Chapter 27 #2
His eyes drag over me slowly, hot, deliberate. I feel it everywhere—throat, thighs, soul—every nerve sparking to life under the weight of his stare.
He moves closer, a silent threat wrapped in memory, and I don’t stop him. I can’t. I’m too far gone to listen to reason, too consumed by the ghost of him to fight. The anger, the hurt, the betrayal, they blur beneath the pulse of want beating in my veins.
Tomorrow, I’ll hate myself for this.
But tonight, I surrender to it—to him—to the all-consuming kind of hunger that once felt like love.
His hand slides lower, possessive, tracing the curve of my hip, dipping beneath the slit of my dress to rest on my thigh. I arch into him, betraying every instinct to pull away.
He steps in behind me—close, dangerous, and unbearably real. His palm slides from my hip, up to my stomach, and pulls me back until every hard line of him locks against every soft edge of me. The contact steals the air from my lungs as they threaten to collapse inside my chest.
It feels like coming home in the worst possible way, the kind that hurts more than it heals. Tears sting the corners of my eyes before I can stop them. Because he isn’t my home anymore.
He never will be again.
But still, I don’t move, I don’t stop him.
Instead, I lean back into him, my arm looping around his neck, nails biting into his skin, tethering him to me in a way that feels dangerous and heady all at once.
His breath ghosts against my ear, and when he groans—low, pained, and wrecked—it sounds like surrender. I dig my nails a little deeper, leaving my mark like a claim I have no right to make.
Then I turn in his arms, breath ragged, chest to chest. Our mouths hover—a whisper apart—and still, he doesn’t kiss me. He just looks at me. This pain-filled look, like he’s falling apart inside, and I’m the reason.
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s gravity pulling two stars doomed to burn each other out closer and closer until collision is the only thing left.
All I know is this feels inevitable.
Every wound, every silence, every night of missing him, leading to this.
To now.
Our mouths collide. It isn’t gentle. It’s an explosion of all the pent-up tension that’s been riding us hard for years now.
Teeth and tongue, hunger so sharp it tears me open.
I kiss him like I could rewrite time itself, like I could erase the distance carved between us, and he answers with the kind of hunger that feels like punishment and prayer all at once.
His hands dig into my hips, anchoring me. He drags me back into the shadows behind the VIP curtain, pressing me against velvet walls, drowning in flickering lights and the pulse of the club, soaked in sin.
“Why did you come?” I whisper, my lips barely brushing his as the words pass between us, our bodies pressed impossibly close.
He doesn’t answer me with words. He just corners me, one hand above my head, the other gripping my waist, and pins me against the wall.
That look—dangerous, demanding, and intoxicating—sends heat straight through me.
Like I’m the question he’s been aching to ask, the one that makes him lose control, the one I’m helplessly, wantonly willing to give him.
His hand slides under my dress, finding the lace of my garter. He groans, a low, broken sound as he traces the line of my sheer thigh highs.
“You wore them for me,” he murmurs, voice thick with disbelief that contradicts his next words. “I fucking knew you would.”
My lungs seize as his fingers dip beneath the lace, tracing patterns over my skin, inching closer to where I ache for him most. The thrill—raw and reckless—surges through me, a delicious danger, knowing anyone could walk in at any second.
His audacity, his cocky assurance, ignites something inside me I’m not ready to admit.
“You love the risk, don’t you, baby? The thought that anyone—any random stranger—could walk in at this exact moment and see how drenched you are for your stepbrother.
You’re dripping for me, soaked, and it drives me insane.
Don’t worry… maybe I’ll let them watch. But they’ll never touch this perfect fucking cunt. ”
His words hit me like a whip, searing through every ounce of self-control.
I should push him away. I should run. I should fight this madness but I don’t.
My body betrays me, trembling, shivering, and aching under his palm.
Every gasp, every shudder, every desperate whimper is his.
I’m trapped between burning shame and unbearable need, my mind screaming to resist while every fibre of me melts into his possession.
I’m putty in his hands, helpless, consumed, owned.
“Matt.” His name comes out as a breathless moan—a prayer and a curse wrapped into one as he works his fingers past the lace of my underwear. I press my mouth to his neck, not to kiss, but to muffle the sound that escapes me as his fingers slip inside, finding me as soaked as he predicted.
He grunts, pressing another finger into me. “Fuck, I love how wet you get for me. Always such a good little slut for me, aren’t you, baby? So fucking needy for your stepbrother.”
His words slam into me, stealing the last shards of air from my lungs.
All I can feel is him, his fingers inside me, his hard cock pressing into my hip, claiming me as if the world doesn’t exist. All I can smell is him, intoxicating, impossible to ignore.
He’s everywhere at once, drowning me, clouding every sense, consuming every thought.
I’m completely his—every gasp, every quiver, every desperate moan—utterly, irrevocably owned as if nothing has changed.
I tilt my head back, and in the next second, his mouth is on mine.
