Chapter 19
Delilah Barrinheart
I’m back there.
The walls are too close, the air damp and stale, my wrists burning where the restraints bite in deeper every time I struggle. Someone is shouting, but it takes me a second to realize it’s me. My throat is raw, my voice useless.
He said he’d come back.
He said—
Pain explodes across my ribs, knocking the breath from my lungs. I curl inward instinctively, trying to protect what little of myself is left.
“He’s not coming,” someone says, close to my ear. Calm. Certain. “No one is.”
Jon.
The thought of his name hurts worse than the blow.
Then hands are on my face.
Not rough. Not claiming. Warm. Steady.
“Delilah.”
The voice cuts through the dark like a blade of light.
“Hey. Hey—look at me.”
I gasp awake, lungs dragging in air like I’ve been underwater too long. My sheets are twisted around my legs, my skin slick with sweat, my tank top clinging uselessly to my ribs. My heart is trying to claw its way out of my chest.
Hands cradle my face exactly like they did in the dream—but these don’t hurt.
They ground.
“Easy,” Jon says, low and firm. “You’re here. You’re safe. It’s just me.”
I blink hard, the room swimming back into place. The dim light. My bed. Him.
He’s kneeling beside me, bare-chested, hair mussed like he came straight from sleep. Boxers, nothing else. Like he didn’t stop to think—just came.
“You were yelling,” he says quietly. “Couldn’t wake you.”
My breath stutters. My hands shake. There’s too much adrenaline in my veins, too much leftover fear with nowhere to go.
“I thought—” My voice breaks. I swallow and try again. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
His thumbs brush my cheekbones, gentle, anchoring. “I’m here.”
Something inside me snaps—not cleanly, not logically. Just a sharp break where fear turns into need.
I surge forward and kiss him.
It’s not graceful. It’s not planned. It’s heat and impulse and the desperate need to feel anything other than panic.
For a heartbeat, he freezes.
“Delilah—” he murmurs against my mouth, hands still framing my face, not moving lower, not taking more. “Hey. Slow down.”
But when I don’t pull away—when I kiss him again, harder this time—he exhales, a sound that feels like surrender, and kisses me back.
It’s messy. All breath and mouths and hands finding each other like we’re making sure the other one is real. I’m dimly aware of my fingers curling into his shoulders, of his hand sliding into my hair, steady instead of frantic.
When we finally break apart for air, my forehead presses into his chest.
“Talk to me,” he says softly, his voice a careful thing. “Tell me this is okay.”
I nod, because words feel too small. Because for the first time since captivity, my body isn’t flinching. Isn’t remembering.
His lips trace my jaw, then my neck—slow, questioning, like he’s checking in with every inch of space he takes.
And somehow… it works.
Each place he touches feels new. Clean. Untainted. The other hands—the ones from the dark—don’t follow me here.
He doesn’t know everything I endured.
But in this moment, he doesn’t need to.
All I know is that the fear is quiet for the first time in days, replaced by warmth and the steady reality of him.
And for now—That’s enough.
His mouth lingers at my throat, warm and unhurried, like he’s mapping me instead of taking. Every kiss is deliberate, every pause a question he waits for me to answer with my breath, my hands, the way I lean into him instead of away.
“You’re here,” he murmurs, more to himself than me. “You’re with me.”
“I know,” I whisper, even though my body is still buzzing, still humming with the aftermath of fear turned into want. “Don’t stop.”
His hands slide down my sides, thumbs brushing bare skin, and I feel the shift in him—the restraint thinning, the control he’s fought so hard to keep fraying at the edges. He presses his forehead to mine, breathing me in like he needs to steady himself before he breaks.
“This doesn’t fix everything,” he says quietly. “I won’t pretend it does.”
“I don’t need it to,” I answer, my voice firmer than I feel. “I just need this.”
That’s what does it.
The sound he makes then is low, almost a growl, and his mouth finds mine again with a hunger that steals my breath. It’s not careful anymore, but it’s still him—still grounding, still present. He pulls me closer, like distance is the real enemy here, like if he lets go I might disappear again.
My fingers trace his spine, memorizing the heat, the strength, the way he shudders when I whisper his name like it means something dangerous. When he presses me back into the mattress, it doesn’t feel like being trapped.
It feels like being held.
“Delilah,” he says again, slower this time, like a promise. “I’ve got you.”
He stays there for a long moment, forehead pressed to mine, breathing me in like he’s memorizing proof that I’m real. That I’m here. That I didn’t disappear when he blinked.
I feel him everywhere—not just the solid warmth of his body anchoring me to the mattress, but the restraint humming beneath his skin. The way he’s holding back on purpose.
It does something dangerous to me.
“I need you to tell me,” he says quietly. “If anything feels wrong. Even a little.”
I nod again, because words still feel like they might shatter. My hands slide up his arms instead, feeling the tension there, the strength he’s keeping leashed. My fingers curl at his shoulders, grounding myself in the present—this body, this room, this moment.
“Jon,” I breathe. “I’m not breaking.”
Something shifts in his expression then. Not relief—something deeper. Pride, maybe. Or trust. He brushes his thumb under my eye, slow and reverent, like he’s checking for cracks.
