Chapter 13 #2
“No.” She stepped into him, furious enough to be brave. “You’re projecting. Because God forbid someone doesn’t want you, right?”
Something in his face shifted. Not anger exactly. Worse. Recognition. Like she’d pressed his bruise dead center. For one heartbeat, he went perfectly still, his jaw tightening as if he were wrestling with the impulse to walk away. To be the man who didn’t ruin things.
He should’ve walked away. Fuck knows he wanted to. Sort of. But then she looked at him with her eyes blazing, her chest heaving. Those perfectly pouty lips were parted in defiance, and something inside him just… roared.
He was so fucking hard. Sickeningly hard in sweatpants that weren’t doing him any favors.
Either she hadn’t noticed, or she had and was pretending she didn’t…
which honestly might’ve been worse. Because if she was pretending, it meant she’d seen it and filed it away, but was still standing there taunting him with that mouth, that fire, that perfectly sinful curve of hip.
Did she know how he couldn’t stop thinking about her? How many nights he’d gotten himself off replaying the way she looked in rehearsal shorts with sweat-slick hair? Wondering if she was wet for him when she danced like that?
If she ever touched herself after practice the same way he did?
He swallowed hard. His jaw clenched. And when he looked up at her and saw the heat in her eyes as she looked at him… he knew he was gone.
Fuck it.
He moved before he could think better of it, catching her wrist like lightning with just enough pressure to tell her he wasn’t bluffing.
His other hand slid to her waist, fingers sinking into her soft curves.
A low, feral groan rumbled in the back of his throat, like he’d been dying to touch her like this—with hands full of want—and it’d taken everything he had to hold back.
Holly reacted on instinct. She shoved him hard, palms planted against his chest, aiming to create space between them.
But Nate caught her waist with a grip that was all muscle and control, turned with the force of her momentum, and drove her backward.
She hit the mirror with a sharp, startled smack, breath catching as the cold glass kissed her spine.
Nate braced himself over her, one forearm planted beside her head, his other hand still anchoring her hip like a man claiming territory he had no right to.
And she didn’t pull away.
It undid him. The fact that she met his gaze, fire-forged and furious, even with his body caging hers.
Even with his cock, thick and hard, pressed shamelessly against her hip through the unforgiving cling of his sweats.
She had to feel it. She had to know. And still, she stood her ground with no fear, no flinch.
Just the tense, electric silence of someone who might be one breath away from dragging him under with her.
He didn’t move. Couldn’t. Not with his cock digging into her like that, not with the scent of sweat and lemon cleaner and her clinging to the space between them.
His blood was boiling, his restraint hanging on by a thread, but it wasn’t just lust. It was the fact that she didn’t run.
That she wanted this fight as much as he did.
That she was still here, holding her line, even as his control went up in flames.
“I don’t care if he wants you,” Nate said, voice ragged with heat and honesty, every word pulled straight from his chest like it cost him. “I care that you still react.”
Holly’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, shaken rhythm, her fists tangled in his hoodie. Not pushing now, just holding on. Her lips were parted and moved with the barest quiver, but her voice came steady and sharp. “You don’t get to care.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth like it was instinct. Destiny.
“Too late,” he said hoarsely.
Holly was already leaning into him, caught between fury and something far, far more dangerous. Her words didn’t match the tension in her hands as she pulled him closer, angling her devastating hips to grind into his aching cock as she tilted her chin up like a dare.
“Then do something about it.”
For half a second, Nate froze, as if she’d just pressed a match into his palm and he was deciding whether to light it or crush it.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, to the curve of it when she breathed, to the defiant tilt of her chin like she was daring him to make the first move. He was already gone anyway.
Already too fucking hard, past the point of no return.
His cock throbbed painfully in his sweats where it had been pressed against her for long enough to make him light-headed.
He could feel himself leaking, heat and want bleeding into the fabric, humiliation and hunger twisted so tightly together he couldn’t tell which one was driving him anymore.
The only thing he knew was that she hadn’t backed away.
