Chapter 6: Lesson in Possession
The stale, buttery smell of popcorn was a cloying blanket in the dark. Ava shifted in the plush red velvet seat, the fabric worn smooth in patches. On screen, a grainy knife flickered. The professor’s hand, large and warm, rested on her knee. A testing weight.
It had been three weeks since the rain. Three weeks of silence from Lucas, of biting her nails raw, of feeling the ghost of him inside her every time she showered. Professor Callahan’s interest was a distraction. An experiment. An adult who saw her as an adult, not a little sister.
His thumb stroked the inside of her thigh through her jeans. “The mise-en-scène here is profoundly nihilistic,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble meant only for her. His lips were close to her ear. She could smell his cologne, something woody and expensive.
She made a sound, a soft agreement that caught in her throat as his hand slid higher. Her heart hammered, but it was a distant, tinny echo. This was what she wanted. Control. A scene she directed.
Then his hand cupped her between the legs, pressing firmly. She gasped, a real one, and turned her face toward his. In the erratic light of the flickering projector, his features were sharp, hungry. He kissed her. It was possessive, academic. She kissed back, forcing a low moan into his mouth, playing the part.
A shadow detached itself from the wall at the back of the theater.
Lucas moved down the aisle like a storm front. The dim light caught the grim set of his jaw, the wildness in his eyes. He’d seen it all. The hand. The kiss. The performed moan.
Ava’s breath hitched. Her professor, sensing her stiffness, pulled back. “Is everything—”
Lucas didn’t break stride. He reached their row, his hand shooting out to clamp like a manacle around Ava’s wrist. The pain was bright, shocking.
“Hey!” the professor barked, standing up.
Lucas ignored him. He yanked, and Ava stumbled out of the seat, her purse falling, spilling its contents under the seats. He dragged her up the aisle, past the other scattered patrons who peered like curious ghosts.
“Lucas, stop! You’re hurting me!”
He said nothing. The heavy door to the emergency exit stairwell was a dull green. He shouldered it open, the metallic bang echoing in the concrete hollow, and shoved her inside. The door swung shut, cutting off the movie’s soundtrack, leaving them in the buzzing silence of a single bare bulb.
He pushed her back against the rough concrete wall. The cold seeped through her thin shirt. His body caged her in, radiating a fury so potent she could taste it, coppery and sharp.
“Your fucking professor?” His voice was a scrape against the quiet. “That’s what you’re doing now? Trading notes for handjobs?”
“It’s none of your business,” she spat, but her voice trembled.
“None of my business?” He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “After what you did? After you crawled into my head and built a fucking nest?” His mouth came down on her neck, not a kiss, but a claiming bite. His teeth sank into the tendon, sharp and punishing. She cried out, her hands flying up to push at his chest, but he was immovable.
His free hand shoved between them, fumbling with the button of her jeans. He popped it open, yanked the zipper down in one brutal motion. His fingers hooked into the lace of her panties and pulled. The fabric strained, then tore with a sickening rip. The sound seemed to echo forever.
“You want an education?” he growled, his breath hot against the bite mark. He brought his wet, furious mouth to hers. “Let me teach you what happens when you fucking tease me.”
Two of his fingers plunged into her without warning. She was wet—awfully, treacherously wet from the adrenaline, from the fight, from him. A betrayed sob escaped her lips as her body clenched around his invading fingers.
“Already soaked,” he hissed, working his fingers in and out in a crude, punishing rhythm. “For him? Or were you thinking of me while he touched you? Thinking of me fucking you against a wall?”
“Go to hell,” she choked, her hips rocking against her will, seeking more friction, more of that devastating roughness.
“We’re already there, baby.” He withdrew his dripping fingers, unbuckled his own belt with frantic, clumsy movements. He pushed his jeans and boxers down just past his hips. His cock sprang free, thick and fully erect, the head flushed an angry red. He was already leaking.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t guide himself. He just hoisted her up by the backs of her thighs, her torn jeans and panties still tangled around her knees, and slammed her down onto him.
The fullness was breathtaking, a searing stretch that bordered on pain. He was bigger than she remembered, harder. He buried himself to the hilt in one deep, devastating stroke, seating himself so deeply she felt impaled.
“Fuck,” he grunted, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. “That tight little cunt. Still mine. Feels like it, anyway.”
He began to move, lifting and dropping her with each powerful thrust. Her back scraped against the concrete, her shoulder blades taking the brunt. Each impact drove the air from her lungs in a ragged gasp. The angle was brutal, perfect. The swollen head of his cock raked over a spot inside her that sparked white heat behind her eyelids.
“You like that?” he panted, his rhythm erasing any semblance of gentleness. It was pure taking. “You like getting railed in a dirty stairwell by the guy you ruined? Not so sophisticated now, are you?”
“Shut up,” she moaned, her nails digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders. “Just shut up and fuck me.”
He obliged. His pace became frantic, animalistic. The sound of their bodies meeting, skin slapping against skin, mingled with his ragged breaths and her shattered whimpers. The stale, dusty air filled with the scent of sex and sweat and concrete.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he demanded, his thrusts becoming shallow, desperate jerks. “Say it.”
She shook her head, her vision blurring.
He drove into her, a final, deep plunge. “Say it, Ava.”
The tension in her belly snapped. Her orgasm tore through her, violent and silent, a series of intense internal clenches that milked his cock. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream.
The feel of her convulsing around him triggered his own release. With a choked-off roar, he pistoned into her twice more and held, his body locking as he emptied himself in hot, pulsing jets deep inside her.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their heaving breaths and the distant hum of the bulb. He stayed buried within her, softening, his weight pressing her into the wall. The reality of what they’d just done—the torn underwear, the semen leaking down her thigh, the bite mark throbbing on her neck—settled over them like ash.
Slowly, he let her slide down until her feet, still half-trapped in her jeans, touched the floor. He stepped back, turning away to fix his clothes, his shoulders slumped.
Ava leaned against the wall, trembling, pulling her jeans up over the sticky mess between her legs. The physical shock was fading, leaving a hollow, aching confusion.
“I saw you with him,” Lucas said quietly, not looking at her. “And I wanted to burn the world down.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You left me in the rain.”
He finally turned. The fury was gone, replaced by a bleak exhaustion. “I’m always leaving you, Ava. Or you’re leaving me. We don’t know how to do anything else.”
He reached out, his thumb gently tracing the angry bite mark on her neck. A gesture so at odds with the violence of minutes before that her eyes filled with tears.
“My period is late,” she whispered.
His hand stilled. The silence in the stairwell became absolute, heavy with the weight of a possibility more terrifying than any horror film flickering on the other side of the door.