CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Need and Greed
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Need and Greed
There is a weight to want, and it’s not a light or soft or fluttery kind. It drags you down by the bones, like grief wearing a dress stitched from heat and hunger.
And right now, it’s sitting in my lap. Or maybe I’m the one in its lap. What a cursed cradle to be held in.
His breathing was too calm for a man of such danger. That stillness that screamed trained control as if he’d been swallowing storms his whole life and still grinned like he’d never tasted thunder.
My hands, these traitorous and trembling hands, moved again. And somehow I was touching places that I had no right to.
I didn’t want to feel safe.
I wanted to feel real.
I wanted to ruin something, even if it was me.
Even if it was him.
So I leaned in.
My breath brushed against the hollow of his throat, and I watched him swallow like he’d forgotten how.
The scent of him was still firewood and whiskey, sin aged like fine wine and sharpened by restraint.
He was letting me do what I wanted, but I knew this was another illusion, because if he wanted to take the lead, he would.
I pressed my lips to the dip of his collarbone, and he let out the softest sound. It was low, half-choked. Curse smothered in velvet.
His fingers twitched at my waist, but he didn’t stop me.
And that was the most dangerous thing of all.
He was letting me.
Like he wanted to see how far I’d go before I broke us both.
“You said I could use you,” I whispered against his skin. A confession I’d never admit sober.
One button. And then another. My hands found the line of his shirt, undoing it slowly, reverently, as though each glimpse of his flesh was a scripture I needed to memorise. My mouth followed the path, tracing skin over the sternum, mapping warmth and heartbeat.
“Is this what you want, Dolcezza?” His voice cracked around my name. It was ragged, burnt around the edges, yet pristine in the core.
It was lethargically hypnotising as if his voice was manipulating me more than the drug in my system.
“I don’t know what I want,” I said honestly, pressing my teeth into the curve where his chest met his shoulder. “But I need something to make the ache shut up.”
His head fell back against the leather seat, a sharp sigh leaving him. I felt his pulse kicking at his throat like a drum against my lips. And then… my fingers reached lower, between us.
I felt the tremble under my touch, like lightning waiting in copper wires.
I found the metal of his belt and unhooked it.
My palm brushed against the hardness of him through fabric, and I felt his grip on my waist tighten, as if he was trying to anchor himself with the ghost of restraint.
His hips shifted, the rough grind of his pants pressed between my aching thighs, and a sound escaped him.
An unguarded, sinful moan that scorched my lungs.
He was beautiful like this.
Unravelled at the seams, thread by thread, under my hands.
He asked me to turn him into my little sin.
So I did. I kissed him like I had something to prove. Like maybe if I kissed him deep enough, I’d find a part of him that hurt me, haunted me, and the part I hated.
“You won’t leave me like them, right?” I didn’t know why I said that. Maybe it was the vulnerability. The ache in the chest. Or maybe I was reminded that my mother left me in the dark. I suddenly recalled the touch of sand in my palms that I couldn’t contain.
He didn’t speak.
Just pulled me closer.
His hands slid from my waist to my thighs, grinding me against him until the ache inside me bloomed into wicked need. He held me as if I were something breakable and burning all the once. A prayer he couldn’t say out loud.
His voice came again, deeper now, with shadows in every word. He cupped my jaw, made me look into his stormy eyes, and there was this depth in them I couldn’t understand.
“I can destroy everything for you, Dolcezza. I’ve been yours from the first time you looked at me.
Even if this world disappoints you again and again, I will always be there with you.
In your dreams and nightmares,” he kissed my temple, “in your highs and lows,” his mouth hovered over mine, maddeningly close, “and in the places no one sees. In the thoughts no one dares to touch. You breathe, and I unravel.”
Then he kissed me like he wanted to ruin every version of me that existed before him.
I struggled to keep up, because he kissed me with the intention of erasing every version of me. It was slow, as if he had all the time to destroy every wall I’d ever built. His lips were warm and brutal and worshipping. And I let him. God, I wanted to let him.
A breath caught in my throat as I pulled back, and there it was, his face.
That maddeningly calm exterior was cracking, like the seams of control were starting to bleed open.
