“I won’t…fuck… I won’t,” she moaned, pleasure reverberating off the walls.
“Good girl.” My hand slipped between us, fingers circling that spot I knew by heart. “Come for me, Orla, I’m desperate for it.”
Her whole body went rigid, the sound that tore from her throat muffled against my shoulder as she clenched the inner walls around me, pulsing so hard around my cock I nearly lost it then and there. I kept moving, grinding her through it until she was shaking under me.
“Too much…” she gasped.
“Never too much.” I smirked.
My mouth claimed hers, hungry and filthy, before I flipped us so she was astride me.
“Ride me, baby,” I rasped, hands gripping her hips. “I want to watch you come undone.”
Her palms splayed on my chest, hair falling wildly down her back as she sank onto me again, sharply inhaling with euphoria taking every inch. The sight wrecked me.
“That’s it,” I said, sinking deeper into her, as she rolled her hips greedily. “Show me how much you missed me.”
She moved faster, chasing it, head tipping back, moaning my name. I held her there, thrusting up to meet her, every muscle strung tight.
“Tyler… ” she gasped, voice cracking. “Ah, I’m…”
“Give it to me,” I groaned. “Come for me again, O. I’ve got you.”
Her walls clamped around me, her whole body shuddering as she shattered for the second time, collapsing against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and rolled us back over, driving into her with a few rough, helpless thrusts I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.
“Fuck, Orla…”
I buried myself as deep as I could and spilled my load into her in long hot spurts with a guttural groan, holding her so tight she couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
When the tremors eased, I stayed inside her, forehead pressed to hers, both of us breathless in the dark.“You’re it for me, O,” I whispered hoarsely. “Always. No fucking headlines, no doubts. Just us.”
Her fingers threaded into my hair, tugging me into a slow, messy kiss. Tears clung to her lashes, but her voice was as certain as I’d ever heard it be.
“I know,” she whispered. “I believe you.”
Chapter 42
Orla
I laythere stunned for a while.
He’d ripped the fucking door off its hinges.
That should have been the moment everything in me shut down and fear took over. I’ll admit, it took a few seconds for my body to catch up with the reality of what he’d done, the splintered wood, the empty doorway, the noise that must have rattled down the hallway.
But with Tyler, it didn’t land like that.
I knew deep down that whatever had driven him to it hadn’t been about rage; it was panic. It was the idea of losing me. Love with nowhere sensible to go, twisting itself into something hot-headed instead.
I never felt threatened. Never felt unsafe in his arms. For all his flaws, and there were plenty, that line was one he’d never cross. He’d completely laid himself bare to me in ways I’d never imagined he could and it stirred something fiercely protective in me.
The weight of everything was still there, like a bruise that had stopped throbbing but hadn’t quite faded. I was still reeling, stillturning it over in my head, the ugly truth that I’d defaulted to believing the press before believing him.
My hand rested over his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart. It was soothing. We lay there quietly breathing in the same rhythm for a while. Every so often, I felt his lips brush the top of my head, and that tiny gesture undid me more than any grand speech could.
Everything he’d said, about wanting marriage, babies, all of it—it looped in my mind like a song I couldn’t stop listening to. I’d never expected to hear that from him. Not Tyler Reed. Not the man I’d once assumed would bolt at the first mention of a shared future. And this wasn’t even the first time he’d said those things.
My fingertips drifted across the ink scattered over his skin: the dice etched into his ribs, the curling laurel leaves disguising both collarbones, a string of roman numerals I couldn’t place. “What do all these mean?” I asked softly.
