Chapter 20
TWENTY
Eliza
HEAT
The air between us tightens, thick as a storm about to break. The cold bite of the concrete burns beneath my knees, but I barely feel it. Every nerve in my body is tuned to him. There’s no noise but our breathing, and even that feels deliberate, held back.
A stillness that isn’t emptiness … It’s control. His control.
I expected him to smirk. To tease. But he doesn’t. He just stares at me with an intensity so unflinching it feels like pressure, like weight pressing down over every inch of my exposed skin.
When he finally moves, it’s only to cup the side of my face.
His thumb brushes my cheekbone, then drifts lower to rest at the hinge of my jaw, like he’s testing the muscle.
His touch is firm, sure, but not cruel. His fingers trace the shape of my mouth, and I know he’s not admiring it. He’s owning it.
“You sure?” he asks, voice low and rough, but not uncertain. It’s not a question born of hesitation. It’s respect. A final pause before everything changes.
I nod. My throat’s too tight to speak.
He unbuttons his pants, the sound barely more than a whisper. He frees himself with one hand, and there’s no show to it. He’s not performing. Not trying to be the fantasy I shared in the dark. He’s just being Cooper. And that, somehow, is more intimate than any fantasy I could have conjured.
“Open your mouth.”
The command doesn’t startle me. It doesn’t even feel like a command. It feels like an invitation. My lips part, and I look up at him—not seeking approval.
Just—present.
Completely, wholly present.
He steps forward, the head of his cock brushing against my tongue. The weight of him is immediate. He doesn’t thrust. Not yet. He just rests there. Heavy. Warm. Real. I close my lips around him slowly, and his exhale is quiet and ragged, like I’ve taken more from him than he expected.
His fingers tighten in my hair. Not to pull. To guide.
And when he moves—slow, shallow thrusts—I let go.
I let my mind still. Let sensation take the place of shame.
Let want replace fear. I’ve spent my entire life defining myself by words.
But right now, there are none. Just the sound of his breath.
The soft, wet slide of his body in my mouth. The dizzying ache of surrender.
He doesn’t talk much—not the way I do. But now, every quiet sound he makes is a language. A story I understand on instinct. His grunt when I take him deeper. His sharp inhale when my tongue traces the underside. The low curse when I gag, just a little, and don’t pull back.
“Just like that,” he says, voice cracking with restraint. “Don’t you dare stop.”
The words don’t humiliate me. They anchor me. I’m not ashamed. I’m not small. I’m his. And he’s not degrading me—he’s recognizing me. Recognizing every hidden part of me I thought I’d buried too deep to ever unearth again.
When he finally pulls free, I’m breathless, dizzy, spit-wet, and aching. But I don’t want to stop.
I want all of him.
He hauls me to my feet, slow and careful but without asking, without breaking the thread of dominance that now connects us. My legs tremble. Not from fear. From release. From the space that’s opened between us, carved by the heat of his gaze and the softness of his grip.
He turns me—hands on my hips—and bends me over the back of the metal chair. The chill of it shocks my skin, makes me gasp. And still, he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask.
He slides a hand between my thighs, fingers brushing the heat there, the slick evidence of what we’ve already done. “Fuck,” he mutters, low and reverent. “You’re dripping.”
I bite my lip. Not out of shame. Out of the unbearable truth of how badly I need what comes next.
When he presses inside, it’s not brutal.
It’s not gentle either.
It’s complete.
A slow, steady claiming that fills every inch of me until I’m stretched around him, held open and helpless, right where I need to be.
His hand curls around the back of my neck, holding me down—not to dominate, but to center me.
To hold me still so I can feel every inch of him. His body. His weight. His need.
He thrusts again. Deeper. My body rises to meet him without thought.
“You think this is a fantasy?” he says, voice gravel and grit and heat. “Think again, Eliza.”
I moan, high and broken.
He drives into me without apology, without hesitation, his grip iron at my hips, keeping me braced and open for every brutal, claiming thrust. There’s nothing calculated or cautious in the way he moves—just raw male force, anchored by a will honed through combat and silence and years of never needing anyone. Until now.
Until me.
He fucks like he bleeds—without complaint. Without fear. Like the pain in his shoulder doesn’t matter. Like the whole goddamn tunnel could collapse around us and he wouldn’t stop until I was wrung dry, aching and soaked in the truth of what he does to me.
He pounds deeper, hips slamming into the curve of my ass as I cry out, high and wrecked.
My thighs shake. My jaw clenches. I want to crawl away from the overwhelming flood of sensation, and I want to crawl back to him at the same time.
