21. Skylar
It takes Mal a second to compute that I mean the fucking part literally. Then his green eyes gleam in the dark and I figure it fits what he needs in this moment as much as it does me.
I don’t have the headspace to dissect why. For me or for him, but mostly me. Because I already know whatever’s about to happen is going to be a world away from how I usually fuck.
Mal’s a shrewd bloke. He leaves me standing at the door and helps himself to what he finds in the first drawer he opens.
It’s where I keep the stone he threw at my window, but I can’t tell if he sees it. If he cares. Or why I care. This is what I’ve always wanted from Mal. What I’ve thought about since we met. How he feels about a fucking rock means nothing to me.
None of this does.
A mantra I cling to with both shaking hands as he comes back to me and braces his arm on the door again.
I can smell the clean sweat that’s built on his skin while we’ve been in here.
His cedar-wood soap, and that fresh air scent that seems to seep from him whether he’s indoors or lying in the sun by a perfect lagoon.
As he lowers his face to bite my neck, it dawns on me that I’ve spent more time alone with him than anyone since I ghosted my ex. And this is nothing like that.
Bhodi’s the sweetest soul on earth.
Mal isn’t.
And I like that—I need it to plug that aching wound inside me.
Sharp pain draws a gasp from me. Mal’s teeth. Then he grips my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Stay.”
It’s not literal. And it’s not a request or a plea.
It’s an order, and I need that too.
I need all of it. The cool wood of the door to brace my body. His rough hands manoeuvring me as I wage war against a poisoned instinct to fight him off, because he’s too fucking close, the way he’s always been.
Because he sees me.
Mal is still holding my face. He gives me a hot second, waiting, maybe, for me to change my mind. But I’m not going to. The longer he’s in my space, the more I want it. And I’m not scared of him fucking me.
“Do it,” I whisper. “I want it.”
It .
Fuck.
I want him , even though it’s just this once.
But my window to articulate that evaporates.
Mal looks like he’s the one who might leave.
Then he’s on me, his mouth crashing to mine with the force of a hurricane, and I kiss him back to survive the answering fire in my blood.
The inferno that quiets everything else until I’m nothing but a chain reaction to every brutal drag of Mal’s bruising kiss.
And fuck, we’re good at this.
Too good, and that’s the shit that should scare me. But I’m beyond thought. I growl into Mal’s mouth and he pins me harder, wedging his knee between my legs, pressing against me as if he wants to tunnel beneath my skin.
His cock tangles with mine and he groans, rough and low, like we’re already fucking. Like he’s going to fuck me. And he gets busy with his hands. With slick fingers that don’t need a map, and?—
Damn .
My eyes flutter closed, and I grip his hips hard enough to leave marks that won’t fade in the sun.
We’re gonna ruin each other .
A cold fact.
But there’s nothing cold in what he’s doing to me, and I burn as the heat between us derails into something we couldn’t stop if we tried.
We don’t try.
I don’t try.
Mal has me sweating, my breath caught in my lungs. I reach for his cock. Wrap my palm around it. Work him in time with the slow twist of his fingers inside me, my leg hooked over his hip.
He drops his head to my shoulder. “You have healing hands, Sky. And somehow you’re still fucking killing me.”
Good. If I’m going to drown in this colossal mistake, I want him with me. I want him in me, and my whole body throbs with relentless need.
Mal reclaims his fingers. My sweats are already halfway down my thighs. He shoves them lower, and his hands are everywhere as he spins me around, his hot palms sliding down my ribs as it’s my turn to brace an arm on the door, forcing myself to relax.
And honestly, it’s not that fucking hard.
Mal’s not gentle, but he’s got mad skills.
He sucked my dick like he was angry with me, but the press of his sheathed cock inside me is more nuanced than messy, a slow, wet slide that has me choking on a gritted moan, Mal’s chest hot at my back, his wicked teeth finding my neck again.
The sting of his bite drowns out any discomfort of his dick easing home. I hiss through my teeth, head dropping to the door.
Mal grunts, anchoring himself with an arm locked around my ribs. He gives me a pulsing second to make peace with the intrusion.
Then he starts to move, he starts to fuck me, and it’s brutal. It’s perfect . Sharp, hot, and so close to the sweetest agony it’s like he’s trying to fuck the ghosts out of us both.
My jaw clenches, fists against the door as Mal plants a hand between my shoulder blades, angling higher— deeper —curving his body over me, his breath ragged in my ear.
Or maybe it’s mine.
I’ve lost track of my own lungs. Of everything except Mal as I push back against him in a silent demand for more.
He groans through a laugh and lets me have it, his steadying arm dropping lower, his hand splayed across my abdomen, and something about his warm palm covering my stomach does me in.
I shouldn’t like it—it’s too fucking tender.
Too nice . But the beat of skin on skin, the grind of us together, it takes me out of my head, and I let it break me.
