Chapter 13 Nolan
The heat is a wildfire under my skin and I’m burning alive.
I’ve had heats before. Plenty of them. I know how this works—the fever, the need, the desperate aching emptiness that demands to be filled. I’ve always managed them alone, locked in my room with toys and cold showers and sheer stubborn willpower.
This is different.
This is Erik’s scent seeping under the door, wrapping around me, making everything worse.
This is my body recognizing its match and screaming for him with every cell, every nerve, every breath.
This is want so intense it’s become pain, throbbing between my legs, pooling hot and slick where I need him most.
I’ve been fighting it for hours. I’ve tried the cold shower.
It helped for maybe ten minutes before the heat surged back worse than before.
I’ve tried to sleep—impossible, my skin too sensitive, every brush of the sheets sending sparks through my nerve endings.
I’ve tried to take care of it myself but my own hand felt wrong, inadequate, my body rejecting anything that wasn’t him.
Through the wall, I can hear Erik moving. He’s awake and restless.
He’s suffering too. I can smell it: his arousal bleeding through the door, mixing with my heat-scent until the air is thick with wanting.
He’s out there, trying to trying to respect my wishes, and I’m in here falling apart.
I don’t know Erik Nilsson, not really. Until the last few days, I would have said that he was one cold fish, but that’s not the whole of it.
For Erik, it’s all about control, that much is clear.
He needs to be in charge of everything. He takes great pride in only doing what he wants, when he wants it and of having control over his so-called baser urges.
I think if he gives in and comes in here when I told him no, it’ll destroy him in ways that the vengeful part of me loves the thought of.
But I said no. I told him to stay away.
Maybe I was an idiot.
Another wave crashes through me and I curl into the mattress, biting down on a moan. My thighs are slick. My whole body is trembling. The emptiness inside me has become a physical ache, a hollow demanding thing that won’t be ignored.
I need him. I need him.
I’m off the bed before I consciously decide to move. My legs are shaky, barely holding me up. I make it to the door, wrench it open, and there he is—sitting up on the couch, shirtless, looking as wrecked as I feel.
Our eyes meet.
“Nolan.” His voice is rough, strained. “What are you—”
“I changed my mind.”
He goes still. I watch his nostrils flare, watch his pupils blow wide as my scent hits him full force.
“You said—”
“I know what I said.” I’m gripping the doorframe, trying to stay upright, trying to form words through the fog of need. “I was wrong. I can’t—Erik, I can’t—”
“You need to be sure.” He’s on his feet now, but he hasn’t moved toward me. Holding himself back. Checking. “Heat affects judgment. If you don’t really want—”
“I want.” I let go of the doorframe, take a shaky step toward him. “I’ve wanted since the Bureau meeting. Since you walked into that room and I couldn’t breathe. This isn’t just heat. This is—” Another wave hits and I gasp, doubling over. “Please. Please, Erik. I need you.”
He crosses the room in three strides.
His hands are on my face, tilting it up, and then his mouth is on mine and I’m drowning in him. The kiss is desperate, messy, all teeth and tongue and the ragged sounds we’re both making. I grab fistfuls of his hair and hold on.
“Bedroom,” he growls against my lips.
“Yes. Now. Please.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing—hands under my thighs, my legs wrapping around his waist—and carries me through the door. I’m kissing his neck, his jaw, anywhere I can reach, drunk on the taste of his skin. He smells incredible, all alpha musk and want, and I want to drown in it.
He lowers me onto the bed, follows me down, and then we’re tangled together, hands everywhere, fighting with clothes.
My shirt tears—I don’t care. His sweatpants get shoved down, kicked away.
And then it’s just skin on skin, heat on heat, and I’m arching up into him like I’ll die if we stop touching.
“Nolan.” His mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, trailing fire. “Tell me what you need.”
“You. Inside me. Now.”
He groans, the sound vibrating against my chest. His hand slides down my stomach, between my thighs, and when his fingers find where I’m wet and ready, we both gasp.
“So slick,” he breathes. “So ready for me.”
“I’ve been ready for hours.” I roll my hips up, chasing his touch. “Stop teasing and take me.”
His control snaps.
He flips me onto my stomach in one smooth motion, hands gripping my hips, dragging me up onto my knees.
I barely have time to brace myself before he’s there, pressing against my entrance, and then he’s pushing inside and I’m crying out into the pillow because it’s so much, so full, so exactly what I’ve been desperate for.
