Chapter 1: The Bomb at the House Party
The bass from the living room thrums through the floorboards, up through the soles of my boots, and settles somewhere behind my ribs. It feels like a second, shittier heartbeat. The kitchen air is thick with the smell of warm beer and someone’s cheap vanilla body spray, and I’m leaning against the doorframe because standing up straight feels like too much of a commitment.
Then I see him.
Harry’s in the center of it all, of course. The couch is shoved back, people are packed shoulder to shoulder, and he’s got one arm raised, a red plastic cup in his hand. The other is draped around Kendall Jenner like she’s a trophy he just won at the county fair. Her hair is perfect. Her dress probably costs more than my tuition. She looks bored, but in a chic, mysterious way.
“Hey!” Harry’s voice cuts over the music, all easy charisma. “Shut up for a sec, you animals!”
A laugh ripples through the crowd. Liam and Louis are by the stereo, grinning. Niall lets out a wolf-whistle.
“Just wanted to say,” Harry continues, his green eyes scanning the room. They slide right over the kitchen, over me, but then snap back. They lock onto mine. He hesitates for a fraction of a second. “This one’s officially putting up with me. Kendall and I are official!”
The roar is instantaneous. A chorus of whoops and cheers, the clinking of cups. Zayn gives a nod from where he’s leaning with Emily. Spencer’s smile looks tight beside Liam. My own face feels like plaster.
My hazel eyes sting, which is so fucking pathetic it almost makes me laugh. Instead, I smirk. I tip my head back and finish my beer, the lukewarm liquid bitter on my tongue.
Hanna is next to me, a solid, furious presence. “That fucking asshole,” she hisses, her blue eyes blazing.
“Guess I’ll have to find a new study buddy,” I mutter, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. My voice is steady. Good. It’s a lie, but it sounds good.
Across the room, Harry’s smile falters. He’s still looking at me. The celebratory noise seems to fade around him, and in the chaos of flashing phone lights and dancing bodies, it’s just this silent, screaming wire stretched between us. His gaze isn’t triumphant. It’s desperate, pleading, like he’s waiting for me to throw something or burst into tears so he can have a reason to run over here.
I give him nothing. I turn away.
“I need another drink,” I tell Hanna, or maybe I tell the sticky floor. I push off the doorframe and melt into the crowd, heading for the hallway where the bathrooms are. I need a wall at my back. I need to not be in that room.
I need to not be in that room.
The hallway is darker, the air slightly cooler. People are crammed along the walls, laughing, shouting into each other’s ears. The line for the bathroom snakes past the stairs. I lean my head against the wall, the thumping bass vibrating through my skull. I close my eyes, but all I see is his arm around her waist, his stupid, perfect mouth announcing it to the world.
A body presses against my back. Warm. Solid. Familiar. The scent of his cologne—something woodsy and expensive—cuts through the sweat and beer.
“You look so fucking good tonight, Nikki.”
His voice is a low rumble in my ear, his lips brushing my skin. Heat floods me, immediate and traitorous. I whirl around, my fist clenched, every curse word I know poised on my tongue.
“Get the hell away from me, you pathetic—”
He doesn’t let me finish. His hand closes around my wrist, tight enough to bruise, and he yanks me forward. The door to the empty bathroom next to the laundry closet is ajar. He shoves it open, pulls me inside, and slams it shut. The lock clicks. The world outside muffles to a dull, throbbing hum.
“Harry, what the fuck are you—”
He spins me around so fast the room blurs. My hands slam against the cold porcelain of the sink. My reflection is wide-eyed, furious, the blue and purple of my hair stark against the filthy bathroom light.
His body cages me in. One hand flattens between my shoulder blades, pushing me down. The other fists in the waistband of my jeans.
“I’m gonna fuck you right here,” he growls, his voice raw and ragged against the shell of my ear. “And you’re gonna love it.”
My protest dies as he yanks my jeans and underwear down to my thighs in one rough, efficient motion. The cold air hits my skin. I’m exposed. I should be fighting, screaming, kneeing him in the balls. But my body is betraying me, a hot, liquid ache spreading low in my belly.
