It’s pure animal, shelf edges carving crescents into my palms, detergent fumes burning my sinuses, his breath scorching my neck like a brand. Sweat drips between my shoulder blades. His tongue follows every drop on my neck. My thighs quake, slick running down my inner knee. The coil in my core snaps. I come screaming his name, vicious and shattered, walls clamping his cock like a fist, gushing around him.
“There,” he snarls triumphantly, feeling me milk him, hips stuttering as he chases it. “Knew this greedy cunt would break first. Take it.”
Two more savage thrusts, hips slamming so hard my teeth rattle, then he shatters, groaning my name like a prayer and a curse, cock pulsing hot inside the latex. But as he pounds through the last brutal waves, grinding deep, his mouth finds my neck, not biting, kissing. Open-mouthed, reverent. Breath hitching.
“So fucking good,” he whispers, wrecked, lips dragging softly across my pulse. “Don’t shut me out again.”
I twist just enough, lips brushing his ear, voice gone hoarse and tender against my will. “Don’t make me.”
Three gasping heartbeats, still locked together, dripping sweat, chests heaving, chemical stink thick as the afterglow. His forehead brushes my shoulder. My fingers spasm against torn metal.
For a moment, we just hang there, locked together, hearts trying to punch their way out of our chests.
Then his weight eases. He slips out of me, steps back, one hand braced on the shelf, the other still on my hip like he’s reluctant to let go.
I push his hand off and tug my leggings back up with fingers that don’t feel like they belong to me. The elastic bites my waist. My skirt falls crookedly around my thighs. When I smooth my coat, my sleeve comes away with a gray dust streak, and the sharp chemical reek of detergent clings to my hair.
It feels like evidence. Proof this doesn’t belong in any of the lives I’m supposed to live.
He drags the condom off, ties it, bins it, then wrestles his sweats up, breathing still ragged. For a second, it looks like he might lean against the door and slide down it. Instead, he straightens, scrubs a hand over his face, and looks at me.
“Élise—”
“No.” I don’t turn around. I keep my palms flat on the cold metal of the shelf, shoulders squared. “We don’t… talk after, remember?”
He huffs out a humorless breath. “We never talk before, either. You just appear, set everything on fire, and vanish.”
I turn then, slowly. His hair is a mess, his hoodie skewed, jaw already darkening where my hand landed. He looks wrecked and unfairly beautiful.
“You can’t just keep disappearing when I—” He stops, jaw working, eyes flicking away like the words are too much. “When I actually try with you.”
The hollow inside my chest pulses. I aim for it.
“This is all it is, Nico.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend. “You knew that.”
It should sound cruel and clean. It doesn’t. The last word cracks, just a little, like thin ice under weight.
His eyes snap back to mine.
“Coward,” he says quietly.
Heat flares in my cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He steps closer, not enough to touch, enough that I have to tilt my chin up. “You’d rather stab me with words than admit you’re scared. You fuck me in a broom closet, but God forbid you actually want anything.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I spit. “You’re nothing but nerves and ego and a pair of fast legs. You want a princess you can parade around when it suits you.”
He laughs once, harshly. “If all I wanted was a body, I could’ve had a dozen by now who don’t come with a security detail.”
“Then by all means,” I say, spreading my hands, “go find one. I won’t stop you.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” he fires back. “You never stop anyone. You never stay. You just run.”
The words land because they’re true. Because they sound like my father when he’s tired of pretending I’m not a disappointment.
For a second, I almost do what I always do, turn, walk out, slam a door on the mess.
My hand even finds the handle.
