Chapter 3: The Taste of Ashes
Three weeks of silence built a strange new rhythm. I went to class. I annotated Wuthering Heights until the margins bled black ink. I drank coffee with Spencer and let Hanna drag me to a terrible movie, where we threw popcorn at the screen. I slept through the night sometimes. The world had reformed itself into a shape that didn’t include him, a puzzle with one piece permanently missing. It was a dull, manageable ache.
My apartment became a sanctuary of my own making. The half-unpacked boxes were finally sorted, books colonizing every flat surface. The ghost of his cologne had been chased out by cinnamon candles and the earthy smell of rain on old bricks. I was on the couch, a blanket over my legs, a poetry collection open but unread in my lap. A carton of lo mein sat cooling on the coffee table, one chopstick sticking straight up like a surrender flag.
The rain started as a tap, then became a drumroll against the windowpanes. It was the only sound until the doorbell rang.
It was too late for delivery. Spencer would have texted. A prickle of instinct traced my spine. I padded to the door, my socks whispering on the wood floor, and looked through the peephole.
The distorted fisheye lens showed a drowned figure, haloed by the yellow hallway light. Shoulders hunched against the weather. Chestnut curls plastered to his forehead. My heart didn’t stutter; it simply stopped, a dead weight in my chest.
I didn’t open the door.
The bell rang again, a long, insistent buzz.
“Nikki.” His voice was muffled by the wood, but I heard the ragged edge. “Please. I know I shouldn’t be here.”
I leaned my forehead against the cool paint. My breath fogged a tiny circle on the surface. Every sane cell screamed to walk away, to go back to my cold noodles and my poetry. But my hand was moving, fingers curling around the deadbolt, turning it with a definitive clunk.
I opened the door.
He looked like hell incarnate. Water streamed from his hair, down the sharp planes of his face, soaking into a grey t-shirt that clung to his chest. He was shivering, but his green eyes burned with a feverish intensity, roaming my face as if memorizing it. He smelled of wet cotton and cold pavement and something deeper, a frantic, animal desperation.
“You’re soaked,” I said, my voice flat.
“I walked.” He didn’t move to come in. He just stood there, dripping on my welcome mat, his gaze dropping to my bare feet, then traveling up my worn leggings to the oversized sweatshirt I lived in. “I’ve been trying. Fucking trying to stay away. To do what you asked.”
“And?”
“And I can’t.” The admission was torn from him. “I dream about it. The kitchen floor. The way you tasted. The sound you made when I finally… when I was inside you. It’s on a loop, Nikki. It’s all I have.”
The crude, specific words were a physical touch in the narrow doorway. My skin warmed against my will. “So you came here for a sequel?”
“I came here because I’m going out of my mind.” His hand shot out, gripping the doorframe beside my head, blocking my retreat. He leaned in, the heat of his body cutting through the chill he brought with him. “Tell me to leave. Say it. Look me in the eye and tell me to go, and I’ll walk back into that rain and you’ll never see me again.”
I looked into his eyes. I saw the wild hunger, the shame, the sheer fucking need. I saw the boy who used to steal my fries and the man who had shattered me. My lips parted. No sound came out.
That was all the answer he needed.
He was on me in a blur of cold rain and scalding heat. His mouth crashed down onto mine, a collision, not a kiss. It tasted of thunderstorms and despair. His hands, icy and shaking, framed my face, holding me still for his brutal, searching kiss. I didn’t respond. I combusted.
My hands flew to his soaked hair, fisting in the cold curls, pulling him deeper into me. A groan vibrated from his chest into mine. He kicked the door shut behind him with a slam that shook the wall, plunging us into the dim, cinnamon-scented light of my apartment.
He walked me backward, our mouths still fused, until my shoulder blades hit the wall beside my bookshelf. He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged gusts against my cheek. “I need to see you,” he rasped, his voice shredded. His fingers grabbed the hem of my sweatshirt and yanked it up and over my head in one furious motion. The cool air pebbled my skin. My plain black bra felt flimsy under his ravenous gaze.
His mouth descended to my neck, laving, biting at the place where his teeth had marked me weeks before. The old bruise was a faint yellow shadow, but he found it like a homing beacon, sucking at the tender skin until a fresh, sharp pain bloomed. I cried out, arching into him.