He fumbles with his own fly, the sound of his zipper loud in the small room. I hear him spit into his palm. Then the blunt, wet head of his cock is pressing against me, not asking, just seeking. He’s hard, fully, impressively hard.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he challenges, his breath hot on my neck.
I hate him. I hate him so much my teeth ache. I bite my lip, drawing blood, and say nothing.
He takes my silence as permission. He pushes inside with one brutal, unforgiving thrust.
I cry out, a sharp, fractured sound swallowed by the music. He’s big, and he doesn’t give me time to adjust. He fills me, stretches me, a familiar invasion that feels like both a homecoming and a violation. My forehead presses against the medicine cabinet mirror.
“Fuck,” he grunts, his hips sealing against my ass.
He starts to move. Hard, deep, punishing strokes that shake the sink. Each drive knocks the air from my lungs. His hand leaves my back, tangles in my hair, and pulls my head back so he can mouth at my throat, my shoulder, biting the strap of my tank top.
“You see her out there?” he pants between thrusts. “She means nothing. You know that, right? You fucking know that.”
I can’t form words. Pleasure is coiling, tight and dangerous, low in my gut. The shame of it makes me want to vomit. My hips push back against him, meeting his rhythm. My own traitorous body.
“This is what you do to me,” he rasps. “This is all you. Always you.”
His hand slides around my hip, his fingers finding the wet, swollen heat between my legs. He rubs tight, relentless circles, his thrusts becoming more frantic, less controlled. The dual sensations overwhelm me. The sink is digging into my pelvis. The mirror is fogging. My knees are shaking.
“Come for me, Nikki,” he demands, his voice breaking. “Come on my cock while I’m balls deep inside you. Do it.”
It’s the raw need in his command that shatters me. A wave crashes over me, violent and blinding. My back arches, a silent scream tearing through me as I convulse around him, the pleasure so intense it borders on pain.
Feeling me clench around him tips him over the edge. He buries himself to the hilt, his body going rigid against mine. A low, guttural groan tears from his throat, and I feel the hot, pulsing rush of him filling me up. He collapses over my back, his weight heavy, his face buried in my hair. We’re both breathing like we’ve run a marathon.
The reality crashes down. The stickiness between my thighs. The smell of sex and sweat in the cramped air. The distant echo of the party where his girlfriend—his official, publicly announced girlfriend—is waiting.
He softens inside me and slowly pulls out. The loss feels colder than the air. He tucks himself away, zips up. I don’t move. I can’t.
His hands, suddenly gentle, pull my jeans back up over my hips. He fastens the button. He turns me around. My face is wet. I don’t know when I started crying.
He looks wrecked. His curls are damp with sweat, his green eyes are dark and shattered. He cups my face, his thumb wiping under my eye.
“Nikki,” he whispers, and it sounds like a prayer and an apology all at once.
A fist pounds on the door. “Hurry up in there, assholes!”
The spell breaks. The desperation in his eyes hardens into panic. He steps back, raking a hand through his hair. He looks from me to the door, from the door back to me. The boy who just owned every inch of me now looks like a cornered animal.
He doesn’t say another word. He unlocks the door, opens it just enough to slip out, and is gone, absorbed back into the swirling chaos of his own party.
I’m left alone, my body humming, his come leaking into my underwear, staring at my own shattered reflection in a frat house bathroom mirror.
I didn’t move until my breathing evened out. I wiped my face with a scratchy piece of paper towel, scrubbed at the smudged liner under my eyes. The girl in the mirror looked used. She looked like she understood the punchline to a really cruel joke. I straightened my tank top, tugged my jeans into place, and pushed the door open.
The hallway crowd had thinned. The party was migrating, the epicenter of noise shifting toward the backyard. I walked on unsteady legs back toward the kitchen, my body a live wire of aftershocks and shame.
Hanna was exactly where I’d left her, now holding two fresh beers. Her eyes scanned me, missing nothing—the slight tremor in my hand, the new redness at my throat, the hollow look in my eyes.
