Chapter 3: Possessive Claim
The music from down the hall was a dull, bass-heavy throb, but in Ava’s room, it was just the two of them and the frantic, wet sound of their kissing.
The guy—Kyle, maybe, or Kaleb, she hadn’t really been listening—had hands that were too eager, slipping under her thin tank top and fumbling with the clasp of her bra. She arched into it, moaning into his mouth, but the sound felt hollow in her own ears. She was chasing a feeling, trying to replicate a specific, devastating heat that had been absent for two weeks. Since the night at Lucas’s apartment. Since the silence.
This wasn’t it. This was sloppy and thirsty.
The door slammed open with a crash that shook the framed Polaroids on the wall.
Ava jerked back, wiping her mouth. Lucas stood in the doorway, filling it. He wasn’t dressed in his usual flannel and jeans. He wore dark slacks and a wrinkled dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. He’d clearly come from some work thing. His face was pale, his jaw a hard line, but his eyes—his eyes were black with a fury so intense it stole the air from the room.
He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the guy.
“Out.” The word was low, flat, and absolute. “Now.”
Kyle-or-Kaleb stumbled back, his lips swollen, his face a mask of confused bravado. “Whoa, dude, what the hell?”
Lucas took one step into the room. That was all it took. The guy flinched, muttered “Fuck this,” and sidestepped around him, vanishing into the hallway. Lucas kicked the door shut. The latch clicked with a finality that made Ava’s heart hammer against her ribs.
He finally looked at her. His gaze traveled from her disheveled hair, over the bare skin of her stomach where her top had ridden up, down to her tiny shorts.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, forcing her voice not to shake. She crossed her arms.
“Riley won’t take my calls,” he said, his voice dangerously calm. “She told Maya, who told Zay, who told me you’ve been ‘exploring your options’ at Sigma Chi mixers for the past three nights.” He took another step closer. The cozy room felt claustrophobic. “Were you exploring that one?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“You made it my business,” he snapped, the calm cracking. “You blew up my life, you crawled under my skin, and then you just… stopped. No calls. No texts. Was I just a fucking notch, Ava? A story to tell your dormmates?”
“You were the one who acted like it was a mistake! You wouldn’t look at me the next morning. You practically shoved me into that Uber.” Her own anger, fueled by two weeks of frustrated confusion, ignited. “So yeah, I’m moving on. Is that what you want to hear?”
What she saw in his eyes then wasn’t just anger. It was raw, unchecked jealousy, and something darker—possession.
“No,” he said, simply.
He closed the distance between them in two strides. His hands shot out, one tangling in her hair, the other gripping her hip, and he spun her, pushing her back against the cool plaster wall next to her bookshelf. The impact knocked a breath from her lungs. Polaroids of them as kids, laughing on a hiking trail, fluttered to the floor.
His body pressed against hers, pinning her. He was trembling. She could feel the hard line of his erection already straining against his slacks, pressing into her stomach.
“You want to get fucked?” he growled, his mouth inches from hers. His breath was hot and smelled of bourbon. “By some frat boy who doesn’t know the first thing about what you need?”
His hand slid from her hip, down over the curve of her ass, and up the inside of her thigh. His fingers found the lace edge of her panties. They were already damp—from the other guy’s fumbling, from Lucas’s sudden, violent presence. He rubbed the soaked fabric, a rough, circular motion that made her gasp.
“He wouldn’t know what to do with this,” Lucas hissed. “He wouldn’t know how to make it hurt so good you forget your own name.”
With one sharp, brutal tug, he ripped the delicate lace sideways. The fabric gave way with a tearing sound. A chill air hit her exposed skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of his palm cupping her bare sex. He shoved two fingers inside her without preamble, curling them, searching.
She cried out, a sharp, broken sound, her head thudding back against the wall. She was embarrassingly wet, her body betraying her mind’s protest.
“See?” he muttered, working his fingers in and out, a crude, punishing rhythm. “You’re dripping for it. You’ve been dripping for me since I walked in. Since I fucking left you in that cab.” He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear. “So take it from someone who knows how to ruin you properly.”
He withdrew his fingers, shiny with her arousal, and brought them to her mouth. He smeared them over her lips. The taste of herself was sharp and familiar. She kept her eyes locked on his, defiant, and sucked his fingers into her mouth, cleaning them with a slow, deliberate swipe of her tongue.
A animal sound ripped from his throat.
