Chapter 15 #2
"Tally shut me down." Clipped. Fast. Like if I slow down they won't make it out at all. "Threatened to call the cops. Told me an officer already came to warn her off. Said I was a troublemaker. Said it would go badly for her if she did business with me."
Trevor sets down his glass. The sound is precise. Deliberate. A man buying time to think.
My hands find the counter edge. Palms flat. Knuckles white. I can feel the shake starting in my fingers and press down harder to stop it, which doesn't work, nothing works, the shake lives where it wants and I just rent the space.
"They're not just looking the other way.
" That edge in my voice now, the one that lives right next to shouting and sometimes crosses the line.
"They're running cover. They're watching me.
Have been watching me. Every witness I've gotten close to in two years has had a door slammed in their face by someone with a badge, and I've been telling myself it's paranoia, small-town caution, it's—" I stop.
The rest isn't worth finishing, because the rest is bullshit and we both know it.
"How long do you figure you've been on their radar?" Trevor's voice is steady — the steadiness that makes me want to throw something, because steady Trevor is already three steps ahead and measuring the distance, and right now I need someone as furious as I am.
I laugh. Short. Humorless. Air leaving my lungs because the alternative is worse.
"Long enough."
"Then we get smarter." He takes a step toward me. Not crowding. Closing distance. His eyes on mine, dark and focused, reading the fine print on the back of my skull. "Slower. You've been operating like nobody's watching. Now we know they are. Every move—"
"Slow is how girls disappear." Sharp. Bitten.
My chest is tight, my breath coming in short pulls because my lungs have decided oxygen's a luxury they can't afford.
"Careful is how Hannah becomes Annette becomes a name in a notebook nobody reads because everybody decided it was easier to look away.
I am not—" I stop. My jaw set so tight it hurts.
"I am not going to be careful while they take another girl. "
We're chest-close before either of us registers it.
I don't remember moving. He doesn't either.
We're just suddenly there, the air between us gone charged, my jaw set, his eyes hard, both of us breathing through the fight instead of past it.
I can smell him — sweat, soap, something underneath that's his alone, that I've spent a decade trying to forget and failing.
His hand finds my waist. Or mine finds his shirt.
Neither of us will ever be able to say who moved first, and it doesn't matter, because once it starts there's no first — only the collision, my fist in his shirt, his mouth on mine hard enough that our teeth click, and the sound is obscene in the quiet kitchen and neither of us gives a single fuck.
I shove him back against the counter. His hips hit the edge and he grunts — low, rough, the sound traveling straight from his throat to my dick — and then his hands are in my hair, gripping hard enough to hurt, and the hurt is good, specific, something to focus on besides my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest and my hands shaking for reasons that have nothing to do with fear and everything to do with ten years of want compressed into each point of contact.
We grapple. That's the only word for it.
Not kissing, not fucking — grappling. His back against the counter, my knee between his thighs, his hand finding the hem of my shirt and yanking it up, my palm flat on his chest feeling his heart hammer through thin cotton.
We're both sweating, August heat and adrenaline and two men with too much fury and not enough outlet, and the sweat makes everything slick — his skin under my hands, my mouth on his neck, his teeth on my collarbone hard enough to mark.
I get his wrist. Pin it to the wall beside the fridge, my grip tight, his forearm corded, and for a second I have him — actually have him, Trevor Hollander pinned to my kitchen wall with my hand on his wrist and my body against his, and the power of it goes to my head like cheap whiskey.
He twists free. One smooth motion, the kind that speaks to years of Marines and hand-to-hand I've never had, and then I'm the one against the wall, his forearm across my chest, his hips grinding into mine, the pressure so direct, so fucking specific, that my knees almost go.
"Bedroom," I say. Wrecked. Rough. The kind of rough that happens when your throat decides forming words is secondary to getting Trevor Hollander's clothes off. "Now."
We make it upstairs in something between a stagger and a run.
His room — the narrow bed, the water-stained ceiling.
He hits the mattress first. I'm on him before it finishes settling, my mouth on his, my hand working his belt one-handed because the other's braced against the headboard holding us both up.
"I'm topping you this time." Against his mouth.
Not a question. A statement that lives somewhere between a demand and a plea, and the line between those two has never been thinner than now, with Trevor under me and his hips rolling up and his hands gripping my ass through denim hard enough to leave marks.
He shudders. Full-body. I feel it everywhere our skin touches through too many layers. His head drops back against the pillow. His eyes close. His throat works — once, twice, a man swallowing something he's carried a long time.
"Yes." One word. Flat. The way Trevor delivers everything that matters — without ornament. Just yes.
I get his jeans down. His cock is hard, thick, the head flushed dark and wet at the tip, and Christ, the sight of it does something to my stomach that borders on religious.
I drop my mouth to him without ceremony.
Take him deep. Feel him twitch against my tongue, hear the sound he makes — low, choked, barely there — and it travels straight to my own dick, so hard it hurts, trapped against the mattress through my jeans with nowhere to go and too much want to carry.
His hand finds the back of my head. Not pushing — holding. Fingers in my hair, grip tight, his hips rolling up in short desperate thrusts I match with my mouth, and the rhythm we find is filthy, urgent, the kind that comes from a place deeper than tenderness.
"Cole." My name in his mouth. Rough. Broken. The kind of broken that means he's close, and knowing I'm the one pushing him there does something to my chest I've got no language for.