She’d held her ground, all fury and fire, and that made him feral.
Then his mouth hit hers. It wasn’t tentative or sweet.
It was hard and hot and inevitable, the kind of kiss that didn’t ask permission because it already had it.
It tasted like adrenaline and restraint snapping, like every unsaid argument turning molten.
Nate’s huge hands bracketed her hips, dragging her closer with brutal precision, fucking into her hip with a groan that betrayed how fucking close he was to coming in his pants.
Holly answered with a sound that wasn’t quite a gasp and wasn’t quite a moan, but which filled his mouth and drove him crazy anyway.
The mirror fogged behind her almost instantly, their joint breath ghosting over the glass as the room filled with the sound of two desperate people losing control on purpose.
“I knew you were a fight-fucker,” she growled against his mouth, the words wicked and breathless.
“Fuck, Holly.”
The last thread of Nate’s self-control burned clean through.
He kissed her again, like punishment and confession at once.
His cock pulsed again, thick and insistent, the damp heat of him unmistakable now, and he didn’t even pretend to care that she could feel it.
He wanted her to. He wanted her to know exactly what she did to him.
How undone he was for her. How ready he was to show her.
His hands roamed like he was mapping territory.
Hips, that ass, up until his fingers curled possessively around her throat, thumb nudging her chin as if he couldn’t stand not having her exactly where he wanted her.
Holly let out a snarl of pure defiance and hunger, then grabbed the front of his hoodie and yanked it up over his head in one impatient motion.
Nate shuddered, breath catching hard. It was almost obscene how fast he came undone for her. He let himself fall apart, like she was the only thing anchoring him to the present moment and he was done pretending he didn’t want to be owned by her.
Then he spun her around. Fluid. Intentional.
No wasted motion. Her perfect breasts were pressed up against the mirror now.
Her hands were splayed against the cool glass and she moaned, breath fogging across it instantly.
Holly’s reflection stared back at them both with wild hair, smeared mascara, eyes wide, and lips parted in pure, unfiltered need.
Fuck if he didn’t want to know what those lips would feel like wrapped around his cock.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” Nate growled into her neck, his voice dark and close and already half-drunk on her.
His cock throbbed against her, still trapped between them, leaking against her skin like a man halfway to losing his mind.
It was torture, the kind he didn’t want to stop.
He didn’t want relief. He wanted to drag her over the edge first, wanted to feel her fall apart knowing he’d barely touched her.
“Nate,” she growled, panting. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”
Holy shit, that was it.
He hooked a thumb into the waistband of her leggings and dragged them down with brutal precision, just far enough to expose everything he’d been dreaming of.
He could feel her damp heat so close to where he needed her the most that it counted as a goddamn war crime.
Her panties were soaked, clinging to skin flushed and trembling.
When his cock twitched against her she arched into it like her body was begging for it.
He reached around her, one big hand snaking low over her belly and then down to her slick heat. They groaned in unison as he dragged his thumb through her slick pussy.
“Jesus Holly,” he purred against her neck on the tail-end of a reverent sigh. “You’re so fucking flooded for me. Bet if I just—”
He pushed two thick fingers inside her without an ounce of resistance, and her moan cracked him wide open.
He watched her in the mirror, watched her bite her lip and fight the sound in her throat.
Mascara smudged, cheeks flushed, eyes fluttering shut like she couldn’t bear to watch herself come undone for him.
God, he loved it. Loved that she tried to hold on. Loved that she was losing.
“Tell me you want this,” he murmured, rough and low, lips brushing her jaw as his fingers curled inside her like a promise. “Tell me you wanna come on my fingers, Martinez.”
He watched her in the mirror, squeezing her eyes shut like she couldn’t bear how good it felt. How much she wanted it. When she opened them again, her gaze locked on his, wild and pleading and furious all at once.
“I hate you,” she said, voice shaking on the barely concealed truth. It didn’t land like hate. It landed like surrender.
Nate’s grin turned dark, almost reverent. “Liar.”
