Chapter 11
Zane
“Fuck,” I say, skimming my nose along the column of her throat. “You feel so much fucking better than I remember.”
The words scrape out of me, torn from somewhere too deep to dress up as cocky bullshit. I want to sound in control and to be the man who can still smirk as she comes apart beneath him. The bad idea with the sharp mouth and steady hands.
Skylar’s body shifts beneath mine, hips lifting, taking me deeper, and the moan that spills from her mouth goes straight through my ribs and down to my cock.
It is soft at first, then broken, then not soft at all.
It becomes the kind of sound that makes a man forget every decent thing he promised himself before he laid hands on her.
My forehead drops to her shoulder for half a second and I breathe her in.
Skin.
Heat.
Sweat.
Her.
Her pussy grips me tight, wet and hot around every inch of my cock, and my whole body locks around the feeling. I have remembered her. Dreamed of her. Tortured myself with her. I have taken myself in my hand in the dark, teeth gritted, hating myself while her name burned behind my eyes.
But memory is a cruel little liar.
Skylar’s nails drag down my back, and pain sparks across my skin. I welcome it. Anything to keep me from losing myself too quickly. From turning this into a hard, desperate mess of need and nothing else.
I pull back enough to see her face. Her hair is spread across my pillow, strands clinging to her cheeks and throat.
Her lips are swollen from my mouth and her eyes are half-closed, lashes low, but she is still watching me through them.
Still stubborn. Still fighting even as pleasure drags her under.
God, this woman.
This impossible, furious, beautiful woman.
I thrust harder. Her back arches off the mattress, her breasts pressing into my chest, and she gasps my name.
“Zane.”
That is it.
Not the sex, the heat, or my cock buried deep inside the only woman I have ever loved. It’s her saying my name as if it still belongs in her mouth.
I slide one hand under her ass and grip her hard, lifting her hips higher. Her legs spread wider for me, and the new angle lets me sink deeper.
“There,” I say, my voice low, watching her face. “That’s the spot, isn’t it?”
Her eyes snap open. Even shaking, she manages a glare.
“Don’t sound too proud of yourself.”
I drive into her again and her mouth falls open, the insult dying before it can take hold. My mouth curves because fuck, there she is. My Sky.
“Hard not to be proud,” I say, leaning forward and dragging my lips over her jaw. “You keep making those sounds for me.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She whispers in my ear, “I’m still deciding.”
A rough laugh escapes me, then turns into a groan as she rolls her hips and takes me deeper.
I kiss her with every filthy, starving part of me.
My tongue slides against hers and my mouth swallows the sounds she cannot hold back.
Her fingers grip my hair, tugging hard enough to hurt.
I thrust into her, and she meets me, her body moving under mine with the same reckless fire she used to have, and something new, too.
Something sharper. A woman who survived me and still came back.
That thought almost breaks me.
I don’t deserve this. I know it in every ugly part of myself. But I take what she gives me because I am not noble enough to walk away from Skylar when her legs are wrapped around me and her mouth is open beneath mine.
Her pussy clenches around my cock and my breath catches.
She is close.
I feel it in the way her thighs tremble against my hips and in the way her nails dig into my shoulders, as if she needs to anchor herself before the pleasure drags her under.
“Sky,” I breathe.
My control starts to slip.
It happens slowly at first.
A crack in the careful part of me. A shift in the rhythm. My hips move harder, faster, chasing the way she tightens around me every time I hit that perfect spot inside her.
Then she whispers my name again.
That’s when I lose the last clear thought in my head. My hand tightens on her ass, lifting her higher, opening her wider. I fuck into her harder, each thrust driving the bed against the wall, each sound from her mouth feeding the part of me that has been starving for her.
Her hands are everywhere.
On my shoulders. In my hair. On my back. She scratches, grips, holds on, and I fucking love it. I want marks, the proof that when I wake tomorrow with her nails seared into my skin. If she is going to be mad at me, she can do it while I carry evidence that tonight happened.
I slide one hand between us and her whole body jerks when my thumb finds her clit.
“Fuck,” she cries.
I grit my teeth and hold back by sheer force because there is no way in hell I am coming before she does.
“That’s it,” I say, circling her clit while I keep thrusting. “Come on my cock, Sky.”
My thumb moves over her clit again, slick and steady, exactly the pressure her body is begging for.
Her pussy tightens and I can’t help but groan.
