Chapter 3
THREE
Wren
Kade carries me down the hallway, the sound of the front door slamming shut echoing through my apartment like a gunshot.
We're both breathing hard, tangled in each other's space.
That careful control from the alley is shattering at the edges—I can see it in his eyes, feel it in the grip of his hands.
I wear nothing but high heels and pure, desperate need, my bare legs locked tightly around his waist.
He doesn't stop or hesitate. He carries me straight into the bedroom, dropping me hard onto the unmade mattress.
"You're sure?" He hovers over me, hands framing my face, searching my eyes for doubt. "Because once we—"
I spin and come up on my knees.
"If you leave, I'll scream. Loud enough to wake the whole building."
"If I stay, you'll scream more."
The dark promise sends heat flooding straight through me. I claw at his shirt, desperate for skin. He pulls back just enough to yank the dark fabric over his head, tossing it aside into the shadows.
Dim light from the street filters through my windows, illuminating his body for the first time. Lean muscle, brutal and functional. Scars mark his torso—a violent map of survival.
My fingers trace a puckered starburst on his left side, between his lower ribs. Close to the lung. A near miss. A dark tattoo rests over his heart. In the shadows, the angular shape mimics map coordinates or an old callsign. Completely unreadable.
"See something you like?" An edge sharpens his tone, bracing for me to recoil from the damage.
"Yes." I map the raised tissue, the history written on his skin. "All of it."
My gaze drops.
I reach for his belt—already familiar with the buckle, already knowing what I find when I pop the button—and free him completely. He's hard and heavy and perfect in my hand, and the sound he makes when I wrap my fingers around him goes straight to my core.
I hold his gaze as I lower my head.
The moment my lips close around him, his hand fists in my hair.
"Wren—"
"I wanted to do this in the alley." I pull back just enough to say it, my lips still brushing the head of his cock. "Let me."
A sound tears from his throat that doesn't resemble language.
His grip tightens in my hair—not pulling me off.
Holding on. I take him deeper, and his whole body goes rigid above me, thighs locked, jaw clenched, every muscle drawn taut as he fights to stay still and loses ground with every passing second.
"Careful." He catches my wrist with his free hand, his voice wrecked. "I'm trying to last more than thirty seconds."
"Why?" I look up at him, release him slowly. "We've got all weekend. Take what you want and come as much as you need."
"Fuck."
He pulls out of my mouth with a roughness that steals my breath, both hands gripping my shoulders, and shoves me back onto the mattress with enough force that I bounce.
Before I can process the ceiling above me he's already climbing over me—knee driving hard between my thighs, spreading them wide, his weight dropping onto me like a decision.
He pins both my wrists above my head in one hand. The other slides high up my inner thigh, finding me slick and swollen and desperate all over again.
"You're going to be the death of me." His forehead drops to mine.
"Good." I arch into his hand, already climbing fast. "Die inside me, Kade.
" I pull him closer with my legs, ankles locked behind his back, dragging his hips flush against mine.
"I want to feel you lose control. All of it—every last piece of it.
" I lift my mouth to his ear, let my voice go low and wanton.
"Use me until you can't anymore. I can take it.
I want to take it. Make me feel you for days. "
His control flatlines.
He thrusts into me. Brutal. Deep. Fast. A gasp tears out of me at the sudden fierce invasion, my nails raking sharp half-moons into his shoulders.
The stretch pushes every limit after the alley's roughness, but it's exactly what I need.
What I've been craving since the moment I first pressed myself against him on that dance floor.
"Look at me." His fingers grip my chin, forcing my eyes open.
I lock onto storm-gray eyes gone wild with feral need. The rhythm sets immediately—punishing, relentless, driving the breath from my lungs with every thrust. Skin slaps against skin. The headboard cracks against the wall.
"Harder," I demand, my voice already breaking.
He obliges instantly, hands anchoring on my hips to drive himself deeper.
The friction builds—sharp, frantic, entirely necessary.
The world narrows to the heat of his skin, the sweat dampening our bodies, the heavy wet sound of flesh meeting flesh.
I rake my nails down his chest in retaliation.
Red lines bloom in their wake, marking him the way he's marking me.
He flashes that predatory wolf's grin—the one from the bar that first made me stupid—and continues destroying me with zero hesitation.
Then he pulls out completely.
Before I can protest, his hands are already moving—flipping me with a rough efficiency that leaves no room for argument, hauling my hips up until I'm on my knees in front of him.
The sudden reposition steals my breath. His hand fists in my hair, gathering it into one grip, and he yanks my head back until my throat is exposed and my back is a sharp, helpless arch.
"This is what you asked for." His mouth grazes my ear, his voice a low wreck. "All night. Whatever I want."
“Yes. God, yes.”
He drives into me from behind, and the sound that tears out of me is embarrassingly loud.
The room comes alive with it—the rhythmic crack of the headboard slamming the wall, the creak and protest of the mattress springs, the obscene slap of skin on skin, his breathing ragged and rough behind me, my own moans spiraling higher and higher and completely beyond my control.
It's too much.
It's not enough.
The grip in my hair holds my neck arched, forces me to feel every inch of every thrust with nowhere to retreat, no way to moderate any of it.
I stop trying.
I babble. Beg. Threaten him with physical violence if he slows down even fractionally. He answers by tightening his fist in my hair and going harder.
When I finally shatter it takes my whole body with it—every muscle seizing, his name tearing hoarse from my raw throat, my fingers twisted white-knuckled in the sheets.
