Next Time, I Won't Ask. I'll take!

Luca

One night sleep wouldn’t come at all.

The house too quiet and I wasn't concentrating on work. My own bathroom sat too close to the hall. Any sound I made in there would be carried. I ended up in the guest bath at the far end and turned on the tap, allowing water running uselessly into the sink to cover the rest.

I stripped. My fist went straight to my cock, wrapped around it because the alternative was pacing the dark like a fucking animal until I did something worse.

I stroked it roughly. Angry. Jaw locked. Head tipped forward, hair in my eyes. Twenty-eight, CEO of a company that bent cities, and I was jerking off in my mother’s new husband’s guest bath like a teenager who couldn’t hold his own leash.

My mind supplied her anyway.

Her soft stomach. Her wide eyes. That ruined little voice in the garden trying to be brave. The flush on her throat when the wine spilled.

My grip tightened.

“Melody—”

Her name dragged out between my teeth before I could kill it. I hated the sound of it in my own mouth.

I heard a tiny sound, my head snapped up.

She stood in the doorway staring. Color gone from her face except the heat climbing her neck. Eyes locked on my cock like she’d never seen one—or like she’d been waiting to see mine.

My hand kept moving, once, slow, full stroke, deliberate—veins, wet head, the way my stomach hollowed—so she couldn’t pretend later she hadn’t seen all of it.

“I—” Her voice cracked. “The door… I didn’t know anyone—”

She turned to run.

I caught her by her wrist, yanked her through, and shut the door hard. Spun her and pinned her back to the wall. Both wrists trapped in one of mine above her head, my body caged hers without giving her the full press of it.

She forced something down her throat. I watched her throat work.

My free hand dropped. To the waistband of her shorts, dragged the elastic out half an inch, and held. I didn’t look down. I watched her face while my knuckles sat just above the place already betraying her.

“Fuck!”

She was soaked through for this.

My grip on her wrists tightened. I flexed my fingers once against her lower belly, a fraction lower, enough to feel the heat spike.

Her thighs pressed together. The movement shoved her tighter against my hand. I smiled without any of it reaching my eyes.

A helpless sound escaped her throat.

I went still. Something ugly and hungry sat up in my chest and purred.

“You make that noise again and I’m not asking,” I threatened. My mouth brushed the shell of her ear.

“I’ll put you on your knees on this tile and fuck the shock off your face until you forget your own name.”

Seconds stretched.

I felt the yes in her body—tremor in the wrists, hips trying to chase the pressure I wouldn’t fully give, the sharp sweet smell of how wet she was.

Usually I didn’t get this close to anyone. Touch had a price. Skin was a door I kept bolted but she short-circuited it.

I wanted to shove my hand the rest of the way and confirm. I wanted to spin her, bend her over the sink, and take what she’d walked in offering whether she had the spine to admit it or not.

Her mouth formed an answer.

“No.”

I felt Hunger. Fury. Something almost like relief. I shuttered all of it.

I released her wrists as if the contact burned and stepped back, tucking myself away with sharp, angry movements.

The absence of her heat pissed me off more than the interruption had.

“Get out,” I said to her.

“Next time you put yourself in front of me like this, I won’t ask. I'll take. And you live with what that makes you.”

I opened the door and didn’t watch her slip past.

She left, but the room kept her heat like an insult.

I stood there with my hand on the edge of the sink and breathed through my teeth until the urge to drag her back by the hair loosened its grip.

I had known this girl for two months. She had power she didn’t even know she was holding, and I wanted to break it or bury myself in it—I couldn’t tell which, and that was the part that should have scared me clean.

I had told her to keep her distance. I meant it as a warning. It was also the only prayer I had left. Because the next time she said no, I was no longer certain I’d stop.