Page 50 of Power Play

"I'm not making your decisions."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"I already answered that question. The answer hasn't changed."

'I’m here because I can't be anywhere else.'

The sentence sits between us the way it sat when I said it in this kitchen. She heard it then. She hears it now. The difference is that she stopped what was happening with a hand on my chest and a single word that dropped me like a round.

She doesn't stop it this time.

Her hand grabs the front of my shirt and pulls, and the collision is harder than the last one because neither of us is pretending anymore. Her mouth hits mine and the anger is in it, all of it, the isolation and the professional destruction and the surveillance and my presence in her kitchen again doing the thing she told me not to do.

The kiss is a fight. She bites my lip in the same place she bit it before and the copper taste registers alongside the heat of her mouth and the grip of her hand twisting in my shirt. I grab her hips hard enough that she'll wear the marks tomorrow.

She shoves me backward. My shoulders hit the hallway wall and she's against me before the impact finishes registering. Her body presses the full length of mine with a force that has nothing to do with tenderness. This is the war we've been fighting since she laid out my operational files on this counter and dismantled me with a precision that left nothing standing.

I reverse the position. Her back hits the wall and the sound she makes is rage and want in equal measure. My hands pin her wrists above her head. Her eyes meet mine and the challenge in them is the most honest thing either of us has offered.

"Let go of my wrists."

I let go. She grabs my belt.

The undressing is violent. Her hands strip my shirt over my head with a roughness that scrapes the fabric across the bite mark on my lip. I pull the sweatshirt off her and find bare skin underneath for the second time, and the discovery hits the same way it hit before except this time I don't stop at the discovery.

My mouth finds her neck, the curve of her breast. I bite down where her shoulder meets her throat and her fingers dig into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks that will match the ones I left on her hips. My hand closes over her breast and the nipple hardens against my palm before I've finished the stroke. I roll it between my fingers and her spine arches off the wall, pressing her hips forward into mine with an urgency that has nothing to do with invitation and everything to do with demand.

I drop my hand between her legs. Through the thin fabric, the heat is startling and the dampness tells me what her mouth won't admit. My thumb presses against her through the cotton and her breath catches, her hips rolling into the pressure with a responsiveness that guts every pretense I have left about who is in control of this encounter.

"This doesn't change anything," she says against my ear. Her teeth find my earlobe and the bite sends a jolt straight through me.

"I know."

"It doesn't mean I trust you."

"I know."

"It means I'm tired of fighting what my body already decided."

I strip the last barrier off her, get rid of the rest of my clothes and lift her against the wall. Her legs wrap around me and the slick heat of her presses against the length of me. She rolls her hips and the friction drags a sound from me that has no tactical application whatsoever. Her hand reaches between us, and the efficiency of her fingers tells me she's been thinking about this with the same tactical precision she brings to everything else.

She finds me and wraps her hand around me. The grip is firm and deliberate, stroking once with a pressure that makes my forehead drop against the wall beside her head. She positions me at her entrance and the wet heat against the tip is enough to fracture whatever was left of the professional distance I've been maintaining since she threw me out.

I push into her against the wall. The angle is steep. The depth is immediate. The sound she makes is the rawest thing I've heard from someone who controls every syllable that leaves her mouth.

Her back presses hard into the plaster. Her nails score lines down my back. The wall gives us leverage that a bed wouldn't, and I use it, driving into her with a force that is the physical equivalent of every argument we've had and every truth she dragged out of me in this apartment.

She matches me. Her hips meet every thrust with a counter-rhythm that fights for an angle I'm not giving her. Her inner muscles grip me on every withdrawal, her body pulling me back before the next stroke lands, and the wet, relentless clasp of her is enough to end me if I let the pace slip for even a second.

The wall isn't enough. I carry her to the bedroom with her teeth scraping the tendon in my neck. I'm still inside her when we reach the bed and the sensation of moving while buried in her makes both of us gasp at the shift in angle.

I lower her onto the mattress. The change in position opens her body to me in a way the wall didn't allow. I pull out to the tip and press back in slowly, filling her in a single measured stroke. Her back arches.

Her nails rake down my ribs, tracing the scar she found the first time we did this. The ferocity she's bringing to it now versus how carefully she traced it then tells me everything about who we've become.

I shift the angle, tilting my hips until the base of me grinds where she needs the pressure, and the moan that escapes her is low enough that I feel it through my chest.

She flips us. The strength it takes to reverse a man my size is real, and her managing it tells me she's been planning this the way she plans everything. She pins my wrists the way I pinned hers, and the symmetry lands with the force of a statement: you don't get to be the only one in control.