Chapter 4: The Reclamation
The rain wasn’t romantic. It was a cold, needling downpour that seeped through my leather jacket and plastered my hair to my skull. I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the lit window of his apartment—the one above the garage behind the frat house, his private sanctuary. The one I’d sworn I’d never approach again.
My conversation with Cassian hours before hung in the air around me, a pristine, untouched promise. I’m not interested in being a rebound. He was solid ground. He was integrity in a grey sweater.
And I was here. In the pouring rain. Outside the earthquake.
My feet carried me forward, up the external staircase. The metal steps clanged under my boots. I didn’t think. Thinking was what had gotten me here, the endless, cyclical torture of comparing memory to reality, of weighing Cassian’s steady gaze against the nuclear fallout Harry had detonated in my nervous system. The darkroom had been a graveside service, but the body was still twitching.
I knocked. Not a polite tap. A hard, jarring rap of my knuckles.
Footsteps. The door swung open.
He stood there, backlit by the warm lamplight of his room. He wore low-slung sweatpants and nothing else, his hair a mess of curls, a book in his hand. His green eyes widened, not with victory, but with pure, unvarnished shock.
“Nikki?”
The sound of my name in his mouth broke the dam. All the resolve, all the carefully reconstructed walls, dissolved into the acidic mix of rain and longing. I stepped forward, shoved him back into the room with a hand flat on his chest, and kicked the door shut behind me with a slam that shook the frame.
Water dripped from me onto his hardwood floor. I was trembling. “I hate you,” I said, the words barely audible, choked by the shudder in my breath. “You liar. You fucking coward. You broke me.”
He dropped the book. It hit the floor with a thud. He didn’t move to touch me. He just watched, his face pale, every muscle in his torso tense. “I know.”
“You don’t know!” The shout ripped out of me. “You have no idea what it feels like to have your own body betray you! To want someone who treated you like a fucking option!”
“You were never an option,” he said, his voice low and rough. “You were the only choice. I was just too stupid and fucked-up to see it.”
“Your stupid fuck-up is my trauma!” I was crying now, hot tears mixing with the cold rain on my face. “I went to the darkroom to get rid of you. To finish it. And instead, I let you…”
“I know what you let me do.” He took a step closer. The scent of him—soap, clean cotton, that underlying scent that was just Harry—wrapped around me. “And I know why. Because it’s not finished. It won’t finish. Not like this.”
He reached out then, his hand coming up to cup my jaw. His thumb swept over my cheekbone, wiping away rain and tears. The touch was devastating in its tenderness. A sob escaped my throat, raw and broken.
“I can’t stop,” I whispered, the admission tearing itself from a place of profound shame. “I can’t stop loving you. And I hate it. I hate you for it.”
That was all he needed. A low sound, part groan, part agony, broke from him. He pulled me into his arms, crushing me against the solid warmth of his bare chest. His mouth found mine.
This kiss wasn’t a war. It was a surrender. A mutual, desperate capitulation to a force we were too weak to fight. I tasted salt, rain, and the unique flavor of his mouth—spearmint and whiskey. My hands fisted in his damp curls, pulling him closer, deeper, as if I could consume him and be consumed, erasing the space where betrayal lived.
He walked me backwards, our mouths still fused, until my knees hit the edge of his bed. He broke the kiss, his breath ragged. His eyes searched mine, asking a silent question. I answered by pulling my soaked jacket off, letting it fall to the floor. I yanked my clinging t-shirt over my head. I unhooked my bra.
The air was cool on my skin. His gaze was heat. It traveled over me with a reverence that felt like a new kind of pain.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, his voice thick. “It hurts to look at you.”
“Then don’t look.” I pushed at his sweatpants. He helped me, shoving them down his hips. He was already hard, his cock straining upright, the tip flushed and leaking. The sight sent a jolt of pure, wanton hunger straight to my core. My body recognized him. It sang for him.
He laid me back on the black sheets. They were cool and smooth. He followed me down, covering me, but not with his full weight. He supported himself on his elbows, cradling my face. He kissed my eyelids, my temples, the hollow of my throat. A trail of fire.
“I love you,” he murmured against my skin. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Nikki.”