“Yeah,” he muttered against my throat, his hands scrabbling at the waistband of my leggings. “That’s it. Let me hear you.”
He dropped to his knees so fast his jeans made a wet sound on my floor. He hooked his thumbs in the fabric of my leggings and my cotton underwear and dragged them down my hips in one rough, unceremonious pull. The air hit my bare skin. He didn’t give me a second to feel exposed.
He buried his face between my thighs.
His tongue was a hot, demanding stripe against my core. He groaned, the sound vibrating through my flesh, and his arms locked around my thighs, holding me open, holding me captive. He licked into me with a frantic, starving intensity, his nose pressed against my clit, his stubble scraping the sensitive inner skin of my thighs.
“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he growled, the words muffled against my flesh. “Even for me. Even after what I did.”
He was right. My body was traitorously slick, responding to the raw ownership of his mouth, to the sheer audacity of him being here, on his knees. Shame and want twisted together, a tight coil in my gut. I tangled one hand in his soaking hair, not to guide him, but to anchor myself as the world tilted.
His tongue focused, a relentless, circling pressure on my clit. He sucked it between his lips, and my knees buckled. A broken sound, half-sob, half-moan, escaped me. He drank it down, his grip tightening, pressing his face harder against me as if he could crawl inside my skin.
“Come on my tongue,” he ordered, his voice a dark rumble. “Do it. I need to taste you come. I dream about that, too.”
The command, the filthy poetry of it, snapped the coil. My orgasm ripped through me, sudden and violent, a white-hot detonation that clenched my entire body. I shuddered against the wall, a silent scream locked in my throat, my fingers pulling his hair hard enough to hurt. He rode it out, lapping at me, swallowing every pulse until I was trembling and oversensitive, pushing weakly at his shoulders.
He stood, his eyes black with lust, his jeans visibly tented. Water still dripped from his hair onto his chest. He looked feral. Beautiful. Ruined.
Without a word, he grabbed me by the waist and lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his hips, the rough denim of his jeans abrading my inner thighs. He carried me the few stumbling steps to my small kitchen and hoisted me onto the counter, sending a stack of mail and a lone coffee cup clattering to the floor.
He pushed my thighs apart, his gaze locked on the glistening evidence of his mouth on my body. He fumbled with his belt, his fingers clumsy. The buckle clinked, the zipper snarled. He shoved his jeans and boxers down just enough to free his cock, thick and achingly hard, the head flushed dark.
He positioned himself at my entrance, the tip nudging against me. He was breathing like he’d run a mile, his forehead damp with sweat and rain. He looked into my eyes, and the desperation there was a bottomless pit.
“I need to feel you,” he rasped, his voice cracking. “I need to know this is real. That you’re real.”
He didn’t wait for permission. He drove into me with one single, deep, punishing thrust, sheathing himself to the hilt.
The stretch was breathtaking, a filling, burning ache. The cold, hard edge of the counter dug into my lower back. I gasped, my nails digging into his rain-slick shoulders. He held himself there, buried inside me, his body trembling with the effort of staying still.
“Tell me you feel this,” he grunted, his hips giving a minute, involuntary jerk. “Tell me.”
I could only shake my head, my breath catching. Words were beyond me. All that existed was the brutal, perfect fullness of him, the heat where we were joined, the chaotic symphony of our panting breaths.
He began to move.
It was not love-making. It was a frantic, driving fuck. He pulled almost all the way out and slammed back in, setting a relentless, jarring rhythm that knocked the breath from my lungs with every impact. The slap of his skin against mine, the wet, filthy sound of our joining, filled my tiny kitchen. He gripped the backs of my thighs, his fingers pressing into the muscle hard enough to leave bruises, spreading me wider, taking more.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his eyes wild. “Look at me while I fuck you.”
I forced my gaze to his. The pain there was naked, excruciating. Every thrust was an apology, a curse, a prayer. He leaned down, capturing my mouth again, swallowing my moans. The angle shifted, and the head of his cock brushed a spot deep inside that made stars explode behind my eyelids. A sharp, high cry was torn from me.