She shakes beneath me.
“Zane.”
“I’ve got you.” The words spill out before I can stop them.
For a second, the heat shifts. Something vulnerable moves between us, too raw for the way our bodies collide, too honest for a room full of ghosts and bad decisions.
I’ve got you.
I shouldn’t have said it.
Not after failing her so badly. But her hands glide to my face, fingers trembling, and she pulls my mouth back to hers.
She kisses me as if she wants to hate me and cannot.
I fuck her harder—my thumb working her clit, my mouth on hers, my body braced over her because if I let go, I will collapse into every feeling I have spent years trying to bury.
Her orgasm hits her hard. I feel it before I hear it. Her whole body locks beneath mine—pussy clamping down around my cock so tight my vision nearly goes black. Then she cries out, loud and broken, head tipped back, throat bare, nails biting into my skin as pleasure tears through her.
The sound of it ruins me.
My name falls from her mouth, and I am done.
Completely fucking done.
I bury my face in her neck and drive into her through it, chasing her orgasm and mine at the same time. Her body pulses around me, hot, wet, and perfect. I can’t hold back for another second.
“Fuck,” I growl against her neck. “Sky.”
I come hard.
It’s brutal.
Full-body.
The kind of release that rips through a man and leaves nothing in its wake.
My hips snap deep, and I spill into her with a low, wrecked groan as every muscle tightens and every thought burns to ash. There is only her—Skylar—beneath me, around me.
My body shakes as the last pulse moves through me. I hold myself over her, arms trembling, trying not to crush her as the world slowly comes back in pieces.
My chest feels split open.
Neither of us speaks.
That might be smart because I always ruin shit when I speak.
For a few seconds, I let myself have this. Her body under mine. The quiet after.
I shift carefully, pulling back just enough to look at her.
Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes stay closed, lashes dark against her skin, as if she is still somewhere in the wreckage of her orgasm, not ready to crawl out yet. Her mouth is swollen from mine. Her hair is a mess across my pillow. She looks thoroughly fucked and furious about it.
Beautiful. Dangerous. Mine in all the ways I am not allowed to claim.
My throat tightens. “Are you still mad at me?”
Her eyes open slowly. “Yes.”
My mouth twitches before I can stop it. “Good.”
I brush my thumb along the side of her jaw.
She lifts her hand, and for a second, I think she is going to push me away. But instead, she pushes my hair back off my face.
The touch is soft. Too soft. It glides over my forehead, along my temple, then pauses near the scar on my jaw. Her eyes follow every inch of me, taking in the details the years left behind.
I hold still beneath her gaze. That is fucking harder than it should be. I can take fists, pain, and threats. Men twice my size who think prison taught them something I didn’t already know.
But Skylar staring at me as if she is trying to read every place life touched me while she was gone cuts different.
Some selfish, stupid, starved part is already trying to wrap this night in both hands and claim it.
Claim her. Drag her back into my life and lock the door.
Tell the whole world to fuck off because she came back to me.
But I don’t get to do that because she came back for one night.
I do not get to mistake sex for forgiveness.
I lean in and kiss her softly. A careful press of my mouth to hers. It’s different from the desperate heat that brought us here that it almost hurts worse. I pull back before I ask for more than I deserve. Then I ease out of her.
My jaw tightens at the loss.
She looks away first, then pushes herself up slowly, drawing in a breath as if she has to remind her body that it belongs to her again.
I get off the bed and run a hand through my hair, trying to pull myself together.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I say.
Her eyes flick to mine.
I glance toward the bathroom, then back at her. “You coming?”
After a moment, she slides off the bed.
The movement draws my eyes before I can stop them. She stands, naked and flushed in the soft light, hair spilling around her shoulders, her body marked by the night we just made.
I watch her walk toward me. My cock reacts instantly. I’m only human after all.
Her gaze drops to my cock, then lifts back to my face, that sharp little spark I have missed so much making me ache.
“Hard already, Rivera?”
My mouth curves. “Don’t sound so surprised, sweetheart. You’ve been a problem for my self-control and my cock since the first time you opened that smart mouth.”
Her eyes narrow, but the corner of her mouth betrays her.
Skylar doesn’t say much after the shower.
Neither do I. Probably safer that way. Words have always been dangerous for me. My hands know how to fix things but my mouth knows how to fuck them up.
The shower should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Nothing with her is ever enough.