He moved lower. His mouth closed over my nipple, sucking hard, his tongue circling the peak until I cried out. His hand slid down my stomach, over my hip, and between my legs. I was already wet, soaked for him, my body arching off the bed to meet his touch.
“See?” he said, his voice dark with awe. “You still want me. Your perfect, gorgeous cunt is dripping for me.”
He shifted down the bed, hooking my legs over his shoulders. He didn’t tease. He put his mouth on me, licking a broad, slow stripe from my opening to my clit. I gasped, my back bowing.
“Harry…”
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he challenged, his breath hot against my most sensitive flesh. “Tell me to stop.”
I couldn’t. My hips rolled, seeking more pressure. He gave it to me. He ate me like a man starving, his tongue plunging inside me, then flicking ruthlessly over my clit. He used his fingers, too, two slipping inside, curling, finding that spot that made my vision blur. He sucked my clit into his mouth, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure.
It was too much. It was not enough. The orgasm built not as a slow wave but as a detonation, gathering in my belly with terrifying speed. My hands gripped the sheets. A broken litany of curses and pleas fell from my lips.
“Come for me,” he growled, his voice vibrating against me. “Come on my mouth. Let me taste it.”
That was it. The command shattered me. The climax tore through me, violent and absolute, a white-hot wire of pleasure snapping taut from my core to every extremity. I screamed, my body shaking uncontrollably as he drank every pulse, every shudder, his tongue gentling but never stopping until the last aftershock had faded.
I was boneless, gasping. He moved up my body, his face glistening with my release. He kissed me, letting me taste myself on his tongue. It was filthy. It was intimate beyond bearing.
He positioned himself between my thighs. The thick head of his cock pressed against my opening, which was still fluttering from my orgasm. He pushed in, just an inch. A stretch, a glorious, familiar burn.
“Look at me,” he said.
I forced my eyes open. His face was inches from mine, his expression utterly stripped bare. All the charm, all the coy smiles, were gone. What was left was raw, vulnerable need.
“I love you,” he said again, each word a hammer strike. “I’ll spend every damn day of my life proving it. If you let me.”
He sank the rest of the way in, a slow, inexorable slide that filled me completely. We both moaned, a duet of relief and anguish. He was home. He was the ruin.
He began to move. Not with the frantic, punishing pace of the darkroom, but with a deep, rolling rhythm that felt like a heartbeat. Each thrust was a promise, a plea, an apology. He angled his hips, hitting a place that made me see stars. My legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper.
“You feel that?” he panted, his forehead against mine. “You feel how you take all of me? Nobody else. Never again. Just you.”
I couldn’t speak. I could only feel. The building pressure, the coil tightening again, impossibly soon. The emotional dam had broken, and now my body was a flood of sensation. I clawed at his back, my nails digging into the muscles.
“Fuck, Nikki,” he groaned. “Your pussy is so tight. It’s squeezing my cock so good. You’re gonna make me come.”
“Don’t stop,” I begged, my voice a ragged whisper. “Please, don’t stop.”
His pace quickened, losing some of its control. His thrusts became harder, deeper, driven by a need that mirrored my own. The sounds filled the room—the slap of skin, the creak of the bed, our mingled, desperate cries.
I came again, a second, shocking climax that ripped through me without warning. It was less violent, more a deep, spreading warmth that clenched around him in rhythmic pulses. He shouted my name, his body locking as he drove into me one last, shuddering time. I felt the hot rush of his release inside me, marking me, claiming me in the most primitive way.
He collapsed, his weight a welcome anchor. We lay tangled, both of us slick with sweat and spent. His breath was hot against my neck. My heart hammered against his.
For a long time, there was only the sound of our breathing and the rain against the window.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The chill of the air on my damp skin. The stark reality of where I was, and what I’d just done. Cassian’s honest, serious face flashed behind my eyes.
Harry must have felt the shift. He raised his head. “Stay.”
The word wasn’t a question. It was a raw fact, hanging in the sweat-and-sex scented air between us. My heart, a frantic bird against my ribs, went still. Cassian’s sober, assessing gaze flashed again, a ghost in the room. I’m not interested in being a rebound. This was the definition of a rebound. A catastrophic, gravitational collapse back into a destructive orbit.
