I broke the kiss long enough to say, “Here. I need you here.”
“We're in the gym.”
“I don't care.” I grabbed the back of his neck. “I need you right now, Troy. Need to feel you. Need to know this is real and I'm not losing my mind.”
He studied my face for a long moment, reading the desperation there and the need that went beyond just physical want into territory that felt dangerous and necessary at the same time.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Okay.”
He took my right hand first. Turned it over in his palms and looked at the damage with the same flat assessment he brought to everything. Then he led me toward the bathroom attached to the gym without letting go of it.
The fluorescent lights were harsh and made everything look worse than it probably was. Troy ran warm water over my knuckles, working carefully, washing away blood and loose skinuntil he could see the actual damage underneath. I hissed when the water hit the worst of it. He kept going anyway.
“Deep,” he said.
“I know.”
“You fight in two days.”
“I know that too.”
He dried my hands with a clean towel, his thumbs pressing gently along the bones of my right hand, feeling for anything that moved wrong. His jaw tightened slightly when he found what he was looking for but he didn't say anything, just held an ice pack from the kit under the sink against my knuckles and watched my face.
I caught his chin with my other hand and tilted his face up. “Troy. We deal with the hands tomorrow. Right now I need you.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression. Then he set the ice pack on the edge of the sink and nodded. “Okay.”
He kissed me softly and led me back out to the mats.
We knelt facing each other, both of us wrecked and marked up in different ways by the same weeks of chaos, the bruising from the alley fight mottled across his ribs and the cut above his eyebrow that had finally stopped seeping, and I let myself look at all of it directly for the first time. The fluorescent light was honest to the point of cruelty and I was glad for it. There was nothing flattering about the angle and no forgiving shadow to hide in. We were exactly what we were and we were choosing it anyway.
I reached out and cupped his face with my hands, careful of the split knuckles, feeling the roughness of his jaw against my palms.
He exhaled long and slow with the specific release of someone who has been holding their breath for longer than they should have been.
I kissed him, not urgent or driving toward anything, just his mouth against mine in the quiet gym with the hum of fluorescent tubes overhead and blood still tacky on the leather bag behind us. His lips were salt-rough and familiar in a way that still surprised me every time, the particular shape of him and the way he kissed back with a deliberateness that said he was present for every second of it.
The heat built in increments. His hands moved to my chest, mine to his waist, and both of us shook slightly with something that wasn't cold.
“I need to feel you,” I said against his mouth. “Need to know you're real and here and mine.”
“Then take what you need.” His voice was rough and raw from crying and confession and the weight of everything we'd said. “I'm not breakable, Declan. Stop treating me like I am.”
The challenge in his tone made something shift in my chest and made the careful control I'd been maintaining crack just enough to let something darker through.
I pushed him back onto the mats harder than I'd intended and followed him down with my weight. I pinned his wrists above his head and felt him arch up into the contact instead of pulling away.
“You want it rough?” I asked, needing to hear him say it and needing permission to stop being gentle when gentle wasn't what either of us needed right now.
“Yeah.” His eyes were dark with pupils blown wide. “I want everything you've been holding back. All the fear and the rage and the helplessness you've been swallowing. Give it to me.”
I kissed him hard enough to bruise and bit his lower lip until he gasped. I used my weight to keep him pinned while my mouth moved down his jaw and his throat, finding the places that made him shake. He fought the hold just enough to make me tightenmy grip and just enough to feel the power exchange happening between us.
“Fuck,” he breathed when my teeth found the junction of his neck and shoulder. “Declan.”
I bit down harder, not enough to break skin but enough to leave a mark and enough that he'd feel it tomorrow and remember this, remember me losing control in the best possible way.
His hips bucked up against mine. The friction made us both groan. I ground down against him and let him feel how hard I was, let him understand exactly what he was asking for.
