26. Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
REVA
I go still. The silence after that is mean and hot.
“Say that again,” I dare him.
He leans in. “You are finished pretending you don’t want me.”
I try to slap him. He catches that hand, too.
Now both my wrists are in one of his hands, held between us, and his other hand comes up over my mouth, his palm flat. Firm. Commanding.
My eyes widen. His drop to mine, dark and amused in a way that makes me want to commit a crime.
“Enough talking.”
The words should make me angrier. They do. They also make every nerve ending in my body wake up like it has been waiting for him to stop using language as a leash and switch to his hands.
I glare at him over his palm.
Then I stick out my tongue, and I lick it.
His pupils blow wide. For half a second, the room stops breathing. Then Deacon laughs under his breath.
It is not a nice sound. It is the sound from the bathroom in the Toulouse bar. Low. Dark. The one I could not identify then and cannot get out of my head now.
He removes his hand slowly.
“Oh, Little Ghost.”
My whole body reacts to the name. Betrayal by nervous system.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“No, you don’t. You just wish you did.”
He turns me fast, backs me into Nash’s desk, and lifts me onto it in one smooth motion. Papers slide. A pen hits the floor. The edge of the desk bites into the backs of my thighs.
I grab his shirt—maybe to shove him away, maybe to keep him close.
We both know which.
His mouth comes down on mine, hard enough to bruise. This is not Ever grounding me. It is not Shiloh coaxing pleasure out of grief. It is not Nash taking command of the storm and building walls around it.
Deacon Cross is the fucking storm.
Deacon kisses like he has been starving and resents me for being food. His hands are everywhere at once with brutal efficiency—under my shirt, over my breasts, dragging the cups of my bra down until his thumbs find my nipples and roll hard enough that I gasp against his mouth.
He swallows the sound.
Then he yanks my shirt up, bends his head, and takes one nipple into his mouth. My head falls back.
“Fuck.”
His teeth graze. My hands go into his hair. He releases me long enough to look up, mouth wet, eyes almost black. “Hands on the desk.”
I do not move.
His smile is dangerous. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Then put your hands on the desk.”
I hate myself a little for obeying, but I plant my palms on either side of my hips.
He kisses me again, one hand fisted in my hair now, the other already opening my jeans. He does not ask if I am sure because I already told him. He does not treat me like glass. He handles me like something hot, volatile, and his to hold only because I have not taken myself away.
The button of my jeans gives.
The zipper follows.
He pulls them down my hips along with my underwear, rough enough that I have to lift myself to help or be dragged flat. The air hits me, cool and shocking. I grab at his shoulders when he spreads my knees wider.
“Hands.”
I glare.
He stills.
Everything in him goes quiet and hard.
“You give me your hands when and where I ask for them, or we stop.”
My throat works. The order probably ought to make me furious, and a small part of me is angry. A larger part wants this, though, with a kind of desperate need that won’t be settled.
I put my hands back on the desk.
“Good girl.”
The words hit somewhere lower than pride. Warm slides through me. He sees it and smiles.
I hate that too.
His fingers slide between my thighs, and whatever I planned to say dies in a sharp inhalation. He finds me wet. Too wet. His eyes lift to mine, and the look on his face is pure male satisfaction.
“Don’t—” I warn.
“You’re dripping.”
“Just don’t talk.”
“I remember this about you.”
My pulse stutters.
“So hungry for it. So angry.” His fingers circle my clit once, slow and exact. “You wanted me in that bathroom before you knew my face.”
“I thought you were Shiloh.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I slap at his chest. He catches my wrist and pins it beside my hip.
“One hand gone. Do you want to lose the other?”
My breath comes too fast. “You’re an asshole.”
“Never claimed to be otherwise.”
He slides two fingers inside me.
My whole body clenches around them.
His mouth moves to my ear. “You going to tell me you don’t want my cock because I’m such an asshole?”
I close my eyes. He withdraws his fingers.
“Eyes open.”
I force them open and find him watching me. Every inch of him is controlled. Every inch of him looks close to snapping.
“Tell me,” he says.
“No.”
He rubs the tip of his fingers against my clit, slick with me. “Then I’ll wait.”
“You won’t.”
“I will.”
He would. That’s the problem. Deacon Cross is patient enough to ruin people.
I reach for his belt. He lets me. The buckle opens under clumsy fingers. His zipper follows. I shove the fabric down enough to free him, and the sight of him steals the air out of my lungs.
I remember the feel of him before I see the metal.
The piercing.
The bar catches the light when he wraps his hand around himself and strokes once.
Memory hits with embarrassing force. The ceramic sink. The stygian darkness. His voice at my ear and the drag of metal through my body. The way he made me beg.
His gaze sharpens as he watches me remember.
“There,” he murmurs.
I swallow. “Don’t say there.”
“You remember.”
“I remember wanting to murder you.”
“You remember wanting to come. Just like you do now.”
My face burns. Deacon steps between my thighs. His cock slides through my folds, slow, wet, deliberate. The metal bar drags over my clit with one pass, and I jerk so hard my hands slip against the polished wood.
He catches my hip.
“Hold still.”
“Fuck you.”
“That is the plan.”
He does it again. Slower. My breath breaks.