My body, however, had already decided. Every muscle was liquid, heavy with him. The ache where he’d been inside me was a possessive, hollow echo. I could still feel the wet trickle of his release on my inner thigh.
I turned my head on the damp pillow. The rain painted shifting tracks of light from the streetlamp across his ceiling. His bedroom was exactly as I remembered it—the same stupid soccer trophy on the shelf, the same pile of clean laundry on the armchair, the same faint cedar scent from his closet. It was a museum of an intimacy I’d tried to burn down.
“I’m not sure who I hate more right now,” I said, my voice gravelly. “You or me.”
He shifted, pulling me tighter against his side. His skin was hot. “Hate me. Just don’t leave.”
“Cassian asked me out. For real. Not… not whatever this is.” I gestured vaguely at the wreckage of his sheets, our tangled limbs.
Harry’s entire body went rigid. The arm under my neck tensed into a steel cable. “Are you going?”
I didn’t answer. I watched the shadows move. I thought of tacos and brutalist architecture and a conversation that didn’t feel like walking through a minefield.
His hand, which had been tracing idle patterns on my shoulder, stilled. Then it moved. Not in comfort. In claim. His fingers slid down my arm, over the curve of my hip, and between my legs from behind. He cupped me, his palm a brand against my swollen flesh. I gasped.
“Don’t go,” he whispered into my hair, his voice low and dangerous. His middle finger slipped inside me, where I was still slick and sensitive from him. I jolted. “He’ll never know you like this. He’ll never make you come so hard you forget your own name.”
His finger curled, a deliberate, knowing motion. A fresh spark of pleasure, sharp and unwelcome, shot through my exhaustion. “Harry, stop.”
“Stop?” He added a second finger, stretching me. The sound was obscenely wet. “Your body isn’t saying stop. Your cunt is gripping my fingers like a fucking vise.” He scissored them gently, and a low moan escaped my throat before I could catch it. “See?”
It was humiliation, and it was a turn-on. The duality split me open. I was back in the darkroom, using him to excise him. He was using my own treacherous physiology against me.
He rolled me onto my stomach. The sheets were cool against my front. He kneeled between my legs, his hands spreading me open. I felt exposed, pillaged. The air kissed the wetness there.
“Look at you,” he breathed, dragging the head of his cock through my folds. He was hard again, impossibly fast. “So fucking ruined for me. Sore and used and perfect.” He notched himself at my entrance. “Tell me you’re mine.”
I pressed my face into the pillow. The scent of him was overwhelming. It was the scent of every good memory before the crash. It was home and hell.
He pushed in, just the tip. The stretch was a bright, borderline pain. I clenched around him.
“Say it.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed, a dark, rich sound. He withdrew and then slammed forward, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke. The force knocked the air from my lungs. A cry tore from me, muffled by cotton.
“That’s the plan,” he grunted, already setting a relentless, pounding rhythm. His hands gripped my hips, holding me in place for his drives. Each thrust was a punctuation mark on his sentence. “You. Are. Mine.”
The angle was different, deeper, hitting a place that made my toes curl. Pleasure, thick and syrupy, began to pool in my gut despite myself. My body arched, pushing back against him, meeting his force with my own.
“This is what you want,” he panted, his voice ragged with effort. “This is what you came back for. Not fucking tacos and architecture. You want to be fucked stupid. You want to be owned.”
He leaned over, his chest pressing against my back. His mouth found my ear. “Come for me. Come all over my cock. Show me you’re still mine.”
His words were the trigger. The orgasm detonated, a seismic wave that started in my core and radiated outward, leaving me shaking and blind. My internal muscles clamped down on him in frantic pulses. He swore, a guttural stream of filth, as his own release followed, hot and endless inside me.
He collapsed on top of me, his weight crushing, his breath scorching my shoulder. We were a mess of sweat and come and unresolved war.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he mumbled into my skin, long minutes later. He was still inside me, softening. “I’m just asking for a chance to be the man you thought I was.”
I didn’t have the strength to push him off. I didn’t have the strength to leave.
“Give me your phone,” I said, my voice flat.
He hesitated, then rolled off me. He fetched it from the floor, a sleek black rectangle. He handed it to me, his expression wary.