“There?” he gasped against my lips, adjusting his angle, pounding into that same exquisite spot with devastating accuracy. “Is that it, Nik? Does that feel good? Even after everything?”
“Yes,” I hissed, the word a betrayal. “God, yes.”
My second orgasm built faster, a tidal wave rising from my toes, fed by the raw friction, the emotional carnage, the sheer wrongness and rightness of him. He felt it, my internal muscles starting to flutter and clutch around him.
“Come with me,” he pleaded, his rhythm starting to fracture. “Please. I can’t… I’m gonna…”
He leaned down, his mouth finding the fresh mark on my shoulder. He bit down, a sharp, claiming pain, as his hips stuttered and he slammed into me one last, deep time. A raw, ragged shout tore from his throat as he came, his release flooding me in hot, pulsing waves. The sensation of him pumping deep inside me, the animal sound of his climax, pushed me over the edge. My orgasm seized me, a silent, convulsing wave that shattered my vision into fragments of light and dark.
He collapsed against me, his head buried in the crook of my neck, his body heavy and spent. We stayed like that, tangled together on the kitchen counter, our harsh breaths slowly syncing. The rain still hammered the windows. The only light was from the lone lamp in the living room, casting long, distorted shadows of our entwined forms against the wall.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The cold of the counter under my thighs. The ache between my legs. The warm, sticky wetness trickling down my inner thigh. The weight of him, and the terrifying, unspeakable intimacy of it.
He stirred first, pulling out of me with a soft, wet sound that made us both flinch. He gently helped me down from the counter. My legs were jelly. I leaned against the cabinets, watching as he righted his clothing with subdued, careful movements. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
He walked to the sink, wet a paper towel, and came back. Without a word, he knelt again and gently cleaned between my thighs, his touch unbearably tender. He disposed of the paper towel, then picked up my leggings and sweatshirt from the floor and handed them to me.
I dressed silently. The fabric felt strange on my oversensitive skin.
He stood by the door, looking lost. The frantic energy was gone, leaving only a hollowed-out shell. “I should go.”
He said it to the floor, his voice a hollow thing. His hand was already on the doorknob, fingers tightening around the cool brass. The finality of the gesture cut through the humid, sex-heavy air. It was the correct exit line for a guilty man.
My throat tightened. The silence stretched, thin and sharp as a razor wire. I saw the slope of his shoulders, the defeated angle of his head. He was really going to walk out. Again. The part of me that had memorized the hurt wanted to let him. That part was screaming. But a deeper, more stubborn part, the part that still felt his teeth on my skin and his come inside me, moved my mouth.
“Tu… um.” The sound was a choked whisper. I cleared my throat, the noise absurdly loud. “Don’t.”
His head snapped up. His green eyes were wide, stunned, searching my face for a trick. “What?”
“Don’t go.” The words were clearer now, heavy as stones dropped into the space between us. “Not like this. Not… just walking out the door after you…” I gestured vaguely toward the kitchen, my cheeks burning. “You don’t get to fuck me raw on a counter and then just say you ‘should go.’ That’s coward shit, Harry.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hand fell from the knob. “What am I supposed to do, Nikki? You tell me. Because I don’t know the rules here. I showed up. I did the… the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. I proved I’m exactly the selfish bastard you think I am. What’s left?”
“Talk.” The word felt foreign. “You said you couldn’t breathe. So talk. Use your fucking words, for once. Not just your dick.”
A harsh, humorless laugh escaped him. He ran a trembling hand through his wrecked curls. “I don’t know how.”
“Try.”
He leaned back against the door, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, his long legs bent in the narrow space of my entryway. He looked up at me, his expression bleak. “It’s like this noise. All the time. In my head. This static. Maya… she was just a body. A distraction from the noise. She didn’t matter. You were across the room laughing with Niall, and the noise got so loud I couldn’t think. So I walked into a dark room with a girl who didn’t matter.” He swallowed hard. “The second it happened, the noise got worse. It’s been a fucking siren ever since.”
I stayed by the kitchen doorway, arms wrapped around myself. “You hurt me.”
“I know.”
“You broke us.”
