“I’m not.” But his grip tightens, betraying his fear. “I just got you back.” He kisses my jaw and neck.
He’s trying to seduce the doubt out of me, mark his claim where words won’t hold. But the new presence under my skin now sees this clearly for what it is—a beautiful trap, lined with kissesinstead of teeth.
Every kiss I allow is a goodbye I can’t say aloud. Every touch a guilt I’ll have to bleed out later, and Dom knows something is wrong. I see it in the slight tremor of his hands. In how his kisses grow more urgent, more frantic, like he’s trying to fuse us together before I slip through his fingers. He senses me fading, and it’s killing him.
“Just a few minutes,” I whisper, untangling myself from his arms. “Please.”
The bathroom gives me a moment of sanctuary. The hot water pounds against my shoulders, scalding and necessary. I let it wash over me, trying to drown the ache of pretending.
The door clicks open.
“Dom.” His name catches in my throat as he steps into the shower behind me without hesitation or question, because there’s never been boundaries between us. Not with our bodies or our hearts. Until now.
His hands settle on my hips, thumbs stroking slow circles. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this.” Dom’s lips brush my shoulder, then his teeth sink gently into the flesh, enough to make me shiver. “You don’t walk away from me. Not after the way you just looked at me.”
Before I can speak, his mouth is at my throat again, teeth grazing with purpose. I gasp, hands flying to the slick tiles for balance as he spins me around, pinning me with a gaze that’s nothing short of feral.
“Let me help.”
“I can do it myself.” But he’s already reaching for the bottle, working shampoo through my tangled strands. His fingers move with maddening gentleness, as if tenderness alone could undo what’s been broken.
This is torture. His hands drift lower, down the curve of my back, cupping my ass, pulling me flush against the solid heat of his length.
He groans, voice rough against my ear, and grinds forward. “I missed you.”
My chest splinters with the weight of what I’m doing. He thinks he’s loving me back to him, healing whatever broke inside me, buteach gentle caress only proves how far I’ve drifted. The hands that once saved me now bind me, and I hate myself for letting him believe otherwise. For taking these moments of tenderness when I know they’re just delaying the inevitable.
“You feel that?” His voice grates with need. “That’s what you do to me. Every fucking time.”
I turn in his arms before they drift any further.
“Let me,” I whisper, fingers already ghosting down his chest. This I can give him. One last offering before everything falls apart.
My touch maps familiar territory: the scar just beneath his ribcage, the twitch in his abdomen when my nails drag over it. He shudders, breath hitching.
“Fuck, Aria—”
I drop to my knees, the tile biting into skin slick with heat and water, steam curling against my shoulders as though the shower itself wants to drown me in guilt. He’s already hard, thick, and demanding in my hand, and still I let my fingers close around him. His jaw locks tight, a muscle feathering beneath the scar I’ve traced a hundred times, and his hips twitch helplessly into my grip.
I shouldn’t notice these things. The water dripping down his chest, collecting in the hollow of his throat. The way his lashes cling together, wet and dark, or how his mouth falls open on a groan that vibrates all the way through him as I take him into my mouth. His hands fist in my hair, not cruel, but desperate, and the tremor in his abdomen tells me he’s losing control. I hollow my cheeks, drag my tongue slow along the underside of him, committing every detail to memory even as shame coils tighter in my gut.
When he breathes my name, it isn’t command but supplication, a word stripped raw, prayer and plea all at once, and I hate how much I want to answer it.
“Love . . .” His head thuds back against the tile. “You’re gonna—fuck—”
His control falters, unraveling into sharp, shallow thrusts, and my throat convulses to bear the rhythm. Tears gather hot at the cornersof my eyes, spilling until salt and water mingle, until every breath scalds like fire dragged raw across my chest. The pressure breaks something loose inside me, an ache so profound it feels less a release than dissolution, my body fracturing molecule by molecule under the weight of what I’m doing.
Dom comes with a fractured moan, hips jerking, voice stripped hoarse as he spills down my throat. I take it all, even as guilt saws between my ribs and hollows me out with morbid meticulousness, leaving only a cavity where love once anchored me. Once, his pleasure had been my purpose, his surrender something sanctified. Now it is larceny, the theft of the last unspoiled fragment of what we were. It isn’t him who’s changed—it’s me. The love remains, but warped, suppurating with secrets, calcified with choices I cannot undo.
He drags me up before I’ve found breath again, fist tangled in my wet hair as his mouth crashes against mine, a kiss so consuming it feels etched into marrow. When the violence eases, when lips begin to linger, I turn my face away, unwilling to bear the gentleness I no longer deserve.
“We should get ready,” I whisper.
His eyes narrow, confusion flickering under the post-orgasm haze. He doesn’t understand why I’m pulling away. Not yet. But I can see the suspicion brewing, the crack beginning to form.
He lets go, and the water spills between us, washing the moment down the drain. The heat of him remains, long after his touch disappears.
I used to think there was nothing worse than losing him. Now I know better. The real heartbreak is having him like this—soft, open, devoted—while knowing I’m already gone.
