17
Easton
The words were gasoline on the fire already eating me alive. Make me mean it.
I didn’t need a second invitation. My mouth was already on hers, swallowing her next breath, her next challenge, her next lie.
I kissed her like I wanted to punish her for existing, for making me feel this, for walking back into my life and acting like she could handle the wreckage she’d left.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a declaration of war fought with teeth and tongue, a brutal, devouring thing that tasted like blood—mine or hers, I didn’t know, didn’t care. It was ours.
My hands moved. One stayed fisted in the thin, cheap fabric of her referee top—The Sin Bin, the irony wasn’t lost on me—right over the rapid, frantic beat of her heart.
I could feel it, that wild, trapped-bird rhythm against my knuckles.
The other slid from her waist to the back of her thigh, my fingers digging into the soft, giving flesh, hiking her leg up around my hip.
She gasped into my mouth, a sharp, startled sound that was pure fuel.
Her fingers dug into my shoulders, her short nails biting through the worn cotton of my hoodie, scoring my skin.
I lifted her clean off the floor, her back still against the wall, and she wrapped her other leg around me without hesitation, locking her ankles at the small of my back.
The move pressed her pussy, hot even through our clothes, against the hard, aching ridge of my cock straining against my jeans, and a ragged, furious sound tore from my throat—half agony, half triumph.
I carried her like that, my mouth never leaving hers, a messy, breathless tangle of lips and teeth and shared fury, walking us blindly out of the narrow hallway and into the bleak main room.
I didn’t make it to the bed. A low, scarred wooden table sat in front of my shitty couch, covered in unopened mail, a skate tool, and a half-empty plastic water bottle.
I swept it all off with one violent arm, the crash of the bottle hitting the floor, the skittering of metal, nothing but background noise to the roaring, white-hot static in my ears.
I laid her back on the cool, scarred wood.
Not gently. There was no gentleness left in me.
It had been burned out seven months ago, scorched away by her absence and my own fucking pride, replaced by this—this acid, all-consuming need to prove something, to claim something, to make her feel even a fraction of the hollowed-out ache she’d carved into my chest. To make her remember.
Her long, thin black braids fanned out around her head like a dark crown against the pale, unfinished pine.
Her eyes were wide, dark, and blazing up at me, her chest heaving under that stupid fucking top.
No fear. Never fear with her. Just challenge.
Just fire. Just the same infuriating, beautiful defiance that had drawn me in and then burned me to ash.
I didn’t bother with her top. My hands went to the waistband of her tiny black shorts, the fabric soft and worn.
She was already working on my jeans, her fingers fumbling with the button, then the zipper, her knuckles brushing against the painful hardness beneath.
We were a frantic, silent tangle of hands and anger and too many months of wanting to do this while pretending we wanted to kill each other instead. It was ugly. It was perfect.
I shoved her shorts and the flimsy lace of her panties down her legs in one rough, inelegant pull.
She kicked them off, the movement lifting her hips, and I nearly lost my mind at the sight of her, bare and spread out for me on my goddamn table.
Her skin was a rich, beautiful brown against the pale, unforgiving wood, and she was already wet.
The proof of it glistened in the low, shitty light from the kitchen, a slick, inviting sheen, and the sight was a vicious, soul-deep triumph.
She could scream that she hated me until her voice broke, but her body had always been a traitor.
It always wanted me. It always needed me.
She finally got my jeans open, her hand shoving inside my boxer briefs, her fingers wrapping around my cock.
Her touch was electric, rough and desperate, and I hissed, my hips jerking forward into her fist, my forehead dropping to her shoulder.
Her thumb swiped over the head, spreading the moisture beading there, and the sensation was so intense it bordered on pain.
“Stop,” I growled, the word less of a request and more of a primal command, torn from a place deeper than reason.
She didn’t. She stroked me, her grip tightening, her eyes holding mine with that defiant, fucking beautiful glare.
I caught her wrist, pulling her hand away and pinning it above her head on the table, my fingers like iron manacles.
I used my other hand to finally free myself, shoving my jeans and boxers down just enough.
I didn’t give her time to think, to breathe, to come up with another cutting remark that would slice me open.
