Chapter Thirty-Three
THE DOOR CLICKED behind her, but I stayed still.
My hands were fists at my sides. Not out of anger — not at her, not even at Roxanne — but from restraint. Every part of me wanted to follow Lark out that door, grab her by the wrist, press her against the nearest wall and show her what the hell she meant to me. Not with words. Not with promises.
With my body. My mouth. My time.
But she didn’t need another man who took. She needed man to let her choose. One who was patient enough to wait for her to figure her shit out. But fuck, she made me feel like I was loosing my goddamned mind.
So I waited. Counted out five long breaths, jaw tight enough to crack.
Then I left the office.
Lark was by the front door, one hand braced on the frame like she needed the wood to hold her up. Her head was bowed, hair falling down her back, shoulders pulled tight.
I stepped up slow, boots loud in the empty room, until I was behind her.
She didn’t turn.
“I meant what I said,” I told her, voice quiet, soft. “I choose you. Every damn day. Not because I have to. Because I want to.”
She still didn’t turn, but her fingers curled tighter around the doorframe.
“I don’t need saving, Chain,” she said. Voice calm, but shakin’ under it. “And I worry that’s what you’re doing. Even if you don’t realize it.”
I stepped closer. Just behind her now.
“I’m not here to save you, Lark,” I said, breath warm against her ear. “I’m here to see you.”
She turned then — slow, like it cost her somethin’ — and when her eyes met mine, they were storm-dark and uncertain.
“I don’t know how to be anything but this,” she said.
“You don’t have to be anythin’ but what you are.”
“Even with me driving you crazywith my mood swings?”
“I’ve got calluses, darlin’. I can take it.”
Somethin’ broke behind her eyes, not weakness, not surrender. Just the need to be believed.
And I wasn’t waitin’ anymore.
I reached out slow, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t.
My fingers brushed her jaw, thumb tracing the edge of her cheek.
“You ever feel the change in me when you walk into the room?” I said. “Like you stole every single breath my from body.”
She swallowed, lips parting.
“You ever notice how I can’t stop watchin’ you? How we feel each other without touchin’?”
That made her blink , once, then twice, like she didn’t trust what she heard.
And then she moved — fast, sudden, like the part of her holdin’ back finally gave way. Her hands fisted in the front of my cut, yankin’ me down as her mouth crushed into mine.
Fuck.
She tasted like cherries and sin and the kind of kiss that rewrites the goddamn rules. I kissed her back with every ounce of the heat I’d held in check for weeks. Let her feel it — how badly I’d wanted this. Wanted her.
But even then, I didn’t press her against the wall. Didn’t grip her too tight. I let her lead. Let her take what she needed.
When she pulled back, breath ragged, her fingers still in my cut, I stayed close.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t be.”
“But I am afraid of what this could mean.”
I nodded, lips brushin’ her forehead. “Yeah,” I murmured. “Me too. But sometimes you just gotta let it happen.”
We stood there, wrapped in somethin’ too fragile to name, too fierce to ignore.
And I knew, whatever this was between us, it wasn’t just fire. It was fuel.
***
SHE DIDN’T RELEASE her grip on me as I guided her back into the office, her fingers still curled in the fabric like lettin' go would mean admittin' this wasn’t gonna happen, like any distance between us might break the fragile thread of heat that had stretched too long and tight between us already.
She didn’t retreat after the kiss either, just stood there, chest risin' in shallow bursts, her eyes locked on mine with a gaze that held no fear, only the raw uncertainty of someone tryin' to decide whether the thing in front of her would wreck her completely or pull her out of whatever wreck she’d already been survivin'.
But I wasn’t here to do either—I wasn’t here to save her, and I sure as hell didn’t come to break her.
The truth was simpler, rougher. I wanted her—needed her—in a way that went far beyond impulse, beyond logic, beyond anything I could talk myself out of.
And she wanted me too. That was written in the set of her jaw, the tremble in her breath, the way her body leaned into the gravity of mine without hesitation.
"I can’t help but want you," she murmured, her voice raw, the edges frayed like it had scraped its way out of her throat from someplace buried and unspoken.
My hand found her waist, slow and deliberate, groundin' her without pressure, offerin' contact without control.
"Darlin'," I said as I shrugged outta my cut, my voice low and rough with the weight of restraint, "the word want is too fuckin' tame for what I feel."
Her bottom lip trembled—not a sob, not fear, just the smallest crack in a wall she’d kept up too long—and then her hands were movin' again, slidin' under the hem of my shirt, draggin' it up with slow insistence, her fingers grazin' my skin like she was relearnin' what it meant to be allowed to touch, to take.
She wasn’t here to talk. She was here to forget—to lose herself in somethin' visceral and real and impossible to fake.
And I was here to let her.
I pulled the shirt over my head and let it fall behind me, not givin' a damn where it landed. Her hands didn’t pause.
They moved across my chest, over the ink and the raised lines of old mistakes, tracin' the landscape of a man who hadn’t always made the right calls but who knew exactly what this was—what she was.
She touched me like I wasn’t some temporary fix or fleeting distraction, but like I was the thing anchoring her in this exact moment, the only solid thing she could hold on to when everythin' else was pullin' her under.
“Chain.”
"Jesus, Lark..."
The way she said my name—breathless, filled with need—dug straight into my chest. She looked up at me, and whatever hesitation had been there before was gone, burned off by somethin' hotter, deeper.
There was fire in her eyes now, wreckage too—but it was the kind of wreck that begged to be touched, not repaired.
"Touch me," she said, her voice stripped down to nothin' but need. "Show me how good it can feel."
