Chapter 6: The Fire Pit's Ultimatum
The patio lights flickered off behind Mark’s house, leaving only the fire pit’s erratic dance. His shadow, long and imposing, fell over me as he walked back. The phone was gone, slipped into his pocket. His eyes hadn't changed. That dark, focused intent was back, sharpened by the interruption.
“Where were we?” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the pit of my stomach.
He didn’t sit beside me. He sat directly in front of me on the wide lounger, his knees bracketing my thighs, closing me in. The heat from his body was a physical wall. The clean, sharp scent of him—expensive soap and whiskey—overwhelmed the jasmine. His hands came to rest on my bare knees. My skin there was impossibly smooth, and his touch was like a brand.
My mind gibbered, a staticky panic. Just tell him. Scream. Push him off.
But my body, Sabrina’s body, did the opposite. A slow, heavy warmth spread out from his touch, a liquid pooling low in my belly. My legs, which felt so slender and breakable under his palms, went lax.
“You’re still trembling,” he observed. One hand slid up my thigh, a slow, deliberate ascent. His fingers were hot, the calluses on his palms scraping softly against my hypersensitive skin. The sensation was shocking, a direct line of fire to my core. I flinched, a tiny jerk, but my hips tipped forward almost imperceptibly, seeking more of that rough heat.
Over his broad shoulder, through the shimmer of heat from the fire, I saw it. The silhouette. Still there. A tall, bearded statue in the darkness. Watching. Sabrina. A silent judge in my own stolen flesh. The guilt was a cold knife twisting beside the growing heat.
Mark’s other hand came up to cradle my jaw. His thumb brushed my lower lip, and it felt swollen, pulsing under the touch. “So beautiful,” he breathed, and it wasn’t a line. It sounded like a fact he was stating to himself.
He leaned in. This time, there was no interruption.
His mouth was on my neck, just below my ear. Not a kiss, but a hot, open-mouthed press of skin on skin. The scratch of his stubble was a savage contrast to the softness of his lips. A sharp, involuntary gasp tore from my throat. It was a sound I’d never made, high and ragged. My head fell back, offering him more, my neck arching with a flexibility that was entirely new. My hands came up, fluttering, and landed on the solid rock of his shoulders. I meant to push. I clung.
His tongue traced the shell of my ear. “That’s it,” he murmured, the words vibrating into my very bones.
The hand on my thigh moved higher. His fingers hooked under the thin, soaked elastic of the thong. The material was a wet, chilly string against his knuckles, a stark contrast to the feverish skin beneath. He paused there, his fingertips a breath away from the heart of the alien ache between my legs.
My entire consciousness narrowed to that point of imminent contact. Every nerve in this foreign body was screaming, taut as a wire. The cool night air, the crackle of the fire, the distant hum of a pool pump—it all faded into a dull roar. There was only the pounding of a heart too small and fast, the suffocating scent of him, and the devastating promise of his hand.
I was melting and freezing all at once. My breasts, heavy and confined, ached with a deep, rhythmic throb that matched the pulse elsewhere. The slightest shift of my posture made them sway, a gentle, frustrating jiggle that reminded me of their constant, vulnerable presence.
His lips moved from my neck to the corner of my mouth. “Look at me,” he said, a quiet command.
My eyelids, which had slid shut, fluttered open. His face was inches from mine, his eyes black in the firelight, reflecting the flames. I was drowning in them.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t like any kiss I’d ever given or received. His mouth was demanding, confident, and my own responded with a pliant, desperate hunger that had nothing to do with Justin Zygurski. My new lips were soft, embarrassingly full, and they shaped themselves to his perfectly. The taste of him—whiskey and mint—flooded my mouth, a taste that was somehow sharper, more vivid on Sabrina’s tongue. A low moan, soft and helpless, escaped me, swallowed by his mouth.
As he kissed me, deep and slow, his hand finally moved.
He didn’t yank the thong aside. He simply slid his fingers beneath the wet fabric, his touch a hot, shocking invasion on skin so intimate it felt like a exposed nerve.
He went utterly still against my mouth. His kiss softened, then stopped.
He broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to look into my eyes. His expression was one of raw, male surprise. His fingers, resting where they were, pressed ever so slightly. A confirming touch.
I was drenched. Soaking. A slick, undeniable heat that had nothing to do with the hot tub.
A faint, knowing smile touched his lips. “Jesus, Sabrina,” he whispered, his voice thick with a kind of awed victory. “You’re…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The evidence was under his hand, a betrayal so complete it severed the last tether to my old self. My body, this traitorous, beautiful shell, had prepared itself utterly without my consent.
Shame, hot and corrosive, flooded me. But beneath it, coiled tight and terrifying, was a sharp pang of pleasure at his discovery, at the pure animal approval in his voice.
His fingers moved again, a subtle, circular exploration that made my spine bow. A choked sound, half-sob, half-sigh, hiccupped from my throat. My hips pressed upward, a sharp, involuntary grind against his hand, seeking pressure, seeking friction, seeking anything to satisfy the hollow, pounding need.
My gaze, blurry with unshed tears and a haze of sensation, flickered over his shoulder.
The fence line was empty.
Sabrina was gone.