I fight.
I shove at his chest. He doesn’t move. I try to twist away; he pins me harder against the wall. My hands find his hair and yank. He retaliates by biting the junction of my neck and shoulder hard enough to make me cry out.
It hurts. It feels incredible. It feels like war and surrender wrapped into one.
He wins.
Or maybe I do.
It’s impossible to tell where the anger ends and the wanting begins. They’re the same thing now, tangled up in sweat and skin and the desperate need to feel something other than fear.
He pins my wrists above my head with one hand. The grip is bruising, inescapable. With his free hand, he tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“Last chance.” His voice is wrecked. “Tell me to stop, and I stop. Tell me to walk away, and I walk. But if you don’t—” He grinds his hips against mine, and the friction makes my vision blur. “If you don’t, I’m going to take you against this wall like I’ve been wanting to since the night you pepper-sprayed me.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth crashes into mine again, swallowing my words, my breath, my defiance. His hand leaves my chin and works at my jeans—efficient, ruthless, shoving them down my hips along with everything underneath.
Then his fingers are on me. Inside me. Two of them, curling exactly where I need them, while his thumb finds the spot that makes my knees buckle.
“This what you wanted?” His voice is dark. Dangerous. “To be seen? To be noticed?” He pumps his fingers harder, and a moan tears out of me. “I see you, Cassie. I fucking see you.”
I can’t answer. Can’t think. The pleasure builds in sharp, relentless waves, cresting toward something devastating.
“Look at me.”
My eyes fly open. His are black. Bottomless. Burning with something that looks like fury and worship in equal measure.
“When you come, you look at me.”
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me without warning—violent, consuming, pulling sounds from my throat I don’t recognize. Hewatches every second of it. Drinks it in like he’s memorizing the destruction.
Before I can recover, he’s freed himself and lifted me in one motion. My back scrapes against the wall, my legs wrap around his waist, and then he’s inside me—hard and deep and devastating.
I cry out. Dig my nails into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
“That’s it.” He starts to move. “Fight me. Take it. Show me you’re still here.”
I’m here. God, I’m here.
He doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t gentle. He takes me against that wall like he’s trying to exorcise something—demons or ghosts or the memory of the woman he lost. Every thrust is a sentence he can’t say. Every groan against my throat is a confession he’s not ready to make.
I meet him stroke for stroke. Demand more. Demand everything.
“Harder.”
He obliges. Shifts the angle. Drives deeper until I’m not sure where he ends and I begin.
The second orgasm builds faster than the first. The tension coils in my core, spreads through my limbs, turns my muscles to liquid.
“Diego—” A warning and a plea.
“I’ve got you.” His hand slides between us, finds the spot that’s still throbbing from before. “Come for me. Now.”
I don’t have a choice.