His jaw clenched, the veins in his neck twitching with control, eyes glassed with hunger.
He looked like a man on the verge of losing control… and loving every second of it.
I could’ve asked him to stop. But I didn’t.
Because there was a part of me – a small, shameful, and starving part – that needed this. Needed him to unravel. Not gently or softly, but in chaos.
I slid down, slowly, knees pressing into the cold metal of the car floor. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t even know who I was beneath the ache anymore. But my body knew what to do. My hands moved to his undone belt, and I felt him still again.
His breath hitched. And I felt him, hot and hard beneath my palm, still trapped in his boxers.
His hand came down, catching my wrist, not to stop me, but to feel me. To feel that I was really doing this. This time, I wasn’t forced. This time… I was choosing to sin.
He didn’t speak. He just watched me with that unreadable expression, eyes burning into my skin as if ink that would never wash off.
“Hold my hair,” I whispered with the same tremble I’d been holding onto.
A breath escaped him, and something in his gaze broke.
He did it. His hand on my wrist twisted into my hair with that roughness. I wasn’t trying to please him. I wasn’t even trying to save myself either. Maybe… if I gave him everything, the silence inside me would finally stop screaming.
His hips bucked slightly as if he had been touched in his manhood again.
The muscles in his jaw ticked, and a low curse tumbled out of his mouth.
His fingers tightened in my hair, and I bit back a sound of my own.
I wanted him to break me, not with violence, but with this.
With worship that looked like every dangerous version of sin.
I pulled out his entire length, and I was startled that he was semi-erect. I couldn’t hold it with my single hand, so I fisted his cock with both of my hands. It was thick and veiny, and I couldn’t believe this had been inside me several times.
Swallowing, I looked up to meet his eyes, and they darkened as I opened my mouth and touched him with my tongue. He took a sharp breath. “Fuck…”
I loved watching him throw his head back, and my tongue tasted the salty pre-cum. In a few seconds, he was as hard as rock, swelling in my hands and standing tall like a fortress.
I didn’t stop there, though. I had no reason to. His hand in my hair guided my whole mouth to his length. He was eager. But I shut my lips, and his mushroom head only met my closed lips. He let out a frustrated growl and snapped his eyes at me.
I licked my lips, blinking my hooded eyes at him, feigning every ounce of innocence I could muster.
“You said you’d let me take control,” I muttered, tilting my head. “If you keep acting this way, I refuse to please you.”
That got his attention, because he sighed and cursed again. “You’re playing with me, Dolcezza.”
I smiled. “Maybe I am,” I whispered, letting my thumb stroke along the ridge of his tip, watching the way his abs clenched under the pressure. “Maybe I just like watching you fall apart.”
His chest rose, sharp and shallow, like he’d forgotten how to breathe. His hand in my hair trembled—just enough for me to notice. The storm in his eyes flared.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he muttered. I kissed the underside of him. Then again. Slower. Deeper. Like a promise made on holy ground.
And then I took him in.
Inch by aching inch, letting him stretch past my lips, my throat opening willingly to every inch of sin he had to offer. His hips jerked, his free hand curling into a fist against the seat as a sound escaped him—raw, low, beautifully ruined.
I hummed against him, and that’s when he lost it.
“Fucking hell—” he groaned, his grip in my hair tightening, but not forcing. Never forcing. Just grounding himself with the only part of me he could hold on to.
His other hand found my jaw, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with the gentleness of a man who knew he didn’t deserve softness, yet begged for it anyway.
“You’re mine,” he growled under his breath, voice rough with reverence. “No matter what you do, no matter how sweet you pretend to be… I see the ruin in your eyes. And it looks just like mine.”
I looked up at him, my lips still wrapped around him, eyes watering but unblinking. I let him see it—all of it. The ache. The loneliness. The desperate, broken worship we gave each other to keep from collapsing.
He was shaking when he finally pulled me off with a gasp, pressing our foreheads together, his breath a prayer against my lips.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered. “Don’t want me like this. I’ll never come back from it.”
“I’m not trying to want you,” I said quietly. “But if I do… I won’t come back either.”