I unlocked it. His passcode was still my birthday. The knowledge was a tiny, sharp shard in my chest. I opened his messages. I found Ava’s thread. I deleted every trace of it. I blocked her number.
I opened his contacts and found my name. I deleted ‘Nikki’ and typed in a new one.
I handed the phone back to him. He looked at the screen. Where my name had been, it now read: PROVE IT.
He stared at it. Then he looked at me. The ghost of his old, cocky smile touched his lips, but his eyes were deadly serious. “Okay.”
He got out of bed. He walked naked to his dresser, pulled out a clean, grey t-shirt, and brought it to me. “Put this on. You’re shivering.”
I sat up, the sheet falling away. I pulled the soft cotton over my head. It smelled like his laundry detergent, not his cologne. A small, fundamental difference.
“I’m staying tonight,” I said. It wasn’t surrender. It was a statement of fact. “But this doesn’t mean we’re back together. This means you’re on trial.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t get to ask where I go. You don’t get to question who I see.” I thought of Cassian’s text, unanswered on my own phone, buried somewhere in my drenched jacket on the floor. “If I decide to go on that date, I go.”
His jaw tightened. A flicker of the old possessive fire lit in his eyes, but he snuffed it. He just nodded.
I laid back down, facing away from him. The bed dipped as he climbed in behind me. He didn’t try to pull me close. He just lay there, a line of heat along my back. The rain had softened to a whisper.
I stared at the wall. In the dark, my mind replayed the last hour on a vicious loop. The feel of his mouth, the bruising grip of his hands, the crude, undeniable truth of our physical fit. It was a drug. I was an addict crawling back to a bad source.
But beneath the sated exhaustion, a colder, harder part of me was already calculating. This was a different kind of control. I was inside the fortress now. I had seen his desperation. He had handed me a weapon: his own need.
Prove it.
The words glowed in the dark behind my eyes. He would try. He would bring me coffee and apologies. He would show up. He would be perfect.
And I would let him. I would watch him perform. I would let him fuck me with a tenderness he was trying to learn. I would file every effort away, comparing it to the evidence of his betrayal, the screenshot of those texts burned into my memory.
I didn’t know if love could survive that kind of forensic scrutiny. Maybe it wasn’t love anymore. Maybe it was just a mutually assured destruction pact, signed in sweat and come.
His breathing evened out into sleep behind me. Carefully, I extracted myself from the bed. My clothes were a damp heap. I found his hoodie—a different one, not the one I’d destroyed—and pulled it on. I crept to the window.
Down in the lot, a lone car rolled through a puddle, its headlights cutting through the gloom. My phone was in my jacket. Cassian’s unanswered text was there. A clean path. A path of concrete and honesty.
I turned and looked at Harry sleeping in the tangled sheets, one arm thrown over his eyes. Even in sleep, he looked like a plea.
Prove it.
I walked back to the bed. I didn’t slide in beside him. I sat in the armchair, the one with the clean laundry, and pulled my knees to my chest. I wrapped his hoodie around me and watched him sleep. I watched the rise and fall of his chest. I watched for the truth that words and orgasms could hide.
The first grey light of dawn was bleeding around the edges of his blinds when my eyes finally grew heavy. My last thought before sleep took me was not of his touch, but of the cool, analytical look in Cassian’s eyes as he described a building’s load-bearing truth.
I stayed.
The grey light hardened into day. It carved the room into sharp planes: the line of his shoulder under the sheet, the dust motes swirling above the trophy on the shelf, the stark geometry of my own knees drawn up in his chair. My body was a catalogue of aches. The deep, pleasant throb between my legs. The sharper sting on my hip bones where his fingers had dug in. A stiffness in my neck from sleeping upright.
He stirred. A low, unconscious sound. His arm slid from his face, his features softening in sleep, looking younger, unguarded. This was the Harry I’d fallen for—the one hidden under the performance. The sight was a needle to the heart.
His eyes opened. Green, sleep-clouded, then instantly clear and fixed on me. He didn’t startle. He just watched me watching him. The silence was a third presence, heavy with everything we’d done and said.
“You didn’t sleep,” he said, his voice morning-rough.
“I slept.”
“Not next to me.”
