Chapter 12
This kiss wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t a negotiation.
It was a reclaiming. It was hard and desperate and hungry, a violent storm of lips and teeth and tongue that stole the air from my lungs and the last of the beer-fog from my brain.
One of his hands remained fisted in my hair, holding me in place, while the other slid down my back, pressing me impossibly closer against the hard lines of his body.
He broke the kiss as suddenly as he’d started it, both of us gasping. His eyes blazed with a dark, possessive fire as they roamed my face.
“His mouth was here,” he stated, his thumb brushing roughly over my bottom lip.
Before I could stammer a reply, he was kissing me again, deeper, more thoroughly, his tongue sweeping in to claim and cleanse. When he pulled back a second time, his gaze as fixed on the collar of my t-shirt.
“His hands were here,” he growled, his fingers hooking under the neckline of my shirt. With a sharp, shocking tear, the cheap cotton gave way, rending down the front. The ruined fabric hung open, exposing my chest to the cool air and his scorching gaze. I shuddered.
He didn’t pause. His mouth trailed down my jaw, over the frantic pulse in my throat, to the hollow of my collarbone. “Here?”
“Y-yes” I panted.
He bit down, not hard enough to break skin, but with enough force to make me cry out and leave a mark that would bloom tomorrow. A brand. Each touch of his lips and teeth was a silent, physical vow, overwriting the false intimacy of the photo, erasing Shay’s touch with his own.
He backed me up until my legs hit the edge of my worn-out couch. “On the couch,” he ordered, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Where he sat with you,”
Understanding dawned, hot and shameful. He was reclaiming the territory, too.
I sank onto the cushions, looking up at him as he stood over me, a god of wrath and desire in my living room.
He shed his own clothes with swift, efficient motions, the loose tie, the crumpled dress shirt, the tailored trousers, until he stood gloriously, intimidatingly bare.
The power dynamic was surreal: him, a billion-dollar sculpture of muscle and intent; me half-naked and shattered on my own cheap sofa.
He came down over me, caging me in, his knees on either side of my hips.
His eyes held mine, a silent question and a definitive answer.
He reached between us, his hand rough and sure, and freed himself.
The blunt had of his cock pressed against me, not where i expected, but against my entrance, still covered by my jeans.
The friction through the denim was maddening. “Henry,” I begged, the word a broken thing.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his hips rocking slowly, torturously, against me. “Who do you belong to?”
The last of my resistance crumbled. “You.” It was a surrender and a truth. “You.”
“Again.”
“You! I’m yours, Henry. Only yours.”
A low, approving rumbled sounded in his chest. With one hand, he wrenched my jeans and boxers down just enough, his movements urgent. There was no preparation, no finesse, just the slick pressure of his arousal and my own desperate readiness. He pushed inside in one relentless, claiming stroke.
I cried out, my back arching off the couch, my fingers digging into his shoulders. He filled me completely, a devastating fullness that was equal parts pain and perfect relief. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, his forehead pressed to mine, our ragged breaths mingling.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
I forced my eyes open, drowning in the storm of his gaze.
“Every part of you,” he growled, beginning to move with deep punishing thrust that shook the couch frame. “Every thought. Every moan. They are all mine. This,” he punctuated the word with a particularly hard drive of his hips, “is mine.”
I could only cling to him, my world narrowing to the feeling of him moving within me, the heat of his skin, the possessive words snarled against my mouth. He was everywhere, inescapable, rewriting the narrative of my apartment, of my body, of my very self.
The pressure coiled, tight and inevitable, deep in my gut. “Henry, I’m..”
“Come,” he ordered, his own control fraying, his rhythm becoming frantic, possessive. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”
It was all the permission i needed. My climax shattered through me, blinding and violent, my shout swallowed by his kiss.
The clenching of my body around him tore his own release from him.
He groaned, a raw, broken sound that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard, and spilled himself inside me, his final, ultimate claim.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of our harsh breathing and the distant hum of the city through the window.
He collapsed against me, his weight a welcome anchor, before rolling slightly to his side, taking me with him.
He kept me tucked tightly agaisnt his chest, one arm a heavy band across my ribs, his legs tangled with mine.
He nuzzled the mark on my collarbone, his lips gently now. “Sleep,” he whispered into my skin, his voice rough with spent passion. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And wrapped in the overwhelming reality of him, his scent, his strength, his possession, in the ruins of my living room, i finally did. The “don’t be dramatic” text was forgotten, obliterated.