I positioned myself at her entrance, the broad, aching head of my cock nudging against her slick, swollen heat.
I leaned over her, bracing one hand on the table by her head, caging her in.
My other hand came up, my fingers curling lightly around the front of her throat.
Not squeezing. Not yet. Just holding. A reminder.
A claim. My thumb brushed the frantic, rabbit-quick pulse jumping under her jaw.
Her breath hitched, her eyes locked on mine, her lips parted, swollen and dark.
“Nobody,” I said, my voice a low, filthy rasp, stripped of everything but anger and a want so deep it felt like dying, “is ever gonna fuck you like I do, Aura.”
I used her name. Not Clarke. Aura. The rule breaking one, I’d hoarded it like a miser, a stolen treasure. Now I weaponized it. Threw it between us like a grenade.
Her name. For this real, ugly, glorious thing between us.
I thrust into her in one brutal, deep, unyielding stroke.
She cried out, a sharp, shocked sound that was instantly swallowed by a guttural gasp as I buried myself to the hilt, my balls slapping against her skin.
She was so tight, so fucking hot and wet and perfect, her body clamping around me like a vise meant to break me.
It was heaven and hell. It was everything I remembered and everything I’d tried to drink into oblivion.
The fit was obscenely right, a key turning in a lock I’d thought was welded shut.
I didn’t move for a second, letting her feel the full, stretching, claiming weight of me inside her.
Letting us both feel it. Letting the reality of it—the heat, the pressure, the utter rightness—sear through the layers of bullshit and hurt.
Her chest heaved, her free hand coming up to claw at my forearm, her nails scratching at the wood of the table beneath her pinned hand.
“Still hate me?” I ground out, my face inches from hers, our breath mingling, hot and ragged.
“Yes,” she gasped, the word trembling, but her hips lifted, a subtle, undeniable roll that took me even deeper.
Liar. Beautiful, fucking liar.
I pulled out almost all the way, savoring the tight, wet drag, then slammed back in, setting a punishing, piston-hard rhythm from the very first stroke.
No finesse. No tenderness. Just deep, hard, driving thrusts that rocked the table against the floor with a heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud.
Each impact jolted through her, through me, a physical echo of the collision we’d been hurtling toward for months.
The sound of our bodies meeting was raw, animalistic.
“This what you wanted?” I snarled, my hand on her throat applying the faintest, most threatening pressure, just enough to make her swallow hard, to make her eyes widen, to make her feel the absolute control I had in this moment.
“You show up, you say your piece, you look at me with that fucking mouth… you knew this was where it was going. You came here for this.”
“Fuck you,” she choked out, her free hand clawing at my bicep, her legs tightening around my waist.
“You are,” I said, my voice brutal with a satisfaction so dark it scared me.
I shifted my angle slightly, driving up, and hit the spot that made her eyes roll back in her head, a broken, choked sound ripping from her throat.
“Right here. Taking every inch. Just like you used to. Tell me you don’t remember how I fit you.
Tell me you’ve forgotten the way your cunt sucks me in like it’s begging for it. ”
She shook her head, her braids sliding across the wood, but a broken, sobbing moan tore from her lips, betraying her.
“Tell me,” I demanded, hammering into that same sweet, brutal spot again and again, watching her body tense, her back arch. “Tell me you don’t remember begging for it just like this. On your knees. In my bed. Please, East, please, I need it, I need you.”
“I don’t… I don’t beg,” she panted, but her voice was fraying, unraveling with each driving thrust.
“You do and you will again.” I dropped my head, my mouth near her ear, my thrusts never slowing, the sweat from my brow dripping onto her skin.
“You’ll beg before I’m done with you tonight.
You’ll scream my name until your throat is raw, and you’ll remember that this…
this deep, this hard, this fucking perfect…
this is mine. It was always mine. You let other men touch you, but you gave them rules.
You gave me this. Your tight, perfect little cunt, dripping for me, coming on my cock because you can’t help it. Because it knows its owner.”
“Shut up,” she sobbed, the tears finally spilling over, tracking through the light sheen of sweat on her temples, but her hips were meeting mine now, stroke for furious stroke, her body bowing off the table to take me deeper, to get more. “Just… hell, just fuck me, you bastard.”