I uncurled from the chair, my joints protesting. The oversized hoodie fell to mid-thigh. I stood, ignoring the faint tremor in my legs. “I need water.”
I walked to his kitchenette, a small alcove with a mini-fridge and a sink. I drank directly from the tap, the water cold and metallic. I felt him behind me before I saw his reflection in the dark window glass. He stood a few feet back, wearing only his sweatpants, his hair a glorious riot of curls.
“Nikki.”
I turned, leaning against the counter. The space felt too small. “What?”
“Last night. I meant it. All of it.”
“You meant it when you texted Ava not to worry about me, too.” The words were flat, factual. They hung there, killing the fragile morning peace.
He flinched. A full-body recoil. “Yeah. I did.” He didn’t offer excuses. He just absorbed the blow. “I can’t erase that. I can only show you what’s here now.”
“What’s here now is a mess.” I gestured between us. “I’m a mess. You fucked me back into your bed after I told you I was seeing someone else. That’s not a fresh start. That’s a toxic repeat.”
“Is that what it was?” He took a step closer. The air crackled. “Just a fuck?”
My skin remembered. The worship in his touch, the broken-open look in his eyes when he came. It wasn’t just anything. That was the problem. “It was a chemical reaction. Highly combustible. Predictably destructive.”
“So let it destroy me.” Another step. He was in my space now, the heat from his body reaching me. “Use me. Punish me. Do whatever you need to. Just stay in the same room while you do it.”
His hand rose, not to grab, but to hover near my cheek. He was waiting for permission. The old Harry would have taken it. This hesitation was new, and it disarmed me more than any confident move.
I tilted my chin. “I’m going to shower. I smell like you.”
A ghost of his old smirk touched his lips. “I like how you smell.”
“I don’t.” I pushed past him, toward his bathroom.
It was clean, masculine. A single towel hung on the rack. I locked the door and turned the water as hot as I could stand. I stepped under the spray, scrubbing at my skin with a rough bar of soap. I washed my hair with his shampoo, something woodsy and expensive. The steam filled the small room, fogging the mirror.
I was trying to wash off the night, the decision, the weakness. But the evidence was inside me. I could feel it. I leaned my forehead against the cool tile. Prove it. The challenge felt hollow now, a game I’d set up for a player who knew all my moves.
The shower curtain rustled. I froze. He stepped into the tub, naked, the water sluicing over his shoulders. He didn’t touch me. He just stood there, letting the water hit him, his eyes on my face.
“The door was locked,” I said, stupidly.
“I have a key. For the bolt.” He reached for the soap in my hand. “Let me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a quiet offering. I hesitated, then released the soap. He took it, working up a lather in his palms. He started with my shoulders, his hands firm, kneading the tension from my muscles. He moved down my back, over the curve of my ass, his touch thorough, clinical almost. He turned me gently, his soapy hands sliding over my collarbones, down the slope of my breasts.
His thumbs brushed my nipples, and they tightened instantly. His eyes flicked up to mine, watching my reaction. He soaped my stomach, his fingers tracing the lines of my hips. He knelt in the tub, the water cascading over his dark curls. He washed my legs, my calves, my feet with a focus that felt reverent.
Then his hands were on my thighs, urging them apart. I let him. He didn’t use the soap here. He just looked, his gaze hot and intent on the thatch of curls, the swollen lips beneath. “Still sore?” he asked, his voice a low rumble under the water’s patter.
“Yes.”
He leaned forward and pressed his mouth there, not a kiss, just a firm, warm press of his lips against my mound. A jolt went through me. He looked up, water dripping from his lashes. “Good.”
He stood, rinsing the soap from both of us. He was fully erect, his cock standing thick and heavy against his stomach. He reached for the shampoo, poured some into his hand. “Turn around.”
I obeyed. His fingers worked into my scalp, massaging, tugging gently at the roots. It felt so good I almost moaned. He rinsed my hair, his hands careful, sweeping the suds away. This domestic intimacy was more disorienting than the sex. This was the proving. The quiet, relentless work of care.
