Chapter 10: The Claiming
A gentle hand touched her shoulder.“Roll over for me, Teresa.” His voice was different. The command was still there, but the edge had softened into something deeper, more solemn.
She was liquid, barely capable of moving, but she managed to turn onto her back, the sheets clinging to her damp skin. She looked up at him.Patrick stood beside the bed, gloriously naked. The lamplight caught the sandy hair on his chest, the hard planes of his stomach, the formidable, thick length of him jutting out, flushed and ready.But his eyes held none of the earlier predatory fire. They were clear, blue, and startlingly vulnerable.
He knelt on the bed, his movements slow and deliberate.He didn’t push her legs apart. Instead, he guided them together, then urged her knees up, his hands warm on the backs of her thighs. He settled himself in the space he’d created, his weight sinking into the mattress between her legs, but he didn’t enter her.Not yet.He lowered himself over her, bracing on one forearm. His other hand came up, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw, brushing sweaty strands of dark hair from her forehead. “I want to see your face,” he murmured, his voice a low, rough whisper that seemed to vibrate in her very bones. “When I make love to you for the first time.”
The shift in his tone was seismic.It wasn’t a ploy. She could hear it, the stark truth ringing in the quiet words.Make love.Not fuck.Not use. Not own.Make love. For all the filthy, wonderful, debasing things they had done, this was new territory.
Tears, unbidden and sudden, pricked at the corners of her eyes.He saw them.His thumb brushed beneath one eye, catching a trailing dampness.
“Don’t,” she whispered, embarrassed.
“Why not?” he asked softly, his gaze roaming her face as if memorizing it.“You’re so beautiful.All of you. This fierce, stubborn, brilliant face. This body that’s taken everything I’ve given tonight and begged for more.” He leaned down, his lips brushing hers, not in a kiss, but in a shared breath.“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Teresa Lisbon. In any country.Under any light.”
The words dismantled her. They were a truth more penetrating than any of his explicit demands. They reached past the sated, raw animal of her body and touched the lonely core of her, the part that had watched him for years, convinced she was only ever background noise in the symphony of his grief.
She wrapped an arm around his neck, her fingers sliding into the hair at his nape. She pulled him down, not with force, but with a silent, desperate need for connection.Their mouths met, and this kiss was different. It was deep, yes, and hungry, but it was slow.It was a conversation. An exploration of lips and tongue that spoke of years of missed chances and quiet yearning. It tasted of salt and her own slickness and something indescribably them.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing raggedly, she kept her eyes closed for a second, resting her forehead against his.
“Patrick,” she breathed into the tiny space between them.
“Hmm?”
She opened her eyes, her green gaze locking onto his blue one with an intensity that mirrored his own.The vulnerability was terrifying, but it was his. He had given it to her.And so she gave him hers. She reached between them, her hand finding his hard, hot length. She guided him to her entrance, the broad head nudging against her slick, swollen folds.
She looked right at him, her voice soft but clear, a final surrender that was also an offering.“Use me.Take what you need. I’m yours.”
A shudder ran through him, a full-body tremor she felt against her own skin. For a brilliant, manipulative talker, he seemed to have no words.His eyes glistened. He nodded, once, a sharp, grateful movement.He pushed forward.
It was not the aggressive, dominating thrust she might have expected after her words.It was slow. An inexorable, gentle invasion that stretched her, filled her with a burning, perfect fullness she felt in her throat. He watched her face, every flicker of sensation, every slight widening of her eyes, every catch of her breath. He sank into her until he was fully sheathed, until their hips were pressed flush together, until she could feel the coarse hair of his pelvis against her sensitive flesh. He paused there, buried deep, letting her adjust to the sheer, intimate reality of him inside her.
“Oh, god,” she whimpered, her head falling back against the pillow.“Look at me,” he whispered.
She forced her eyes open, her vision slightly blurred.“Tell me,” he said, his voice thick. “Whose pussy is this?”
The question was the same, but the context had transformed it. It wasn’t a demand for submission; it was a plea for confirmation.
“Yours,” she gasped, meaning it in a way she never had before.
He withdrew almost completely, then slid back in with that same devastating slowness. “And these breasts?” His thumb stroked over a pebbled nipple.“Yours.” A tear escaped and tracked down her temple.
He leaned down, kissing the tear away, his hips rocking against hers in a deep, languid rhythm. The pace was agonizing and perfect.Each stroke dragged against a place inside her that sparked lightning. This wasn’t about frantic friction; it was about feeling every millimeter of connection, every shift of muscle, every shared heartbeat.
He thrust deeper, curling his pelvis, and she cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders. “And this cunt?” he whispered against her lips, the crude word a shocking, tender contrast to the reverence in his movements. “This beautiful, tight, perfect cunt I’ve dreamed about for a thousand fucking nights?”
“Yours, Patrick.” Her voice broke on his name.“All yours.”
That broke his control. A low groan tore from his chest, and his rhythm shifted, not becoming harder, but somehow more. It became a rolling, relentless wave, a pursuit of a feeling that was as much emotional as physical.He was making love to her. He was inside her body, but he was looking straight into her soul.
The pressure built differently this time. It wasn’t a sharp coil in her belly; it was a deep, swelling tide that originated in her chest, in the place where his words had lodged. It spread through her limbs, warming her from the inside out, centering on where they were joined. Her climax approached not as a chaotic explosion, but as an inevitable sunrise.
“I see you,” he rasped, his own breathing ragged, his pace steady and deep. “I see you, Teresa.”
That did it. The wave crested, broke, and washed through her in a series of long, pulsing waves. It was less a shatter and more a melting, a dissolving of every boundary between them. She didn’t scream; she sobbed, a deep, heart-wrenching sound of release that carried years of silent longing. Her body clenched around him, milking his length in rhythmic spasms.He kissed her through it, swallowing her cries, his own movements becoming urgent, stuttering. The tenderness fractured into raw need. “Come for me, come on my cock, let me feel it,” he chanted, his words slurred against her mouth. The filthy encouragement, now wrapped in this new intimacy, sent another, sharper aftershock through her.
With a final, deep thrust, he buried himself to the hilt and let go. She felt the hot, sudden pulse of his release inside her, a shocking intimacy that triggered one last, delicate tremor in her own core. He collapsed against her, his full weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in the curve of her neck.His breath was hot and ragged on her skin.
They lay there, tangled and spent, for a long time.The only sounds were their slowing breaths and the distant hum of the city night. The lamp still cast its confessional pool of light. Her fingers, of their own volition, stroked through his damp hair.
He finally shifted, sliding out of her with a soft, wet sound that made her blush in the darkness.He didn’t go far. He rolled onto his side, gathering her against him, pulling the disheveled sheets over them both. She settled her head on his chest, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart.
His hand traced idle patterns on her bare back.“So,” he said, his voice gravelly with exhaustion and something else. “That guy.The one who hurt you.”
She stilled. “What about him?”
“Just wondering what his name is,” Patrick said, his tone light, conversational. “And what allergic reaction he might have to, say, a potent mixture of ipecac and industrial laxative secretly administered in his morning latte. Purely hypothetical, of course.”
A laugh bubbled up in Teresa’s throat, surprising her.It was a raw, choked sound.She pressed her face against his chest. “Shut up, Jane.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Just thinking out loud.”