I stepped closer, slow like molasses, lettin' the weight of each breath between us stretch long and tight until her back brushed the edge of the desk behind her.
My hands came down on either side of her hips, palms flat on the cool wood, not cagin' her in, just lettin' her feel where I was—solid, steady, right there.
"With pleasure," I whispered, voice drawlin' low like thunder rollin' across open fields.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. Just waited, still as sin, like she trusted me to burn her just right.
So I leaned in and brushed my mouth over hers, slower this time, less heat and more intention. I kissed her like I was layin' bricks, buildin' somethin' real with every soft press of lips, every quiet exhale, every pause that said more than words ever could.
Her hands slid up my arms, fingers diggin' in just enough to let me know she needed more. I didn’t rush. Didn’t shove. I just held her there, kissed her like I was starvin' but takin' my time, learnin' the shape of her mouth.
Then her clothes started comin' off in pieces—slow, then a little faster, but never rough. I didn’t want to scare her with how bad I needed her, didn’t want her mistakin' urgency for somethin' darker. I just wanted her to feel everything.
She was all heat and soft skin under my hands, and I memorized every bit of her—from the way her breath hitched when I kissed the soft skin just beneath her collarbone, to the sweet gasp that escaped her lips when I dragged my palm down the length of her thigh and lifted her onto the desk.
"You sure?" I asked, my voice thick with want, thumb sweepin' slow over the jut of her hip. "You say the word, darlin’, I stop."
Her answer came in the form of a kiss—deep, shaky, full of tongue and ache and everything she hadn’t dared to say out loud.
But her body spoke louder.
The way she opened for me. The way her nails dug into my back. The way she moaned, low and wrecked, when I slid my fingers inside her—not rough, not to hurt—just deep enough to make sure she felt it. All of it.
She kissed me like she was done pretendin'. Like she didn’t give a damn if this destroyed her. And I kissed her right back like I had nothin' else to lose.
The office smelled like her now—like heat and skin and somethin' wild I didn’t have a name for. I had my hands on her thighs, draggin' her closer 'til she was perched on the edge of that desk, legs partin' like it was second nature.
I slid my palms up her stomach, fingers spread wide over ribs, thumbs barely grazin' the soft curve just beneath her breasts. Her back arched up into me, like her whole body had been waitin' for this, like it knew what it needed and finally had it in reach.
"Fuck," I growled, starin' at her like she was somethin' holy. "You’re so damn beautiful."
Not pretty. Not cute. Beautiful in the kind of way that left me breathless—all grit and scars and strength wrapped up in somethin' delicate.
I dipped my head, mouth trailin' slow kisses along her neck, across her collarbone, down to the place just beneath her jaw that made her breath hitch and her fingers twist tighter into my shoulders.
When I sucked there, teeth grazin' her skin just right, she let out this soft, broken moan that just about undid me.
"You feel that?" I murmured, voice hot against her throat. "That’s what you do to me, Lark. Every damn time you walk by. Every time you look at me."
She reached up, grabbed the back of my neck, and pulled me into a kiss that was all teeth and need and desperation.
"Fuck," I groaned, mouth trailin' down to her chest, my lips catchin' on her skin. "You’re already drippin' for me and I haven’t even put my hands on you properly yet."
She gasped when I caught her nipple between my teeth, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make her grind into my thigh.
"You want slow," I rasped, fingers teasin' over her slit, "or you want to feel what you do to me?"
Her voice was barely a whisper. "I want you."
That was all I needed.
Permission.
I dropped to my knees right there in that office, the one place I never let another woman inside, no matter what jealous whispers had tried to say. From this night on, this space was somethin' different. Sacred.
Because she was here. Legs open. Eyes dark. Watchin' me like she couldn’t believe this was real.
I dragged her forward to the edge of the desk and buried my face between her thighs.
She cried out, loud and strangled, one hand grippin' the desk, the other fisted in my hair.
I didn’t ease her into it. I devoured. Tongue deep, slow then fast, teasin' then punishin'. I didn’t let up. Not 'til her thighs were tremblin' around my head, not 'til she was pantin' my name like a prayer, comin' apart on my tongue.
And I still didn’t stop.
Even when she whimpered, even when she tried to pull back, too sensitive, too raw—I held her hips firm.
"Ain’t done yet," I growled against her. "Told you I’d show you."
She moaned, louder this time—and pulled me in harder.
When I stood, her eyes were glassy, lips parted, legs still spread like she forgot how to close 'em.
I undid my belt, shoved my jeans low, and gripped her by the hips. Met her gaze. "Eyes on me."
Then I sank into her in one long, deep thrust.
Her head fell back, mouth open in a soundless cry.
I braced a hand around her waist, not tight, just holdin' her steady, keepin' her right there with me.
"You feel that?" I rasped, hips rollin' slow but deep. "This ain’t pity. This is want. This is every goddamn night I went to bed hard, thinkin' about your mouth, your voice, your silence."
She dug her nails into my shoulders, draggin' me in deeper.
"Chain—oh—"
"Say it," I growled, breath comin' ragged. "Say you know this means somethin'."
She met my eyes, voice breakin'. "I know. I know it does."
And I lost it.
Fucked her into that desk like she was mine.
Because she was.
Fast. Rough. All hands and breathless moans and nothin' held back.
And when she came again, I followed—her name on my lips, my hands still gripping her waist, both of us shakin' like we’d just been struck by lightnin'.
After, I didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
I just held her close, arms wrapped around her like she was the only thing tetherin' me to the ground.
Forehead to hers.
No lies.
No promises.
Just this.
Real.
Raw.
Ours.