He turned me to face him again. Water ran in streams between my breasts, down the valley of my stomach. He cupped my face, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones. “I’m going to take you to breakfast,” he said. “Somewhere public. Where everyone can see. I’m going to pull out your chair. I’m going to order for you if you let me. I’m going to sit there and listen to whatever you want to say, no matter how much it eviscerates me.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve to be seen with. Not hidden. Not an option.” He kissed my forehead, a chaste, damp press. “And then I’m going to bring you back here and fuck you again. Because I need to. And because I think you need it, too.”
The crude honesty of it stole my breath. He turned off the water. The sudden silence was loud. He reached past me, grabbing the single towel. He wrapped it around me, rubbing my arms through the fabric. He used a corner to blot the water from my face. He was meticulous.
He led me, damp and towel-clad, back into the bedroom. He dressed quickly in jeans and a clean t-shirt. He tossed me a pair of his boxer briefs and soft, worn sweatpants. “Yours are still wet. Wear these.”
I dressed in his clothes. They swam on me, the waistband of the sweatpants rolled over itself to stay up. He found a clean hoodie for himself. He looked at me, a strange expression on his face—a mix of pain and possession. “You look good in my clothes.”
“I look like a kid who raided her big brother’s closet.”
“You look like mine.” The words slipped out, raw and unvarnished. He immediately looked like he wanted to take them back. “Sorry. I’m trying. It’s… it’s hard to turn off.”
We went to a diner two blocks over. The vinyl booth was sticky. The coffee was bitter. He did everything he said he would. He held the door. He slid into the booth across from me, not beside me, giving me space. He ordered pancakes for me, eggs and bacon for himself. He asked the waiter for extra syrup.
A girl from his sociology class passed by and did a double-take. Her eyes widened at the sight of us together. Harry gave her a small, tight nod, nothing more. A statement.
“So,” he said, after the waiter left. “The architecture guy.”
“Cassian.”
“Right.” He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Is he good?”
“Good at what?”
“At… being with you. Is he kind?”
The question disarmed me. I expected jealousy, posturing. Not this. “He’s honest. He’s not a game-player.”
Harry nodded, absorbing that like a physical blow. “I’m glad.” He looked up, his green eyes earnest. “I am. You should have that. Everyone should have that.”
“But?”
“But I’m not going to make it easy for him.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’m going to be so good to you that the thought of his honest, kind hands on you will feel like a consolation prize. I’m going to be the high you can’t quit.”
My pulse kicked. “That’s not healthy.”
“I don’t care.” He set his cup down. “Healthy is what comes after I’ve fixed this. Right now, I’m fighting for my life. And I’ll fight dirty.”
The food came. I ate without tasting it. He watched me, ate his own food, refilled my water glass without being asked. It was unnerving. This was the thoughtful man I’d glimpsed before the betrayal, now amplified, focused like a laser.
We walked back to his place. The sun was higher now, bleaching the sky. My phone, finally charged and retrieved from my jacket, buzzed in the pocket of his sweatpants. I knew who it was without looking. Cassian. Checking in. The world outside this bubble was asserting itself.
Back inside his apartment, the door clicked shut. The silence was different now, charged with the promises made over breakfast. He leaned against the door, watching me.
“You should text him back,” Harry said quietly. “Tell him you’re busy.”
“Or I could tell him the truth. That I’m with you.”
“That would work, too.” He pushed off the door. “But you won’t. Not yet. You’re still trying to keep a foot in both worlds. To see which one holds your weight.”
He crossed the room until he was standing in front of me. He smelled like diner coffee and clean cotton. “Let me show you which one does.”
He kissed me. It was slow, deep, consuming. A kiss with no hurry in it. His hands came up to frame my face. When he finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
“I want you on your knees,” he murmured, his lips brushing mine as he spoke.
A thrill, dark and electric, shot down my spine. This was the other side of the coin—the commanding, dominant Harry that my body craved even as my mind resisted. Without a word, I sank to my knees on the hardwood floor. The position was one of submission, but my gaze as I looked up at him was defiant.
He unbuttoned his jeans, freed himself. He was already fully hard, the vein along the underside throbbing. He held himself at the base, guiding the broad, flushed head toward my mouth. “Open.”
I did. He pushed in slowly, past my lips, over my tongue. He was big, and the stretch was immediate. I relaxed my jaw, letting him slide deeper until he hit the back of my throat. My eyes watered.
