Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
REVA
He grabs my leg and hoists it up to his waist, cupping my ass and grinding against me. His hardness presses against my core.
My gaze snaps to his, my chest tightening. Two seconds is all it takes for my gasp to break loose, but Ever smiles. It’s only a slash of a grin before he kisses me again.
I clench my thighs, already wet. Needy.
No matter how I feel about him at the bar or at the house, no matter how much lust and hate blur together until I can’t tell one from the other, right now he’s the only thing keeping me from shaking apart. There isn’t room to think. Not if I want to stay upright.
I want this. I want him.
Ever takes my mouth like he’s starving, grip hardening where he holds me. He drags me closer, fists flexing against my body as if keeping us both contained costs him something. It does. I can feel the restraint in him, the way he’s holding himself on a leash while I come apart in his hands.
When he pulls back, his eyes flash with something that looks too much like pain.
“Are you sure, Reva?” He grinds against me, slow and brutal, and I almost lose the thread entirely. “You have to be sure.”
He glances past me once, toward the trees, listening. That alone should cool me down. It doesn’t.
I catch his jaw in my hand before he can look away again. “What if he comes back?”
Ever’s eyes cut to mine, dark and steady. “He won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I broke his wrist.” The words come flat and certain. “And I tagged Nash the second I heard you scream. If that bastard circles back, he won’t make it ten feet.”
The answer should sound insane. Instead it locks into place.
My pulse still races, but it changes shape. I’m not safe. Not really.
But I’m safe enough to make a bad decision. I’m only sure of one thing, and it isn’t him. It’s a name. A body. A promise I came here to keep.
But my pussy clenches anyway, wetness soaking through my panties, and the ache between my legs swallows everything else for one wild second.
I lift my chin. “I’m sure.”
“Fuck. Reva...” His voice drops into a rough rasp that tightens my skin everywhere.
I twist in his hold, planting both palms against the tree and arching back into him. “I need you inside me, Ever.” My voice shakes, but I force the words out anyway. “Please.”
It’s the only bend he’ll get from me.
The current between us turns violent.
Ever growls, low and wrecked, and his scent is everywhere—heat, sweat, soap, male. It fills my lungs and goes straight to my head. I glance back over my shoulder and catch his eyes on me, dark and intent and barely controlled.
“One warning.” His hand closes over the side of my neck, thumb pressing just enough to make me shiver. “We do this, you’re mine.”
I should fight that. I should laugh in his face.
Instead relief rolls through me when his hand drags down my spine. “Yes.”
I don’t even know what I’m agreeing to, not really. I only know I need the steadiness of his touch and the pressure of him at my back before the aftermath of that attack catches up and cracks me open.
And I’m tired of fighting.
He angles my hips, covers me with his body, hard and unyielding. My breath stutters.
“I want to sink into you,” he murmurs.
The words throb through me. Every time I move against him, he gets harder. His hands slide from my hips to my breasts, cupping, weighing, thumbs rough through my shirt. I close my eyes and roll back against him, chasing friction.
Ever hums low in his throat, but after one slow grind he stops me.
No.
This isn’t the position he wants.
He turns me to face him and presses my spine to the trunk. Bark catches through my shirt. His eyes drag over me, mouth set hard.
“Lose the pants.”
I open my mouth to say something smart and he answers with a warning sound in his throat that goes straight between my legs.
Then his hands are on me—fast, efficient, tugging, yanking denim and panties down together.
He gets them past my boots and I’m suddenly standing there bare from the waist down, shirt rumpled, boots planted in dirt, thighs damp and trembling.
His gaze drops.
“Are you wet for me, firefly?”
Heat surges up my throat. Ever is usually so taciturn, but apparently sex makes him talky.
His eyes are black and fathomless when he looks up again, and then he kisses me before I can decide whether to deny it. His tongue spears into my mouth as his fingers slide between my thighs.
He brushes one finger through my slick, up to my clit, and I jolt.
“Oh, God.”
Pleasure hits so hard it almost folds me. I want his mouth on me. I want his face between my thighs. I want him to take everything I don’t know how to hand over.
But I need to see him. Need to face him.
The idea of turning away, of giving any man my back right now, scrapes too close to things I can’t survive in this moment.
As if he feels that too, Ever keeps me pinned, eye-to-eye, while he slides a finger inside me.
“Mine,” he grinds out.
I clench around him, hips jerking. He chuckles, dark and hungry.
“So fuckin’ tight...and all mine.”
I need more.
He adds a second finger, curls them, and works me open while his thumb presses my clit. My limbs go loose and restless at once, shaking and squirming while he watches me the entire time. No mercy in him. No softness either. Just attention so sharp it feels like he’s reading me from the inside out.
He kisses me again, eyes still open.
My orgasm hits too fast.
Too hard.
He swallows the scream I don’t mean to give him while I come on his hand, shaking against the tree, thighs trembling, pussy clamping around his fingers. His mouth curves against mine—satisfaction, possession, promise.
When I finally drag in air, his expression says this is only the beginning.
He hooks my leg back over his hip, grinding against me once before he reaches down and flips open his zipper.
This is stupid. One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, and that’s a long list.
There’s urgency in this, but he still doesn’t rush. Ever’s eyes flick up to my face while he frees himself and wraps a hand around his cock, giving me the chance to look.
To see exactly what he plans to do to me.
I do.
And my stomach drops.
He’s thick. Hard. Precum shining at the tip. He strokes himself once, slow, while his other hand cups my ass and keeps me lifted for him.
Condom, my brain says belatedly. We should use a condom. Be responsible—
The thought barely forms before he presses the tip to my entrance and holds there.
