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My mouth finds the curve of her breast, the dip of her ribs, the space just beneath her collarbone that makes her pulse race when I drag my teeth across it. Her hands are in my hair now—tugging, not guiding. There’s no sweetness in the way she pulls me closer. No breathless moans for affection. Just need. Raw and ugly.
There’s no room for softness. No tenderness. This isn’t about affection. This is about release. Mine.
Her thighs part beneath me like she knows it too, like she expected this the moment she opened the door and didn’t flinch. I trace the line of her jaw with my mouth, my teeth grazingher throat. She lets me. She doesn’t beg, doesn’t gasp, doesn’t whisper my name like it means something. She just gives. And that’s what unravels me—how easy it is to lose myself in a body that offers no resistance.
I want her beneath me. I want her quiet. And I want her loud.
But I don’t want her heart.
I roll my hips against hers, slow and deliberate. Her breath stutters, legs wrapping around me like a vise. I grab her wrists, pin them above her head—not because she’s fighting, but because I can. Because I want to feel her pulse under my grip, want to feel the edge of power tingling at my fingertips and know I’m still the one in control. This is mine. This moment. This bargain.
She shifts beneath me, restless, needing more friction, more weight. I give it to her in increments, savoring the way she strains against the hold she agreed to. Her eyes meet mine—dark, unblinking. No softness there. No stars. Just something sharp and waiting.
“You’re sure?” I murmur, voice roughened by need, by restraint. By the effort it takes not to sink into her too fast, too hard.
She nods. “Don’t make me beg.”
I won’t. I’ll make her cry out. I’ll make her writhe. But I won’t pretend this is anything it’s not.
Because this is not love.
This is not healing.
This is war. Quiet and close and breathless. A battlefield with no victor, only aftermath.
And gods help us both—I'm not leaving until I’ve won.
I don’t kiss her again. Kissing implies something tender, and nothing about me is soft right now. I trail my hand down her side, fingers splaying over her hip, and I drag her beneath me like it’s owed. Like I’ve earned it. Her breath catches, and I watchher eyes—wide, dilated, hungry—but not asking for more. Not begging.
She meant it. No rules. No expectations. Just this.
I don’t thank her. I don’t say anything else. I just move, sinking into her heat, her softness, her strength—and I lose myself in it. In her. In the raw, maddening simplicity of bodies and sweat and surrender.
My fingers drag down her thigh, grip, spread, anchor. Her gasp is sharp, throat-bare, and my teeth find her shoulder—just enough to mark, not enough to mean anything. I leave impressions, not promises. I leave bruises, not bindings.
The movement is mechanical at first—power and rhythm, exertion without affection—but her hand slides into my hair, fisting it, tugging me closer like she needs to make sure I stay. Like she wants to feel the weight of it. And I let her. I let her use me the same way I’m using her. Because it’s fair. Because it’s simple.
Because it’s the one place I don’t have to lie.
Later, when her limbs are tangled in the sheets and I’m staring at the ceiling like the cracked plaster has answers, I’ll try to tell myself it was just sex.
Because I don’t have more to give. I only have this.
Elias
She’s standing beneath the oak like she’s about to command the gods, hands outstretched, head tilted, lips parted with some half-muttered focus spell Silas probably taught her—and I’m watching from the railing with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a front row seat to the apocalypse of her patience.
The squirrels are furious. One hurls an acorn directly at her head. She dodges like it’s a spell and gives them the finger with both hands, which only makes them screech louder.
“You know,” I call down, voice flat with just enough amusement to coat the insult, “your mastery of Forced Stasis has officially escalated tensions between you and the rodent community. We’re probably going to war now. Should I alert the Council?”
She spins around, cheeks flushed, sweatpants slung low on her hips like she got dressed in a daze. And Elias Dain, sarcastic mess that I am, nearly chokes on the last sip of my coffee.
Because she’s glowing—not literally, not yet, but something about her when she’s this frustrated, this raw with effort and not performance, makes it hard to look away.
“You’re not helping,” she grumbles, marching toward the porch like she plans to murder me with a look.
I shrug, because I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen her worse. And yet—there’s a difference between pretending not to care and pretending she doesn’t undo me a little more every time she triesto be better. Stronger. Like she doesn’t already have claws in me so deep they’ve carved a home.