This time, it’s not about lust.
It’s about everything we can still have and everything we’re scared to lose.
His mouth drags up my neck, open and hungry, but his hands stay clenched at my waist like he’s fighting himself. Holding back with barely-there restraint.
I slide my hands up his chest, feeling the hammering pulse beneath his wall of muscle, and pull him down to me.
A broken sound of surrender rumbles out of him as his mouth crashes into mine.
His body presses me into the mattress, solid and sure, his touch fierce but aching. His fingers sink into my hair, pushing it back, memorizing every thread.
I tug at his shirt, yanking it over his head, his muscles tight like a bowstring about to snap. My clothes follow, fabric tossed beside the bed in a cloud of black.
Gasping against his lips, I scrape my nails down his bare back, spurring him on. His hips grind between my legs, all that tension coiled tight and spilling over. Yet even in the urgency, there’s something devastatingly careful in the way he handles me, like he’s terrified of breaking the one thing he’s desperate to keep.
When he rolls on a condom and pushes inside me, it’s with a ragged groan against my lips, his hands framing my face, forcing my eyes to stay on his.
“Stay with me,” he grits out.
I cradle his face between my palms, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between us. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His mouth moves down my jaw, over my collarbone, teeth nipping a path. He thrusts into me, hard and deep, a full-body claim that punches the air from my lungs.
His free hand palms my hip, then my waist, tracing every curve, learning me by touch alone—rough, reverent,his.
Our bodies find a beautiful rhythm, every thrust a silent vow he doesn’t know how to speak aloud.
He drives into me again, and again, grinding deep, dragging broken sounds from my lips that only make him hold me tighter.
“Annie,” he breathes out, a prayer and a curse all at once. His forehead drops to mine, sweat-laced skin sliding together.
“I’m with you.”
The friction builds, every grind of his hips unraveling me. My back arches off the bed, my fingers clawing at his shoulders, trying to pull him closer, needing more, needing everything.
Pressure coils in my core, sharp and hot, the pleasure blurring into something bigger. Something I can’t contain. His name rips from my throat as I fall apart beneath him, my body clenching and shuddering, taking him with me.
A cry breaks loose from my chest, and he catches it with his mouth, swallowing the sound, kissing me, absorbing every shattered piece.
When he comes, it’s not quiet. It’s a guttural, broken roar ripped from his throat, as if loving me and leaving me are the same violent thing.
I hold him through it, our bodies locked, our hearts pounding together.
And when he finally collapses on top of me, dropping his cheek to my chest, I thread my fingers through his hair and part my lips with the one thing I know will reach him.
Music.
“I Only Want To Be With You.”
Chapter 46Annalise
Our last show in Los Angeles has been the best one yet.
Maybe it was the wall-to-wall fans, the killer set capped off with a roaring encore, the $725,000 paycheck looming from Chase’s guitar deal, or the fact that everyone is getting laid.
Either way, morale is through the roof.
Backstage after the show, locked in the tiny en suite bathroom off the green room, Chase drives into me, my skirt bunched up around my waist, my underwear pooled around one stiletto, and my right leg lifted toward the ceiling, ankle gripped tightly in his white-knuckled fist. I’m pressed against the door, the frantic, frequent thuds a clear indicator of what we’re doing to anyone within earshot.
