Chapter 11: Aftermath of the wedding ceremony
The door clicked shut, sealing them into the quiet, lemon-scented dark of the borrowed house. The silence was a living thing, pulsing with everything left unsaid on the drive home. Tessa leaned back against the cool wood, her eyes finding Hardin in the gloom. He was just a shape, a tension of shadows a few feet away.
She pushed off the door, crossed the space, and kissed him.
It was less an invitation and more a necessity, a physical sealing of the promise she’d made in the car. His mouth was soft at first, surprised, then instantly desperate. He kissed her back with a hungry gratitude that stole her breath. His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks.
He broke away only to tug his suit jacket off, the fabric whispering as he let it fall to the hardwood floor. He pulled her back to him.
They kissed again, a slow, deep convergence that was more about feeling than passion. His skin was warm under her palms, She could feel the rapid, heavy thump of his heart against her own.
His skin was warm under her palms, and she could feel the rapid, heavy thump of his heart against her own. It was a frantic rhythm that matched the unspoken words choking the air between them—his father’s toast, the cold terrace, the devastating truth about his mother. She kissed him harder, trying to erase the ghost of that eight-year-old boy from his mouth.
They didn’t break the kiss walking towards the bed, a clumsy, connected shuffle through the familiar dark of the bedroom. Her back gently met the wall, and she used it for leverage, pushing them both forward until the back of Hardin’s legs hit the firm edge of the mattress.
Tessa pulled away slightly, breaking the kiss just enough to draw a sharp breath. Hardin tried to capture her lips again, a low sound of protest in his throat.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes dark and certain in the faint light from the streetlamp outside. “I want you now,” she said, the words clear and leaving no room for the ghosts.
He looked at her, his ocean-blue eyes scanning her face as if memorizing a map in a storm. Then he kissed her, a deep, surrendering kiss that held an echo of his gratitude by the car.
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his crisp white shirt, pushing the fabric apart. She shoved the shirt from his shoulders, and it joined his jacket on the floor with a soft rustle. He didn’t break the kiss, his own hands reaching behind her to find the zipper of her blue dress.
He undid it slowly, the sound a long, slow sigh in the quiet room. The dress slipped from her shoulders and fell, a pool of silk at their feet. He stepped out of his suit pants, letting them pool on the floor, and kicked them aside.
He laid her down gently on the cool sheets, following her down, his body a welcome weight. He kissed her slowly, each touch of his lips a deliberate, tender punctuation. He broke the kiss to look at her, his gaze tracing her features as if seeing her for the first time since they’d left the nightmare of the mansion.
Then he kissed her again.
This kiss was different, a raw and searching thing that mapped the curve of her lip, the catch of her breath. He moved his mouth to her jaw, then her throat, each press of his lips a silent apology for the world he’d dragged her into tonight.
His hands, usually so sure, trembled slightly as they traced the line of her hip. He was looking at her, really looking, in the fractured city light coming through the blinds.
“Tessa,” he breathed against her skin, the word more air than sound.
She shivered, arching into his touch. Her own hands slid up his back, feeling the taut muscles, the ridges of old scars she’d never asked about. She found his shoulder, her fingertips tracing the muscle beneath.
He braced himself above her, his forearms caging her head. The three birds inked around one arm seemed to watch her.
She pulled him down for another kiss.
He groaned into her mouth, the last of his restraint fraying. His hips settled against hers, a slow, deliberate pressure that made her gasp. He rocked against her once, twice, a painful friction through the layers of their underwear. The heat and the want were a tangible pulse in the room, drowning out the memory of string quartets and his father’s voice.
He pushed himself up suddenly, the loss of his warmth a shock. He leaned over, his arm stretching to yank open the drawer of the nightstand. The wood rasped in the quiet.
He reached into the drawer, pulling out a condom. Tessa watched him. He closed the drawer, holding the square packet in his hand, looking at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked, the shadows hollowing his cheeks.
She nodded, holding his gaze. “Yeah.”
He tore the wrapper open with his teeth and pulled it down over the length of himself, looking at her. She looked down, then back up to meet his eyes. He slid in slowly, looking at her. Her face twisted, a sharp inhale catching in her throat as he bottomed out inside of her. He stopped, looking at her. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head, her palm flattening against the rapid beat of his heart. “Go slow,” she breathed, the words barely audible.