He fumbled with his belt and fly, his movements jerky. His cock sprang free, thick and already leaking. He didn’t bother with his pants, just shoved them down his thighs. He hooked his hands under her knees and lifted, forcing her legs up and around his waist. The position spread her wide, vulnerable, her torn panties a useless scrap at one thigh.
He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head nudging against her.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice ragged.
She did. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown.
He slammed up into her.
The penetration was brutal, a filling, stretching shock that stole her voice. She could only gasp, her nails digging into his shoulders through the cotton of his shirt. He was bigger than she remembered, or maybe it was just the unchecked force of it. He buried himself to the hilt, his hips grinding against hers, making sure she took every inch.
“That’s it,” he breathed, his forehead dropping to hers. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? No gentle. No sweet. Just this.”
He began to move. There was no rhythm, just a driving, punishing series of thrusts, each one jolting her body against the wall. The bookshelf rattled beside them. It was raw, it was mean, and it was exactly what had been festering between them for two weeks—all the guilt, the silence, the unresolved need, channeled into a physical violence that felt like truth.
“You think some fucking kid could fuck you like this?” he grunted, punctuating each word with a deep, grinding plunge. “You think he could make you feel this… full?”
She couldn’t answer. Pleasure, sharp and coil-tight, was building from the very brutality of it. Each scrape of his pubic bone against her clit, each possessive slap of his skin against hers, sent a jolt of white-hot electricity through her nerves. She buried her face in his neck, biting down on the tendon there to stifle her moans.
“No,” she finally whimpered. “Only you.”
Her admission unleashed something in him. He pulled out almost entirely, then drove back in with a force that made her see stars. He shifted his angle, and on the next thrust, he hit a spot so deep and perfect that a scream was torn from her throat.
“There,” he panted, chasing that spot again and again, his rhythm finally finding a devastating, focused cadence. “That’s where you need it. Right fucking there. Come on. Come for me. Show me it’s still mine.”
His words were the final trigger. The coil snapped. Her orgasm exploded through her without warning, a convulsive, mind-wiping wave that clamped her around him like a vice. She shook, a silent scream against his skin, her internal muscles pulsing and fluttering in a relentless, sweet agony.
Feeling her come undone around him broke his control. With a choked, guttural roar, he shoved into her one last, deep time and held there. She felt the hot, sudden flood of his release filling her, jet after jet, a claiming so intimate it felt more invasive than the sex itself. He trembled against her, his whole body rigid with the force of it.
Slowly, the world swam back. The bass from down the hall was still thumping. Her legs, locked around him, began to ache. He was still inside her, softening, both of them slick with sweat and spent.
He let her legs slide down until her feet touched the floor, but he didn’t pull away. He leaned into her, his weight heavy, his breath hot on her neck. She felt a shudder go through him that had nothing to do with pleasure.
When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow, stripped of all its earlier fury.
“Riley’s telling your parents.”
The words were a bucket of ice water. Ava went still.
He finally pulled out of her. The feeling of emptiness was immediate and profound. He turned away, fumbling to tuck himself back into his slacks, doing up his belt with unsteady hands. He wouldn’t look at her.
Ava stood against the wall, her shorts and torn panties around one ankle, his cum already starting to trickle down her inner thigh. The physical evidence of what they’d just done was a stark, ugly contrast to the cold dread now seeping into her veins.
“When?” she whispered.
“Tomorrow night. Family dinner. She’s making it formal.” He ran a hand over his face. He looked exhausted, wrecked. “She said I’m a predator. That I took advantage of you.”
“I’ll tell them that’s not true.”
“Will you?” He finally looked at her, his eyes bleak. “What is the truth, Ava? You’re nineteen. I’m your sister’s best friend. I fucked you on my floor the night she found out, and then I fucked you against your wall because I saw someone else’s hands on you. That doesn’t look good on paper.”
He turned and walked to the door. He paused, his hand on the knob, his back to her.
“I’ll be there tomorrow. At the dinner. To face it.” He sounded like a man walking to the gallows. “You should decide what you’re going to say. Who you’re going to protect.”
He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Ava slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor amidst the scattered Polaroids. She pulled her knees to her chest, the physical ache between her legs a dull, throbbing reminder. On the floor beside her, a photo showed her at thirteen, pigtailed and grinning, arm slung around a fifteen-year-old Lucas, who was making a silly face at the camera.
She picked it up, staring at their innocent, faded smiles. Then she crumpled it in her fist, the plastic crackling in the silent room. The decision, it seemed, had already been made for her. The fallout was just beginning.