I grab his shoulder, nails biting into muscle as he pushes in the first inch and stops.
“Oh God,” I whisper.
He stretches me around him, holding me steady while my foot slips in the dirt and his body keeps me up.
“That’s it,” Ever says, voice rough against my mouth. “You take it so well, Reva.”
Then he drives in.
Fuck the condom.
The breath leaves me in a sharp sound as he fills me all at once, so deep it burns. My head falls back against the tree and the world narrows to heat and pressure and the blunt shock of him inside me.
He pulls almost all the way out. Slams back in. I cry out.
“Reva…” His forehead falls against mine. “Goddamn this pussy…best I’ve ever had.”
The filthy praise wrecks me. My body shudders around him. He catches my face in one hand, forces my eyes open when they try to roll shut.
“None of that. Look at me.”
It’s an order, and I obey before I can stop myself.
The second I meet his gaze, he kisses me—hungry, punishing, the first swallow of water after dying of thirst. His thrusts turn rougher, harder, pinning me between his body and the tree.
Bark scrapes my ass, my thighs, but I don’t care.
His cock pulses inside me, and every stroke strips out another thought.
Midway through a hard drive of his hips, Ever freezes. Not soft. Not gentle. Locked. His eyes flick down between us, then back up, sharp with alarm.
“Reva.”
His hand slides to my side—under my shirt, his fingertips finding wet heat. He pulls his fingers back and they’re dark in the low light.
Blood.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, voice gone hard. He starts to pull away.
I clamp my thighs around him and haul him in closer by his shirt, shaking my head once.
“Don’t you dare,” I rasp.
“We’re stopping.”
“No.” My voice breaks on the word, furious at him for choosing now to be careful. “It’s not—”
I swallow and force the truth through my teeth. “It’s a small cut. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Ever’s jaw flexes, eyes scanning my face as though he can read lies in my pupils.
“Reva—”
I dig my nails into his shoulder, hard enough to make him hiss. “Keep going or we’re never doing this again.”
His breath punches out. Anger. Need. Something he can’t name. “You play fucking dirty, Reva. You’re gonna hate me,” he says, rough.
“I already do,” I whisper, and roll my hips against him on purpose.
Ever’s restraint snaps in his face. And then he drives back in like he’s punishing both of us for it.
He picks up speed until I can’t do anything but pant. No room for regret. No room for sense. Just him.
Then, without warning, still buried deep, Ever hauls me off the ground.
I gasp and lock my arms around his neck while instinct takes over and my legs wrap around his waist. My thighs shake. He braces me there and fucks up into me in hard, driving thrusts that knock broken sounds from my mouth.
I’m split open in the best way.
Consumed. Grounded. Utterly, fully, possessed.
He licks into my mouth, bites my lip, and fucks me harder.
“Mine, mine, mine.”
Each word is a thrust.
Each thrust a mark.
“Ever—” It comes out shredded.
He drags his mouth to my ear. “Scream. No one can hear you. Scream and come all over my cock.”
That does it.
The dirty promise. His voice. The fullness of him. The brutal pace and the grind of his body where we’re joined. I come again with a curse, clenching around him so hard I feel him lose rhythm.
His movements turn jerky.
For one desperate second I think he’s going to stay buried and spill inside me, and some traitorous part of me wants exactly that.
Instead he tears himself free with a rough groan and pumps his cock in his fist, jaw clenched, eyes squeezed shut. Cum streaks the ground near the roots while he rides out the orgasm in fractured grunts.
I stare at him, breathing like I ran a mile.
I’m in so much trouble. Because I wanted him to come in me. Because I wanted him to keep saying mine until I forgot my own name.
Because one of these days I’m going to pay for wanting what men like him do to women like me.
He’s chosen me. I haven’t chosen him.
...Have I?
Ever opens his eyes, still breathing hard, and steps close enough to press his sweat-slick forehead to mine. He steals one more kiss—slower this time, less violence, more aftermath.
Then he lowers me carefully until my boots hit dirt.
My legs barely hold.
I brace on the tree while he tucks himself away, and the trembling starts somewhere deep and works its way outward. My lips won’t stop shaking.
Ever grabs my pants from where he threw them and shakes off leaves and grit. He looks up to hand them to me—and freezes.
“Reva?”
His gaze drops—fast, precise—down my shirt to my side and to the darkening spread he couldn’t see in the low light before. His face changes in a way that makes my stomach drop as he helps ease my legs into them.
“Jesus Christ.”
My pants on but unbuttoned, he reaches for me and stops himself mid-motion as if afraid to hurt me more.
“Sit.”
“No.”
“Reva.” His voice turns iron. “Sit.”
I swallow hard and slide down the tree, dirt cold under my thighs, breath coming shallow now that the adrenaline is gone.
Ever drops to a crouch, hands steady, and lifts the hem of my shirt with two fingers like it might bite him.
The cut is longer than I wanted it to be. Not deep. But it’s still bleeding, slow and stubborn.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says, and the words scrape out of him like blame.
“I didn’t feel it,” I lie. Then, quieter: “Not at first. And then I did. I just didn’t care.”
Ever’s eyes flick to my face—sharp, furious, scared in a way he’s trying to kill.
“You’re gonna get infected,” he mutters.
“I’ll be fine. I’m an EMT.”
“Then act like one,” he snaps. “It’s still bleeding…”
He presses his palm to the wound to stop the bleeding, and the pain finally blooms—late, mean, and real.
I gasp and clench my teeth.
Ever’s jaw flexes. “I’m taking you home. Now.”