Chapter 1: Rain-Soaked Reunion
He doesn't come inside so much as fill the doorway, rain still dripping off his curls, his soccer hoodie dark with water at the shoulders. I step back without meaning to. The door clicks shut behind him and suddenly my apartment feels three sizes too small.
"Say whatever you came to say," I tell him, arms crossed, chin up.
"I don't want to say anything." His voice is low, rough from the voicemail he clearly listened to in the car, because his eyes are red-rimmed and wrecked. "I want to listen. I did listen. Fourteen minutes, Nikki. I listened to all fourteen minutes of you telling me what an asshole I am, twice."
"Then you got the whole speech."
"I got the whole speech." He drips onto my floorboards. "And I'm standing here anyway."
I hate him. I hate the wet curl falling over his forehead and the way my chest hurts when he looks at me like that, like I'm the thing he's been starving for. I turn toward the kitchen just to have somewhere to put my body, and he follows, and then I turn back to tell him to leave, and we're nose to nose, breathing the same air, rain and lavender and four years of unfinished business.
"You brushed me off," I whisper. "I begged you for five minutes, Harry. You said later."
"I know."
"I was so ready to hate you for the rest of my life."
"Are you still?" His hand comes up slow, giving me every chance to stop it, and curls around the back of my neck. "Tell me you still hate me and I'll walk out that door right now."
The lie won't come. It sits there in my throat and dies, and what comes out instead is his name, and then his mouth is on mine.
It's not sweet. It's a collision. His hands are in my hair, blue roots to purple ends, fisting it, tilting my head back so he can devour me properly, and I'm grabbing fistfuls of that soaked hoodie and yanking it up over his head hard enough that he has to let go of me to shrug it off. He laughs against my lips, a dark, breathless sound.
"God, you're still a pain in my ass," he mutters.
"Shut up and put your back into it, Styles."
So he does. He walks me backward across the living room until my shoulders hit the front door, the wood cold through my shirt, and pins me there with his hips. He's hard already, a thick ridge pressing against my stomach through his jeans, and the feel of it makes something molten roll through me. His mouth travels down my jaw, my throat, sucking a mark below my ear that I will absolutely let him keep.
"Years," he growls into my neck. "Four goddamn years I've wanted to do this."
"Then stop talking about it."
His fingers find the hem of my shirt and drag it up my body, and I lift my arms and let him pull it over my head, my bra following, tossed somewhere toward the couch. His breath stutters when he looks at me. His green eyes go over my bare chest like he's memorizing it, and I feel my nipples tighten under the attention, my whole body flushing hot.
"You're perfect," he says, hoarse.
"Less staring. More hands."
He cups my breasts with both hands, thumbs dragging slow over my peaks until I gasp, then dips his head and takes one into his mouth, tongue circling, teeth a light sting that makes my knees buckle. I claw at his shoulders. He presses me harder into the door and suckles until I'm squirming, until I'm grinding my hips up against him shamelessly, my leggings suddenly the worst invention in human history.
"Bed," I manage. "Now."
He doesn't argue. He hooks one arm under my thighs and lifts me like I weigh nothing, my legs wrapping around his waist, my tits pressed against his bare chest, his mouth finding mine again on the way down the hall. He nearly clips the doorframe with my heel and we both laugh into the kiss, and somehow that makes it hotter, realer, us.
He lays me down on my own bed, sheets still rumpled from this morning, and kneels between my legs to peel my leggings down slowly, kissing a line down my stomach as more skin is bared. My panties go with them. I'm bare and open under him, dripping, and he just looks for a second, one hand sliding up my inner thigh.
"Harry." My voice cracks. "Please."
"Yeah, baby. I've got you."
He lowers his head and puts his mouth on my pussy, and my back arches clean off the mattress. His tongue is broad and hot, dragging a slow stripe up my slit before circling my clit, and then he settles in like he's got nowhere else in the world to be. Two fingers spread me open so he can lick deeper, fucking me with his tongue, nose pressing against my swollen bud, stubble scraping my inner thighs in a way that makes me shudder.
"Oh my god. Right there, don't stop, don't you dare stop."
He doesn't. He works me with obscene patience, alternating slow broad strokes with quick flicks of his tongue, sliding two fingers into my aching cunt and curling them against that spot that makes sparks burst behind my eyes. I thread my fingers into his damp curls and pull, and the moan he groans into me vibrates straight through my clit.
I come apart in under three minutes, loud and graceless, thighs clamping around his head while he keeps licking me through it, gentle now, drawing out every aftershock until I'm whimpering and pushing at his forehead.
He lifts his face, lips shiny, grinning like he just won a championship. "Fourteen minutes of voicemail," he says, kissing up my body, "and this is the only speech I ever needed to hear."
"Get your pants off before I change my mind."
He scrambles back off the bed to kick his jeans and boxers down, and Christ, he's been hiding all of that under soccer shorts for years. Long, thick, already flushed dark and hard, a bead of precum at the tip. He strokes himself once, twice, watching me watch him, and then he's crawling back over me, settling into the cradle of my hips.
"Condom," he breathes, like the word physically hurts him.
"Drawer. Left nightstand. Fast."
He fumbles it on in seconds and then he's back, the blunt head of his cock nudging at my entrance, and we both still for one heartbeat, looking at each other. This is the line. Everything before this was heat, but this is the years, all of it, finally crossing.
"Nikki," he says, soft, the cocky grin gone.
"Yeah," I whisper. "Harry. Yes."
He pushes in slow, and I feel every inch, my walls stretching around him, that sweet burn as my body opens for something it's wanted this long. He bottoms out with a broken groan, forehead dropping to mine, and we just breathe for a second, joined, shaking.
"Fuck," he gasps. "You feel... baby, you feel unreal."
"Move," I beg, digging my nails into his ass. "Please move."
He pulls almost all the way out and drives back in, and then the slow is over. He fucks me like the last four years are chasing him, hips snapping against mine, the headboard knocking the wall, my tits bouncing with every thrust. I hook my legs over his shoulders and he sinks deeper, hitting the end of me, and I'm wailing his name at my own ceiling.
"That's it, scream it," he pants. "Been wanting the whole damn neighborhood to know you're mine."
"Harder, Harry, harder."
He gives it to me. His thumb finds my clit and rubs tight circles in time with his thrusts, and my second orgasm builds fast and violent, coiling in my belly. He's cursing, rhythm stuttering, so close himself, sweat dripping from his curls onto my chest.
"Come with me," I gasp. "Harry, come inside me, come with me, please."
That does it. My cunt clamps down around him and he shoves deep and groans long and low, cock pulsing, and we shake through it together, his hips grinding little circles to wring out every last pulse, until we collapse in a tangled, gasping heap.