Chapter 1: The Fight Turns Into Something Else
The door clicked shut behind me, a sound so final it made my stomach drop. His cologne hung in the air, that stupid, expensive spice-and-smoke scent that clung to my sheets for days after he left. My bed was still rumpled from this morning, his faded gray hoodie a heap on my desk chair.The room felt like a crime scene.
“We can’t do this anymore, Harry.”
I said it to the wall, to the poster of a galaxy he’d tacked up for me because I said I liked the stars. My voice didn’t shake.I’d practiced in the mirror.Silence. Then a low, disbelieving laugh.“What?”
I turned. He was leaning against my dresser, arms crossed over his broad chest, those green eyes dark in the lamplight. He looked like a goddamn painting—the tousled curls, the sharp line of his jaw, the black ink snaking down his forearms.It made the guilt twist tighter, a sickening knot in my gut.
“You heard me.It’s over. This ends now.”
He pushed off the dresser, the movement fluid and predatory.The space between us evaporated in two long strides. “Ends?” he repeated, his voice dropping to a rough scrape. “You don’t get to decide that, Nikki.”
“The hell I don’t.” The fire in my blood, the one he always lit, started to crackle.“She’s my best friend.You’re her boyfriend. This is fucking vile.”
“And you love it.” He was so close now I could feel the heat coming off him.“You love how vile it is. You come apart for me because it’s wrong.”
My hand shot out, palms connecting hard with his solid chest. “Get away from me.”
It was like shoving a brick wall.He didn’t even sway. Instead, his hands snapped around my waist, fingers digging in, and he spun me. My back slammed into the door, the impact shuddering through my teeth. A gasp ripped from my throat, half-pain, half something else.Then his mouth was on mine.It wasn’t a kiss.It was a claiming. All teeth and fury and desperate, hungry heat. He tasted like mint and bourbon and pure, undiluted anger.I bit down on his lip, hard, a metallic tang flooding my tongue. He grunted, gripped my hair at the root, and yanked my head back. “You drive me fucking insane,” he growled against my jaw, his breath scorching my skin.
“Then leave,” I spat, writhing against him. My body was a traitor, already softening, melting into the hard planes of his.
“Not a chance.” His hand slid from my waist, over the curve of my hip, and shoved roughly between my legs, pressing the heel of his palm against the thin fabric of my leggings. A sharp, electric jolt of pleasure-pain shot through me.“You think you can just shut this off? Tell me to stop?” He ground his palm down and I cried out, my head thudding back against the door. “Feel that?That’s all me.I put that there. This ends when I say it ends.”
Tears of rage and shame burned my eyes. “Fuck you.”
“Yeah,” he hissed, grabbing the waistband of my leggings and my underwear and wrenching them down to my knees in one violent motion. The cold air hit my skin, followed immediately by the blistering heat of his hand.He didn’t bother with finesse. Two fingers pushed into me, dry and rough, curling deep.I choked on a gasp, my nails scraping down the door.
“So fucking wet for me,” he snarled, his voice thick with triumph and contempt. “While you were giving your little speech. This is what you are for me.”
He pulled his fingers out, and I heard the rustle of his jeans, the clink of his belt. He didn’t bother taking anything off, just freed himself.He was hard, flushed and angry-looking. He hooked a hand behind my knee, hiking my leg up around his hip, pinning me to the door.
There was no gentle slide. He drove into me in one brutal, tearing thrust, filling me so completely I saw white behind my eyelids.A broken sob escaped my lips.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his breath ragged. He was buried to the hilt, not moving, just holding me there, impaled and utterly helpless.I forced my eyes open. His face was a mask of furious need, his pupils blown black.“You see this?You feel it?This is yours.Only yours. And you’re mine.”
He began to move then, a punishing, relentless rhythm that rocked me against the unyielding door.Each thrust was an accusation, a punishment, a devastating pleasure. The wood creaked in protest. I tried to stifle the sounds, biting my lip until I tasted blood, but they spilled out anyway—sharp, ragged moans punched out of me with every snap of his hips.“You want to end it?” he panted, his forehead dropping to mine. His sweat dripped onto my face.“Then tell me to stop.Say it.”
I couldn’t. My hands fisted in his hair, pulling him closer. My hips rocked to meet his, my body arching into the assault.The pain had blurred, transmuted into a raw, blinding need. The guilt was still there, a rotten core, but it was being incinerated by the sheer physicality of him.
“That’s what I thought,” he breathed, and his mouth crashed down on mine again, swallowing my cries.
He fucked me like he hated me, like he was trying to brand himself inside me, and I took it all, clawing at his back, his shoulders, leaving marks over the tattoos. The coil in my stomach wound tighter, a devastating pressure building with every brutal, perfect stroke. I was trembling, so close, teetering on an edge made of shame and pure, animal ecstasy.
“Come for me,” he growled into my ear, his pace becoming erratic, frantic.“Come on my cock and then tell me it’s over. Do it.”
His command, the filthy, possessive words, shattered me. A silent scream tore through me as I came, a seizing, convulsing wave of pleasure that wiped every thought clean, leaving only the brutal, pounding reality of him. My muscles clenched around him, milking him, and with a raw, guttural shout, he followed, pulsing deep inside me, his body rigid and trembling against mine.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of our ragged breathing, the wet sound of our bodies still joined, the faint buzz of the lamp. He was heavy against me, his weight keeping me pinned to the door. The reality of what we’d just done—the violence of it, the breathtaking intimacy of it—seeped back in, cold and clear.Slowly, he softened and slid out of me. A shudder ran through my body.He rested his forehead against the door beside my head, not looking at me.
I felt raw.Used.Exposed.My leggings were still tangled around my knees. The cheap wood of the door was now etched with the sweat from my back.
He finally pushed back, running a hand through his wrecked hair. He looked down at himself, then at me, my legs still spread, dripping with him.His expression was unreadable.
Without a word, he tucked himself back into his jeans, zipped up. He reached down, his fingers surprisingly gentle as he tugged my leggings back up over my hips.His knuckles brushed my stomach, and I flinched.
He picked up his hoodie from the chair and pulled it on. He walked to the door, his hand on the knob.He didn't turn around.
“It ends when I say it ends,” he said again, his voice quiet now, dead serious.
Then he opened the door and was gone, leaving me alone in the scent of sex and shame, leaning against the door that still vibrated from the force of him, my body already aching for the brilliant, tender bruises I knew would form by morning.