“Where did you go?” she asked, her voice low.
“Bathroom,” I said, taking the beer she offered. My voice was sandpaper.
“You were gone twenty minutes. I was about to send a search party.” Her gaze flickered over my shoulder, hardening. “He just came out of the hall. Looking like he lost a fight.”
I took a long swallow. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did he—?”
“Hanna. Drop it.”
She heard the finality. She nodded, but her jaw was clenched tight. “Okay. But we’re leaving. Spencer’s by the back door. Liam’s trying to talk to her, but she’s pissed. At him, at Harry, at the whole fucking situation.”
We weaved through the mess toward the sliding glass door. Spencer stood with her arms crossed, a sleek silhouette against the chaotic backdrop of the backyard party. Liam was in front of her, hands out, talking in a placating tone she clearly wasn’t buying.
“—just how he is, Spence. He’s impulsive. He doesn’t think.”
“He thinks with his dick, Liam. And he’s using a supermodel to do it while he fucks with Nikki’s head in a bathroom. That’s not impulsive. That’s calculated cruelty.” Spencer’s voice was ice.
Liam saw us approach, relief and guilt flashing across his face. “Hey, Nikki. You okay?”
“Peachy,” I said, my smile feeling like a cracked plate.
Spencer turned, her brown eyes softening for a second before turning resolute. “We’re going. Aria and Emily are already outside. Louis is… somewhere. Probably enabling.”
As we stepped out into the cool night air, the noise changed from a contained roar to a sprawling din. Bodies were clustered around a blazing fire pit. I saw Zayn and Emily sharing a solitary lawn chair, her head on his shoulder. Niall was animatedly telling a story to a laughing group, Hanna’s gaze instinctively finding him before she looked away, pissed off on my behalf. And there, by the rusting metal keg, was Harry.
Kendall was beside him, one elegant hand resting on his arm. He was listening to something Louis was saying, but his shoulders were tense. His head turned, slowly, as if pulled by a magnet. His eyes found me in the dark. The firelight danced across his face, turning his expression into something unreadable.
I forced myself to look away, to follow Spencer toward the side gate.
“Nikki.”
His voice. Closer than it should be. He’d broken away, crossing the yard in a few quick strides. He smelled like sweat and whiskey and me.
Hanna stepped in front of me. “Back off, Styles.”
“I need to talk to her. For one minute.”
“You don’t get minutes,” Spencer said, stepping up beside Hanna. “You used all your minutes. You made your choice. Now go parade it.”
He ignored them, his green eyes burning into mine over their shoulders. There was a wild, reckless pain there. “Please.”
It was the ‘please’ that did it. It was raw and stripped bare. I nudged Hanna’s arm gently. “It’s fine. One minute.”
They exchanged a look but moved aside, forming a protective wall a few feet away. Harry moved closer, his body blocking out the firelight.
“What,” I said, flatly.
“That… in there….” He ran a hand through his curls, agitated. “That wasn’t… I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”
I barked out a laugh. “How did you mean for it to be, Harry? Romantic? You bent me over a sink and fucked me like you hated me two minutes after announcing your relationship to the entire school. Congrats. You nailed the audition for ‘Biggest Cliché in the World.’”
He flinched. “You think I want her? You think I can even fucking breathe when you’re in the room? She’s… easy. She’s simple. She doesn’t…” He struggled for words, gesturing at me. “You’re in my head. All the time. It’s like a scream. I can’t turn it off.”
His confession hung between us, ugly and real. It wasn’t an excuse. It was just the truth of his damage.
“So you use her to quiet the scream? And use me to feel it louder?” I shook my head. “You don’t get to have both. You don’t get to have her on your arm and me in a bathroom. You made your choice. Now live with it.”
I turned to leave.
His hand shot out, fingers wrapping around my wrist. Not hard, but firm. An anchor. “I can’t.”
I looked down at his hand, then back up at him. “Let go.”
“No.”
The word was final. Possessive. It ignited something dark and reciprocal in my gut. The same twisted thing that had arched my back for him in that filthy bathroom. This wasn’t love. This was sickness. And we were both infected.