I’ll fix myself later.
Mal ups the pace. Deeper. Harder. Faster. I groan like it’s been punched out of me, losing myself to the pressured coil unravelling in my gut beneath the safety of his hand.
I reach back and grasp his hip, his skin hot and thrumming with his own rushing blood.
He bucks forward, taking me with him, and my head finds my forearm. Needs it to stay upright as this thing between us, this heat, this obsession, careens toward a finish line I’m not ready for.
My body has other ideas. I breathe through clenched teeth, soaking up every strained sound Mal makes behind me, committing them to memory. I bear down, pleasure jolting through my burning veins. Fuck. I’m close, so fucking close?—
A door slams.
In the flat.
The front door.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Sol’s sunny laugh floating up the hall.
Jack’s low rumble.
I lock up, that caught breath expanding to a knot I can’t expel.
Jack.
Jack .
I start to pull away, panic of a nature I’ve never felt before rearing in the distance in a guilt-fuelled wave.
We have to stop.
We have to ? —
Mal’s hand leaves my shoulder blades and slams down on mine, breathing hard at my neck, his sweat and mine slipping down the arch of my spine, pinning my palm to the door. “ No .”
A gravelled order wrapped in a plea this time. And I hear what he’s really saying.
Don’t stop. Not now.
We’re so fucking close.
I relent and realise Mal’s rhythm hasn’t faltered, that he’s still grinding into me at a pace that splinters my brain.
Reckless.
Mad.
Relentless .
He starts to shake, his moan broken. Ruined. And it’s all I need.
All I can take.
Forehead pressed to the door, knuckles white and straining, I come with my teeth clenched so hard I taste blood.
Mal follows, biting my shoulder to keep whatever sound is throttling him contained. He’s so deep inside me, I feel him, pulsing and hot, even with the condom, and it sends another bone-shaking shudder through me. Another harsh shock of heat keeping that blade of danger pressed to my throat.
I feel Mal in every nerve.
Every wild, rampaging beat thundering against my ribs.
I feel the weight of him behind me, one hand pinning me to the door, the other still splayed across my convulsing stomach, and for the first time in years, I don’t feel empty.
Just smothered by a rush of endorphins so abrupt I sway on my feet.
Solid in ways he wasn’t last night, Mal holds me up. “ Breathe .”
With my head against my trembling forearm, I claim some oxygen, at peace for a few long breaths, even with Mal still inside me, a different person than when we started.
No. It’s just sex.
It has to be.
I don’t know anything else, and we can’t be anything else.
A thought that creeps with insidious intent as Mal’s chest lifts and falls against my back and his hand on my stomach presses harder, as if he knows I lost the meal we ate together before I showered the shame from my skin and came to find him.
He knows .
I fucking hate that. But in this fucked-out moment, I love the comfort of his subtle touch more. And so we stay where we are, as if we have all the time in the world, wrapped up in each other in the dark as though we’ll never let go.
Dazed, I drift. Could I sleep like this?
Maybe—
Footsteps in the hallway bear down on us, a drum beat of reality jerking me awake. Jack calls my name, and we’re out of time.
Mal moves fast, pulling out of me, yanking my sweats halfway to where they need to be, and ripping his body from mine.
I’m instantly freezing. Stumbling. But Jack knocks on the door before I can get my shit together to do more than tuck my dick away and wipe up the cum Mal’s fucked out of me.
Behind me, he snorts.
I turn to fire a glare at him, but…
He’s gone.
I blink at the hollow space he’s left behind. The open window. The closed drawer hiding the lube and fuck knows what else.
Like he was never here .
“Skylar?”
Jack sounds anxious.
I wrench my focus from where I last saw Mal—last felt him—and open my door, squinting at the hallway light.
Jack frowns back at me. “Are you okay?”
“I just woke up.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue, because it’s not entirely untrue. I’m just too messed up to unlock the metaphor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just…” Jack’s attention meanders to Mal’s closed bedroom door. “Something felt off up here.”
My head still spins from Mal’s touch. His kiss. The wild fuck I didn’t know I needed so much. Only the dark of my room hides the cooling sweat on my skin. The teeth marks marring my inked shoulder.
I scrub my hands down my face.
Jack notices and backs off. “Fuck. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m awake.”
“You look tired.”
I am tired. I haven’t slept since…I don’t actually know. Since before Mal stumbled into my room yesterday . And I have to work in the morning. I have to be safe to guard people’s health and keep them alive.
But Jack…I love him. He’s my home as much as Sol. Shutting the door in his face is as unthinkable as Mal fucking me against it had been an hour ago. “Can you make me some toast?”
Jack’s frown becomes something different. Something that makes my soul scratch and burn. But he nods and steps away. Giving me space. Letting me take a breath that finds more freedom than I anticipate.
I’m not shaking anymore.
It’s like I never was.