“Fuck, look at you,” he groaned, his hands tangling in my damp hair. “Taking my cock so perfectly. Your mouth was made for this.”
He began to move, shallow thrusts at first, then deeper, establishing a rhythm. I let him set the pace, focusing on the salt-and-skin taste of him, the heavy weight on my tongue, the guttural sounds coming from his chest. He was right. This was a high. A degrading, exhilarating power exchange where I had all the control by surrendering it completely.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered, his voice thick.
One of my hands slid into the waistband of the borrowed sweatpants. I was already wet. I found my clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. The dual stimulation was overwhelming. Pleasure coiled, tight and fast.
“That’s it,” he panted, his hips snapping forward. “Make yourself come while you suck me off. Let me feel you get off on this.”
My moan vibrated around him. The orgasm built rapidly, a cresting wave drawn up by his words, his cock in my mouth, my own fingers. I came with a choked cry, my body convulsing as I swallowed around him.
The sensation tipped him over. With a sharp curse, he shoved deep, holding my head in place as he pulsed hot and bitter down my throat. I took it all, swallowing reflexively, until he softened and slid from my lips, glistening with saliva.
He pulled me to my feet, his kiss fierce, tasting of himself. He walked me backward to the bed, laid me down, and yanked the sweatpants and boxers down my legs. He didn’t enter me. He just looked, his eyes burning.
“You’re mine in ways he can’t even imagine,” he said, his finger tracing my lower lip. “Your body knows it. Your mouth knows it. Your cunt,” he slid two fingers inside me, making me gasp, “knows it best of all.”
He fucked me with his fingers, hard and fast, until I came again, shaking and oversensitive. Then he held me, his face buried in the junction of my neck and shoulder, breathing me in. The afternoon light slanted across the floor.
My phone buzzed again on the nightstand. Insistent. A reminder of the other world, the other path.
Harry didn’t lift his head. “You should go.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“You should go,” he repeated, his voice muffled against my skin. “See him. Go on your date. Be with someone who isn’t a broken fucking mess.”
I pushed at his chest until he looked at me. His expression was bleak. “What are you doing?”
“Proving it,” he said softly. “Proving I want you to be happy, even if it wrecks me. So go. Just… come back. However much of you is left. Come back and tell me about it. I’ll be here.”
He rolled away, off the bed, presenting his back to me as he pulled on his jeans. It was the most devastating thing he’d ever done. He was calling my bluff, raising the stakes to a level I hadn’t anticipated. He was giving me permission to leave, betting everything that I would choose to return.
I got up. I dressed silently in my own clothes, now dry and wrinkled. I didn’t look at him. I pocketed my buzzing phone. I walked to the door.
My hand was on the knob when his voice stopped me, quiet but clear. “Nikki.”
I didn’t turn.
“The door doesn’t lock from the outside. It’ll be open.”
I stepped out into the bright, indifferent afternoon. The door clicked shut behind me. I stood on the metal staircase, the sun warm on my face, the ghost of his taste still on my tongue, the ache of him deep in my muscles. I had my freedom back. It felt like a sentence.
I pulled out my phone. Three missed calls from Cassian. A text: Just making sure you’re alive. Tacos still on the table.
I typed a reply, my thumbs clumsy. Alive. Can I take a rain check? Need to sort some things out.
His response was almost immediate. Understood. The offer’s open-ended.
I put the phone away. I didn’t go back inside. I walked. I walked past the diner, past the library, past the art building. I walked until my feet hurt and the sun began to dip.
I ended up at the waterfront, watching the river churn, brown and relentless. Prove it. The game was in motion. He was proving he could let me go. I was proving I had nowhere else I wanted to be.
The truth was a cold stone in my gut. Cassian represented a future I could understand, a calm, steady progression. Harry was a destructive, beautiful wave I was choosing to drown in.
I turned from the water and started walking again, my steps quicker now, purpose lending them speed. The sky bruised to purple at the edges, matching the ends of my hair. The streetlights flickered on.
I didn’t know if this was strength or sickness. I only knew the direction my feet were taking me, back toward the unlocked door, back toward the wreckage and the want, back to see what, if anything, could be built from the rubble we kept making.