Chapter 44 Chosen
CHOSEN
RORIE
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I messed up.
I said I needed time, but what I needed was you.
The real you.
The one who made me laugh when I couldn’t breathe.
The one who saw past every defense and stayed anyway.
I see you now, Rorie. All of you.
And I’m sorry it took me this long to realize.
Another buzz.
I’m outside your door. Not to argue. Not to demand. Just to show up. For real this time.
My chest caves in on itself.
I rush to the door. He’s there, same gray shirt, same dark eyes, but everything else is different. Softer. Clearer.
He holds up his phone. The photo I sent him earlier—us, standing by the ocean, sun melting into the sky—is now his contact picture. Textually Frustrated.
No longer anonymous. No longer a secret.
He puts the phone away and says, “I want to remember the moment before I knew. Before the guilt. Before the noise. Just… us.”
I’m not breathing. I don’t think I know how to anymore.
“I thought you hated me,” I whisper.
He steps forward, slow, and intentional. “I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I didn’t make you feel safe enough to tell me. That’s on me. Not you.”
My eyes sting. “No—”
“I just—” He stops himself, the space between his brows pinching. “You didn’t just get under my skin, Rorie. You became the reason it felt like I had any at all. Everything felt numb until you started texting me. And then I couldn’t stop needing more of you.”
My heart cracks open. The light inside seeps through.
“Rorie, you made me feel…everything.” Slowly, reverently—he closes the distance.
His hands cup my face, thumbs brush my cheekbones, and his eyes are on me like I’m the only star in the entire sky.
No heat. No rage. No roughness.
“Let me make this right,” he breathes, so close I can taste the confession in his voice.
“I should’ve told you.” My voice shakes.
“Shhh…” He leans in, forehead pressing to mine. He doesn’t kiss me yet. Instead, he lets his hands slide down, featherlight, across my shoulders, down my arms, until they settle at my waist.
“Adams,” he says softly. “I don’t want fast, or frantic, or furious. I want to learn you. I want to commit every shiver and sigh to memory until I can rewrite the definition of love for you.”
His lips brush mine, a breath of a kiss. I lean into it, but he doesn’t deepen. He pulls back with a wicked smirk.
“Still mad at me?” he asks, voice like velvet.
“Yes,” I manage.
“Good,” he whispers against my neck, lips skating lower. “Because making-up is my favorite part. And now I’m going to show you exactly what happens when you keep secrets from me.”
The air narrows, folds in on us like the secret we’ve kept too long.
He’s in my space, my breath, my bloodstream.
Every inch of him is just shy of contact, but I feel him everywhere.
In the thrum beneath my skin. In the anticipation coiling low in my belly.
In the silence that begs to be broken by us.
“You and me,” he breathes. “We’re a goddamn mess.”
His hands find my waist.
“But maybe,” he whispers, “we make beautiful wreckage.”
He kisses me. And it’s not sweet. It’s not slow.
It’s a goddamn implosion.
A kiss that carves, that bruises, that bears the weight of everything we’ve said and everything we couldn’t. It’s need without apology, desperation without shame. His hands slide beneath my shirt, starving for skin.
My fingers are in his hair, tugging him closer, anchoring myself to the one thing that’s never felt like a mistake.
Because this isn’t a mistake.
This is inevitable.
Clothes become obstacles. Buttons snap, zippers hiss, fabric is discarded. He spins me, presses me to the wall, one hand gripping my hip like it belongs to him, the other burying into my hair with a control that trembles at the edge.
I moan as his mouth trails down my throat, his teeth scraping enough to cause a delicious hurt, enough to make me arch. He soothes it with his tongue, then does it again—marking me, claiming me, giving me the apology we never put into words.
His hand slides higher, wrapping gently around the base of my throat—not to squeeze. Just to hold. To remind me I’m his. I’ve always been his.
My pulse pounds beneath his palm.
He feels it. Tracks it. Feeds off it.
“That mouth of yours has lit me on fire for weeks,” he growls, “and now I’m gonna make you feel every fucking word.”
I can’t breathe. I don’t want to.
Spinning back, I yank Nolan into me, our mouths crashing, tongues tangling in a kiss that doesn’t ask for permission—it seizes it, conquers it.
We stumble toward the bed together in the same breath. His urgent hands are everywhere. And when he speaks, it isn’t pure, unfiltered heat.
“I’m not just going to fuck you, Rorie.”
Pressing me into the mattress, he settles above me, gaze burning into mine. His eyes are molten, roaming over every inch of me like I’m a puzzle he’s waited his whole life to solve.
His hair’s wild.
His breathing’s ragged.
His soul is naked.
“I’m going to show you what it means to be wanted. Worshipped. Chosen.”