He hits the edge a breath behind me, driving brutally deep one final shuddering time, his groan vibrating long and guttural against the back of my neck as he buries himself and stays there.
We collapse together in a tangle of damp skin and wrecked breathing.
His weight should feel crushing. Instead it anchors me—holds me together while everything reassembles itself into something resembling a person.
"You're trouble." He traces my swollen lower lip with a fading kiss.
"You said that at the bar."
"It's still true." He rolls us both, pulling me against his side. "Should have walked away. Glad I didn't."
"Me too."
"The moment I saw you dancing, I knew I was fucked." His hand strokes my tangled hair. "Knew I'd follow you anywhere. Do anything to keep you safe."
"You don't even know me."
"I know enough." He meets my eyes in the dark. "Know you're brave and reckless and too smart for your own good. Know you taste like whiskey and bad decisions. Know I want to wake up tomorrow and do this all over again."
"Why wait until tomorrow?"
A low laugh rumbles through his chest. "Even I need twenty minutes to recover, little bird."
"Twenty minutes." I consider that. "So basically immediately."
"Give or take." His hand skims down my spine. "And then I'm going to fuck you until you physically cannot walk. Fair warning."
I press my lips together against a smile. "That sounds like a personal challenge.”
"It is." He pulls me closer, completely unbothered. "You'll be confined to this bed all day tomorrow."
He leans back against the pillow, studying me in the dark with that unhurried, assessing look that makes me feel like a problem he's already decided to solve. "One question."
"Mm."
"What are your thoughts on restraints?"
The answer moves through me before my brain catches up with it. I bring my wrists together in front of me, crossed, and hold them out toward him in the dark.
"Restraints?" I lift my wrists, crossing them in front of me. "Yes, please. I humbly submit myself as an offering."
His eyes drop to my wrists. Stay there.
"I'm yours to do with as you please." My voice drops to something I barely recognize. "All weekend. Every hour of it."
The look he gives me could power the entire building.
"Twenty minutes," he murmurs, pulling me back against his chest. "Starting now."
It doesn't take twenty minutes.
It takes twelve.
He flips me onto my stomach without preamble, pulls my hips up, and takes me apart from behind with my crossed wrists pinned against the small of my back—one large hand holding them there like a promise kept.
No headboard this time. Just the dark and his breathing and the controlled, devastating precision of a man who has decided exactly what he wants and intends to take all of it.
I come with my face buried in the pillow, muffling sounds I don't entirely recognize as my own.
He doesn't stop.
The second time he takes his time—rolls me over, pins my wrists above my head, and works me slow and deep and merciless until I'm shaking and incoherent and begging in a register I didn't know my voice could reach.
He watches my face through every second of it.
Cataloging. Adjusting. Giving me exactly enough and withholding just a fraction more until I'm frantic with it.
"Please."
"There it is." He gives me what I'm begging for, and the orgasm that rolls through me is long and devastating, leaving me completely hollow in the best possible way.
He doesn't follow me over.
Still hard, still ruthlessly controlled, he pulls out and moves—shifting his weight up the bed in one fluid motion, his hand already curling into my hair.
"Open your mouth." His cock brushes my lips. "Take it. All of it."
I don't hesitate.
His groan when I close around him is low and fractured and nothing like the controlled sounds he's been making all night.
Both hands fist in my hair, his hips rolling forward, and I feel the exact moment his composure finally, completely gives out—the rhythm turning urgent, his breathing ragged, every last thread of that iron control unraveling between my lips.
"Don't spill a drop." The command comes out rough and breathless, barely holding together. "Swallow every bit of it, little bird."
I do.
He finishes with my name on his tongue and his hands shaking against my skull, and I take everything he gives me without flinching.
He stays there for a long moment afterward. Just breathing.
Then he pulls me back down against his chest, one arm locking around my waist like punctuation. His lips press once to the top of my head—wordless, almost involuntary, like he doesn't entirely realize he's doing it.
Neither of us moves for a very long time.
He falls asleep first, something I absolutely didn't expect from a man so violently controlled. One heavily scarred arm remains clamped securely around my waist, his deep breathing brushing my shoulder.
Like he trusts me. Like he feels safe.
I lie wide awake, staring at the ceiling, processing. The bar. The alley. The instinctive way he stepped between me and danger without a second thought, like it was reflex, like it cost him nothing. The frantic, desperate hours that followed in this bed.
The warmth of him at my back feels foreign. Good foreign. The kind of foreign that makes me nervous.
A shadow shifts outside my window.
My blood goes cold before my brain catches up.
I turn my head carefully. In the faint reflection of my dresser mirror, a car sits parked across the quiet street at the wrong angle, facing the wrong direction. Engine off. But the silhouette of someone in the driver's seat is unmistakable.
Sitting completely still. Facing my building.
The sedan from the bar?
I stare at it for a long moment and then—deliberately, consciously—talk myself down off the ledge.
It's a mountain town on a Friday night. Someone waiting for a friend to stumble out of the apartment above mine. An Uber driver killing time between rides. A person who had too much to drink and is making the responsible decision to sit it out before driving home.
I’m naked in bed with a man I met five hours ago. My judgment is not exactly operating at full capacity.
I curl tighter against Kade's heat and close my eyes.
The shadow doesn't move.
It's nothing, I tell myself. It's nothing, and tomorrow is tomorrow, and right now this warm, solid, dangerous man has his arm around my waist and that is enough.
I drift off before I can talk myself out of believing it.
But the unease follows me into sleep like a low note held just beneath the melody—present, patient, waiting for the moment I finally have to hear it.