Chapter 13
MARY CATHERINE
Isat on the edge of the tiny bathroom vanity, looked at myself in the small mirror, and had a very direct conversation with my reflection.
You are not humiliated. You are not the girl who got rejected. You are a woman who made a clear and honest choice and was met with—
I stopped.
He'd stopped me twice. Caught my wrist like he was disarming something.
And then he'd said you're shaking and I won't be the thing you grab for in the dark and hate in the morning.
I had felt the shape of those words land somewhere deep and true and inconvenient, because they were the words of a man who was paying attention.
Real attention. The kind that saw through the bravado to what was underneath it.
He was right. I had been shaking.
I was still shaking, a little, but it was different now. Not fear. Something else—something that had been building since cold Atlantic water and was not going to resolve itself by sitting on a bathroom vanity.
I looked at myself in the mirror for another five seconds.
Then, I opened the door.
He was still on the sofa. Exactly where I'd left him, head back against the wall, eyes open, staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man engaged in a private argument he was not winning.
He looked up when the door opened. Something moved across his face that he didn't quite manage to contain—relief, and underneath it the other thing, the thing that had been there all evening and was not subtle anymore.
I crossed the room.
I stopped in front of him and looked down at him and said: "I'm not shaking anymore."
He looked up at me. Said nothing.
"And I don't hate anything about tonight," I said.
"And I'm not grabbing for something in the dark.
I know exactly where I am and I know exactly what I want and I have spent twenty-nine years letting other people make that determination for me.
" I held his gaze. "I'm asking you to let me make this one. "
The silence lasted three seconds. Maybe four.
Then he reached up and took my hand—slowly, deliberately—and pulled me back down.
I came down into his lap and his hands were at my face before I'd fully settled, cupping my jaw, tilting my head. He looked at me for one long moment with those dark eyes doing everything they did—seeing me, all of me, the whole complicated truth of the day—and then, he kissed me.
It was not a tentative kiss. It was not a question.
It was the kiss of a man who had been holding something back for hours and had finally, on his own terms, decided to stop.
It landed with the full weight of all of that—certain and deep and thorough, his thumbs against my jaw, his mouth knowing exactly what it was doing.
His tongue swept in, claiming mine with slow, deliberate strokes that made heat pool low in my belly.
I made a sound I hadn't planned—half moan, half whimper.
I felt him respond to it immediately, a low, rough exhale against my mouth, his hands sliding from my jaw into my hair, fingers tightening just enough to hold me exactly where he wanted me.
He kissed me until I stopped thinking about anything except his mouth, the taste of him, the way his lips moved like he was learning every secret I kept behind them.
Then, he pulled back just far enough to look at me, breathing hard, his forehead against mine.
"You sure," he said. Not quite a question. More like a last accounting.
"Brock." I pulled back enough to see his face. "If you stop again, I will actually hitchhike to New York."
Something cracked open in him. A real laugh—full and surprised and helpless—and then his arms were around me and his mouth was at my throat, hot and open, sucking and biting at the sensitive skin until my head fell back. I stopped being able to construct sentences.
He shifted us without breaking contact—one smooth movement that laid me back against the cushions with his weight coming down over me.
That alone did something to me that I didn't have a category for.
The easy physical certainty of it. The way he moved like the space between us was a problem he'd already solved.
His body was heavy and solid, pressing me into the cushions in the most delicious way, his hips settling between my thighs so I could already feel the hard, insistent length of him against my core.
He braced over me and looked down. I watched him look, his gaze dragging over my body like he owned every inch of it.
"You've been driving me out of my mind since the alley," he said. Low. Flat. Like a confession that cost him something.
"Good," I said.
He made a sound—half growl, half groan—and came down over me.
His mouth found my jaw, my throat, the place below my ear that made my hands grip the back of his shirt.
I pulled at it until he let me get it off him.
Then, I stopped breathing for a moment because the reality of him—the breadth of his chest, the scarring I hadn't expected, the evidence of a life lived in the direction of hard things—was more than the category of handsome had prepared me for.
Muscle and heat and raw, masculine power.
I pressed my hand flat against his chest. Felt his heartbeat, fast and hard, running completely counter to all that stillness.
"You're not as calm as you look," I said.
"No," he said. “I’m not."
He got my shirt over my head in one swift motion. His mouth went immediately to my throat, then lower.
He unclasped my bra with practiced fingers and slid it away, his big hands cupping my breasts, fingertips brushing over my already tight nipples before his mouth followed.
When he closed his lips over one aching peak and sucked hard, I cried out, the sound echoing off the studio walls.