“I know that, too.” He dropped his head into his hands. “And coming here tonight? That was me being a weak, selfish fuck-up all over again. I didn’t come to talk. I came because I needed to be inside you. I needed to feel like I still could be. Like I hadn’t destroyed my only real thing.”
The crude honesty was more disarming than any apology. It was ugly and bare. I walked over and slid down the wall opposite him, mirroring his pose on the floor. The old wood floor was cool through my leggings. We were just two ruined kids sitting in a dim hallway. “So what now?”
“I have no idea.” He looked at me, his eyes glistening. “But if you tell me to leave for real, I will. I’ll go. And I’ll spend every day after trying to be someone who didn’t do this to you. To us.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. The part of me that was all sharp edges and survival wanted to say it. Leave. Instead, I heard myself ask, “Do you want a shower? You’re shivering.”
He blinked, thrown by the mundane offer. “Yeah. Okay.”
I pushed myself up and went to the linen closet, pulling out a clean towel. I handed it to him without touching his fingers. “Bathroom’s there. Don’t use all the hot water.”
He disappeared behind the door. The lock didn’t click. I listened to the pipes groan, the rush of the shower. I cleaned the kitchen counter with a disinfectant wipe, my movements methodical. I erased the fingerprints, the smudges, the physical proof. The mail and the cup were set right. When the water shut off, I was on the couch, the poetry book open again, seeing none of the words.
He emerged in a cloud of steam, wearing just his jeans, low on his hips, the towel draped around his shoulders. His hair was dark, dripping onto his collarbones. The tattoos on his chest and arms stood out against his skin. He looked younger. Unarmed.
“Sit,” I said, my voice quieter.
He did, sinking into the far corner of the couch, maintaining a careful foot of space between us. The distance felt like a canyon. The rain had softened to a gentle patter.
“The kitchen floor,” I said, not looking at him. “Three weeks ago. You remember what you said after?”
He was silent for a long moment. “I said a lot of stupid shit.”
“You said, ‘This doesn’t have to mean anything.’” I finally turned my head. “Did it mean anything?”
He stared at me, his gaze unwavering. “It meant everything. It always has. I was just too fucking scared to say it.”
The admission hung in the air, fragile and immense. The static he described, I realized, was in me too. A low hum of fear. I’d armored myself against him, against the hope he sparked. That armor was currently in pieces around my ankles.
I shifted on the couch, turning to face him, drawing one leg up beneath me. “Come here.”
He hesitated, confusion warring with a desperate hope in his eyes. “Nikki…”
“Not for that.” I reached out, my fingers brushing the back of his hand where it rested on his knee. “Just… come here.”
He moved slowly, as if approaching a spooked animal. He closed the distance, lying back along the length of the couch. I guided him, shifting until his head was in my lap. He went rigid for a second, then exhaled a shuddering breath, his whole body melting into the cushions. His eyes drifted shut.
My fingers touched his damp hair. I began to card through the curls, gently untangling them. He made a soft, broken sound in his throat, a sob he tried to swallow. A single tear escaped, tracking a path into his temple.
We stayed like that for a long time. The only sounds were the rain, our breathing, and the soft scrape of my nails against his scalp. The frantic, hungry energy from the kitchen was gone. This was something else. Something more terrifying in its quiet vulnerability.
His hand came up, his fingers wrapping gently around my wrist. He didn’t pull my hand away. He just held it there, against the beat of his pulse. “I’ll do anything,” he whispered, his eyes still closed. “Anything you need. Just… don’t give up on me yet.”
His whispered plea hung in the cinnamon-scented air, a fragile thread tethering us to the precipice we’d created. My fingers, still threaded through his damp curls, stilled. The weight of his head in my lap was an anchor, a claim I hadn’t consented to but now bore. The rain’s gentle patter was the only clock we had.
“I’m not making any promises,” I said, my voice low. It wasn’t a rejection. It was the only truth I had left.
“I’m not asking for any.” His eyes remained closed, but his hand tightened slightly around my wrist. “Just… stay right here.”