The piercing makes every pass sharper, dirtier, impossible to ignore. My body chases it despite my best effort. I tilt my hips, and he stills immediately.
“No…when I say.”
I make a keening sound that should humiliate me but doesn’t. Humiliation requires attention and every bit of mine is fixed on the dick gliding with excruciating slowness in and out of my pussy right now.
“Deacon.”
He leans close, mouth at my ear. “Tell me you want it.”
“I refuse.”
“Tell me you want me to fuck you on his desk, Daddy Nash’s. Is that what you call him?”
“No!” I grip the edge hard enough that my fingers ache. “Can’t you guys just fucking get along?”
He drives in hard enough to make me utter a short, gasping scream. “Little ghost, if we didn’t get along, one of us would surely be dead.”
He eases back out and then presses back in, just barely. Just the tip.
A threat.
A promise.
Not enough.
I hate him.
I want him so badly my eyes sting.
“Please,” I breathe.
His hand tightens in my hair. “Try again.”
“Please fuck me.”
He drives into me in one brutal thrust. The cry that leaves me does not sound human.
He covers my mouth with his, swallowing the rest while my body stretches around him and the piercing settles deep enough that I see white at the edges of my vision. His hand braces at my lower back, holding me in place. He stays still for one second, forehead against mine, breath hot and uneven.
“Still hate me?” he asks.
I dig my nails into his shoulder. “More.”
“Good.”
Then he fucks me. Hard.
Fast.
No slow build. No gentle easing into what we both know has been circling since Noir. The desk jolts beneath us with every thrust. Papers scatter. Something heavier hits the floor. My hands slide, and he catches both wrists, slamming them above my head against the metal as he bends me back.
“Keep them there.”
I do because I need my balance.
I do because he told me to.
I do because every drive of his hips sends that piercing against places I have thought about against my will since the bathroom.
He looks down at me, jaw tight, eyes wild. Control cracking. Storm breaking. The letters, the lies, the kitchen, the garden, every wrong thing between us burns down to his body inside mine and my name in his mouth like a curse.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says.
The words shiver through me.
“You said that before.”
“I meant it then.”
“And…now—?”
He pulls my hips harder to the edge of the desk and changes the angle. The next thrust punches the question out of me in a gasp.
“Now you’re here.”
His hand goes between us, thumb finding my clit with unfair accuracy.
“Now you’re mine to keep alive.”
“I’m not yours.”
He slows. Just enough to be cruel.
The piercing drags against my walls, and I arch off the desk with a broken sound.
“You keep saying that,” he says. “Your body keeps arguing.”
I hate him. I hate the truth in it. I hate that my legs lock around his hips like a vise because I cannot make myself let go.
He pulls my hair until my throat is bared to him.
“Tell me what you need, little ghost.”
The name detonates in my chest.
“I need to come.”
His mouth touches my neck, right over the pulse. “Ask.”
“Make me come.”
“Better.”
He drives into me harder, thumb working me in tight, relentless circles. The desk digs into my back. My shirt is shoved above my breasts, bra ruined under them, jeans trapped around one ankle. We are filthy, exposed, furious.
We are perfect.
I come like something snaps clean through me.
My body locks around him, and the sound I make tears my throat raw. He keeps going through it, dragging every pulse out until I am shaking and clawing at his back, begging without words now.
His rhythm breaks.
He grabs my hips, holds me exactly where he wants me, and buries himself deep with a guttural sound that I feel in my bones. His forehead drops to my shoulder as he comes, his breath ragged against my skin, his hands bruising my hips like letting go would cost him more than he has.
For a while, neither of us moves. The room is destroyed in small, damning ways.
Papers everywhere. Pen on the floor. My jeans twisted around my ankle. Nash’s desk thoroughly dishonored.
Deacon’s mouth brushes the top of my shoulder.
Soft.
Too soft after all that.
I close my eyes.
He withdraws carefully, then tucks himself away before helping me sit up. I hate that my legs shake. I hate more that he notices and puts a steadying hand at my waist without making a point of it.
I pull my bra into place, tug my shirt down, and wrestle with my jeans. Deacon helps, then picks up the letter from where it fell near the edge of the rug. The paper is crushed from my fist. One corner is torn.
He smooths it once against the desk and sets it beside me. I stare at it. Then at him.
“Don’t send another one.”
His eyes hold mine. “I don’t need to send any more letters, and we both know it.”
He steps close, takes my chin, and kisses me once. Brief. Hard. Nothing like the sex. More dangerous because it feels like punctuation.
“Get angry if you need to,” he says. “March into rooms. Yell. Throw paper. Lick my palm again if it helps.”
My stomach flips.
“But stop pretending I am writing to the girl I tricked,” he says. “I am writing to the woman standing in front of me. The one who knows my face now and still came apart on my cock.”
My face burns red and I stomp toward the door.
“Reva.” He catches me just as I’m about to make a dramatic exit, completely ruining it.
“What?” I snap, whirling around.
He’s holding the letter out, a shit-eating grin on his face.
With a growl, I snatch it and resume my march to the door.
“You’re welcome!” he sing-songs.
I fling the door open and launch myself through it, just to see absolutely everybody standing on the other side.
You have to be fucking kidding me.