She looked down between them, her breath hitching as he began to move with a careful, deliberate slowness that made her toes curl into the sheets. The initial sharpness softened, transforming into a deep, stretching fullness that forced the air from her lungs in a shaky stream.
She looked back up at him, breathing heavily now, her eyes wide and locked on his. Her hand slid from his chest to the sweat-damp nape of his neck, her fingers tangling in his messy hair. He continued that slow, deep rhythm, each measured movement a silent vow, a shared breath in the dark.
He looked at her. Really looked. His eyes, usually a turbulent ocean, were still and clear, reflecting the faint light and her own face back at her. There was no storm in them now, only a profound, terrified wonder. He was completely exposed, more than he’d been on the terrace, more than he’d ever been. His torso seemed to tremble with each controlled thrust.
“Hardin,” she whispered, the name a broken thing.
They both leaned in, kissing each other with a sudden, shared desperation. It was salt and heat, the taste of her tears or his, she couldn’t tell. They broke the kiss, their breathing heavier, echoing in the silent room.
Hardin tried to remain his slow pace, looking at Tessa, his gaze a question. He slowly went a little faster, not much faster than he was. The bed now creaked against the wall with a rhythmic, gentle protest. He watched her face for any sign it might hurt, his eyes scanning for a flinch, a hesitation, anything other than what he found.
Her expression was pure focus, her lips parted, her eyes half-closed but fixed on him. A soft sigh escaped her, and her nails dug into the skin of his shoulders just enough to anchor them both. It wasn't pain he saw. It was something else, something that made his chest tighten.
"Don't stop," she breathed, the words hitting his mouth.
He buried his face in her hair, his breaths hot and uneven against her scalp. The scent of her shampoo, something clean like coconut, mixed with the sweat at his temple.
A sound tore from him, part groan, part sob. His head found the curve of her neck, breathing heavily. He kissed her neck, not with gentleness but with a kind of frantic reverence, his lips kissing the sensitive skin there.
Her legs wrapped tighter around his hips, pulling him deeper. The change in angle made her gasp, her back arching off the mattress. A small, broken noise escaped her lips, and her eyes squeezed shut.
"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice gruff, strained with concern. He stilled, his whole body tense.
"Yes," she moans out, her head tilting back into the pillow, eyes fluttering open to find his.
"Yes," she moans out, her head tilting back into the pillow, eyes fluttering open to find his. The sincerity there, the raw need, undoes the last of his careful control. He kisses her neck again, his teeth grazing the pulse point just below her ear.
She shudders, a full-body tremor that he feels everywhere. "Hardin, please." Her breath catches in her throat, then releases as a moan spills out, low and wanting.
He stops kissing her neck, lifting his head to look at her. That please did something to him. It wasn't a question. It was a command from her very core, and it traveled straight through him, a live wire to his spine. His pace, which had been measured and deep, slowed almost to a stop at the sound of it.
She felt the hesitation, the sudden check in his rhythm. Her eyes, hazy and dark, found his. "No," she breathed, her hands releasing his shoulders to fist the sheets beside her head. "Please, don't stop."
Her head tilted back further, throat exposed, eyes struggling to stay open as if fighting against a wave of pure sensation. The sight was an undeniable surrender, and it demolished him a ragged sound tore from his chest.
He looked at her watching him, listening to her fragmented breaths. He started to slowly build his pace back to where it was, the low creak of the frame against the wall marking each return. His hands found hers, interlocking their fingers next to her head, pinning them gently to the mattress.
The world narrowed to the joining of their bodies and the locked gaze they couldn’t break. She bit her lower lip, a soft whimper escaping as the sensation built, relentless and coiled tight in her abdomen.
Her eyes, which had begun to drift shut, snapped back to his. The intensity there was almost too much, a current that threatened to pull her under. She felt exposed, utterly seen.
“Hardin,” she gasped, his name a plea for something she couldn’t name.
The sound was swallowed by the room, by the heat and the rhythm and the terrifying vulnerability in his eyes. Her body was trembling at the edges, a coil wound too tight. She could feel the start of something vast and inevitable building.
“Hardin” his name tore from her again, a raw moan this time that had nothing to do with pain.