He didn’t stop, licking and biting gently, then harder, switching sides until I was writhing beneath him, wetness slicking between my thighs.
"Quiet," he murmured against my skin, not like a demand. Like he found it interesting that he'd pulled that out of me. His voice was gravel-rough, amused, and possessive, all at once.
"That's not—" I started.
He did it again, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and the rest of the sentence went nowhere.
He worked his way down my body with that same unhurried focus, his big hands bracketing my hips, holding me in place when I moved—not rough, just absolute, the grip of a man who had decided where I was going to be and was informing my body of that decision.
He peeled my pants and panties down my legs, tossing them aside, then spread my thighs wide with those strong hands.
I felt the possessiveness of it low in my stomach before I had a word for it, felt it in the way he pressed me down when I reached for him, the firm and certain not yet of it that should have frustrated me and instead made everything worse in the best possible way.
"Brock—"
"I've got you," he said. Against my stomach, moving lower. "Stay with me."
His mouth found my pussy, hot and wet and relentless.
He licked a slow, broad stripe up my center, then focused on my clit with devastating precision—sucking, flicking, humming against me while two thick fingers pushed inside, curling just right.
I stayed with him, hips trying to rock against his face, held firmly in place by his hands as he devoured me like a man starved.
By the time he came back up my body, I was trembling again—nothing like the earlier trembling, nothing like fear, this was its direct opposite.
He braced over me and looked down with an expression I wanted to keep somewhere.
His cock was heavy and flushed against my thigh, thick and leaking at the tip.
Goddamn.
He lined himself up and looked at me once more. I held his eyes and nodded and he pushed forward—slow, so slow, stretching me open with every thick inch until I was gasping at the fullness, the burning pleasure of it.
When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt inside me, he stopped. Held. His jaw tight, his eyes dark, his weight on his forearms framing my face, and I felt him everywhere—deep, throbbing, claiming.
"Brock—"
"I know," he said. "I know."
He moved. Long, deep strokes that dragged against every sensitive place inside me. He moved like he did everything—with complete attention, with no wasted effort, with a focus that made me feel like the only thing in the room that mattered.
One hand slid under my hips, tilting me, and the angle changed so he hit the perfect spot on every thrust. I gasped and he made a low sound, like he'd been waiting for exactly that.
"There," he said. Low and rough. "Right there. Stay right there."
He picked up a rhythm—deeper, harder, more urgent—his hips snapping against mine with possessive force while still somehow tender, like he was pouring everything he felt into every thrust. His hand moved between us and found my clit, rubbing circles as he drove into me.
His mouth found my ear.
"Nobody else," he said. Low and tight, like it was being pulled out of him. "You understand me? Not the hitchhiking, not New York, not anyone else. Not anymore."
I should have found that alarming. It was alarming. It was the kind of thing a man said that a sensible woman filed under red flag and examined carefully in daylight.
In the dark of the studio with his body against mine, his cock stretching me so perfectly, I found it was the most attractive thing anyone had ever said to me.
"Okay," I breathed.
"Say it back."
"Nobody else," I said. And meant it, which was its own category of frightening.
Something cracked open in him at that. The rhythm shifted, deeper, more urgent, almost punishing in its intensity. His hand never stopped working my clit.
I stopped being able to think about anything at all—not the wedding or Daniel or my parents or the life I'd left or the life I would build or anything beyond this man and this room and the thing that was building in me like a tide.
"Let go," he said. Against my throat. "I've got you."
I let go.
The orgasm hit like the Atlantic had hit—like something enormous and honest and entirely without mercy.
My walls clenched around him, pulsing, soaking his cock as pleasure tore through me.
I pressed my face against his shoulder and let it move through me.
He followed seconds later with a deep, guttural groan, his cheek dropped to mine, hips stuttering as he spilled inside me, hot and thick, his body shaking with the force of it—raw and unguarded and entirely real.
Sex with Daniel had never been like that. Ever.
For a long time afterward, neither of us moved.
His weight settled over me. I lay under it and looked at the ceiling of the studio, at the bad overhead light he'd had the sense to turn off so only the city glow came through the windows. I thought about the word nobody.
Nobody else.
He'd said it like a claim. Like something he was planting a flag in. And I had said it back like I meant it, which I had, which I still did, lying here in the aftermath of the best and most consequential Saturday of my life.
He lifted his head and looked at me. The dark eyes, the jaw, all of it—undone now, softer at the edges, the careful containment of him temporarily, completely dismantled.
"You okay?" he said.
"Yes," I said. Meaning it the way I'd been meaning things all day—with my whole self.
He searched my face for a moment. Found whatever he was looking for.
Then, he pulled me into his side. I went.