“Break me,” she told him, so softly that he could hardly hear her. “Don’t be gentle.”
He delved for her pleasure again and her breath hitched, then caught completely when he shifted his hand enough to angle his fingers up, curling deeper inside her like he already knew exactly where to touch.
She gasped loudly, one hand palming the mirror for balance, the other reaching behind her to grab a fistful of his hair as her thighs trembled.
Jesus Christ, she was so beautiful.
“There,” he whispered, voice thick with awe. “That’s it. That’s the spot, isn’t it sweetheart?”
She made a strangled sound in the back of her throat that was half curse, half prayer.
Her hips bucked helplessly, chasing the relentless precision of his fingers and the heat of his mouth against her neck.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down.
Just kept her pinned there with his body and his voice, murmuring filth and praise in equal measure.
“You feel that, Martinez?” he said gruffly, before she clenched around his fingers and a ragged moan fell from his lips. He tilted his hips, thrusting against the barrier of his own pants just to get some kind of relief.
“You’re so fucking tight around me. So wet. Fuck! Bet I could just slip my cock in and you’d take every inch without even trying.”
She moaned. Loud. Broken.
He grazed his own lip with his teeth to pull himself back from the brink, hips stuttering.
“You gonna come for me, baby?”
Holly exhaled and nodded frantically, a desperate movement that looked more like surrender than anything she could’ve said out loud.
Her eyes met his in the mirror, wide and wild, and that was when it hit him.
She was letting him see her. Letting him have her, like this, in a way she didn’t give to anyone. And fuck, it turned him on.
“Come on these fingers, Holly,” he pleaded, voice rough and reverent. “Let me feel it.”
She shattered with a cry that echoed off the glass.
Her whole body locked against his, thighs clamping around his hand, heat flooding over his fingers as her walls pulsed tight in wave after wave of release.
Her head dropped forward, forehead resting against the mirror, breath fogging the glass while her entire body trembled.
Nate didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just held her, one hand still between her thighs, the other stroking her side like he could keep her grounded through the aftershocks. When she finally turned her head she was dazed and flushed, and he met her gaze in the mirror.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he murmured, soft and reverent, pressing a kiss just beneath her ear. “You know that?”
Her breath hitched. Just for a second. Then she shifted and his cock, still hard and leaking in his pants, dragged across her with friction that made his whole body tense.
Fuck, he was so close he could barely think.
He needed to be inside her. Needed her wrapped around him, tight and soaked and his.
And maybe that’s why she pulled away.
She didn’t speak. Just reached down for her leggings with shaking hands, dragging them up with stilted efficiency, eyes locked on the floor like she could disappear if she didn’t look at him. Her shirt followed, tugged down with stubborn finality.
“This didn’t happen,” she said flatly, voice stripped of heat and expression leached of vulnerability. Like a switch had flipped, and she’d shut herself off.
Nate blinked. Still breathless and aching from the way she’d just come apart in his arms. “Holly—”
But she was already walking. She didn’t glance back to check if he was following. She just moved as if something in her was cracking open and she had to outrun it.
The rehearsal studio door clicked shut behind her, like the final nail in his coffin. Nate stood there with his cock leaking in his sweats and his heart hammering in his chest. And he couldn't do anything except watch her leave like she’d just walked off with something he was never getting back.
Nate
Cap, u up?
Jaime
This better be about sex and not another existential spiral
Nate
She came so hard she went nonverbal
Then put her pants back on like it was a crime scene
And walked out without a single fucking look back
Jaime
God, I love her
Are we sure she’s not mine?
Nate
Fuck off, McAllister
Jaime
She used you like a vibrator with a gym membership
Didn’t even kiss you goodnight?
Nate
Just the sound of my dignity dying in sweatpants
Jaime
Beautiful
A woman with standards and a getaway plan.
I should write her a thank-you card.
Nate
I think I’m in love
Or experiencing deep-seated trauma
Unclear
Jaime
Either way, hydrate.
And maybe stop leading with your dick.