Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
brAN
The oven timer goes off like a gunshot.
For half a second, my body reacts the way it always does—everything tight, ready, hand twitching toward a weapon that isn’t there. Then the smell hits me. Tomato. Cheese. That stupid lasagna I shoved in earlier because food seemed like a good distraction at the time.
Not my best plan.
I tear myself away from the sight in front of me—Twiggy sprawled on the counter, flushed and dazed, legs parted, hair a wild halo—and cross to the oven. The room feels weirdly quiet without her sounds.
I yank the door open. Heat blasts my face. I grab a mitt, drag the pan out, set it on the stove with more force than necessary.
Focus on something else, Kelly.
Right. Food. Normalcy. All that shit.
I flip off the timer, the buzzing cutting off mid-screech, and stand there, hand braced on the counter, shoulders heaving. My heart’s still pounding, but it’s not from the lasagna.
Behind me, she clears her throat.
“You just gave me the best orgasm of my life and now you’re going to pull a Garfield?” she says, trying for flippant. The words wobble between us.
I close my eyes for a beat.
When I turn around, she’s propped on her elbows, watching me. There’s wariness in her gaze, yeah. Satisfaction, too. Nerves. She’s trying to pretend this is no big deal, like she’s grading me on some pop quiz I didn’t know I was taking.
She has no idea what she just did to me.
No idea what I just did to myself.
Am I sorry it happened?
Hell, no.
Do I want more?
A slow, helpless smile curls my lips.
Fuck, yeah. I want it all.
I cross the kitchen before I’ve fully decided to move. My hands find her waist, warm and soft under my fingers, and I pull her up into a seated position, then closer, until she’s pressed to my chest.
Her legs fall open around me as if they were always meant to fit there. I guide them around my hips, lock my arms under her thighs, and kiss her.
Deep. Open-mouthed. No room for misinterpretation.
I want her to taste herself on my tongue, to understand exactly what I just took and what I’m not planning to give back.
She moans into my mouth, the sound low and needy, her tongue twisting with mine. My brain goes blessedly blank. The constant noise—Kael’s warnings, Henry’s shadow, rules and lines and all the reasons I shouldn’t do this—drops away until there’s only one word left.
Mine.
Tallulah Gentry is mine.
The thought is disconcerting and clean at the same time.
I’ve never had such an immediate, visceral reaction to anyone before.
Lust? Sure. Curiosity. The urge to fuck and forget.
But this is different. This is some fundamental certainty clicking into place, like a puzzle piece finally finding its slot.
I turn it over in my mind, test its edges the way I test everything.
Mine.
Yes. It holds.
I don’t care what I have to do or who I have to answer to; I will find a way to make that true in every way that matters.
The first step?
Putting myself so deep inside her she can’t tell where she stops and I start.
I break the kiss long enough to murmur, “Hold on to me,” against her lips.
She does, fingers curling into my hair, arms around my shoulders like she was born to anchor herself there.
I straighten, lifting her easily. She’s small, but it’s more than that—she trusts me enough to let all her weight rest in my hands. The feeling squeezes something in my chest I’ve spent years armoring over.
I carry her down the short hallway to the bedroom. Every step is a choice. I could put her down. Could set her on the couch, make a joke, walk away.
I don’t.
I lower her onto the bed, the dark blue comforter crinkling under her bare skin. She props herself on her elbows, watching me. The lamplight paints gold across her shoulders, her breasts, the vulnerable curve of her stomach. I stand there for a second just looking.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. No contest.
My hands move to my belt. I unbuckle it, unbutton, unzip. Her gaze follows every motion like it’s a live feed, like she’s cataloguing each detail for later dissection.
“Sweet mother…” she whispers under her breath.
If I wasn’t already rock-hard, that would do it.
I shove my jeans and boxers down and kick them aside. I don’t make a production out of it, but I don’t hide, either. She deserves to see exactly what she’s getting herself into.
Her lips part. Her throat works around a swallow. For a heartbeat, panic flares in her eyes.
She shifts like she’s going to climb off the bed, scramble away.
I shoot a hand out and catch her ankle, fingers wrapping around the delicate bone. “I’m not letting you go that easily,” I growl.
“You’re…you’re huge,” she says into the blanket, voice muffled, not quite looking at me. “I can’t—”
“You can,” I say, softer than I mean to. “I won’t hurt you.”
I stroke a hand over the curve of her hip, feeling the tremble there. Her muscles are tight with nerves, but under my palm she melts, just a fraction, leaning into the touch.