“Okay?” His voice is strained, barely human. He’s holding himself still, buried deep, waiting for me to adjust.
“Move,” I manage. “For God’s sake, move.”
He moves.
The first thrust punches the air out of my lungs.
The second makes me see stars. By the third I’m beyond words, beyond thought, nothing but sensation and the overwhelming rightness of having him inside me.
He sets a brutal pace—deep, hard, relentless—and I take everything he gives me and beg for more.
“That’s it,” he growls, one hand fisting in my hair, the other bruising my hip. “Take it. Take all of it.”
I can’t respond. Can only moan and writhe and push back against him, meeting every thrust. The heat is singing through my veins, satisfied at last, and underneath it is something else—something that feels terrifyingly like joy.
He shifts the angle and suddenly he’s hitting something inside me that makes my whole body light up. I scream into the pillow, hands clawing at the sheets.
“There,” I gasp. “Right there, don’t stop, please—”
He doesn’t stop. Drives into that spot over and over until I’m sobbing with how good it feels, until my thighs are shaking and my arms give out and I’m face-down on the mattress taking it because I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
“Going to come,” he grits out. “Nolan—”
“Yes. Do it. I need—I need to feel—”
He slams in deep and holds there, pulsing inside me, and the feeling of it sends me over the edge. I come so hard my vision whites out, clenching around him, wave after wave of release crashing through me until I don’t know which way is up.
We collapse together, his weight pressing me into the mattress. His breath is hot and ragged against my neck. His heart pounds against my back. Neither of us moves.
“Again,” I whisper when I can form words.
He laughs, the sound exhausted and wondering. “Give me five minutes.”
“Three.”
“You’re going to kill me.”
“Probably.” I turn my head, catch his mouth in an awkward sideways kiss. “But what a way to go.”
I lose track of time after that. The heat swallows everything—hours, days, the difference between sleeping and waking. There’s only Erik’s hands on my body, Erik’s mouth, Erik moving inside me over and over until I don’t know where I end and he begins.
The second time, he takes me slow. So slow I think I might die from it.
He lays me out on my back, pushes my thighs apart, and just looks at me. I’m flushed and sweating, chest heaving, completely exposed. Under anyone else’s gaze I’d feel vulnerable. Under his, I feel powerful.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “You’re so beautiful like this.”
“Less talking.” I reach for him, try to pull him down. “More—”
He catches my wrists, pins them above my head with one hand. “Patience.”
“I don’t have patience. I have heat hormones and a very short fuse.”
He laughs, low and dark, and then lowers his head between my thighs.
The first touch of his tongue makes me arch off the bed.
He holds my hips down, keeps me pinned while he takes me apart with his mouth—long, slow licks alternating with focused attention exactly where I need it.
I’m moaning his name, cursing, begging, and he just keeps going, relentless, until I’m right on the edge.
Then he stops.
“Erik!” The word comes out wrecked, furious. “What are you—”
“Patience,” he says again, and I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“I will end you. I will literally—”
He slides two fingers inside me and crooks them against that spot, and I lose the ability to form threats.
To form words. To form anything except desperate, keening sounds as he works me with his fingers, still not letting me come, building me up and backing off until I’m nearly crying with frustration.
“Please,” I beg. I’ve never begged for anything in my life but I’m begging now. “Please, Erik, I can’t—I need—”
“What do you need?”
“You. Inside me. Please.”
He pulls his fingers out—I whimper at the loss—and then he’s there, sliding home in one long, slow thrust. I wrap my legs around his waist and hold on.
This time he doesn’t rush. Rolls his hips in a steady rhythm, pulling almost all the way out and then sinking back in, deep and thorough. Every stroke drags against my sensitive walls, sending sparks up my spine. I’m dissolving, melting, becoming nothing but the place where we’re joined.
“Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes. His face is inches from mine, expression fierce and tender and utterly focused.
“I want to see you,” he murmurs. “I want to see your face when you come.”
The intimacy of it is almost too much. This isn’t just heat-fucking anymore. This is something else. Something I don’t have a name for, something that scares me more than the heat ever could.
But I can’t look away. Can’t close my eyes. Can only stare into his as he moves inside me, as the pleasure builds and builds until I’m shaking with it.
“Erik—” His name comes out broken. “I’m going to—”
“I know. I’ve got you. Let go.”
I shatter.