“I know,” he says. “I just don’t ever want to be the reason you do.”
He kisses me again, softer this time. Slower. Like he’s letting me set the pace without saying it out loud. His mouth moves against mine with intention, not urgency, and the tension in my chest loosens with every second that passes without pain, without fear.
His hand slides down my side, pauses—asks—and when I lean into it, he exhales like he’s been holding his breath for days.
“That okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes.”
The word is steady. Real.
He kisses my temple. My cheek. The corner of my mouth. Each touch is deliberate, grounding, like he’s reminding my body that this is mine again. That I get to choose what happens next.
My thoughts scatter—not from fear, but from the way my body responds to him now that it finally feels safe enough to want.
This is different, I realize.
This is allowed.
He murmurs my name again, low and intimate, and I answer with my hands, my breath, the way my hips shift instinctively toward him. He stills immediately.
“Tell me,” he says.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper. “Please.”
That’s all it takes.
He kisses me deeper, slower, and this time there’s no hesitation—just heat and closeness and the steady rhythm of two people choosing each other in the dark. His mouth traces familiar paths, his hands warm and sure, and my body follows without flinching, without remembering anything except him.
His mouth crushes into mine again, deeper this time—less of a kiss and more of a need that’s been coiled too tight for too long. There’s no finesse, no restraint. Just hands and heat and that low, broken sound he makes when I pull at his waistband like I’m starving for it.
Jon doesn’t rush. Doesn’t fumble. He cups the back of my neck and kisses me like he’s memorizing me—like he needs the taste of my mouth more than air. When he finally lets go, it’s only to trail his lips down my throat again, murmuring against my skin, “You sure?”
I answer by lifting my hips and grinding against him, needy and unashamed. “Please.”
That’s all it takes.
He growls—an actual growl—and peels my tank top off like it offends him. His hands roam immediately: over my ribs, my stomach, the swell of my hips. His thumbs find my nipples, rolling them until they pebble, until I arch beneath him with a gasp.
“Fuck, sweetheart…” he mutters, voice gravel and reverence. “You’re shaking.”
“I want you to make it worse.”
His gaze snaps to mine—hungry, almost feral. And then he kisses me like he’s angry at himself for holding back.
He shifts down my body, lips dragging over every inch of exposed skin, teeth scraping lightly across my hipbone. When he gets between my thighs, he pauses. His hands spread me open, eyes locked on the soaked mess between my legs.
“Look at you,” he breathes. “Fuck, Delilah—you’re soaked for me.”
I tremble when his tongue drags a slow, devastating line through my folds.
I cry out when he wraps his lips around my clit and sucks.
He doesn’t tease. He devours, groaning into me like I taste like everything he’s ever needed.
His hand comes up to hold my stomach down because I can’t stop squirming—can’t stop crying out his name like a prayer turned into a curse.
I come fast. Too fast. It rips through me with a sob, my body arching off the bed. He doesn’t stop. He keeps going, tongue lapping through the aftershocks while I writhe and shake and beg.
Only when I tug at his hair, breathless and overstimulated, does he crawl back up and kiss me—messy, claiming, filthy.
“You ready for more?” he whispers against my lips.
I nod, dazed. “I want all of it.”
He groans and grabs a condom from the drawer like he’s been waiting for this—like this moment was always coming, even when he didn’t let himself believe it.
His boxers hit the floor, and when he slides the condom on, I can’t stop staring.
He’s thick, hard, flushed all the way to the tip. My mouth waters.
But I don’t get time to touch—he's already pushing my legs apart again, lining himself up with one hand while the other cups the back of my thigh and pushes my knee toward my chest.
“Eyes on me,” he rasps.
I obey.
The stretch burns in the best way. Slow. Deep. Real. My fingers claw at the sheets, at his back, at anything I can anchor to because fuck, he’s big and it’s been so long and I’m so full.
“Goddamn it,” he groans, forehead falling to mine. “You feel like heaven.”
He starts to move. Deep, unhurried thrusts that build and build until I’m gasping beneath him, digging my nails into his shoulders and whispering more, harder, please. He gives it to me—hips snapping harder, deeper, until I’m keening, moaning, breaking.
“You like this, sweetheart?” he pants, voice wrecked. “Me fucking you like I mean it?”
“Yes—Jon—don’t stop.”
He shifts, grabs my thigh, pushes deeper—hits something inside me that makes me see stars. I scream his name, no shame, just desperation.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “No one touches you like this. No one fucks you like this.”
I nod, frantic, tears slipping down my cheeks—not from pain, but from everything. From release. From relief. From how much I feel everything when he’s inside me like this.
He kisses them away. Whispers, “I’ve got you. Let go.”
And I do.
I shatter under him, clenching hard around his cock, dragging him over the edge with me. He curses, grinds deep one last time, and collapses onto his forearms, buried inside me while we both tremble.
We stay like that, wrapped up in each other, the only sound is our heavy breaths and the distant buzz of the world we left behind.
His lips brush my temple. “You okay?”
I nod, eyes closed, with a small sniffle. “Yeah. You?”
He exhales like he’s still catching up. “Not even close. But I’m not going anywhere.”
And neither am I.