“Bran,” she breathes. There’s a dozen things packed into my name—fear, excitement, want.
I trail my hand down the line of her spine, slow and steady, to settle at the small of her back. My thumbs find the dimples there, press in, adjusting her hips so our awkward difference in height won’t become an issue.
“Tell me to stop,” I murmur, more to myself than to her. “Tell me now.”
She looks back over her shoulder then, eyes blown and dark, and shakes her head.
“Don’t you dare,” she says.
That’s it. That’s all I get.
That’s all I need.
I ease closer, lining myself up with her body, careful and focused. The sight of me nudging against her, the contrast of my size and her slick, flushed opening, almost undoes me.
I push in slowly, forcing myself to go against every hardwired instinct to thrust and take. Inch by inch, I sink into her heat, giving her time to adjust, to breathe.
She gasps, the sound punched out of her, and goes tense under me. Her hands fist in the blanket, shoulders drawn tight.
I stop. Every muscle in my body screams at me to keep moving, but I hold still, jaw clenched.
“Tally,” I rasp, leaning over her, bracing one hand by her head, the other still firm on her hip. “Talk to me.”
For a second, all I hear is her breathing, harsh and uneven. Then she pushes back—just the smallest shift, but enough.
“I’m okay,” she says. “Just…full.”
Something in the way she says it—raw, startled, almost shocked—hits me where I live.
“Fuck,” I whisper, the realization slamming into me. “Tink…”
I knew she was inexperienced. The way she stiffened earlier when my hand slid under her sweater, the nervous jokes, the way she catalogued every sensation like she was building a reference file—none of that belonged to a woman who’d done this a hundred times.
But this?
My throat tightens. I drop my forehead to the back of her shoulder, breathe in the scent of her shampoo and skin.
“You should have told me,” I say, voice rough. “I would have gone slower. I—”
“Not anymore,” she cuts in, pushing her hips back against me again. “I’m not anything anymore. So you might as well stop talking and…move.”
Christ.
Every protective instinct I have wars with the greedy, possessive part of me that wants to do exactly that.
I ease out a fraction, then slide back in, testing. She’s tight, impossibly so, the grip of her body around me enough to make my vision go white at the edges.
She makes a broken little sound, half-pain, half-pleasure.
“We’ll take it easy,” I manage. “You tell me if it’s too much.”
“You’re already too much,” she mutters into the mattress, but the words don’t come with a flinch. They come with a shiver.
I withdraw, then sink in again, a little deeper this time. Slow, measured strokes. No snapping hips, no punishing pace. Just steady, deliberate movement, letting her stretch around me, letting her body learn mine.
Under my hands, the tension in her back gradually shifts. The stiff line of her spine softens; her breathing evens out, then hitches for different reasons.
“Bran,” she whispers, voice going high and thin.
“Yeah, baby,” I murmur, pressing a kiss between her shoulder blades. “You’re doing so good.”
The endearment slips out before I can stop it. We both feel the weight of it.
She takes another breath, a shaky one. “You keep calling me that,” she says, “and I’m going to think you like me or something.”
I huff a laugh against her skin. “Too late.”
She goes very still.
A beat passes.
Then she laughs, a startled, disbelieving sound, and something inside me unclenches.
I straighten, sliding one hand down between her thighs, fingers skimming over sensitive skin. She jerks, body clenching around me, a gasp tearing free.
“Easy,” I murmur. “Just helping.”
I find the little bundle of nerves I’d already mapped with my mouth, stroke lightly, in time with my slow thrusts.
I’m not gentle because I don’t know what I’m doing; I’m gentle because I do.
I’ve been here before, with other women, but none of that history feels like it belongs here.
This is its own thing. Its own universe.
“Bran,” she says again, more desperate now.
“You’re okay,” I say, even as my own control frays. “You’re better than okay. Let go for me.”
Her hips lose their tentative rhythm, movements going jerky. Her legs start to shake against the mattress. Her hand shoots back, groping for something to hold, and finds my forearm. Her nails dig in, little crescents of pain that ground me.
I keep the pace steady. In, out. In, out. Fingers circling slowly, relentlessly.
“Come on,” I coax, voice frayed. “That’s it. Take what you need.”
She stiffens, every muscle in her body pulling tight, and then she breaks.
Her inner muscles clamp around me in a series of hot, desperate squeezes, the sound that tears out of her low and wrecked and beautiful. I ride it out with her, swallowing my own curse, holding on until the last possible second before I let myself go, following her over the edge.