Chapter 4: Begging for More
Her world narrowed to the wet heat of his mouth and the desperate, climbing pressure in her core. She was close, so close, her fingers fisting in his sheets, her hips rocking against his face. Then he stopped.
He pulled back, his mouth slick and chin wet, and looked up at her. The raw need in his eyes was mirrored by something darker, a possessive fury that hadn’t been spent on the couch. “Flip over,” he said, his voice a graveled command.
A shudder ran through her. She didn’t hesitate. Rolling onto her stomach, she felt the cool sheets against her belly and breasts. She pushed herself up onto her knees, her back curving, presenting herself to him. The air touched her wet skin, making her shiver. She heard him move behind her, the shift of the mattress, the rasp of his zipper.
His hands gripped her hips, hard enough to bruise. He guided himself to her opening, the blunt head of his cock pressing against her soaked flesh. He didn’t ask. He just pushed, one firm, inexorable thrust that buried him inside her to the hilt.
Maria cried out, a sharp sound muffled by the pillow. He was so deep, stretching her, filling the emptiness with a brutal, familiar fullness. For a moment, he stayed still, letting them both feel it, the unbearable rightness of the fit.
Then he pulled back and drove into her again.
“Oh, fuck,” she whimpered, the breath forced from her lungs.
This wasn’t making love. This was claiming. Each thrust was a punctuation mark, a hard, angry declaration. Her own need met his, a collision of grief and lust. She pushed back against him, meeting his rhythm, her ass slapping against his thighs.
“Is this what you came for?” he growled, his voice tight with strain. His hands slid from her hips to her waist, holding her steady as he pounded into her. “To get fucked like this?”
“Yes,” she gasped, the word breaking on a moan. “God, yes, Joe. Please.”
“‘Please’ what?” He leaned over her, his chest pressing against her sweaty back, his mouth close to her ear. His pace never slowed, the force of his drives pushing her up the bed. “Say it.”
“Fuck me harder,” she begged, the words filthy and true. “I need it. I need you to fucking wreck me.”
A rough sound tore from his throat. He straightened, his hands clamping back on her hips, and gave her exactly what she asked for. His thrusts became harder, faster, piston-like strokes that chased her own pleasure to a dizzying peak. The room filled with the sound of skin on skin, their ragged breathing, the creak of the bedsprings. The headboard began to tap a frantic, staccato rhythm against the wall—tap-tap-tap—then with a final, driven surge from Joe, it cracked against the plaster with a sound like a gunshot.
Maria screamed. The shock of the noise, the violence of the impact, tore the orgasm from her. It ripped through her, a convulsive wave that clenched around his cock, milking him, pulling a guttural shout from his lips as he followed her over. He poured into her, his hips jerking erratically, his release hot and endless inside her.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their heaving breaths and the faint settling of the headboard against the wall. Joe slumped over her, his weight a warm, heavy blanket. His forehead rested between her shoulder blades. She felt the frantic beat of his heart against her back, slowing gradually to match her own.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. The sudden emptiness was a visceral loss. He rolled onto his back beside her, staring at the ceiling. The silence between them was different now—charged, but softened at the edges.
Maria slowly lowered herself from her knees, rolling onto her side to face him. His profile was sharp against the dim light from the hallway. She saw the tension had returned to his jaw.
“The headboard,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Fuck the headboard,” he murmured, but there was no heat in it.
She reached out, her fingers tracing the line of his arm from his wrist to his bicep. He didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. It wasn’t for the headboard.
He turned his head to look at her. His eyes, in the half-light, were unreadable pools. “For which part?”
“For all of it.” She swallowed. “For leaving. For coming back like this.”
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he shifted, turning onto his side to face her. He brought a hand up, his thumb brushing a strand of damp hair from her cheek. The gesture was so familiar, so achingly tender after the roughness, that her breath hitched.
“Why did you leave, Maria?”
The question hung there, simple and devastating. It was the one he hadn’t asked in the heat of the kitchen, or against the wall, or on the couch. He’d asked who she belonged to, but not why she’d gone.
She looked away, at the fallen photo on the nightstand. “I got scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of… the silence,” she said, the truth rising like bile. “Of how easy it was. Of looking at you across the breakfast table and knowing exactly what you were going to say. Of seeing our whole life laid out like a road with no turns.” She met his eyes again. “I felt like I was disappearing into ‘us’. And I thought I needed to find ‘me’.”
Joe absorbed this, his expression not changing. “And did you?”
A tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her temple into her hair. “No. I just got lonely.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the storm was gone, replaced by a deep, weary sadness. “So you came back for this?”
“I came back because I was a coward,” she said, the words hurting as they came out. “I couldn’t call. I couldn’t have a conversation. I could only show up and let something else… take over.”
He nodded slowly, as if this confirmed something. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, looking down at her. His body was a landscape of shadows and taut muscle in the dim light. “This… doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know.”
“It just makes it more complicated.”
“I know that, too.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “Then what do you want, right now, in this minute?”
She reached for him, her hand settling on the side of his neck, feeling the strong pulse there. “I want you to hold me. Just for a little while. Before the sun comes up and we have to figure out what the hell we’re doing.”
A flicker of something—relief, maybe, or the same terrible longing—crossed his face. He didn’t smile, but he moved. He lay back down and opened his arms. She slid into them, fitting herself against the curve of his body, her back to his chest. His arms wrapped around her, solid and sure. He pulled the disheveled comforter over them both.
His warmth enveloped her. The scent of him, of them, was everywhere. His breath stirred the curls at her nape. In the dark sanctuary of his bed, with the cracked headboard testament to their collision, she felt a fleeting, fragile peace. It wasn’t an answer. It was a temporary ceasefire in a war she’d started.
She felt his lips press softly, once, against her shoulder. A ghost of a kiss. A punctuation mark.
Outside, a car passed, its headlights painting a slow arc across the ceiling and then vanishing. They didn’t speak. They just held on, two people clinging to a life raft they’d spent months trying to sink, waiting for the inevitable dawn.