We stayed. The fluorescent buzz of the Sigma Chi kitchen felt like a memory from another lifetime. Here, the light was gold and uneven. His breathing deepened, slowed. The rigid panic that had held his body finally seeped away, leaving the heavy, warm laxness of exhaustion. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the dark fan of his lashes against his skin. A strange, reluctant peace settled over the room.
It shattered with a violent crack of thunder.
The lamp flickered. He jerked awake, a animal reflex, his green eyes wide and disoriented. The storm had returned with a vengeance, wind lashing the windows. In the sudden strobe of lightning, his face was all stark planes and shadow, vulnerable and fierce. The moment of tranquility was gone, replaced by a fresh, electric charge.
“Shit,” he breathed, sitting up slowly, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Power might go out,” I said, stating the obvious to fill the space his absence from my lap created.
“Yeah.” He looked at me, really looked, in the erratic light. His gaze traveled from my eyes to my mouth, down to where my sweatshirt gaped. A different kind of hunger flickered there, quieter but no less intense. Not the frantic need from the door, but something contemplative. “Your bed’s in the other room.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an observation, a placing of a fact on the table between us.
“It is.” I stood up, my body protesting. The ache between my thighs was a persistent, brutal reminder. “You should take it. I’ll take the couch.”
He stood too, unfolding his height in my low-ceilinged living room. He shook his head, a single, definitive motion. “Not a chance.”
“Harry…”
“No.” He stepped closer. The air grew thick, charged like the atmosphere outside. “If I’m staying, I’m not letting you sleep on this couch. We can share the bed. Just sleep. I won’t… I can behave.”
A short, disbelieving laugh escaped me. “Your track record tonight isn’t great for ‘behaving.’”
A ghost of his old grin touched his mouth, there and gone. “I know. But I’m asking.” He reached out, his fingers brushing a strand of my blue-purple hair behind my ear. The touch was so deliberate, so unlike the frantic grabs from before. “Let me try.”
The bedroom was a cave of shadows, the only light the sporadic flash from the storm. My bed was a mess of blankets and open paperbacks. He toed off his jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and slid under the covers in his boxers. I hesitated, then stripped to my t-shirt and panties, my back to him. I felt the dip of the mattress as I climbed in, putting as much distance as the full-sized bed allowed.
The cold sheets shocked my skin. We lay on our backs, not touching, staring at the ceiling. Rain hammered the roof. His breathing was too measured, too controlled to be real.
“This is fucking stupid,” he muttered into the dark.
“What is?”
“This. Lying here like statues. After everything.” He turned onto his side, facing me. I could feel the heat of his body across the inches. “I can hear you thinking from over here.”
“I’m thinking you should shut up and sleep.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then his hand moved, finding mine on the mattress between us. He laced his fingers through mine, his palm warm and slightly rough. “Okay,” he said, simply.
His touch was a circuit closing. The static he’d described flooded me, a hum of nerves and unresolved want. The memory of him on his knees in the hallway, of the counter digging into my back, played behind my eyes. My body, traitorous and alive, remembered it all.
My own breathing shallowed. The space between us became a tangible force, pulling taut.
“Nikki.” His voice was a rough scrape in the dark.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not.” He squeezed my hand. “But if you turn over… if you look at me right now… I can’t be responsible for what happens.”
I turned over. Lightning flashed. His eyes were waiting, wide and consuming.
What happened next was slow. A deliberate undoing. He released my hand to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking my bottom lip. He didn’t kiss me. He studied my face as if reading a sacred text. The hunger was there, but leashed, transformed into a devastating focus.
“I want to taste you again,” he stated, his voice low and raw. “Not like before. Slow. I want to feel every fucking shudder.”
Before I could answer, he moved. He shifted down the bed, the sheets whispering, and hooked his hands under my knees. He pulled me, gently, until my hips were at the edge of the mattress and he was kneeling on the floor between my legs. The position was submissive, reverent. It shattered me more than his earlier desperation had.
He pushed my t-shirt up to my waist. He didn’t rip my panties off. He hooked his thumbs in the lace and dragged them down my legs with a slowness that was its own form of torture. The cool air hit my wet skin. He looked his fill, his gaze a physical weight.
“So perfect,” he breathed, more to himself than to me. “Mine.” The possessiveness wasn’t a demand this time. It was a awed, wretched confession.