The kiss hits me like fire, deep and demanding, and I moan against his lips, unable to stop myself.
He kisses me like he has the right to touch me, and I kiss him like I’m punishing him.
Like I’m punishing myself. I need him to feel every second of the hell he left me in almost as much as I need him to keep touching me.
I taste him—his heat, his sin, the dark edge of him—and it makes my body melt.
His tongue teases mine, claiming me with every flick, and I hate myself for it.
Hate that I didn’t fight harder, hate that I’m this undone, this desperate for him after one look, one touch, one kiss.
Every gasp, every shiver, every stolen breath is proof I’m already lost, still his, utterly and irrevocably.
The pleasure coils tight in my belly as I pull away from his mouth, clenching around his fingers at the sound of Matt’s ragged pants in my ear.
“Do you know how hard I get every time I think of you?” His words scrape rough against my ear, all filthy promises. I shake my head once, helpless, my toes curling in my heels as the bass pounds through me, every beat dragging me closer to ruin.
“One thought of you and I’m fucking gone.
I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe without you tearing through my head.
It’s a brutal loop—how you taste, how you sound when you fall apart for me—and it’s driving me insane.
I want to drag you back to me, tear down every wall you’ve built, ruin you until there’s nothing left but us.
I want to own every breath, every scream, every piece of you.
You’re mine, Lily Davis. You’ve always been mine.
No one else will ever get you, ever touch you, not while I’m still breathing.
I’d burn the whole fucking world before I let them. ”
My breath shudders out, ragged and uneven.
His confession is too much—too vicious, too desperate, too him—and I’m drowning in it, drunk on champagne and lust and the way he unravels me.
How am I supposed to form words when his voice hits like bullets, and his touch has me teetering on the edge of something divine?
So I don’t. Instead, I rock my hips into his hand, letting my body answer for me. My pussy clenches around his fingers, as he mouths down my throat, licking and nipping at the spot just below my ear, the one only he’s ever found, the one that makes me fall apart without shame.
“Speechless? That’s okay, baby. I can do the talking for both of us. Just work that sweet cunt against my hand and give me what I want. Show me how much you’ve needed this, needed me. Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?”
His words twist around me, dark and filthy, and the flick of his wrist tips me over the edge.
I clench down on him, shattering, every nerve lit like firecrackers.
For one devastating heartbeat, it’s only him—the weight of his fingers, the heat of his body, the way he makes me forget.
Pleasure seizes me, merciless and blinding, until clarity tears through like ice water.
I shove him away, hard, my chest heaving, shame crashing in as fast and brutal as the orgasm had been.
My limbs shake, my breath catches, and all I can think is how I let this happen.
After everything. After all the hurt, the betrayal, the wreckage he left behind, I still let him touch me.
I still shattered for him. Like nothing has changed between us… when the truth is, everything has.
He stares back at me, chest heaving, lips swollen and raw, eyes dark with the same hunger and madness still rattling my bones. There’s no apology there, no excuse on his tongue. Just him—relentless, consuming, a temptation I should have burned out of me long ago.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper, my voice brittle. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He doesn’t answer. And I don’t wait to hear him try, I don’t give him the chance to twist the truth into something prettier, to try and justify it, to drag me back into the fire I’m desperate to escape.
Matthew O’Malley has already stolen too much of my life, and I won’t let him pull me under again.
Not when I know damn well nothing has changed.
It would be the same cycle of sneaking around, promising to look for a way out, with the added tension of dodging hate-filled looks from the men I once considered family.
I pivot on my heel and step back into the club—the blaring lights, the thrum of the music, the crush of bodies pressing past me, grounding my racing thoughts.
This is where I belong, or at least where I’ve convinced myself I do.
The life I’ve painstakingly built over the past year—the carefree fashion student, the camgirl radiating confidence and control—wraps around me like a shield.
But even as the familiar chaos of the club embraces me, it feels fragile, like smoke slipping through my fingers.
Every pulse of the music drags him back into me, reminds me of how he owns every corner of my skin, every inch of my memory.
Cora spots me first from her spot at the bar, then Abbie twists to see what's caught her attention. Concern flashes in their eyes, sharp and quiet. They each take a step forward, but I shake my head. I need space, and thank God they don’t push it.
Instead, with frowns tugging at their lips, they stay put, their guards flanking them silently.
A year ago, Liam or Aidan would have had orders to follow me, but now…
they don’t. It’s a separate issue I don’t have the mental energy to untangle right now.
Not when Matt is still in my veins, like a toxic poison I can’t purge.
His words echo in my head, his touch imprinted on every inch of me.
I feel him in the back of my mind as I move through the crowd, hear his breath in the music, smell him in the lingering heat of my skin.
Part of me is furious at myself for letting him claim me, for letting my body betray me, but another part—an undeniable, aching part—is already waiting for him.
Already craving the next time he will find me, take me, own me.