22. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Now playing: Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
We left the quiet suburbs, our bags packed, gearing up for a flight that would thrust us back into the mouth of the corporate beast. The next stop on the tour wasn’t just any regular television taping.
It was Front Lines. The marquee pay-per-view of the winter season.
As I drove through the early afternoon traffic toward the highway, I realized we hadn’t had any time to think about the match. Between the bar outing, our elopement, Ewan’s sudden passing, and now the confrontation with Fiona, our professional lives had been pushed to the margins.
But sadly, the reality of the business was that it didn’t stop for personal tragedy. The framework for the pay-per-view was already locked in stone, and it was going to be a bloodbath.
This year, Silas was the captain of the infamous, brutal War Zone match.
A multi-man monstrosity filled with weapons, roof-high platforms, and zero rules.
As the current Heavyweight Champion, the target on his back was massive.
Evan, of course, was locked in as his primary partner, alongside two fresh-faced newbies from the developmental roster who were desperate to make a name for themselves.
And then, there was the wild card. The surprise entrant the corporate office hadn’t even announced to the public yet.
Me.
I was going to be the unscripted weapon, the unannounced entity they would drop into the madness to watch my husband’s back. Presley had fought the booking, but the creative board, led by Jim Dallas, overrode him. The money was simply too astronomical to pass up.
Glancing at the dashboard clock, then checking the traffic signs once again, a sudden realization hit me.
Because we’d skipped the formal sit-down lunch with my parents to avoid any last-minute legal discussions, we were nearly an hour ahead of schedule getting to the airport.
Which meant we had two distinct options: we could go sit in a sterile, crowded terminal for three hours.
Or I could get exactly what I wanted from my husband right now.
Without a word of warning, I yanked the steering wheel to the right, taking a sudden, aggressive detour off the main highway leading to the airport.
Silas blinked, his head snapping up as he looked out the window at the shifting scenery. His brow furrowed into that familiar line. “What are you doing? The exit for the airport was back there.”
“I know.” I kept my eyes glued to the road as I accelerated down a tree-lined avenue.
“Where are we going?” he asked, his voice pitching up as he checked his own watch. “We have a flight to catch, baby. If we get stuck in traffic and miss our flight, Presley will use it as an excuse to fine us both into bankruptcy.”
“Si, I love you, truly, but shut up. We’re ahead of schedule. We have time.”
I pulled the SUV into the long, iron-gated driveway of our Philadelphia vacation home. Silas stared at the house, his mouth opening a few times before asking the questions on his mind. “Why are we here? Cal, seriously, we don’t have time to browse through your old mail.”
I didn’t answer him, only killed the engine and got out, striding around the front hood to his door. I ripped it open and reached inside to grab him firmly by the front of his dark hoodie.
As I hauled him out of the SUV, he let out a gasp, his large frame stumbling slightly on the gravel before his boots caught their footing. He didn’t fight me, but his brown eyes were wide with a confused but feral heat.
My man loved when I was controlling.
“Cal!”
My fingers were wrapped tightly around his wrist as I dragged his six-foot-three frame up the front porch steps like he weighed absolutely nothing.
When we got inside, the house felt weird: entirely hollow and frighteningly foreign.
The air was a bit stagnant from being closed up so long, and the rooms were more or less bare of my personal belongings.
Most of my life, at least the material aspects of it, were already in our house in North Carolina.
The echo of our boots against the bare hardwood served as a reminder that this place wasn’t home anymore. It was just a building.
I didn’t say a word as I pulled him down the long, empty hallway, past the barren living room, straight to the back of the house toward the master bedroom.
The room was dark with the curtains drawn, and the king-size bed was still unmade.
The sheets were a tangled mess from the last time we’d been here, months ago.
The twisted trauma that came from visiting my childhood home still vibrated under my skin like an electric current. I needed to purge it. Needed to overlay the rushing memories of hands that had broken me with the solid weight of the man who saved me.
With a hard shove to his shoulders, Silas hit the bed with a thud. He landed on his back, his hair sprawling wildly across the dark pillows. The confusion in his eyes had evaporated, replaced by an intoxicating heat that mirrored the fire in my own gut.