He bent his head.
His tongue was a flat, hot stroke from my entrance to my clit. He groaned, the sound vibrating through my core. This wasn’t the frantic, competitive licking from the hallway. This was exploration. Worship. He lapped at me, drinking deeply, his nose nudging my clit with each pass. He used his tongue to open me, to delve inside, then circled back to flick the tight, aching bud with precise, maddening strokes.
“You taste like heaven and regret,” he muttered against my flesh, his words slurred. “I could die right here and it’d be enough.”
My hips lifted off the bed, seeking more. I tangled my hands in his hair, not to guide, but to feel the connection. He responded by intensifying his rhythm, sucking my clit into his mouth, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure that made my toes curl. The orgasm built like a slow, deep earthquake, gathering from a place of emotional ruin. It wasn’t a sharp detonation. It was a wave that rose, crested, and broke over me with a profound, silent intensity. My body bowed, shaking, as pleasure, sharp and sweet, radiated out from my core. He gentled his mouth, kissing me through the pulses until I collapsed back onto the mattress, boneless.
He rose up, crawling over me, his boxers tented obscenely. His lips were slick, shining with me. He kissed me, letting me taste myself on his tongue, the act filthier and more intimate than anything before.
“My turn,” I whispered against his mouth.
I pushed at his shoulders. He rolled onto his back, his chest heaving. I straddled his hips, feeling the hard line of his cock through the thin cotton. I leaned down, kissing him, my hair falling around our faces like a curtain. I dragged my mouth down his neck, over the pounding of his pulse, down the tattooed expanse of his chest. I traced the lines of ink with my tongue, feeling his abdomen clench.
I hooked my fingers in the waistband of his boxers and pulled them down. His cock sprang free, thick and flushed, the tip wet. I took him in my hand, pumping slowly, watching his face. His eyes were glued to me, his lips parted, every muscle in his body taut.
“Nikki,” he warned, his voice strained.
I bent lower. I licked a stripe from the base to the tip, swirling my tongue around the head. He cursed, his hips lifting off the bed. I took him into my mouth, sinking down as far as I could, my throat relaxing. I moved my head in a slow, steady rhythm, one hand gripping the base of his shaft, the other braced on his stomach.
“Fuck… your mouth…” he choked out, his hands fisting in the sheets. “So good. Too good.”
I hummed around him, the vibration making his legs tremble. I could taste the sharp, clean salt of his pre-come. I increased my pace, using my hand in tandem with my mouth, sucking hard. His breathing became ragged, torn.
“I’m gonna come,” he gasped. “Stop, or I’ll…”
I didn’t stop. I looked up at him, meeting his desperate gaze as I took him deep. That was his undoing. With a shattered cry, he came, pulsing hot jets into my mouth. I swallowed, taking every drop, until he was spent and twitching, gently pushing me off with a trembling hand.
I crawled back up his body and lay beside him, my head on his shoulder. He was breathing like he’d been dragged from the ocean. He turned his head, pressing a kiss to my temple.
“I didn’t deserve that,” he said, his voice wrecked.
“No,” I agreed quietly. “You didn’t.”
We lay in the aftermath, the storm raging outside, a matched chaos within. His arm came around me, holding me close. The scent of sex and sweat and rain filled the dark room. The complexity of what we were doing—the damage, the addiction, the impossible longing—settled over us, heavier than the blankets.
Sleep, when it finally came, was a black void. I woke to grey dawn light and an empty space beside me. The panic was instant and cold. Then I heard the soft clink from the kitchen.
I pulled on his discarded t-shirt and padded out. He was at the stove, shirtless, making coffee in the french press I’d shown him how to use a lifetime ago. Two mugs waited on the counter. He turned, leaning back against the stove, and watched me approach.
No easy grin. No charming deflection. Just a young man, barefoot in a borrowed kitchen, looking utterly stripped raw. He handed me a mug.
“Morning,” he said.
I took the coffee. The warmth seeped into my hands. Outside, the world was washed clean and dripping. In here, everything was still terribly, beautifully stained.
“So,” I said, looking at him over the rim of my mug.
“So,” he echoed. He didn’t look away.