11. Nash #3
Her fingers trace my jaw, then slide down my chest, over scars and ink and all the evidence of the man I became long before she walked into my city with revenge in her mouth.
I catch her hand and pin it beside her head.
“Say it,” I command, my mouth hovering just above hers. “Say you’re mine, Reva. Say it before I fuck that defiance right out of you.”
Her lips part. For one second, I think she will fight me on principle. Then her hips lift beneath mine.
“I’m yours,” she gasps. “I’m yours, Nash. God, just… please.”
I kiss her once, hard enough to bruise, then reach between us. She is wet, soaking ready, and the discovery nearly ruins me.
“Fuck,” I say, the word breaking rough. “Look at you.”
She would say something smart if she could. I see it in her eyes. Then I put my hand back where she needs it, and the thought disappears. There is only her now.
Reva under me. Reva opening for me. Reva with my hand still holding her wrist down and my marks heating her skin.
I position myself at her entrance, every muscle in my body locked against the need to take too much too fast.
For one suspended second, I look at her. Really look.
Her face is flushed. Her eyes bright. No panic. No distance. No closet.
Only Reva.
“Tell me no,” I plead.
She shakes her head.
My jaw flexes. “Words.”
“No,” she whispers. “I don’t want you to stop.”
Something in my chest breaks clean down the center. I thrust into her in one hard motion.
She cries out against my neck, nails digging into my shoulders, body arching beneath me. I stop once I am fully inside her, forehead pressed to hers, breath caught somewhere between my lungs and hers.
Control is a living thing.
Mine is bleeding out.
“Fuck, Reva,” I groan. “You’re perfect.”
Then I move.
Not gently. Not with the softness I might have used if the day had not already put its hands on her. I drive into her with a rhythm built from fear and fury and the savage relief of having her alive beneath me. Every thrust says what I cannot make clean enough for language.
Stay.
Breathe.
Do not leave this house where I cannot reach you.
Do not make me imagine a world without you in it.
Her legs wrap tighter around my waist, pulling me deeper. She is loud now. Broken open and not trying to hide it. Tears slide from the corners of her eyes, but she does not turn away. She does not disappear.
She is here. With me.
Her eyes begin to slide closed.
“Look at me,” I command, my hand fisting in her hair enough to bring her focus back to mine.
Her eyes open. That nearly finishes me.
I see every version of her there. The child in the closet. The woman who came to Noir with a dead man’s name on her tongue. The reckless, furious girl who walked into a grave today because not knowing hurt worse than remembering.
“I see you, Reva,” I say, my voice rough enough to tear. “All of you. And I’m never letting go. Do you hear me? Never.”
She breaks around me.
My name leaves her mouth like a wound and a prayer, and I follow a second later, losing the last of my control with a low, guttural sound that does not feel human.
I hold her through it, through the shuddering aftermath, through the way her body clings to mine as if the world outside this room has finally gone quiet.
For a long time, neither of us moves.
I stay over her, still inside her, my face buried in the crook of her neck. Her fingers are tangled in my hair. Her breath warms my shoulder. I feel the small tremors moving through her and hate every cause that is not me.
I am the dominant. The tyrant. The man who believes control is the only thing standing between life and ruin.
But lying there with Reva beneath me, alive and warm and finally still, I understand a truth I do not like.
I cannot control everything. I can only hold what the world keeps trying to take.
Eventually, I shift enough to look at her.
The rage has burned down to something quieter and more dangerous. Possession, yes. Fear, if I am honest enough to name it. Love, if I am drunk enough to let the word live.
I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb.
“You’re staying in this house, Reva,” I say. “No more trips to the past. No more secrets with Ever. Do you understand?”
Her eyes are heavy, exhaustion dragging at her. “I understand.”
She does not fight me. That should please me. Instead, it makes something ache.
I pull the covers over us and draw her into my side until her head rests on my chest. Her body goes soft by degrees, one breath at a time. The old house settles around us. Somewhere beyond my door, Blackwood House holds its silence.
She falls asleep with my arm around her and her hand against my ribs.
I don’t sleep. I listen to her breathe. I listen for Ever coming back. I listen for every old ghost in this city that might decide tonight is the night to test my locks.
Reva does not dream of closets. Not that I can tell.
Good. Let her sleep. Let the house hold. Let the Syndicate gather its dead prayers and sharpen its knives.
Tonight, she is in my bed. Tonight, the door is locked.
And if the past wants her back, it can come through me first.