Chapter 12
Chase POV
My thumb didn't leave her chin.
I kept my grip hooked under the bone, applying just enough upward pressure to keep her gaze locked with mine.
The vinyl edge of the examination table bit into the back of her thighs, but she didn't attempt to shift.
Her hands remained planted flat on the black padding beside her hips, her fingers bunching the material into tight, wrinkled folds.
The air in the Vault was thin, stripped of oxygen, carrying only the hum of the fluorescent fixture overhead and the rapid, uneven cadence of her respiration.
Up close, the gold flecks in her hazel eyes were swallowed by black, her pupils blown wide under the harsh light. The pale hollow of her throat was jumping, the carotid artery hammering against the skin in a frantic, runaway tempo that made my own blood pound behind my temples.
I took another half-step forward, planting my boots between hers, closing the gap until the dense muscle of my thighs pinned her legs against the steel frame of the table.
"You're shaking, Wagner," I rasped, dropping my voice down into the low register where the syllables scraped against my vocal cords.
"I'm not shaking, Guzman." Her voice was breathless, but she forced the words through her teeth, her chin jerking up against my thumb. "I'm waiting for you to back the hell up."
"Liar." I leaned down another fraction of an inch, my shadow blotting out the front of her plum scrubs until the fabric took on the dark cast of my chest. "You spent six hours dodging me in the corridors because you knew if you looked at my face, you'd remember how you gripped my jacket when the plow went by. "
I dragged the rough pad of my thumb across her lower lip, pressing down until the soft, wet flesh parted over the white edge of her teeth.
Her breath hitched sharply, a ragged catch in the back of her throat that sent a hot spike of pressure straight into my groin. The skin of her mouth was burning hot, soft as silk, and wet from her tongue.
Even trapped between my body and the table, she refused to bow.
"You think every woman on this campus is waiting for you to bark an order?
" she whispered, her lips moving against the rough callus of my thumb, her eyes flashing with a desperate, spitting fury.
"You're an arrogant bully who throws his weight around because you don't know how to ask for anything without threatening to break it. "
Her words hit my jaw like a right cross, but they didn't push me back.
They snapped the last surviving wire of my control clean in half.
* * *
My left hand left her chin and drove deep into the thick, dark hair at the base of her skull.
I knotted my fingers into the auburn strands, using the leverage to tilt her head back until the long, pale column of her throat was laid bare beneath the fluorescent light. My right arm shot around her waist, my palm flattening against the small of her back.
With one clean, violent heave of my shoulders, I hauled her off the floor, hoisting her straight onto the high vinyl surface of the table.
Her legs parted on instinct to accommodate my weight. I stepped into the notch, my hips slamming forward until the hard buckle of my belt pressed flush against the soft denim of her crotch.
Before the gasp could leave her lungs, I took her mouth.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't a slow, calculated exploration. It was a starving, brutal collision of bruised flesh, teeth, and raw friction.
I crushed my lips over hers, slanting my mouth across her face to swallow the broken whimper tearing out of her chest. The taste of her—bitter roast coffee, mint, and pure, scalding heat—flooded the back of my throat like neat whiskey, burning away every rule, every drill, and every draft board ranking I had ever memorized.
My stubble scraped the sensitive, flushed curve of her jawline as I angled her head deeper into the angle of my neck.
Her hands came up against my chest. Her palms hit the center of my charcoal thermal, right over the bruised bone of my sternum, and for half a second, the pressure of her fingers felt like resistance.
Then her knuckles bunched.
Her fingers curled into the cotton, twisting the fabric into tight knots, and instead of shoving me back, she dragged me down.
She pulled my weight into her body, her small frame arching off the examination table until her breasts pressed flat against my ribs. A muffled, desperate sound broke in the back of her throat—a raw, ragged hitch of air that opened her lips beneath mine.
I drove my tongue into her mouth.
The heat inside her was an inferno. I claimed the wet, sensitive roof of her mouth with deep, rhythmic strokes, rough and possessive, demanding everything she had kept locked behind her clinical charts.
Her tongue tangled with mine, clumsy at first, then surging forward with an unpracticed, frantic hunger that set my nerve endings on fire.
Blood roared through my ears with the force of an avalanche. My damaged shoulder throbbed with a dull, distant ache, but the pain was drowned out by the heavy, grinding pressure of her hips shifting against mine.
Every breath she drew was mine. Every shudder that rippled through her thighs was answering the iron grip of my hand in her hair.
* * *
I didn't stop.
I deepened the angle, my fingers tightening in her hair, pulling just hard enough to keep her throat exposed as my mouth bruised hers with slow, heavy pressure.
I broke the seal of our lips for a fraction of a second, trailing my mouth down the sharp edge of her jaw to the sensitive skin right beneath her ear.
"That's it," I growled against her skin, the words coming out in a wrecked, scraping rasp that vibrated against her pulse. "Take it, sweetheart. Look at what you do to me."
She let out a high, broken gasp, her head falling limp against my wrist as my mouth moved lower, my lips dragging over the leaping percussion of her carotid artery. Her fingers clamped into the fabric over my ribs, digging through the thermal until her fingernails bit into the muscle beneath.
"Chase—"
"Open your mouth for me," I commanded, my hand sliding down from her waist, my fingers splaying across the denim of her thigh, hiking her leg higher against my hip. "Good girl."
She whimpered, her hips tilting up into the solid wall of my body on an involuntary, desperate hitch of need. Her mouth sought mine in the dark, her lips parting wide, taking my tongue back in with a wild, breathless urgency that nearly brought me to my knees.
Above us, through twelve inches of reinforced concrete, a heavy metal locker slammed shut.
The concussive sound reverberated through the ceiling slab, followed by the distant, rhythmic clank of a maintenance cart rolling down the service corridor.
The intrusion sliced through the room like freezing water.
I froze.
My mouth remained pressed against hers, but my jaw locked, my muscles going rigid as my ears strained to track the footsteps echoing through the sub-basement.
Slowly, dragging every ounce of discipline I possessed from the ashes of my restraint, I pulled back by a single inch.
My forehead dropped against hers, our foreheads resting together in the quiet box.
Our breathing was a violent, synchronized storm, harsh gasps tearing out of our lungs and mingling in the narrow gap between our lips. Her face was flushed bright crimson, her lips swollen, glistening, and bruised red from the pressure of my mouth.
Her hazel eyes fluttered open, heavy and glazed with a dark, dazed heat that made my chest tighten to the point of agony. Her fingers were still knotted into my shirt, trembling violently, refusing to let go of the fabric.
I stared down at her ruined, beautiful defiance.
The lines were gone. The pretense of neutrality was ash on the floor.
I had crossed the threshold, and as I watched her chest rise and fall against mine, I knew with terrifying, savage clarity that I was never going back.