I didn’t waste a single second. Stepping out of my boots and jacket, I climbed onto the mattress until I straddled him, pinning his thighs beneath my heavy weight. My hands moved to grip his jawline with a firm pressure, and I forced him to meet my gaze.
“Cal,” he whispered with a needy whimper escaping his throat.
“Quiet.” My growl was dark, gravelly, and sent a visible shiver down his spine. “All week you’ve talked me down from every ledge. You’ve been the strong one, the shield. But right now, in this room, I’m taking the wheel.”
Si’s pupils blew so wide, his eyes went entirely black in the dim light of the bedroom. He began to nod frantically against my palms as his lips parted in a silent plea.
I didn’t give him the chance to beg. My mouth crashed onto his in a brutal collision that stole the air from his lungs.
Before my tongue pushed into his mouth, I bit down on his bottom lip, causing him to gasp.
Each sound and movement was a claiming with a calculated ferocity that left him entirely dazed.
My hands moved with a frantic speed as I grabbed the hem of his hoodie and shirt and hauled them over his head. His golden skin was flushed, the pink hue traveling from his face down. I traced its rosy path along the corded muscles of his torso.
When I reached the band of his sweatpants, a single hard tug left him completely exposed to the cool air of the room.
His cock was already thick, hard, and weeping with pre-cum, twitching excitedly against his abdomen.
I stripped out of my own shirt and jeans, tossing them onto the floor, and once again loomed over top of him.
I reached into the nightstand drawer, grabbed the lube and popped the lid.
I coated my fingers with the slick substance, and then slid my hand between his thighs, all while holding his gaze.
Inserting two fingers straight into his tight depth, I pulled a loud, shattered cry from his lips.
It echoed sharply off the bare walls of the empty house, creating a symphony of lust.
“Cal, fuck! Please!” he gasped as his back arched completely off the mattress, and his hands flew out to grip the headboard. Each one of his internal muscles clenched down violently around my intrusion.
“I know I told you to be quiet,” I taunted in a dangerous whisper against his earlobe. I added a third finger, stretching him open with a relentless dominance designed to dismantle his sanity. “But I want to hear you scream, baby. I want to hear exactly how much you need your husband.”
My fingers worked in and out of him, maximizing the friction until he was begging. His hips bucked upward against my hand, desperately attempting to chase the pressure. I was wrecking him, all of his control burned to ash.
When I pulled my fingers out, the sudden emptiness made him let out a broken whine.
I grabbed his ankles, pinning his long legs against his chest and exposing his swollen hole.
With little movement, the broad, blunt head of my cock aligned perfectly, and without a single shred of hesitation, I drove myself into him.
In one long, smooth thrust, I buried myself entirely.
A loud, high-pitched cry of blinding pleasure tore from Silas’s throat. His head whipped back into the pillows, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the wooden headboard for dear life.
There was no waiting for him to adjust. I began to move, my hips snapping forward with a bruising cadence. The sound of our slick bodies slamming together was rhythmic, a deafening echo in the empty room.
“Look at me, Silas,” I commanded, my hand gripping the base of his throat. It wasn’t to choke him, but to hold him completely still under me. “Look at your husband.”
He forced his eyes open, and the look he gave me could have me swearing loyalty to Satan himself. His gaze was glassy, a little unfocused, yet filled with a dark unrelenting worship.
“You belong to me. Every single inch of this body is mine. No one else’s. It’s my job to fuck you into the mattress. Tell me who owns you, Si.” I thrust deeper, hitting the exact spot inside him that made his limbs go rigid.
“You, you do!” Silas sobbed, a tear falling as I pounded into him with ruthless speed. “Cal, fuck. It’ll always be you. Please, harder. I need it harder.”
I increased my pace, my already minimal self-control snapping entirely in the face of his submission.
I was a machine, driving into him with a strength that made the wooden bed frame rattle against the drywall.
Each one of Silas’s whimpers turned into loud, shattered cries with every single downward thrust of my hips.
He was completely at my mercy, not only taking every ounce of my aggression, but my grief and love as well, absorbing it into his own body.