He saw the shift in my eyes. The surrender to the fight. He tugged my wrist, pulling me toward the side of the house, into the deep shadow between the fence and the crumbling stucco wall. It was darker here, private, the music a dull thump.
“They’ll see,” I whispered, but I was already going.
“Let them.”
He pushed me against the cold wall. This time, there was no pretense of conversation. His mouth crashed down on mine, a punishing kiss full of teeth and tongue and the bitter taste of his regret. I kissed him back just as violently, my hands fisting in his shirt, tearing at the fabric. This was a battle, and we both wanted to lose.
His hands shoved under my top, palms rough on my ribs, thumbs scraping over my nipples. I gasped into his mouth. He broke the kiss, yanking the cup of my bra down, and his mouth was on me, hot and wet, sucking hard enough to bruise. A sharp pain-pleasure shot straight to my core.
“You want me to stop?” he growled against my skin, his hand already unbuckling my belt.
“Fuck you.”
“That’s the plan.”
He got my jeans open, his fingers diving inside my underwear. They were still damp from him. He shoved them aside, and two fingers pushed into me, curling deep. I cried out, my head hitting the wall.
“So wet,” he muttered, working his fingers in and out. “Still so fucking wet for me. Even when you hate me.”
“I do hate you,” I panted, rocking against his hand.
“Good.” He removed his fingers, bringing them to his mouth, sucking them clean while holding my gaze. The obscenity of it made my knees weak. He undid his own pants, freeing his cock. He was hard again, thick and eager in his fist.
He didn’t ask. He hooked one of my legs over his hip, lifted me slightly against the wall, and drove up into me.
The angle was deep, overwhelming. I bit down on his shoulder to muffle my scream as he filled me. He didn’t move at first, just held himself there, buried, his forehead against mine. We were both shaking.
“See?” he breathed, his voice shattered. “This. This is it. Nothing else is real.”
Then he fucked me. Slow, deep, grinding strokes that rubbed against every raw nerve inside me. It wasn’t the frantic, angry pace from the bathroom. This was deliberate. Devastating. Each stroke was a claim, a plea, a punishment. The rough stucco scraped my back through my shirt. His body was a furnace against mine.
One of his hands braced against the wall. The other slid between us, his thumb finding my clit. The pressure was perfect, knowing, exactly how I liked it. Because he knew. He knew everything.
“Come on, Nikki,” he whispered, his lips against my ear. His thrusts began to lose their rhythm, becoming harder, more desperate. “Come with me. Please. I need to feel you come around my cock. I need it.”
His words, his touch, the relentless fullness of him—it built a coil too tight to hold. It snapped. A silent, seismic wave tore through me, my body clamping down on his in vicious, rhythmic pulses. I hid my face in his neck, choking on the intensity of it.
Feeling me unravel triggered his own end. With a broken groan, he thrust hard and stayed there, pulsing, spilling himself inside me again. His whole weight sagged against me, pinning me to the wall. We stayed like that, joined, for a long minute, just breathing in ragged unison.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The distant music. The cold. The sticky, intimate mess between my thighs. He softened and slipped out of me, gently lowering my leg. He rested his forehead against the wall beside my head, not looking at me.
“I’m fucking ruined,” he said, to the wall, to the night, to himself.
I fixed my clothes with numb fingers. My body felt brilliantly, terribly alive. My soul felt scooped out and hollow.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice quiet. “We both are.”
I walked out of the shadows, leaving him there. Hanna and Spencer were waiting by the gate, their faces grim. They’d seen enough. They didn’t ask questions.
As we pushed through the gate into the quiet of the street, the last thing I heard was Kendall’s clear, cool voice cutting through the party noise.
“Harry? There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
I didn’t look back. The three of us walked into the dark, the only sound our footsteps on the pavement and the ragged, unsaid thing tearing a hole in my chest.
The three of us walked into the dark, the only sound our footsteps on the pavement and the ragged, unsaid thing tearing a hole in my chest.
