Chapter 7 #2
The wet sound of our bodies coming together filled the room—obscene, primal, impossible to ignore.
She was dripping, so slick I could feel her arousal coating my thighs, and every thrust made filthy noises that drove me higher.
Her pussy clenched around me, and I knew she was close.
Could feel it in the way her body trembled, how her breath came in short sharp gasps, the way her nails dug crescents into my skin.
“Don’t you dare come yet,” I ordered hoarsely, because some part of me was still a dom even in the middle of this chaos. “Not until I say.”
She moaned, grinding down on me with every thrust. “Fuck you—I’ll come when I want—”
I stopped moving.
Charlotte made a sound of pure frustration, writhing against me, trying to fuck herself on my cock, but I held her still with the weight of my body pressing her against the wall and the iron grip of my arm around her waist.
Her eyes met mine, flashing with defiance, which only turned me on more. “What did I just say?”
“I don’t take orders from you anymore.” But her voice was wrecked, and her pussy kept fluttering around me like her body was begging for more, even if her mouth wasn’t saying the words.
“You’re taking them right now.” A dark satisfaction curled through me as I pulled almost all the way out, just the tip of my shaft inside her, and held there while she whimpered and writhed. “Ask nicely and I’ll give it to you.”
Her beautiful blue eyes flashed with frustration. “Go to hell.”
I gave her a grim smile. “Wrong answer.”
I waited. Let her feel the emptiness, the ache of being so close to the edge and unable to fall. She lasted maybe thirty seconds before she cracked.
“Please.” The word came out like it was dragged from her throat and I almost laughed at the way she glared at me. “Kane, please —I need to come.”
“That’s better.” I slammed back into her so hard she moaned, and I didn’t stop fucking her.
My control was hanging by a thread. I could feel my own orgasm building at the base of my spine, tightening my balls, making every nerve ending light up with impending release.
But I was determined to make her come first. To prove that no matter how much she hated me, no matter what she believed about my past, I could still break her in the best way possible.
I fucked her relentlessly, one hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, the other braced against the wall for leverage. “You feel that?” I growled against her ear. “Feel how deep I am? This is what you’ve been missing for two years. This is what you threw away.”
“I didn’t—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t do anything but cling to me as I drove into her and stole her breath.
“You published that article and walked away. Didn’t even try to hear my side. You just decided I was guilty and moved on with your life while mine fell apart.”
Her head rolled back against the wall, her eyes tormented as they met mine. “The evidence—”
“ Fuck the goddamn evidence .” I punctuated it with a thrust that made her whole body jerk. “You knew me. You felt what we had. And you still—”
My voice cracked on emotions that felt too close to pain and regrets, and I shut up before I said something I couldn’t take back.
Charlotte’s hand came up to cup my face, and for a moment the fury between us shifted into something raw and vulnerable and terrifying.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Kane, I’m—”
I kissed her before she could finish. I didn’t want her apologies, didn’t want to hear what she was sorry for, didn’t want anything soft or tender when I was still so angry I could barely see straight.
But the kiss gentled despite my intentions. Her fingers traced along my jaw, feather-light, and she kissed me back like she actually meant it, like she actually cared, and something cracked open in my chest that I’d been keeping locked down for two long years.
“Don’t,” I managed against her mouth. “Don’t pretend this is anything more than an angry hate fuck.”
Done talking, I kissed her harder. My knees buckled and I turned, holding her against me as I lowered us both to the floor without pulling out of her, my body covering hers.
This way I could fuck her even deeper, even harder, and I did—slamming into her like I was trying to crawl inside her, like I could fuck away everything that had gone wrong between us.
Charlotte wrapped her legs around my waist and held on, her cries echoing off the walls. I was certain her neighbors could hear. I wanted them to hear. Wanted the whole fucking building to know that whatever she thought of me, I could still make her unravel and fall apart for me just like this.
She shattered with a choked sob and I felt it everywhere—the clamp of her pussy around my cock, the rake of her nails down my back, the scream that tore from her throat.
She came so hard her whole body shook, and the sight of it, the feel of it, the knowledge that I had done this to her made my orgasm hit me like a freight train.
I buried myself as deep as I could go and came with a groan that felt ripped from somewhere primal. Ecstasy whited out my vision, turned my bones to liquid, made me collapse on top of her as wave after wave of pleasure pulsed through me.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of us breathing.
