Chapter 25 #2
The wet slap of skin on skin filled the office, obscene and loud enough that some distant part of my brain registered Jeff and Ethan sleeping next door. I didn’t care. Neither did she.
Her cries turned jagged, desperate—each one dragged out of her lungs by the force of my body driving into hers. I kept her wrists locked above her head, my free hand wrapping around her throat, squeezing, keeping her eyes on mine in the dark.
“Look at me,” I growled. “You don’t get to hide, not from me.”
Her lips parted on broken gasps, cheeks flushed dark. I shifted my angle and drove deeper, ground against her clit with every brutal stroke.
Her whole body seized as her release took her, and a strangled sob ripped out of her.
“Harder,” she begged, voice shredded to nothing. “Please—harder—make it hurt.”
I looked down at her, watched the pleading in her eyes as they met mine, and gave her everything she asked for.
I released her wrists and hooked her legs over my shoulders.
The new angle let me fuck her deeper—bottoming out with every thrust until she sobbed openly, body jerking beneath mine, coming apart.
“Come,” I growled against her ear. “Fucking come for me. Now.”
She shattered.
Her back arched off the cushions; a raw, animal scream tore from her throat.
Her walls clamped down around me—pulsing, gripping, her whole body convulsing as the orgasm ripped through her like a current, this one more intense than the last. Her nails scratched my shoulders.
I fucked her through every second of it—unrelenting—dragging it out until she trembled and sobbed, tears running freely, body wracked with aftershocks.
I didn’t slow down; I simply kept driving into her, chasing my own release with something feral and primal. Her heels digging into my back, pulling me deeper even as she whimpered.
“Take it,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Every inch. You wanted this. Take it.”
Her eyes rolled back. Another broken cry escaped her as another climax tore through—smaller, sharper, triggered by nothing but the brutal rhythm and the way I filled her completely. That ended me. The thought that this was what I could do to her pushed me over the edge.
I buried myself to the hilt with a guttural groan, hips stuttering as I came hard—flooding her, marking her deeply. I kept thrusting through it, short, savage strokes, pushing everything I had into her until she overflowed, slick warmth dripping between us onto the worn couch.
When my body was spent, I collapsed on her. Still inside. Both of us drenched in sweat and tears and each other.
My forehead dropped against hers. Our breathing tore through the silence—ragged, synced, the only sound in the dark.
I eased her legs down slowly. Slid out—watching her wince at the sudden emptiness, a soft whimper escaping her lips. Then I gathered her against my chest, one arm wrapped tight around her back, the other cradling her head so her face tucked into the hollow of my throat.
She still trembled. Smaller now. The violent shaking had burned itself out, leaving something quieter in its wake. Exhaustion. Relief. The fragile stillness that comes after everything inside you has been spent. I pressed my lips to her hair and breathed her scent in.
“You’re here,” I murmured, voice rough and low. “You’re still here. I’ve got you.”
She didn’t answer. Just curled tighter against me, fingers fisting the front of my shirt over my heart like she needed the steady thud beneath her knuckles to remind her she existed.
Minutes passed, maybe longer. The trembling stopped. Her breathing deepened. But she didn’t sleep—not yet. Her fingers kept flexing against my chest, gripping and releasing, then her hand uncurled. Slid up slowly until her fingertips traced the line of my collarbone.
Something shifted between us. The desperate, raw edge dulled. What replaced it moved slower, quieter—just as deep but no longer violent.
I lowered my mouth to her collarbone, lips tracing the elegant line beneath her skin. She shuddered, a soft, broken moan slipping free as my mouth found the sensitive curve of her breast. Her hands came up, fingers tangling in my hair—not guiding, just holding.
“God,” she whispered, the word a breath more than a sound.
I lifted my head and brushed my lips against hers, pulled back just enough to see her face.
In the faint glow, her eyes shone dark and liquid, her lips swollen, her cheeks still streaked with drying tears.
I smoothed a strand of hair from her damp forehead.
My fingers traced slowly down the plane of her stomach—learning the delicate curves of her, the soft give of her waist, the shallow dip of her navel.
She watched me, gaze heavy-lidded, open in a way that had nothing to do with her body and everything to do with what she’d decided to let me see.
My hand slid over the flare of her hip, and she made a small, involuntary sound, like my touch reached something she’d been guarding. She curled into me, tucking her head beneath my chin for a long breath, then turned her face up and sought my mouth again.
This kiss moved differently. Slowly, it tasted of salt and warmth and an essence that belonged only to her.
I broke it gently, rested my forehead against hers, as our breaths mingled in the narrow space between us.
“Sloane.”
“Hmm?”
“What are we doing?” The words came out barely audible, rough with something I couldn’t name. I pulled back to look at her, my fingers stilling on her skin. “I mean… what is this? What are we?”
Her eyes, soft and unguarded a moment before, flickered with vulnerability. She searched my face, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. The whole fragile silence of the night hung suspended on whatever she said next.
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead, her fingertips rose to my jaw, tracing the line, moved to my lips, touching them lightly, as if committing the shape to memory, and then she guided my face back down to hers and placed a kiss against my mouth so tender it made my chest ache.
“We’re figuring it out,” she whispered against my lips, her voice steady now, surer than anything she’d said all night. “Together. That’s what we’re doing.”
She drew me back into her, back into the warmth of tangled limbs and the quiet vibrations of a building keeping us alive in the middle of a dead world.
I understood.
We weren’t naming it tonight. We weren’t pinning it down with a word or a promise neither of us could guarantee we’d live long enough to keep. We existed inside the question—and for now, right now, that carried more weight than any answer could.
Her breathing evened out against my chest, deep and slow. I held her close and closed my eyes.
The fear hadn’t gone anywhere, still present in the dark corners and in the parking lot full of the dead. But tonight, it wouldn’t win; I wouldn’t let it.