Chapter 32 Lance #2
And then I see her neck. The long, bare line of it, exposed and vulnerable, and the memory hits me like a hammer—my hand there during training, her pulse fluttering against my palm, both of us pretending it was nothing.
It was never nothing.
I bring my fingers up and wrap them around her throat.
Her eyes fly open.
I hold her the same way I did at the alcove, except now she’s bare in my lap and I’m inside her and there’s nowhere left for either of us to hide.
“Is this okay?”
She doesn’t just nod. She covers my hand with hers and presses it firmer against her pulse. “Don’t you dare stop.”
Something feral tears loose inside of me.
I grip her throat and thrust up into her so hard she cries out, and I do it again, and again, setting a pace that’s bruising. The chair scrapes across the hardwood with every snap of my hips and I don’t give a fuck. The whole cabin could burn down around us and I wouldn’t stop.
The whole goddamn town.
She rides me like she’s trying to break us both, slamming down to meet every thrust, and the sounds she’s making are these raw, filthy moans. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
“You feel so fucking good,” I growl against her collarbone, my teeth scraping skin. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”
“Show me.” She grabs my face with both hands, and forces me to look at her. Her eyes are wild, pupils blown wide. “Stop holding back and show me.”
My dick pulses.
Goddamn.
I grab her by the waist and stand, still inside her, and she yelps, legs locking tight around me. I carry her three steps to the wall and pin her there with my hips, her back hitting the surface hard enough to rattle the picture frame next to us.
“Yes,” she hisses, her head tipping back. “Like that.”
I drive into her so deep we both groan, and I set a rhythm that’s relentless, one hand cradling her ass, the other still wrapped around her throat where her pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it in my veins.
She hooks her ankles at the small of my back and pulls me deeper with every thrust, and the angle shifts and she keens—this high, broken sound that tells me I just found the spot.
“Right there,” she chokes out. “Oh God, Lance, right there, don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I bury my face in her neck and fuck her against the wall like the world is ending.
Like I’m paying for every night I lay awake wanting her with my hands fisted in my sheets.
Like every second I’ve ever counted was building toward this, toward her, here, wrapped around me, and saying my name like it’s the only one she knows.
Her fingers twist in my hair and yank, and the pain lights me up. I thrust harder, my hand tightening just slightly around her throat—not enough to choke, just enough for her to feel it, to feel me everywhere—and she moans so loud it echoes through the cabin.
“I’m close,” she gasps, her nails scoring down my back. “Lance, I’m going to—”
“I know.” I can feel it, her thighs shaking, her walls clenching, her whole body tightening like a wire about to snap. I press my thumb to her clit without breaking rhythm, circling hard and fast while I’m still buried deep, still pinning her to the wall.
“Come for me,” I rasp against her ear. “Let me feel it.”
She breaks.
Her back arches off the wall and she comes so hard she can’t make sound; it’s just this silent, shattered gasp, mouth open, eyes locked on mine, her body clenching around me in waves so intense I have to grit my teeth to keep from following her over.
I want to watch her. I want to memorize every second of this; the way her face looks when she falls apart, the way her pulse jackhammers against my palm, the way she whispers my name when the aftershocks hit like she’s making sure I’m still here.
She comes back to herself slowly, her fingers uncurling from where they’ve been clawing my shoulders. She cups my face and kisses me, trembling, and that tenderness after the violence of what we just did undoes me completely.
“Your turn,” she says. “Let go.”
I thrust into her once more, twice, and on the third my vision whites out. I come so hard it feels like something tearing open.
Her name rips out of me. I press my forehead to hers, shaking, emptying myself inside her, my hand going back to her throat and her heart still beating against my palm.
We stay like that. Pinned to the wall and breathing each other’s air.
My legs give out eventually. I sink to the floor with her still wrapped around me, and she straddles my lap on the cold hardwood, tucking her face into my neck and just breathes.
“Lance.”
“Yeah.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.”
She laughs, shaky and perfect, and I pull her closer because if I let go right now, I think I’ll shatter apart.
We sit on the hallway floor for God knows how long, and I run my palms up and down her back trying to warm her.
Cavall appears from the living room, pink duck in his mouth, and stares at us with an expression that can only be described as deeply judgmental.
He nudges my knee with his nose. Then nudges her elbow.
Then drops Virgil on the floor between us like an offering and sits down, tail wagging cautiously.
“I think he wants us to go to bed,” she says, laughing.
“He’s not wrong.”
“Your bed or the guest room?”
“Mine,” I say. “If you want.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her hair is a disaster. Her lips are swollen. There’s a red mark blooming on her collarbone where my mouth was, and her eyes are certain in a way that makes my body ache.
“I want.”
She scoops Virgil off the floor as I stand, pulling her up with me, and tucks the duck under her arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
We walk down the hall—me in my sweats hanging off my hips, her in nothing but her bralette she never actually took off—and Cavall trots behind us like he’s herding us to safety.
I drop her on the bed, and she pulls the covers up. I slide in beside her, and she curls into me immediately. Head on my chest. Leg thrown over mine. Her fingers drawing invisible shapes on my skin.
This is what I imagined. On the bench, when I told her about Saturday mornings and coffee and bare feet and a hand on her back. This is the picture I painted in my head and then tried to give to someone else because I don’t think I deserve it.
I deserve it.
The thought startles me. I turn it over, examine it for cracks, wait for the guilt to swallow it whole.
The guilt is there.
But so is her breathing evening out against my chest. Cavall settling at the foot of the bed, Virgil between his paws. The moon through the window making everything slightly glow.
I’ve done terrible things. I’ve killed. I’ve bled. I’ve let people use me until there was nothing left.
“Lance?”
“Hmm?”
“Your seven seconds.” She lifts her head, chin on my chest. “What did you think about before me?”
The question finds the one place I’m still unguarded.
“Nothing,” I admit. “I just tried not to die.”
She presses her lips together, and for a second I think she’s going to cry, but she lays her head back down and holds on to me like I’m something worth keeping.
I stare at the ceiling. My hand moves through her hair. The cabin is quiet except for Cavall’s slow breathing and the wind in the trees outside.
Tomorrow Art’s name will still be on her phone and his arm around her waist.
Tomorrow there’s a party we have to survive, and a world that will never let us have this without burning down their kingdom for it.
Tomorrow I’ll figure out how to live with what we’ve done.
Tonight, she’s mine.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.