Chapter 12
Ryan POV
My thumb stayed hooked beneath the ribbed collar of her sweater, pulling the wool down until the pale, violent thud of her carotid artery was exposed to the humming fluorescent light.
The skin beneath my knuckles was scorching hot, radiating a feverish heat that mocked the fifty-degree chill of the bunker.
Her pupils were blown wide, black ink drowning out the gold flecks in her irises until only a razor-thin crescent of amber remained.
Her breath hitched in her throat, rapid, shallow, catching on the air as if she were drowning on dry land.
She was backed so hard against the stainless-steel table that the metal groaned behind her hips.
"Lie to me, Collins," I growled, my voice a low, gravelly scrape that sounded like two millstones grinding together. "Tell me you spent twelve hours thinking about your data models."
Her chin lifted. The defiance in her face was a physical blade, sharp, unbending, refusing to grant me a single inch of surrender.
"I spent twelve hours wishing I’d left you to bleed on that examination table," she whispered.
A muscle along the side of my jaw spasmed.
I took half a step forward, sliding my boots between hers, closing the microscopic gap left between our bodies. The front of my black training shirt pressed flat against the heavy knit of her sweater, forcing her breasts to flatten against the bruised bone of my sternum.
"You're a terrible liar," I rumbled, leaning down until my rough stubble scraped against the soft, sensitive skin of her cheekbone. "You were shaking in the passenger seat. Your hands were twisted in my hoodie, Nylah. You wanted me to pull your head back and ruin you right there in the dark."
Her breath hitched sharply, a ragged gasp that washed across the corner of my mouth, smelling of winter mint and pure adrenaline. Her fingers clenched into the denim of her thighs, her fingernails biting deep into the fabric.
"And you didn't," she breathed, her lips parting, throwing the words straight into my teeth like a challenge. "You let a phone call scare you back into your pathetic little cage. You're just a coward hiding behind an enforcer jersey."
The last thread snapped.
* * *
Four years of self-imposed exile, four years of calculating every breath to keep people from getting caught in my blast radius, detonated into ash.
My right hand left the collar of her sweater and drove up into the dark, severe knot of hair at the base of her skull.
My fingers tangled deep into the thick strands, gripping the roots with a rough, possessive leverage.
Two steel hairpins popped free, clattering against the concrete floor in sharp, rhythmic pings.
I wrenched her head back, not gently, arching her spine and exposing the long, pale line of her throat to the ceiling.
Her mouth opened on a sharp, shocked gasp.
Before she could draw the breath in, my left arm hooked around the small of her waist.
I hauled her upward, lifting her clean off the concrete, and dropped her onto the edge of the stainless-steel table.
The metal shrieked. I shoved my mass forward between her parted thighs before she could close them, my heavy quads locking her knees wide on either side of my hips, my weight pinning her back against the cold steel surface.
Then I took her mouth.
It wasn't a gentle crossing of lines. It was a violent, starving collision of friction and raw pressure.
My lips crashed down on hers, rough-edged and desperate, crushing her defiance beneath the weight of four weeks of suppressed hunger. I bit down on her bottom lip, dragging the swollen flesh between my teeth with enough bruising force to pull a broken, helpless moan from the back of her throat.
The second her lips parted to let the sound out, I drove my tongue inside.
The taste of her hit the back of my throat like a shot of pure grain alcohol—clean, hot, tasting of mint and the sharp copper tang of her breath. My masseter muscles ached from the intensity of the clench, the blood roaring in my ears so loud it drowned out the hum of the transformer above us.
Nylah didn't fight.
Her hands came up in a frantic blur, her small palms slamming against my chest before her fingers curled, knotting into the black fabric over my bruised ribs.
She didn't shove me away; she pulled me down, dragging my weight harder against her small frame, arching her hips off the table until the front of her jeans ground against the hard, unyielding ridge of my groin.
A ragged, animal groan ripped out of my chest, vibrating straight through her teeth.
I shifted my grip in her hair, angling her face, my tongue sweeping deep, possessive, claiming every corner of her mouth with an unvarnished brutality that left no room for retreat.
* * *
She was coming apart beneath me.
Her small hands released my shirt and flew to the back of my neck, her fingers digging into my hair, her nails scraping across my scalp with a fierce, frantic pressure that drove the air straight out of my lungs.
Every time I drove my tongue deeper, she met it, her hips shifting against mine on the metal table, seeking the friction she had been denying since the morning we met.
I broke the kiss by a fraction of an inch, dragging my mouth across her flushed cheekbone to the sensitive curve beneath her ear.
My breath was coming in ragged, violent gasps that scorched my throat.
"That's it," I rasped, my gravelly voice thick with a dark, ruined hunger that scraped against her jaw. "Good girl. Look at what you do to me, Nylah. Open for me."
"Ryan..." My name was a broken, shuddering whimper on her lips.
I bit down on the soft flesh where her neck met her shoulder, tasting the salt on her skin, feeling the wild, rabbit-fast thud of her pulse hammering beneath my teeth.
She arched violently off the table, her fingernails biting through the fabric of my shirt into the meat of my trapezius, her head falling back against my arm in absolute, shivering surrender.
"Look at me," I commanded, my voice dropping into that low, velvet register that demanded obedience.
Her eyelids fluttered open.
Her amber eyes were glazed, black swallowing the gold, swimming with a raw, dazed heat that made my hands shake where they held her waist. Her chest was heaving, the ribbed wool of her sweater pulled tight against the frantic rise and fall of her ribs.
I leaned down, pressing my lips back to hers, but this time the kiss was slower, a crushing, heavy friction that mapped the swollen contour of her lips, sealing her to me with the deliberate weight of a brand.
Above us, two floors up, an iron door banged shut.
The heavy, metallic clang echoed down the concrete service shaft, followed by the distant scrape of work boots on the upper landing.
The sound sliced through the haze of my skull like a bucket of ice water.
I pulled back by an inch.
Our foreheads rested together, our breath mingling in the cold air in thick, ragged clouds of white steam. My fingers were still tangled in the dark silk of her loosened hair, anchoring her head; her hands were still locked around my neck, her knuckles white against my skin.
Her lips were swollen, dark crimson, wet from my mouth.
She stared up at me through the dim light, her breath hitching in shallow, trembling bursts, her throat working on a dry swallow as the reality of what we had just done crashed down around us.
I looked down into her shattered, beautiful face, my heart hammering against my cracked ribs like a sledgehammer.
The professional detachment was dead. The compliance rules were ashes.
I hadn't just crossed the line. I had burned the bridge behind me, and I was never going to let her cross back.