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My hand crashes against her hip, fingers digging in hard as I yank her against me. Her breath stutters, lips part, eyes blazing with equal parts fury and want. Without warning, I shove her back—hard—until her spine hits the wall with a sharp thud. My hand crashes against her hip, fingers digging in as I trap her there, close enough to feel the heat radiating off her skin. Her breath stutters, lips part, eyes blazing with equal parts fury and want.

“Allow me to fucking remind you,” I growl, voice rough, dragging my palm up under her shirt with fierce intent. Then I crush my mouth to hers—bruising, punishing—like I’m trying to shove the memory of me down her throat. It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet. It’s a reclaiming. My hand fists in her hair, the other pushing higher, until she gasps against my lips and I swallow the sound like a promise.

The tension snaps, raw and electric—words lost in the heat of the fight, the hunger, the wild need we’ve let tangle between us for ten fucking years.

Her hands slam against my chest, nails scratching as she fights, but her body melts into mine with a hunger that mirrors my own. Our lips crash together—hard, desperate—tasting every year of tension and pain in each brutal kiss.

She bites down, and I groan low, slipping one hand beneath the hem of her shirt, trailing fire along her skin. Her eyes meet mine—wild, defiant, burning with raw need that makes me tremble.

“You want to know what our love is, Lou? It’s in your bloodstream, infecting every God damn inch of you. It’s clawing at your insides, won’t let you eat, won’t let you sleep, won’t let you fucking breathe without me. That’s what this is. That’s us.”

I wipe everything off the table with one brutal sweep—papers, pens, that fucking drawing, all of it gone. Then I grab her wrists, slam them down against the cold wood, and throw her onto the surface hard enough to steal her breath.

Her chest rises and falls rapid-fire, eyes wide and wild—part shock, part something darker, a hunger she’s been hiding even from herself.

I lean down, mouth crashing against her neck with fierce urgency, teeth grazing and tongue dragging along bruised skin. My breath is rough against her pulse, the heat between us snapping tight like a live wire.

“Such a gentleman.” She catches my lips with a teasing smirk, voice low and sharp.

“You don’t need gentle,” I growl against her skin, voice low and hungry. “You need someone who sees all the fucking mess and chose’s you anyway.”

I hover over her, palms pressed flat against the table holding me up, drinking her in—her wild blonde hair fanned around her like a halo and a warning. Her shirt’s ridden up just enough for that pierced pink nipple to peek out, raw and tempting—looking every damned bit the salvation I crave and the damnation I can’t escape.

“Is that what you're going to do? Take me anyways?” Her swollen cherry stained lips taunt with a smirk.

“Fuck, no.” My voice is low, feral.

With a flick, I unbutton her shorts and drag them down her legs slowly—deliberate, unhurried. Her body tenses, trembling with the kind of anticipation she’d never admit to, but can’t hide. I watch her defiance flicker in those honey-colored eyes, the blaze behind them daring me to keep going.

I trail my fingers back up, rough against smooth skin, dragging along every inch like I’ve got all the time in the world. When I reach that last thin scrap of black fabric clinging to her drenched little pussy, I pause—just long enough to let the weight of it settle between us.

My eyes meet hers.

“I’m going to ruin you,” I whisper—truth, not threat.

Because we both know I already have.

This isn’t like last night—where I lost control, gave in to the hunger, and took her like I’d been starved. No, this is something much more. This is deliberate. Darker. A need that has nothing to do with impulse and everything to do with claiming what is already mine. One look at her—face flushed, lips swollen, eyes wrecked and wide—tells me she knows it too.

I trail my fingers along her throat, slowly, tracing the fresh bite marks I’d just left behind. They are red and angry, blooming against her skin like proof of everything we refuse to say out loud. She doesn’t pull away. She tilts her head, gives me more, like she wants me to see the chaos I’ve left behind.

Because she’s not soft. She never has been. She’s fire—violent, consuming, wild, and the only way she’s ever been met right is with someone willing to burn with her. Someone who doesn’t flinch.

A motherfucker who brings the gasoline.

“Grab the edge of the table, little viper,” I command as I grab the damp triangle of fabric covering her pussy and pull it between her slick folds. Her hands don’t move so I reach out and give her exposed nipple a sharp slap making her back bow off the table as her raspy moan fills the room. “What did I say about those fucking hands?”

Then despite the defiant gleam in her eye she reaches up slowly and grasps the edge of the table. I reward her by giving her nipple a soft lick.

“Henny…”

That little breathy sigh—barely a sound—nearly undoes me right there. It’s raw, involuntary, and laced with something that makes my blood burn. And despite every part of me begging to bury myself inside her, I don’t. I won’t.

Not yet.

Because this isn’t about release. It’s about control. About making her feel every second of how long I’ve wanted her. How long I’ve starved.

And I’ll be damned if I’m not going to spend the next hour edging her with my tongue until tears run down her face and she is beyond desperate for me to let her come. Because I’ve spent years haunted by the memory of her taste, by the phantom of her on my tongue in every fucking dream.