Neither of us moved. I was still inside her, still feeling the aftershocks ripple through her body and mine.
Her hand was in my hair, fingers threading through the strands in a gesture that was almost tender.
My face was buried in the curve of her neck, and I could feel her pulse racing against my lips.
I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to break whatever fragile truce we’d stumbled into. For thirty seconds, I let myself pretend that nothing had gone wrong between us, that we were still those two people at the club, making plans for a first date that would never happen.
Then reality came crashing back.
I pushed myself up on my arms, looking down at her.
Her auburn hair was spread across the floor in disheveled waves.
Her lips were swollen from my kisses, her throat and shoulders already blooming with the marks I’d left on her skin.
Her eyes met mine, and she looked thoroughly fucked and slightly dazed and so beautiful it made my chest ache.
I hated that she could still affect me like this.
“If you’re about to give me some speech about how this was a mistake,” Charlotte warned, her voice hoarse, “I swear to God—”
“Oh, please.” I pulled out of her carefully and sat back on my heels, trying to gather the scattered pieces of my composure. “It was inevitable, and we’re doing it again.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”
“We’re getting this completely out of our system.” I stood, tucked myself back into my pants, and held out my hand to help her up, trying not to let her naked body distract me as she got to her feet.
Charlotte watched me warily, cheeks still flushed. “So what, we just fuck each other until we’re too exhausted to argue and fight?”
“Something like that,” I said with a smirk.
She stared at me for a long moment. I could see the calculation in her eyes, the weighing of options. She was a journalist—she analyzed everything, looked for angles, tried to figure out what people really wanted.
I wasn’t hiding anything. I wanted to fuck her until neither of us could think straight, and then I wanted to walk away when this assignment was over and never see her again. It was simple for me, really. Or so I tried to convince myself.
The air between us was still crackling, still charged with everything we’d released and everything we hadn’t. This wasn’t over. One round of hate-fucking against a wall wasn’t going to fix two years of resentment and confusion and desire.
But it was a start.
“Take a quick shower and get dressed,” I told her, and I’d do the same in the spare bathroom. “I’m taking you to The Players Club.”
She blinked at me in shock. “Now?”
“ Now .” I met her gaze, letting her see the unyielding command there. “It’s somewhere we can scene properly and things can get intense with parameters.” I let my voice drop. “And where I can take my time wrecking you the way I’ve been wanting to since you walked back into my life.”
A visible shiver ran through her, and I had to resist the urge to reach out and pinch those delectable nipples, or bite them.
She was quiet for a moment, and I could see her wrestling with the decision.
Going back there, where we’d started—it would mean something.
It would drag up memories neither of us had dealt with properly.
But it would also be safe and controlled. A place where we could channel whatever this was into a scene with rules and boundaries instead of letting it spiral into something reckless and unpredictable in her living room.
Because that was the real problem. Not just the heat between us, or the anger, or the history.
It was the lack of control. Here, in her apartment, everything felt volatile.
Too personal. Too exposed. One wrong move and we could do more damage than we already had to each other.
Somewhere else—neutral ground, structured, monitored—I could keep a handle on this volatile mess between us. Keep a handle on her . On myself.
More importantly, it gave me an excuse to get her out of here.
I didn’t trust this apartment. Not yet. No signs of forced entry didn’t mean anything, especially when she had one of those locks that required a code and not necessarily a key.
Taking her out gave me an opportunity to have one of the guys at the firm set up surveillance and keep eyes on the building.
See if anyone made a move while we were gone—see if someone thought the place was finally empty and worth the risk of breaking into.
I could also have Tate swing by and pick up her devices to analyze them.
Because if Calloway had Charlotte on his radar, he wasn’t just going to sit back and wait. Men like him didn’t leave loose ends. They watched. They tracked patterns. Waited for the moment someone got comfortable, predictable, vulnerable.
If someone was watching her, this might flush them out. And if no one showed? That told me something too. That maybe we still had time to figure out exactly what we were up against.
“Okay,” she finally said, much to my relief. “We’ll do things your way, at The Players Club.”
As she turned and walked toward her bedroom, I watched the sway of her hips and bare, heart-shaped ass and felt the same dark, possessive hunger rise inside me again.
This thing between us…it wasn’t love, or even something we could pretend was real. But resolving this tension between us was a release we both needed to survive our time together without tearing each other apart.
And I was done pretending I could keep my hands off her.