Eris
The bathroom feels smaller once Kieran’s lips touch mine.
My thighs press against the cool countertop. Kieran’s hands are warm as he cradles my cheeks, grounding and unmooring me at the same time. The light above the mirror hums softly, but everything else falls away as I notice him holding back.
It isn’t in his grip. That stays careful, almost reverent.
But I see it in the way his jaw tightens when we stop kissing, when I breathe his name. And it’s in the way his forehead rests against mine, like he needs the contact to stay upright and contain himself at the same time.
“This isn’t fast,” I whisper, as if naming this worry aloud will stop the emotions from constricting me.
“No,” he agrees, brushing his nose along my cheek. “It’s not too fast, Eris, but maybe it feels like that because there are three of us.”
His thumb traces the line of my hip, slow enough that it feels like a question.
I answer by leaning into him, by letting my hands slide up his arms and settle at his shoulders.
He exhales as if I’ve just given him permission to exist inside this moment instead of fighting for restraint over his actions.
“You feel different when it’s you,” I murmur.
“When it’s me?” he asks, his gaze curious.
“The first time… I didn’t know it was you. Kieran and Hollow were two different people.”
His mouth finds mine again, but… He’s softer this time. Patient. Like he’s learning me instead of taking from me, careless of the heat curling between us.
I wrap my leg around Kieran’s hip, running my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. He makes a sound under his breath, something raw and unguarded, and his grip on me tightens. One hand braces my back, the other steady at my thigh, anchoring us both.
We’re suspended between choice and surrender.
“I can’t give you half of me,” he mumbles. The warning is a little too late, but he shakes his head as if the words didn’t come out quite right. “You won’t get half of me.”
I meet his eyes in the mirror again, witnessing the truth swirling in his brilliant green irises. The devotion. Danger.
The man who will wait if I ask him to and burn with me if I don’t.
“Good,” I retort. “I don’t do halves, and I don’t want them.”
Kieran kisses me once more, his lips trailing a damp path from my mouth to my jaw to my neck. He claims me with delicate nips before he pulls back, his forehead resting against mine again, sealing the moment with a type of calm that almost always makes way for chaos.
The second he lets go of his restraint, he’s kicking the door shut behind him, the bathroom becoming a casualty to our incoming war zone.
He jerks me toward his chest, redirecting me until my back hits the cool tile wall. The impact is sharp enough to steal my breath, but it only makes the heat between us burn hotter. That juxtaposition of cold porcelain and burning skin has goosebumps racing up my arms and down my legs.
“Still want this?” he murmurs, his voice echoing off the walls in the confined space.
“I wanted this before you walked in.” His shirt is soft cotton, and I resist ripping it as I drag it over his head, throwing it out of our way. “I’m getting exactly what I asked for.”
Kieran’s hands grow more insistent, almost as if he’s punishing me for being a little bratty. He grips my hips, lifting me with ease as he sets me on the bathroom counter. My legs wrap around his waist, locking him in place.
Now, there’s no need for control.
He’s breaking just as fast as I am.
My elbow collides with the products on the counter. Something clatters into the sink. A glass bottle of hydrating serum shatters against the tile floor. My tube of toothpaste knocks over the waste bin.
I don’t care.
Kieran’s lithe fingers hold both of my wrists captive with one hand as he unbuttons his jeans with the other, shoving them past his hips. His movements are fast and precise as he tries to wreck my world with one full thrust, seating himself inside me with barely a warning.
Fuck.
I didn’t realize how wet I am, how needy.
The mirror rattles when I arch into him, bumping the back of my head. The sound is sharp, almost violent… Thrilling. He releases my hands, and I dig my nails into his shoulders, pulling him closer as I chase something I can’t quite name.
Maybe just a ferocious craving to be filled?
Whatever it is, I can’t stop it.
I can only satisfy it.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he breathes against my neck, voice shaking ever so slightly.
“I’ll try my best,” I whisper, wrapping my fingers in his hair.
His following thrust is undeniably punishment for my smart mouth. I use my hand to catch myself from sliding backward into the sink. Water bursts to life behind me, the faucet catching me and spraying wildly into the basin, chilly against my back.
Now everything is slick.
Messy.
Out of control.
Fucking perfect.
“What do you feel?” Kieran asks, a slight growl in his throat.
The edge of the counter bites into the backs of my thighs as he shifts. I grasp at the sink and faucet to keep myself steady, knuckles surely going white as the cold water washes over my fingers.
The roughness in his voice pushes me over the edge far too quickly. I can’t respond with anything more than a broken sound that makes his grip turn bruising and his body press harder, like he’s trying to fuse us together.
And that is exactly what I want right now.
This feeling…
But never ending.
“Answer me.”
“I feel—fuck. You. Oh my god,” I reply breathlessly, a nuclear bomb of an orgasm still detonating in my core. “All of you. Give it to me. Don’t stop.”
Kieran’s reaction to my pleas is immediate. His entire body tenses, but he pushes through it, groaning my name as if I handed him exactly what he wants. I can’t tell if it’s agony or ecstasy he’s in, though neither option is displeasing.
Every finishing movement holds an echo of his raw power, each gasp still lingering in the air. I can even hear skin against skin, every impact pushing me over the edge, every sound impossible to ignore. Burned into my mind. Memorized…
“You’re not walking away from this,” he murmurs, voice low and wrecked. “Us. We keep saying it, but we really mean it.”
My heart slams against my ribs. “I know.”
How can I leave now?
I don’t want to.
Not when he looks at me like I’m everything.
Not when I feel like he’s showing me the truth.
I’m already too far gone.
“Don’t stop,” I breathe.
His smile turns possessive.
Unhinged.
“Never,” he tells me, reaching behind me to turn off the water.
The silence afterward feels louder than any of the noise we were making moments ago. It’s both full and empty, heavy with everything we didn’t say while we were too busy proving something else to ourselves.
Kieran stays inside me, resting his forehead against mine while he steadies his breathing.
His hands don’t roam now: they hold firm, one at my waist, the other splayed between my shoulders like he’s once again anchoring himself to me.
Like if he lets go, something important might slip through his fingers.
I don’t move either.
This is the part I would normally rush… But I don’t rush it with him.
It’s also the part where I check myself, cataloging the aftermath of my decisions the way I do when I alter the course of my life.
Heart rate?
Stable.
Regret?
Missing in action.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod once, but it feels insufficient. “Yeah. I’m okay. Not broken, but maybe I’ll have a few new bruises on the backs of my thighs.”
That earns me a faint, disbelieving huff of breath against my hair. His thumb brushes once along my side, though his eyes search my face, checking for cracks.
He won’t find any.
What he does find is me watching him right back, already recalibrating. Adapting. And highly aware that whatever lines I’ve crossed from them are now permanent changes.
Somewhere beyond the bathroom door, the loft is still quiet. Silas and Jace are still down the hall.
The app is still waiting.
Daniel is still breathing.
Nothing has actually changed.
Except everything has.