Spencer’s car was a few blocks away, a sensible sedan that felt like a spaceship from a saner planet. We piled in. The slam of the doors was final. The engine turned over, and she pulled away from the curb, leaving the throbbing bass and the orange glow of the frat house behind.
“So,” Hanna said from the backseat, her voice dangerously calm. She leaned forward between the headrests. “You wanna talk about what the fuck that was?”
I stared out the window at the passing streetlights. “Not really.”
“He followed you. You talked. Then he dragged you into the shadows. We’re not blind, Nik.”
“Then you don’t need a play-by-play, do you?” I snapped, the words sharper than I meant.
Silence filled the car, thick and uncomfortable. Spencer’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“He fucked you again, didn’t he?” Hanna said, the question landing like a brick.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
“Jesus Christ,” Spencer whispered, more to herself than to us. “In the fucking yard? With her right there?”
“It wasn’t… planned.” The excuse was pathetic.
“Nothing with him ever is, and that’s the problem!” Hanna exploded. “He’s a tornado! He just spins through and destroys shit because it feels good in the moment! And you keep standing in the path!”
“You think I don’t know that?” My own anger flared, hot and defensive. “You think it feels good? It feels like getting hit by a car. Every single time.”
“Then why do you keep letting him run the red light?”
I had no answer. That was the core of the rot. I just looked back out the window.
Spencer spoke, her voice lower, analytical. “It’s the history. It’s the fact that he knew you before all this… this persona. He’s the link to who you were. Letting him go feels like erasing that girl completely.”
Her words cut too close to the bone. My eyes burned. I focused on the blur of darkened houses.
“That girl was an idiot,” I muttered.
“That girl was happy,” Hanna corrected softly. “Sometimes.”
Spencer pulled up to my apartment building, a bland, boxy structure that housed students and a few struggling families. She put the car in park but didn’t kill the engine. “What are you going to do, Nikki?”
I unbuckled my seatbelt. The click was loud. “Take a shower so hot it scolds his smell off me. Try to sleep. Pretend tomorrow is a new day.”
“He’s going to call,” Hanna stated. It wasn’t a question.
“I know.”
I got out. The night air was clean here, free of smoke and spilled beer. I leaned back into the car. “Thanks for the rescue squad.”
“Anytime,” Spencer said, her eyes full of a pity I couldn’t stand.
“Just don’t… don’t tell the others. Not Aria, not Em. Not yet. I can’t handle the fucking intervention.”
Hanna looked like she wanted to argue, but she just nodded. “Our lips are sealed. But this is a solo mission, Nik. We can’t fight him for you.”
“I know.”
I shut the door and watched them drive away. The silence they left behind was immense. It was just me and the echo of his hands on my skin, his words in my ear, the phantom ache between my legs. I climbed the stairs to my second-floor apartment, each step a slog.
The door clicked shut behind me. I dropped my keys on the counter. The quiet was different here—it was mine, but it felt accusing. I went straight to the bathroom, stripping off my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the tile floor like shed skin. I turned the shower on full blast, steaming the mirror.
The water was scalding. I stood under it, letting it beat against my back, my face. I scrubbed with a rough loofah until my skin was pink and raw. I washed my hair twice. But I could still feel him. The specific soreness inside. The ghost of his grip on my hips. It wasn’t a smell you could wash off; it was a stain on my nerves.
I got out, wrapped myself in a towel, and avoided the mirror. My phone was buzzing on the bed, skittering across the comforter.
Harry.
Then again.
Harry.
A third time.
I picked it up. Not to answer, but to watch it. The screen lit up with his name, a tiny green bubble of his profile picture—a stupid one from junior year of high school, us at a lake, his arm around my shoulders, both of us squinting and sunburned. The calls stopped. A text bubble popped up.
Harry: Open the door.
My breath hitched. I walked silently to the front door and peered through the peephole.
He was there. Leaning against the wall opposite my door, head bowed, phone in hand. He’d changed. He wore a clean grey Henley and jeans. He looked up as if he sensed me, his green eyes finding the peephole even though he couldn’t see me.
Harry: I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.
Another text.
Harry: Please.
