Chapter 5: The Claiming Part Two

**Nadia**

I had thought about this moment before.

Not with him, obviously. Not in a Vegas penthouse with a man whose last name I'd learned three hours ago. But I had thought about it the way careful girls thought about things they kept private, quietly, in the back of their minds, tucked behind every other decision they made.

I had not imagined it would feel like this.

---

He moved fast.

His hands found my waist and lifted me like I weighed nothing, carried me to the bed and dropped me on my back, and then his weight was over me and the mattress dipped and the air shifted and everything became very, very real all at once.

His clothes came off quick. Shirt. Pants. Everything.

I hadn't let myself look directly at him before. I looked now. Hard muscle, broad shoulders, the kind of body that looked like it was built for exactly this kind of authority. His cock was thick and heavy between his legs.

My breath caught.

He was going to hurt me. I knew that before he said a word.

"Open your legs."

His voice had dropped into something rough and low. He didn't fully wait. His hands pressed my thighs wide and he settled between them and I felt exposed in a way I hadn't felt even standing in the middle of the room with nothing on. This was different. More specific.

He pressed against my entrance. Hot and blunt. He dragged himself through the slickness he'd built earlier and my body responded to that even through the fear, which felt like a betrayal.

He pushed forward.

The stretch burned immediately. Sharp and deep, like my body was insisting on telling me this was too much, too fast, too new. My hands flew to his chest. He was all hard muscle under my palms and he didn't stop.

His jaw was clenched. Sweat on his forehead. He pushed deeper and I whimpered and my nails went into his shoulders without me deciding to do that, just reflex, just the pain needing somewhere to go.

"Fuck," he growled.

One rough thrust and he buried himself completely.

The pain exploded. I cried out. My whole body clenched around him, trying to figure out what to do with the fullness of it, the sharp ache spreading outward from the center of me. He stilled. Just for a second. Buried deep, breathing ragged, eyes shut tight.

He was shaking.

I felt it. The faint tremor running through his arms, his shoulders, the whole controlled architecture of him. He looked like a man fighting something he hadn't expected to be fighting.

I filed that away somewhere.

Then he started to move.

---

Rougher than I expected. His thrusts came fast and deep, and the pain was still there but something else built underneath it, something that didn't have a name yet, just a spark that grew with every stroke. My body was figuring him out against my will. Adjusting. The burn shifting into an ache that sat somewhere between hurt and need.

His control slipped. I could feel the exact moment it happened. His hips snapped harder. The sound of skin against skin filled the room. He hit something inside me that sent white across my vision and I stopped thinking about whether this was supposed to hurt and started just feeling it.

Pleasure and pain tangled together until I couldn't separate them.

My legs wrapped around him on instinct. I wasn't pushing him away anymore. I wasn't sure when that changed.

"So tight," he bit out above me. His voice sounded rough and strained, like it was being pulled from somewhere. "You're squeezing me so fucking tight."

He was drowning in it. I could feel that in every thrust. Something had come loose in him and he didn't fully have it back, and some part of me that had been scared all night found that steadying instead of terrifying.

He wasn't untouched by this either.

His hand slid between us. His fingers found my clit and pressed hard circles and that was the thing that finished it. My body pulled tight all at once and the orgasm hit sharp and sudden, crashing through me in waves I hadn't braced for. I cried out. My nails raked down his back. My walls clenched around him and I felt him curse under his breath and lose whatever was left of his rhythm.

His thrusts turned wild. One last deep push and he buried himself completely and came, his whole body tensing above me, a long groan dragged out of him that he didn't bother to hide.

---

He didn't pull out after.

He stayed exactly where he was, chest heaving against mine, arms sliding around me with a grip that was more possessive than it needed to be for a contract. His heart pounded against my breast. His body still trembled slightly.

I stared at the ceiling.

My own heart was doing something complicated. Pleasure still hummed through me, warm and insistent. So did the ache. So did the confusion that came with having given something away you could only give once, to someone who had offered you paperwork instead of love.

I had not cried.

I noted that. I didn't know what it meant yet.

He lifted his head.

His dark eyes found mine. Something in them had shifted. Not soft. Not warm. Just different from the flat controlled thing I'd been looking at all night. Deeper. More unsettled.

"You just woke something in me," he said, his voice low and rough, "that will never sleep again."

I looked at him.

At this man who had married me in a closet chapel, who had touched me like he owned me and then looked shaken by his own hands, who was still holding me like letting go was not currently an option he was considering.

I didn't say anything.

I didn't have to.

We both already knew tonight had cost us something we hadn't put in the contract.