I nod, desperate, frantic. My nails score his chest. My thighs quiver around him.
He slides his hand between us. “You’re so wet,” he grinds out, thumb circling my clit in tight, ruthless spirals. “You gonna come for me again?”
“Yes,” I pant. “Yes. I want to come on your cock.”
His head snaps back like I yanked a leash. “Fuuuck.”
The sound he makes is primal, feral. His hands clamp down on my hips, and then he’s thrusting up into me again, brutal, relentless.
My moans turn into cries, each one louder, more desperate than the last.
It hits like an inferno, violent and all-consuming. I shatter around him with a scream, my thighs clenching, body spasming.
“That’s it, baby,” Declan groans. “Come for me. Drench my fucking cock.”
My vision whites out as pleasure blazes through me. I ride it out, writhing, gasping his name like it’s the only word I remember.
He lifts me enough to pull out and comes with a broken curse, his release spilling hot across my thigh.
We collapse into each other, sweat-slicked and breathless, and his arms wrap tight around me. We’re both shaking, both breathing like we’ve crawled from the smoke and finally found clean air.
His chest rises and falls against mine in uneven waves. My hand settles at the nape of his neck, fingers threading through damp strands of hair as I press closer, needing the feel of his skin against mine to keep from floating away.
“I think you broke me,” he murmurs, voice rough and raw at the edges.
A slow, shaky laugh bubbles up from deep in my chest. “You asked for it.”
He pulls back enough to look at me. His eyes are heavy-lidded, pupils still blown wide, but behind the wreckage is something gentler. Something new.
“Amanda…” He says my name quietly, and it lands differently. Like a hope. Like a wish.
“What is it?” My fingertips run along the rough scratch of his cheek as my thumb sweeps beneath his eye. Vulnerability flickers in his gaze, and it makes my heart squeeze. “You can tell me anything, Declan.”
The nod he gives is thin and unconvincing. He grabs the nearest fur throws and wipes up the mess on my thigh before draping the second around my shoulders.His arms slide around me, his hold tightening at my waist until I’m pressed flat against him as if he’s afraid the moment he lets go I might run away.
“I don’t want to be the man I was. Not after this. Not after you.”
“I don’t want to be the woman I was either,” I whisper. “I want—” My throat tightens, the words snagging on old patterns, old fears.
But I won’t let them win. I deserve to say what I feel. And Declan deserves to hear it. All of it. The truth in its full, messy, unfiltered form, and nothing but the truth.
I sit up. Declan needs to see me when I say this, to know that it’s the truth.
“I want this.Us. Whatever we become, I want it to be real.”
His brow furrows slightly. His lips part like there’s something else he needs to say, but the words catch on a rough inhale.
I press a kiss to his cheek. The slope of his nose. The space between his brows. “We don’t have to go back to who we were.”
“No,” he says softly. “We don’t.”
Hope is a dangerous kind of fire. It burns just like fear. I’ve spent my whole life flinching from joy the same way I do from pain, well aware that either one can turn me to ash if I’m not ready.
I draw the fur throw tighter around my shoulders, trying to hold the moment in place. Like our softness might be enough to make me safe. Like if I stay still enough, quiet enough, maybe the universe won’t notice I finally have something to lose.
“Hey,” Declan murmurs, his hand finding my waistbeneath the blanket and squeezing. “You’re here. I’m here. That’s real.”
My mouth finds his again. The kiss is deep and aching, more need than heat. His hands cradle my face like he knows exactly how fragile I am. My fingers knot in his hair, trying to memorize the way he feels when he’s not holding anything back. I want to stay here forever.