It was the same ragged ‘please’ from the yard. It was a wire, pulled taut, connecting the peephole to his chest. I hated it. I hated him. I hated the part of me that reacted, that softened, that wanted to swing the door open and scream at him or kiss him or both.
I didn’t open the door. I texted back.
Me: Go home to your girlfriend.
I saw him read it. He closed his eyes, a pained look crossing his face. He typed.
Harry: She’s not here. She’s at the Four Seasons. That’s not her home. This is.
Me: This is my apartment. You don’t live here.
Harry: You know what I mean.
I did. That was the sickest part. I did know. He meant the space between us, the history, the damage. That was the only place either of us felt permanently stationed.
Me: You made it disgusting tonight.
Harry: I know. Let me in. Let me fix it.
Me: You can’t fuck it clean, Harry.
A long pause. He slumped against the wall, sliding down to sit on the gross hallway carpet. He typed slowly.
Harry: I don’t know how else to talk to you. Words get messed up. My head gets messed up. But when I’m inside you… it’s the only time my brain shuts off and my heart makes sense. It’s the only truth I have.
I read the words. I read them again. They weren’t sweet. They were a confession of a profound sickness. And I was the other terminal of the disease.
My fingers were cold. I typed.
Me: It’s not truth. It’s biology. It’s an addiction. You’re using my body to mute the noise in your head.
Harry: So be my goddamn mute button. I don’t care. I need it.
The raw hunger in the text should have repulsed me. It did. It also ignited that dark, matching hunger in my own belly. A fresh, hot pulse of desire, stupid and deep. I was still tender from him, and my body was already wanting him again. The towel felt rough against my sensitized skin.
I didn’t text back. I unlocked the door. I didn’t open it. I just turned the deadbolt and walked back to my bedroom, leaving the door just… unlocked.
I heard it almost immediately. The soft click of the handle. The slow push as the door swung inward. A pause. Then his footsteps, quiet on the laminate, coming down the short hall.
I stood in the middle of my bedroom, the towel around me, my hair dripping onto the floor. He appeared in the doorway. He looked wrecked. Beautiful and ruined.
“You came,” I said, my voice flat.
“You opened the door.”
We stared at each other across ten feet of worn carpet. The tension wasn’t sexual now. It was tectonic. It was the quiet before the fault line slips.
“Say what you came to say,” I told him.
He shook his head, a quick, frustrated jerk. “I can’t. I told you. I can’t say it.”
“Then you should leave.”
He didn’t leave. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. The click was softer than the one at the frat house, but more absolute. We were sealed in.
“I can show you,” he said, his voice low.
“You’ve shown me. Multiple times tonight. The message is received. You’re confused. You’re selfish. You want what you can’t have.”
“It’s not that.” He took a step closer. “It’s that I only want what I shouldn’t have. What’s bad for me. What ruins me. That’s you. You’re my ruin, Nikki. And I want to live in the fucking wreckage.”
He crossed the space in two long strides. He didn’t grab me. He sank to his knees in front of me. His hands came up, trembling, and untucked the corner of the towel where I held it at my chest. He peeled it open.
The towel fell. I stood naked before him, exposed not just in body. He looked up at me, his eyes wide, almost reverent. Then he pressed his forehead against my lower stomach, his warm breath fanning over my skin. His arms wrapped around my thighs, holding on like a man in a storm.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into my skin, the words muffled. “I’m so fucking sorry for hurting you. For using her. For being such a coward.”
The apology, coming from his knees, disarmed me. My hand lifted, hovering over his damp curls. I didn’t touch him.
“Sorry doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.” He turned his head, kissing the soft skin of my belly. “Let me worship it instead.”
His mouth trailed lower, nuzzling through the neat thatch of hair. His hands slid from my thighs to my ass, gripping, pulling me subtly toward his mouth. I was already wet. The shower, the anger, the sight of him on his knees—it had all conspired against me.
He didn’t ask. His tongue found me, a slow, flat lick from bottom to top. I jerked, a gasp tearing from my throat. My fingers did touch his hair then, threading into the curls, not pushing him away, not pulling him closer. Just holding on.
