Page 56 of His To Erase

Steven

She thinks I don’t know her patterns yet? I could find that girl in a blackout with nothing but the sound of her breath. I could map the rhythm of her panic in my fucking sleep.

And somehow that’s the part I can’t stomach.

I shouldn’t know her like this—shouldn’t crave the sound of her unraveling. Fuck, I shouldn’t feel my pulse shift every time she runs. But I do. And it’s rotting something inside me I didn’t think I had left.

She’s twitchy, paranoid, and always calculating exits.

I see the tension in her jaw, and the way her eyes go flat like she’s somewhere else. I see the way she wraps her arms tighter like she’s trying to keep something in.

She’s hiding something and I’m done waiting for crumbs. This was never about me. Which makes what I do next feel… inevitable.

I’m behind her before I even register the movement, hunger flares under my skin. When I grab her arm and yank her around, she gasps—but it’s not fear in her eyes.

It’s fury. Wild, sharp-edged fury that makes my cock twitch. I can also see the heat in her eyes, she wants me.

“Let go of me,” she bites, shoving at my chest.

I pin her to the nearest tree, caging her in while one hand grips her hip and the other wraps around her wrist tight enough to feel her pulse.

“You done lying to me yet?” I growl against her jaw. “Or do I need to fuck the truth out of you too?”

Her chest heaves. “Fuck you.”

I smirk, leaning in close enough to taste the anger shaking off her skin. “You already did, sweetheart.”

My voice drops, “And if you wanted another round, all you had to do was ask.”

I press in closer, and her back arches, and I can feel her tits pushing into me begging for my hands. I don’t know if it’s defiance or desire that’s fueling her right now and I don’t care.

“Tell me why you ran.”

Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out, so I drag my hand down her thigh and squeeze.

“You gonna answer me?” my lips brush her ear. “Or should I remind you how loud you get when you beg?”

“Stop it,” she whispers. But her hips tilt forward.

“Then talk.”

She bites her lip—hard—and finally breaks. “I don’t remember, okay?” she bursts out. “I don’t fucking remember.”

I go still.

“What do you mean, you don’t remember,” I echo, lower this time. Her eyes are wide and glassy in a way that tells me she’s barely holding it together.

“I—I don’t know,” she stammers. “There’s gaps. Nightmares. Things I can’t explain.”

My pulse kicks hard, there’s now a dull throb at the base of my neck.

Fuck.

She doesn’t know.

She really doesn’t know? I watch her carefully, masking everything. The urge to react, to speak, to tell her she’s not crazy—that she’s not wrong about the silence or the missing time. But I can’t. Not yet. Because if she doesn’t remember… that changes everything.

It shifts the weight of the game I thought I was playing. She’s sitting there unraveling in front of me, and all I can think about is how far this goes. It’s not just an obsession anymore, this is something else.

I let the silence drag. Enough to prove I heard her. Not enough to admit it mattered. Because caring gets messy.

“What kind of nightmares?” I ask, carefully.

She exhales, “Hands. Strangers. My body not listening. Sometimes it feels like I’m screaming but nothing comes out. Sometimes I wake up and I’m already crying.”

I clench my jaw so tight it aches. That would explain the things she says when she’s sleeping. Now I’m burning—because for a moment I wanted to hurt her, to punish her for slipping away. But now I want to kill whoever put that look in her eyes.

She keeps going, oblivious to the storm tearing through me.

“I just—” She wipes her face with her sleeve. “Sometimes I get flashes of being dragged. Of motel lights. Of blood. And I never know if they’re dreams or—” She cuts herself off, her voice cracking. “It doesn’t matter.”

It does. It matters more than anything. But I can’t say that. Not when I’m this close to losing control. Not when the only thing I know how to do is take. Instead, I grab her chin, tilting her face toward me—rougher than I mean to. Her breath stutters, and fuck, that sound undoes something in me.

If she keeps talking, I’ll say something I shouldn’t and I can’t afford that right now, so I slam my mouth down on hers.

It’s not gentle. It’s rage, heat, and punishment tangled into one.

A feral, unspoken demand—because I need something I don’t have the words for.

I need to remind her exactly who owns every fucking inch of her body.

That if I take her hard enough, maybe—just maybe—she’ll stop slipping through my fingers.

I kiss her like I’m trying to win a war I already lost the second she looked at me.

She gasps, and I use it—swallowing her whole, pinning her against the tree like I’m staking a claim. My hands are already everywhere—fisting in her hoodie, yanking it up, dragging across bare skin and making her whimper.

