Chapter 13 The Reckoning #2
I flinch. Can’t help it. The plaster cracks, raining white dust onto my shoulder.
His other hand plants on the wall, caging me. His body is a furnace of heat and fury inches from mine. His chest heaves with ragged breaths.
He looks down. Squeezes his eyes shut. His jaw works, grinding something back—words or violence or the jagged edge of whatever’s tearing him apart.
When he looks up again, his eyes are burning.
“You want to know what I felt when that door blew in?” The words are raw. Wrecked. “When I saw them coming?”
I can’t breathe.
“I felt everything I buried in 2019. I felt her. I felt the phone call. I felt the fucking canyon.”
Sofia. The name he barely speaks. The wound he carries like shrapnel.
“Diego—”
“I can’t do that again.” His forehead drops to mine. His breath is ragged against my lips, hot and desperate. “I can’t lose you because you decided to be brave.”
“I’m not her.”
“I know.” His voice cracks. Splinters. “That’s what terrifies me.”
I should push him away.
I should be afraid of the violence coiled in his body, the fist still pressed into the ruined drywall, the way he’s shaking with something barely contained.
I’m not.
I’m on fire.
Every nerve ending is lit. Every cell in my body screams for contact—for release—for something to burn off the adrenaline and anger and want that’s been coiling inside me since the moment that door exploded inward.
My hand comes up before I think about it. Fists into the front of his shirt. I feel the solid heat of him through the fabric, the way his body goes instantly still—like a held breath.
I pull.
“Then stop treating me like I’m already dead.”
The words leave my mouth rough, scraped raw by everything I haven’t said.
I rise onto my toes, inch by inch, closing the distance. Not rushing. Never rushing. I tilt my head back, forcing him to look at me. Forcing the choice. My mouth hovers there—so close I can feel his breath ghost over my lips, warm and uneven.
Our eyes lock.
His jaw tightens. I see it. The restraint. The war he’s losing in real time.
He lifts his head a fraction, like he’s about to pull away. Like he’s going to be strong.
Then he exhales.
It’s a hard, broken sound—and that’s when he snaps.
Not soft. Not careful. His mouth crashes into mine like he’s been bracing for impact, like the force of it might knock the tension out of his bones.
I make a sound I don’t recognize, fingers tightening in his shirt as if letting go would send me flying apart.
Heat. Pressure. Need. Want. Each one detonating all at once.
There’s no space left between us. No air. Just the crackle of everything we’ve been holding back slamming together, bodies locked, mouths claiming, the world narrowing down to this single, violent, perfect point of contact.
And for one suspended heartbeat—nothing else exists.
We’re just teeth and tongue and hours of suppressed rage channeling into something physical. Something primal.
He tastes like coffee and fury, and when I bite his lip, the sound he makes vibrates through my entire body.
He growls against my mouth—a sound that’s barely human—and then his hands are everywhere. Rough. Demanding. Yanking my shirt up, palms hot against my ribs, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks.
I match him. Claw at his hoodie. Rake my nails down his back. He hisses, arches into the pain, then kisses me harder.
“You want to fight me?” His voice is gravel against my throat. “Then fight.”
I fight.
I shove at his chest. He doesn’t move. I try to twist away; he pins me harder against the wall. My hands find his hair and yank. He retaliates by biting the junction of my neck and shoulder hard enough to make me cry out.
It hurts. It feels incredible. It feels like war and surrender wrapped into one.
He wins.
Or maybe I do.
It’s impossible to tell where the anger ends and the wanting begins. They’re the same thing now, tangled up in sweat and skin and the desperate need to feel something other than fear.
He pins my wrists above my head with one hand. The grip is bruising, inescapable. With his free hand, he tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“Last chance.” His voice is wrecked. “Tell me to stop, and I stop. Tell me to walk away, and I walk. But if you don’t—” He grinds his hips against mine, and the friction makes my vision blur.
“If you don’t, I’m going to take you against this wall like I’ve been wanting to since the night you pepper-sprayed me. ”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth crashes into mine again, swallowing my words, my breath, my defiance. His hand leaves my chin and works at my jeans—efficient, ruthless, shoving them down my hips along with everything underneath.
Then his fingers are on me. Inside me. Two of them, curling exactly where I need them, while his thumb finds the spot that makes my knees buckle.
“This what you wanted?” His voice is dark. Dangerous. “To be seen? To be noticed?” He pumps his fingers harder, and a moan tears out of me. “I see you, Cassie. I fucking see you.”
I can’t answer. Can’t think. The pleasure builds in sharp, relentless waves, cresting toward something devastating.
“Look at me.”
My eyes fly open. His are black. Bottomless. Burning with something that looks like fury and worship in equal measure.
“When you come, you look at me.”
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me without warning—violent, consuming, pulling sounds from my throat I don’t recognize. He watches every second of it. Drinks it in like he’s memorizing the destruction.
Before I can recover, he’s freed himself and lifted me in one motion. My back scrapes against the wall, my legs wrap around his waist, and then he’s inside me—hard and deep and devastating.
I cry out. Dig my nails into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
“That’s it.” He starts to move. “Fight me. Take it. Show me you’re still here.”
I’m here. God, I’m here.
He doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t gentle. He takes me against that wall like he’s trying to exorcise something—demons or ghosts or the memory of the woman he lost. Every thrust is a sentence he can’t say. Every groan against my throat is a confession he’s not ready to make.
I meet him stroke for stroke. Demand more. Demand everything.
“Harder.”
He obliges. Shifts the angle. Drives deeper until I’m not sure where he ends and I begin.
The second orgasm builds faster than the first. The tension coils in my core, spreads through my limbs, turns my muscles to liquid.
“Diego—” A warning and a plea.
“I’ve got you.” His hand slides between us, finds the spot that’s still throbbing from before. “Come for me. Now.”
I don’t have a choice.
The orgasm hits like a wave breaking—sudden, violent, crashing through me with enough force to steal my voice. I shatter against him, shaking, gasping his name.
He follows a moment later. A guttural sound tears from somewhere deep in his chest, his hips stuttering, his entire body going rigid against mine.
We stay there, pinned against the wall, breathing hard. His forehead rests on my shoulder. My fingers are tangled in his hair. Neither of us moves.
The anger is spent.
What’s left is raw. Exposed.
He carries me to the bed.
Lays me down on the scratchy comforter. Strips away the rest of our clothes with hands that are almost gentle now. Almost.
Then he’s over me again. Inside me again. Slower this time, but no less intense. Like he’s trying to apologize without words. Like he’s trying to find a version of this that isn’t war.
When we finally finish, I’m wrecked. Boneless. Floating somewhere between consciousness and oblivion.
He rolls off me. Lies on his back. One arm thrown over his eyes.