He ate me like a man starving. With a deep, focused intensity that was entirely different from the frantic fucking earlier. This was penitence. This was devotion. His tongue circled my clit, flicked, sucked. He pushed two fingers inside me, crooking them, finding a spot that made my vision blur. He worked me with his mouth and his hand, a relentless, perfect rhythm that built a pressure so intense I thought I’d break.
“Harry…” It was a warning, a plea.
He groaned against me, the vibration shooting through my core. He added a third finger, stretching me, filling me in a different way. His tongue never stopped its maddening, expert work.
I came suddenly, violently. My knees buckled. He held me up, his mouth staying on me, drinking me in, gentling his touch as I shuddered and cried out, my orgasm ripping through me with a clarity that felt like pain.
When the tremors subsided, he pulled back. His lips and chin were glistening. He looked up at me, his eyes black with want. He rose to his feet, his own need straining against his jeans. He was so hard it looked painful.
“Now,” he said, his voice gravel. “Now I need to be inside you. Not because I’m angry. Not because I’m claiming you. Because I’m yours. Let me feel like I’m yours.”
He guided me backward until my legs hit the bed. I fell onto it, and he came down over me, his weight a comfort now. He kissed me, and I could taste myself on his tongue, salty and intimate. He reached between us, freed himself, and guided his cock to my entrance.
He pushed in slowly. An exquisite, maddening inch by inch, letting me feel every ridge, every stretch. My body, oversensitive from my climax, sang with a new, deeper ache. He seated himself fully, hilting inside me, and buried his face in the crook of my neck.
“God,” he breathed, a puff of air against my damp skin. He didn’t move. Just stayed there, buried, trembling. “This. This is it. This is the only place that’s real.”
Then he began to move. Long, slow, deep strokes that felt less like fucking and more like a conversation. Each thrust asked a question my body answered with a clench, a sigh. The room was quiet except for the wet sound of our joining, the creak of the bed, our ragged breaths.
He shifted, hooking my legs over his elbows, driving deeper. The angle changed, and a new, brighter pleasure sparked. “Look at me,” he pleaded.
I opened my eyes. His were locked on mine, unwavering. There was no smirk, no arrogance. Just a terrifying vulnerability. He was naked in a way that had nothing to do with clothes.
“I’m scared,” he whispered, thrusting deep.
“Of what?”
“Of this.” He drove into me again, his hips snapping with more force. “Of how much I need it. I’ll ruin everything to keep it. I’ll ruin you.”
“You already are.”
“Then let’s be ruined together.”
His pace quickened, losing its control. The deep, worshipful strokes gave way to something more primal, more needy. His lips found mine, his kiss messy and desperate. I wrapped my legs around his waist, taking him deeper, meeting each thrust. The coil was building again, tighter, fiercer.
“Come with me,” he begged against my mouth. “I can’t… I need to feel you come. I need it, Nikki, please.”
His words, his desperate, open face, the incredible fullness of him—it tipped me over. A second, deeper orgasm rolled through me, a wave that started in my core and radiated out to my fingertips. I clenched around him, milking him, a silent scream on my lips.
It shattered his last shred of control. With a raw, broken shout, he drove deep and stayed there, pulsing, flooding me with his release. He collapsed on top of me, his full weight pressing me into the mattress, his heart hammering against mine.
We lay like that for a long time, slick with sweat, still joined. The reality was a cold tide waiting at the edges of the room. His girlfriend. The morning. The world.
He finally stirred, softening, slipping out of me. He rolled onto his side, gathering me against him, my back to his chest. His arm was a heavy band across my ribs. He kissed my shoulder.
“I’ll end it with Kendall,” he said into the dark.
I didn’t believe him. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You won’t.”
He held me tighter. “Watch me.”
Silence. My body was sated, heavy. My mind was a chorus of warnings. I drifted, not quite asleep, in the warmth of his lie. The last thing I felt before sleep took me was his lips, again, on the skin behind my ear, and a whisper so faint it might have been a dream.
“You’re my only real thing.”