And right then—
I choose him too.
“Promise?”
His mouth crushes mine. Every kiss is a possession. Every bite, a confession. It’s pure euphoria running in my veins.
Nolan draws back, looks at me. “Spread your legs, Rorie.” His voice slides into my chest, and slithers down my core, heat rolling through me like thunder.
Breath shuddering, I hesitate, a little dazed by how badly I want to obey him. How easily he could make me come with nothing but that voice and the weight of that look.
Slowly, I open for him.
He smiles.
Not cocky. Not cruel.
Just confident.
Like he already knows how this ends. And it’s with me, beneath him, whispering his name into the dark, begging for me.
Licking his lips, he slides down my body with reverence and hunger—like the only place he’s ever belonged is between my thighs.
And then he’s there.
And holy God.
It’s not sweet.
It’s not careful.
It’s filthy. It’s fevered. It’s feral.
Quick, devastating licks against my clit punch the air from my lungs. Again. Again. No mercy. No hesitation. Only relentless devotion to every moan, every tremor, every gasp he drags from me as proof I’m his.
My hand fists his hair, holding him there. The other claws the sheets, desperate for something solid as my body starts to shake.
I’m undone.
Unmade.
This man is a storm. I’ve never wanted to drown so badly.
He tugs my clit with his teeth. Cruelty and devotion are wrapped together.
I gasp, hips arching, desperate for more, begging for anything.
But he doesn’t give it.
He doesn’t move.
Doesn’t touch.
He watches me, lips wet, eyes darkening, chest heaving with the restraint it’s taking to hold himself back.
“You said you wanted a man who could make you come with words alone,” he says voice lethal, sin dipped in silk.
Oh, damn he remembers.
I was being a brat in that moment on the plane. And now I’m about to pay for it.
My pulse hammers, body tightens.
“I’ve thought about that, Rorie.” His gaze drops to my thighs, still parted for him, still aching, my wetness smeared across them, ready for him. “Thought about how wild your mind must be. How filthy. How greedy.”
His words graze over my skin.
“Bet you pictured it, too. Me whispering in your ear... telling you how soaked you’d be for me. How your thighs would start to shake before I ever even touched you.”
He leans in close, but not touching, his mouth hovering beside my ear.
“And you’re close, aren’t you, baby?” he whispers. “Your clit’s still throbbing from my mouth. You’re so fucking wet, you can feel it dripping, can’t you?”
A whimper breaks free from my throat.
His smile is all devil. “You want to come, Rorie? I want you to. I want you to fall apart from the sound of my voice alone. From the things I’d do to you.”
My legs tremble, pussy tightens.
Nolan shoves his shorts down. I watch his swollen cock twitch under my gaze. I want to straddle him, slip his fat mushroom head inside me, and torture myself endlessly with just the head of his glorious dick.
He fists his cock, slides his hand slowly over the silky skin of it. “Jealous of my hand, Rorie?”
I don’t hesitate with my answer. “Yes.”
I want to touch him. I reach for him, but he stops me.
“No, baby. But if you’re good, and you come for me by words alone, I’ll let you have as much as you want.” His voice threads into the most intimate part of me.
His hand keeps moving, stroking himself. “Imagine this cock sliding inside you achingly slow. Deep. Feel every inch. I’d let you claw at my shoulders. Let you swear, and sob, and lose every thought except one.”
He pauses, then says, “Mine.”
A gasp rips out of me, involuntary.
“Visualize me fucking you until your legs forget how to stand. Until your voice cracked on my name. Until you begged me to stop and keep going in the same breath.”
My eyes flutter shut. Fuck.
“Do it,” he murmurs, pumping himself harder. “Let go. No hands. No help. Just me.”
My hips buck. Desperate. Empty.
“Nolan,” I gasp, one hand darting toward the throbbing ache between my legs.
But he catches my wrist midair.
“Don’t,” he growls. “I already told you, naughty girl, you don’t get to touch. Not until you do what I ask.”
I whimper, trembling as he pins my arm gently to the mattress. My thighs are quaking, my skin is buzzing with every unsatisfied nerve.
“Beg me with that filthy mouth.”
I squirm under him, another broken sound leaving my throat. “Please—”
His body presses down over mine, but he still doesn’t give me what I crave. His voice is the only thing he allows.
“You’re already so close, baby. Think about my mouth on your clit. You want to know what you feel like under my tongue?”
Frantic, I nod.
“Sweet. Addictive. A taste I’d chase through every lifetime.”
I arch. “Oh, God…”
“That's it. Say it again.”
“Oh God,” I cry out, hips rolling into the air, but there’s nothing there. No friction. No contact. Only his words and the hot press of his breath.