He leaves no room for thought, no room for control, just the relentless rhythm of a man using me the way I begged to be used—without permission. Without mercy.
“You feel that?” he growls, his breath hot against the nape of my neck. “This is what happens when you let a man like me in. I don’t stop until you can’t fucking walk.”
His fingers slide between my thighs. Find my clit. And the cry that tears from me is nearly animalistic, my body locking around him as he drags me toward another climax—not tender, not sweet, but brutal and full-bodied and earned.
“You’re mine now,” he snarls, and I swear I can feel it in my bones. “Not because I said so. Because your body fucking decided.”
He fucks me through it, doesn’t let me come down, not even for breath. His rhythm is unforgiving, deep and ruthless and perfect. Every thrust is an answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. Every snap of his hips says, this is who I am, and I believe it. I believe him.
I brace against the chair, my voice gone, my body raw, and still I want more. Still, I push back into him like I need to be wrecked to be made whole again.
And when I come—again—it’s not an orgasm. It’s annihilation. A total obliteration of thought, of time, of the line between fantasy and reality. My body convulses, wrung out and taken. Not held. Not coddled. Claimed.
He follows with a roar that feels more like a release of war than of pleasure, his hands branding my hips as he buries himself one final time and spills inside me.
We don’t move.
Can’t.
The only sound is the echo of our breathing and the hollow hum of the tunnel lights above, flickering with their own warning rhythm.
He’s still inside me when he lowers his forehead to my back, his weight draping over me, solid and trembling. Not from weakness. From restraint. The kind it takes to hold back everything he could’ve done—and didn’t.
And that, more than anything, undoes me.
Because he could’ve destroyed me.
But he didn’t.
He gave me exactly what I asked for.
What I’ve always needed.
And for the first time, I understand the difference between being used—and being wanted.
We stay like that—pressed together, limbs tangled, breath shallow in the heavy silence of the room.
His chest is damp against my back, each exhale a hard-won drag of air.
The concrete floor beneath my knees is unforgiving, my thighs tremble from strain, and I’m still slick and open where he left me—taken and held in a way that feels, not undone exactly, but rewritten.
His cock softens inside me, then slips free, and I nearly flinch at the loss. He exhales roughly, the sound more animal than man, and I feel the effort in his body as he straightens, already bracing against the pain his shoulder must be screaming.
He doesn’t speak. Just lets his hand slide over my lower back, then up to my spine, steady and grounding. I start to turn toward him, but he beats me to it—gently drawing me upright, his hand still firm at my waist. My legs feel wobbly, my skin flushed, clothes scattered on the floor behind me.
“Get dressed,” he murmurs, voice low and frayed at the edges. “You’ll freeze.”
The words land like a snap of cold air across my skin. Not unkind. Just real. Just Cooper. Practical. Protecting me in the only ways he knows how.
I nod, cheeks hot, and turn to gather my clothes.
My hands tremble a little, not from embarrassment, but from the echo of what we just did—the force of it still humming through every nerve.
I pull my shirt over my head, tug on my underwear, my jeans.
He watches without comment, his gaze steady but unreadable. Not possessive. Not soft. Just there.
When I finish dressing, he moves. Carefully, with a wince and a hiss that tells me how much more pain he’s in than he’s letting on.
His bare chest is still streaked with sweat and dried blood, the makeshift bandage on his shoulder darkening at the edge.
He’s holding himself stiff, but his eyes never leave me.
“Come here,” he says.
It’s not a command this time. Not a test or a game.
It’s an offer.
I go.
He draws me toward the cot tucked in the corner of the room—thin mattress, threadbare blanket, but it’s better than concrete.
He sits first, jaw tight with effort, then pulls me gently into his lap, shifting us both down until we’re lying across it, my body tucked against his good side.
His breath is ragged. His shoulder must be screaming. But he doesn’t make me sleep alone.
“You’ve got nine hours,” he murmurs, voice low near my temple. “Before extraction. Maybe less if we’re unlucky. Either way—we rest now.”
I nod, my fingers curling lightly against his side, over the bruised ribs I know he’s ignoring. I want to ask him what all this meant. What we are now. What comes next.
But none of it matters here.
Not in this abandoned room. Not between a woman who finally said her fantasy aloud and the man who answered it without blinking.
His hand finds my back. Just rests there. Warm. Protective. A silent vow.
And as my eyes drift closed, exhaustion finally overtaking adrenaline, I feel it settle inside me—not fear. Not regret.
But this quiet, impossible thing I don’t have a name for.
Maybe later, when we’re safe, I’ll find the words.
But for now, there’s nothing left to do but sleep.
And trust that when I wake, he’ll still be alive.