“Steven—” she breathes.

“Shut up.”

I hike her thigh up around my hip, pressing between her legs—and she moans, desperate and broken.

“You want something real?” I growl against her throat. “This is it. I already told you, you’re mine.”

Her nails dig into my back. She’s shaking and angry and half out of her mind, but her body arches as her mouth finds mine again, like she’s trying to punish me in her own way, for every question I asked.

I shove her pants down and rip open my own. When I push inside her, she screams.

It echoes through the trees like a warning as I slam into her again and again. My hands are tight on her hips as her back scrapes against the bark, her gasps are a broken prayer in the cold.

“You feel that?” I grind out. “That’s what the truth tastes like, sweetheart.”

“Fuck you,” she chokes out. Her legs lock around me as her body begs.

It’s feral and messy. It’s too much and not enough all at once.

Her head falls back, and her mouth is open in a silent cry as I thrust harder, dragging her right back to the edge she swore she was done with.

She clenches around me, slick and pulsing and fucking perfect—I lose whatever thread of control I had left.

My hand fists in her hair, yanking her head forward so she has to look at me when she comes.

“Look at me,” I growl. “Let them fucking hear it.”

She sobs—loud—and shatters all over me, her body is seizing like she’s breaking open from the inside out. And I follow—driving deep with a growl ripping from my chest as I come inside her, hips slamming against hers like I’m trying to brand her from my cock alone.

I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in like the air might disappear if I don’t take all of it now. Our exhales are ragged, tangled between us, and her skin burns against the cold bite of the night.

“If you ever let another man touch you again…” My thumb drags slowly over her bottom lip, still swollen from everything I’ve taken. “I swear, I’ll fucking kill him.”

She doesn’t answer, but her mouth parts like she wants to. Her lashes are damp, and her pupils are still blown wide.

I lean in, lips grazing her ear. “I don’t share. I don’t forget. And I sure as fuck don’t let go.”

Then I slide out of her, watching the way her body flinches from the loss. Her breath catches, and she clutches at the space between us like she’s still chasing that last wave.

Good. I wanted to ruin her for anyone else. The next time she thinks about leaving, she’ll remember the way I claimed her. Even if she hates me for it. Especially if she does.

She tries to close her legs, but I stop her. My hand slides between them again, dragging through the slick mess I just fucked into her, smearing it everywhere. “You’re mine.” I whisper.

She jerks beneath my touch, trying to resist, but I don’t let her. I bring my hand up slowly and press two fingers against her lips.

“Open.”

She hesitates, but her lips pop open.

“Do you taste that?” I murmur, eyes locked on hers. “That’s mine.”

Her breath shudders as I push my fingers past her lips and she sucks in a sharp inhale through her nose as her lips close around them. Her tongue moves instinctively around my fingers, and fuck me, I almost lose it all over again.

“Good girl,” I rasp, dragging my fingers back out and brushing her chin with my thumb. “Say it.”

Her voice is wrecked and broken around the taste of us. “…yours.”

The sound is a goddamn weapon and I will never let her forget who she belongs to.

I rest my forehead against hers for a beat, both of us breathing hard, the cold air cutting through the sweat between us. My blood's still boiling, but my head is already turning—calculating. Locking in on what I know, and what I don’t.

“We’re going back to the cabin,” I say. “You’re going to sit your ass on that couch, and you’re going to talk.”

I lean in, teeth grazing her jaw. “Or I’ll drag the answers out of you another way.”

I feel her shiver under my touch.

The walk back is quiet except for the crunch of the dirt and Bernadette’s occasional bark in the distance. I stay close enough to catch her if she bolts again, not that she will.

Inside, the air is warm, and the dull flicker of another Harry Potter plays in the background. She doesn’t speak as she collapses onto the couch, hoodie still half off, and her cheeks flushed. She sits like someone who's been hit by a truck and doesn’t know if she lived or not.

I stay standing, watching her as she stares at the screen for a long time—eyes flicking toward it, but not seeing it.

“I don’t know where to start,” she says finally, her voice is small and raw.

“Try the beginning,” I murmur.

“I don’t remember the beginning.”

She curls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. Her eyes are glued to the TV like she needs something to distract her.

“I remember… blood,” she says slowly. “And voices. Someone was yelling. I was in a room, I think. A motel. I remember the wallpaper was peeling, and there was something in the sink. Or—”

She stops and swallows hard.

“I remember my ex slapping me. Hard.”