Chapter 6 #2
His mouth returns to my throat, slower, deeper.
I feel the shape of his breath before the press of fingers sliding inside me.
And that anticipation, lights every nerve pretty and bright.
My head tips back against the boards and one of the thin slats creaks, a small, human sound in the middle of all this.
I bite my lip to stifle another. It doesn’t matter. The night hears me anyway. He hears me.
“Triston.” I whisper again, because there is nothing else to hang onto. His name is a handhold in a storm I asked to be swept into.
“Yes.” He answers, and the word is a claim and a comfort.
His hand has settled at the hem of my skirt, not insistent, just present, a question asked without a single syllable.
The cold at the back of my knees makes me too aware of the warm path his fingers could choose.
The restraint sits there like a shared secret.
He could. He doesn’t. Not yet. The waiting isn’t mercy. It’s art.
The ache blooms brighter like an opening flower, a crush of color behind my eyes.
I don’t move away. I move closer. So close the air can’t fit between us.
My body has picked a side and left my thoughts scrambling to catch up.
He makes a quiet sound that approves of me more than anything anyone has said to me in a year, and I feel shame rise because I love that approval as much as I do.
Shame dissolves quickly in heat. The heat doesn’t leave.
His mouth leaves my neck only to find my jaw, then the hinge where my breath catches, then the hollow just before my ear. The words there cut me like knives.
“You feel what I’m doing to you.” He whispers. “You feel me without me having to take anything at all.”
I let out a small, helpless sound that is not agreement and is also entirely agreement. There’s a split second where panic flares bright. This is too much, this is too close. And then it collapses under the weight of how much I want him. I don’t know what that says about me. I only know it’s true.
I think of my dad for half a heartbeat. I think of what his face would look like if he saw. The thought should freeze me. It doesn’t. It makes the night more urgent, more electric. It makes the risk taste like spice on my tongue.
“Please.” I whisper, and it’s not begging exactly. It’s more like the word you say when you’ve reached the edge of yourself and you need the next step to appear.
He stills, only for a moment, like he’s cataloging the exact flavor of that please. Like he’s putting it in a box labeled mine to take out later and turn over in his hands. When he moves again, it’s the same patience, the same control, and I am grateful and undone by both.
“You’re not going back inside yet.” He says softly, like he’s telling me something inevitable. “You belong in the dark with me a little longer.”
I nod. It’s ridiculous to nod at the night like it asked a question, but I do.
My breath fogs and breaks. Somewhere inside the house, someone shouts and laughter rises like waves.
The yard stays on our side. The shed keeps our secrets.
The wind threads a few loose strands of my hair and his fingers smooth them back, and that small tenderness in the middle of all this heat makes my throat close.
“I’m not running.” I say, and it feels like a vow, or maybe like surrender.
“Good.” He says, and his mouth finds my pulse again.
I close my eyes because they are useless here.
Everything that matters is touch and sound.
The texture of wood against my spine. The weight of his palm anchoring my hip.
The coaxing of his breath moving over my skin like a tide that carries me out and back.
The words that say no one else without needing the sentence.
My body answers and answers and answers until I am fluent.
A quiet noise escapes me, not loud enough to travel, only enough to make him hum his approval into my skin.
The sound trembles through me. The heat is a gathering storm.
I don’t know where he will take this. I don’t know where I want him to take it.
I only know I want it to keep going until the part of me that is afraid of everything has to give up and rest.
“Tell me what you want.” He says, and it’s not a taunt. It’s a key he’s holding out, the kind that opens more than one door.
I don’t have a clean answer. Every answer I have is messy and made of him. I let my head fall back, let the night take one more piece of me, and say the only true thing I can manage.
“Don’t stop.” I whisper.
His breath breaks against my throat on a soft, satisfied laugh, and then the dark pulls tighter around us like a promise.
The words are barely out of me when his hand tightens at my hip, not painfully, but with a certainty that makes my whole body tense. It’s the kind of grip that says he was waiting for that answer, waiting for me to give him permission to keep bending me to his will.
The night is silent except for the faint muffled bass leaking from the house.
Even the air seems to hold its breath with me.
Triston doesn’t rush. He leans his weight into me with slow, steady pressure until the shed digs into my back, and there’s no question: I’m caught. He owns this moment, owns me inside it.
My heart is a snare drum, rattling so hard I’m afraid he’ll hear it. He lowers his mouth to my ear again, his voice pitched so low it barely registers as sound.
“You sound so sweet when you give in.” He whispers. “Like you were made to.”
My cheeks burn, though there’s no light out here to show it.
My body betrays me in every way. My shivers, my shallow breathing, the way my knees weaken when his lips trace the curve of my jaw.
I want to say something sharp, to hold onto a shred of control, but the words are dust. The only truth left in me is the way I lean into his heat.
His hand trails down the outside of my thigh, fingers slow, deliberate, brushing the hem of my skirt. The air is ice, but everywhere he touches is fire. He’s not reckless, he’s deliberate. He knows exactly how close to get, exactly how to make me tremble just by hovering on the edge of too much.
I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. It doesn’t work. A soft whimper slips out, uninvited. His answering chuckle is dark satisfaction.
“That’s it.” He murmurs against my throat. “Let me hear it.”
If anyone steps outside now, they’ll see us.
They’ll see everything I can’t hide. His body pressed to mine, my head tipped back against the shed, the guilty flush in my cheeks, his hand below my skirt.
Panic stabs sharp, but it’s laced with something worse; something better.
The danger makes me feel more alive than I have in a year.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “This is wrong.” I whisper, though the words are weak, crumbling even as I say them.
“No.” He breathes, lips brushing my ear. “This is inevitable.”
The certainty in his voice sinks into my bones. My hands are flat against his chest now, not to push him away, but because I need the anchor. I feel the steady drum of his heart under my palms, strong and fast, matching mine.
The party roars on behind us, someone cheers, a burst of laughter, but out here it’s a different universe. He tilts my chin up with a finger and, finally, claims my mouth with his.
It isn’t a soft kiss. It’s consuming. Possessive. A claim written in the press of his lips and the way his hand fists at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. My gasp slips into his mouth, and he takes it like it belongs to him.
The kiss breaks only long enough for him to whisper. “You’re mine, Sammie. Say it.”
I shake my head, or try to, but it doesn’t matter. He kisses me again, deeper, until I’m dizzy, until I don’t know if the world is spinning or if it’s just me. My hands curl into his shirt, clutching like I’ll fall without him.
“Say it.” He repeats with his voice rough. His forehead rests against mine, his breath hot between us.
The word hovers on my tongue. I shouldn’t. I can’t. But when his thumb strokes along my jaw, when his eyes pin me in the dark like I’m the only thing that’s ever mattered, I break.
“Yours.” I whisper.
Satisfaction rolls off him like heat. He kisses me again, harder this time, swallowing the confession. My chest aches with the weight of it, but also with release. I gave him the word. He owns it now. He owns me.
And in that moment, pressed to the shed, the October night holding our secret, I don’t want to fight it.
Not tonight.