The sound seemed to startle him. His gaze, which had been locked on hers with an almost terrifying intensity, sharpened into focus. She was trying to free her hands from where he’d pinned them. Her fingers twisted in his grip, not pushing him away, but seeking movement, release, something to ground the storm inside her.
He let go of her hands immediately, his own flying back as if burned. He braced his weight on his palms, stopping all motion. “Are you okay?” he asks, his voice gravelly and stripped bare.
The sudden stillness was a shock. The loss of friction, the loss of his grip, left her unmoored. Cool air rushed between their bodies where heat had been. She could see the panic dawning in his eyes. He was already pulling away, retreating into that familiar fortress of guilt.
“No,” she breathed, the word desperate. She didn’t reach for her hands, now free and tingling at her sides. Instead, she lifted her hips from the mattress, a deliberate, seeking arch that brought her body flush against his again. “Don’t stop.”
Her voice wasn’t a plea this time. It was a command, clear and sure. She saw the confusion flicker across his face, the conflict between his fear and her demand. To emphasize it, she brought her freed hands up, not to push, but to pull. She wrapped her arms around his back, her palms sliding over the sweat-slicked skin. She pulled him down until his chest was against hers and his forehead rested in the hollow of her neck.
A shudder ran through him, a great, full-body release of a breath he’d been holding. He turned his head, his lips finding the pulse in her throat. He kissed it, once, softly. Then he moved again, a slow, deep thrust that pulled a gasp from her lips.
This time, she didn’t hold anything back. Her hands ran down the sweat-slick planes of his back, her nails scraping lightly over old scars and new muscle. They clawed at his shoulders, seeking purchase as the sensation built into something unbearable. Her fists then twisted into the sheets, the cotton straining under her grip. She was fighting something in her own body, a cresting wave she both feared and needed. A moan broke from her, raw and unchanneled. “Hardin.” It came out as a broken kind of sob, strangled by the pressure coiling deep within.
He moved his mouth from the damp skin of her neck to look at her. He kept his slow, measured thrusts, his eyes dark and unblinking. He was reading every micro-expression that flickered across her face—the parted lips, the flutter of her eyelids, the faint tremble in her jaw.
He slowed down to almost a complete stop, hovering deep inside her for a suspended second. Then he pushed in again, a single, profound stroke that made her cry out. He repeated it, this agonizing rhythm: a retreat, a pause filled with her ragged breathing, then a deep, claiming return.
He watched her face, knowing exactly what she was feeling. He saw the moment her control began to fracture. It was in the wild dilation of her pupils, the way her teeth sunk into her swollen bottom lip, the helpless arch of her spine as it lifted from the mattress.
She chanted his name into the crook of his neck, a frantic, damp litany. Her clenched fists finally released the sheets, her hands flying back to his skin, grasping at him.
Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, not pushing him away but pulling him closer, deeper, as if she could fuse them together. Every nerve ending was screaming, tightening from her core out to her trembling limbs. The world dissolved into sensation—the feel of his skin under her palms, the ragged sound of his breathing in her ear, the impossible fullness of him with every slow, deliberate thrust.
"Hardin," she moaned out, the word shredded and raw."Please."
He froze.
The sudden, absolute stillness was a shock. He lifted his head to look at her, his body rigid, his eyes wide and dark. That single plea had sliced through everything. They felt everything in that suspended silence—him throbbing deep inside of her, her pulsing and clenching around him in frantic, involuntary waves."Please?" he questioned, his voice a harsh scrape.
Tessa's breath hitched, the sound trapped in her throat. She couldn't find words, not with this desperate need colliding inside her. Her fingers tightened on his back, nails biting into his skin.
She didn't say anything. She couldn't. She slowly moved her hips underneath him, a deliberate, rolling lift that drew him deeper. She nodded, once, her gaze holding his through the dim light, and then a loud moan broke from her, ragged and unreserved.
The sound shattered his last restraint.
It was a raw, unfiltered thing that broke the measured rhythm he’d been holding onto like a lifeline. He drove into her, a single, deep plunge that knocked the breath from both of them. Her back arched, a silent scream shaping her mouth.
Her hands flew from his back to his neck, fingers tangling in the damp hair at his nape, and she pulled him down. She was trying to erase the space, the air, the memory of every cruel word and haunted look from the terrace. His mouth found hers in a messy, off-center collision of teeth and shared breath.
She rolled her hips up to meet his next thrust, a fluid, instinctive motion that drew a shattered groan from his chest. He pushed deeper, anchoring them together. The careful control was gone, incinerated.
They were both moaning messes, a tangled chorus of desperate sounds lost in the sweat-slick dark. The bedframe’s complaint was a frantic, percussive beat against the wall. His forehead dropped to hers, their panting breaths mingling, hot and damp.
The coil in Tessa’s stomach wound tighter, a spiraling wire of pure sensation. It was blinding, terrifying. She didn’t understand it, didn’t know what to do with the pressure building beyond bearing. Her world narrowed to the points where their bodies connected, a map of searing contact.
“I can’t—” she gasped, the words breaking apart. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, seeking leverage, seeking more. It was a plea and a confession.
“I know,” he gritted out, his voice ragged against her ear.
And he did know. He could feel it in the frantic clutch of her muscles around him, in the way her breaths came in sharp, shallow gasps that weren't quite sobs. He was balanced on that same brutal edge, the world reduced to the unbearable pressure building at the base of his spine.
They kept up. The roll of Tessa’s hips upwards, a fluid, demanding arch. Hardin’s deep thrust as he met her, driving them both further from the shore of anything resembling thought. The rhythm was a shared language, all gasped breaths and the wet sound of their bodies moving together.
He looked at her, her face blurred by the dark and her own pleasure. “Cum for me, Tessa,” he pleaded, his voice cracking. “Please.” It sounded like he was begging. He was. He needed to see it, to know he could give her this one untainted thing after the poison of the evening.
His hand slipped from her hip to cup her lower back, lifting her slightly. His weight shifted, the angle changing, and the coil snapped.
The coil wound so tight detonated at her core, radiating outwards in shuddering waves. Her cry was muffled against his shoulder, her body clamping around him in rhythmic, involuntary pulses. It was a raw, unraveling thing that seemed to go on and on, pulling the air from the room.
He grabs her face gently, turning it from his shoulder. “Look at me,” he says, needing to see her come undone.
Her eyes, glazed and distant, somehow found his. He watched her come apart, the sight of her, unraveling because of him, was his undoing. A harsh, guttural sound tore from him. He buried his face in the pillow beside her head, his body bowing as his own release slammed through him, deep and shuddering.
Tessa grabbed his face, her hands making him look at her. She watches him come undone, his features contorted in a mix of agony and relief, his eyes squeezed shut before fluttering open to meet hers, dazed and vulnerable.
He keeps slowly thrusting, riding out both their waves until the movements become a gentle, absent rocking. The tremors subsided into a heavy, shared stillness. The only sounds were their ragged, slowing breaths.
Hardin’s full weight settled onto her, a solid, warm pressure that grounded her to the bed, to the earth. She could feel his heart hammering against her own, a frantic, slowing rhythm.
He was still inside her, slowly softening. The intimacy of it, the unguarded closeness after such raw release, was almost more overwhelming than what had come before. She lifted a trembling hand and ran it through his damp hair, her fingers catching in the tangled strands.
He didn’t move for a long moment, his face buried in the pillow beside her head. Finally, he let out a long, shaky exhale that warmed her neck. “Tessa,” he mumbled, the word muffled and thick.
“Yeah?” Her own voice was hoarse.
He didn’t answer with words. He shifted his hands, sliding them beneath her back, his palms warm and broad against her spine. In one smooth, surprisingly strong motion, he flipped them over.
The world spun. Hardin was now on his back, his torso a stark shadow in the low light. Tessa was sprawled on top of him, a gasp caught in her throat from the sudden movement. He hadn’t pulled out; the shift seated him deep within her again, a reminder of their connection.
She braced her hands on his chest, pushing herself up slightly. As she did, her body was hit with waves. They were softer echoes of the earlier climax, gentle, internal pulses that made her muscles flutter and her breath hitch. She went still, feeling the aftershocks ripple through her.
A low, satisfied sound vibrated in Hardin’s chest. His hands slid from her back to settle on her hips, his thumbs stroking the skin there. He was watching her face.