Chapter Three

His hands grip my hips with a savagery barely held in check, hauling me into the hard line of his body until there’s no space left between us.

I gasp, breath snagging as my fingers claw at his shoulders. The heat rolling off him burns through my skin. I drag myself higher, arms locking around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair like I’m drowning and he’s the only thing solid enough to hold.

His mouth crashes into mine. No warning. No restraint. Tongue and teeth and possession, all of it brutal and consuming. There’s nothing gentle in it. Just need, raw and absolute.

I whimper into his mouth, hips rolling helplessly into the hard press of his arousal, my body begging for something my pride still refuses to name.

His lips tear away, only to drag down my throat, mouth finding the frantic pulse there. He tastes me like he’s starving, like I’m the only thing in reach.

Fabric gives way beneath his hands. My shirt tears. My pants split. Every touch is a demand. Every movement a threat to what little control I have left.

He slams me back against the cold wall, pinning me there, anchoring me like an animal claiming territory. His hips roll into mine once, slow and punishing, grinding against my slick heat. The drag of him through my folds pulls a broken sound from both of us.

My skin prickles as the heat spikes, sharp and invasive, winding through every nerve until even the air feels too much.

He kisses me again, harder, devouring. Our breaths tear in and out of us, loud and ragged, filling the space.

His mouth drops to my collarbone, then lower, tongue flicking over my nipple. My back arches violently. My legs lock tighter around his waist, holding him there like I don’t know how to let go.

He presses the thick head of his cock to my entrance and stops. Just long enough to meet my eyes.

“Tell me to stop,” he growls.

I don’t blink.

“You won’t,” I whisper, my voice already fraying.

And he doesn’t.

He drives into me in a single, brutal thrust.

I cry out, my head slamming back against the wall as he fills me completely, stretching me past the edge of pain into something sharp and dangerous. I cling to him, nails biting into his shoulders, my body shuddering as it struggles to take him.

He gives me no time.

He sets a relentless pace from the first movement. Fast. Deep. Unforgiving. The sound of skin striking skin fills the entryway, obscene and relentless.

I sob, overwhelmed, my body forced to keep up as instinct overrides everything else. There’s no rhythm. No care. Just need, primal and scorching.

It still isn’t enough.

The heat inside me refuses to settle, even as it scrapes against pain.

“Harder,” I beg, nails digging into him until I feel warmth slick beneath my fingers. He groans, tightening his grip on my hips, holding me down as he drives into me with punishing force.

My climax tears through me without warning. Violent. Blinding. My body convulses as white fractures across my vision.

He follows with a hoarse sound, burying himself deep. I feel him pulse inside me, hot and claiming, and still he doesn’t stop.

When he finally pulls free, it’s slow. The sound is wet and ugly in the sudden silence.

I sag against the wall, shaking.

And the heat only gets worse.

It doesn’t fade. It turns inward, swelling and spreading, climbing until it burns in my chest. Each breath comes shallow and wrong, like my body is demanding something it never got.

Feeding it didn’t help.

It made it worse.

The realization lands hard. I look up at him, dread and understanding crashing together—and that’s when I see it.

He’s smiling.

Not pleased. Not amused. Just a small, knowing curve of his mouth, like he’s watching a result he already anticipated.

He knew.

“I warned you,” he says evenly, his hands sliding under my thighs, keeping me upright when my legs threaten to fold.

His grip tightens, unyielding. Possessive. Certain.

“This heat,” he continues, his voice low and unyielding, “is going to eat you alive, little thing.”

I try to speak. To call him an incorrigible prick. To say something.

I don’t get the chance.

He’s pulling me away from the wall before I can form the words, hauling me with him into the dining room. He tosses me down onto the table without pretense, without care, like gentleness was never an option to begin with.

He positions himself back between my legs.

I wish I could say I don’t want him to keep going.

I look up at him, then—stupidly—my gaze drops. My breath stutters when I see he’s still hard, like what just happened barely registered. Thick. Rigid. Unchanged. Slick with the evidence of our joining, pulsing as if my body never mattered beyond the reaction it triggered.

The realization makes my stomach twist. Not with fear. With something worse.

He leans over me, bracing one arm beside my head. The other stays locked around my thigh, hauling it higher over his hip as he positions himself against me again.

This time, he pushes in slowly. Not gentle. Never that. He does it to torment me, sliding forward a fraction at a time, stretching me inch by inch until my breath turns ragged and broken. I try to rock my hips, desperate to force him deeper, but his grip tightens, bruising, holding me exactly where he wants me.

He takes his time seating himself fully inside me, then stills. Long enough for the need to crest into something sharp and unbearable.

Then he pulls back just as slowly—only to slam back in hard.

My thigh slips from his hip, but he catches it and hikes it higher, angling himself deeper before setting a merciless pace. He holds me open, uses me the way he wants, until I come once, then again, my body breaking around him without permission.

Even then, he doesn’t stop.

The moment his hips still, I’m clawing at him, begging him to keep moving.

The heat doesn’t just demand. It howls. It mocks every scrap of resistance I try to gather. It wants me pliant and ruined, spread beneath him until nothing else exists.

I bite down on my wrist to muffle the sound tearing out of me, but he wrenches my hand away, replacing it with his mouth. He swallows my cries as he drives into me harder, his weight crushing me down, my body welcoming him greedily, shamelessly, clenching like it never wants him to leave.

And he doesn’t.

Not for hours.

At some point, the cheap table I bought at a garage sale nearly a decade ago gives out beneath us. Wood splinters under my back, sharp and sudden, but he catches me before I can fall. He lifts me into his arms without breaking rhythm, still sheathed inside me, his thrusts never pausing, never easing. The world could come apart around us and he would still be moving. Still taking.

“Upstairs,” I gasp into his shoulder, wrapping my legs tighter around him as he continues to drive up into me, completely indifferent to the wreckage behind us. I’m not convinced he noticed it at all.

He carries me up the stairs without slowing, turns into the first doorway he finds—my pitiful little workout room—and presses me back against the cable machine.

The cold metal shocks against my spine, and I shriek, jolting, his mouth catching mine with a low sound that isn’t laughter so much as dark amusement.

“If you break my machine, I’ll slit your throat,” I pant, tearing my mouth from his when I hear it rattling under his relentless pace.

Every thrust goes deeper. Harder. The stretch of him borders on unbearable, my body straining, muscle and bone screaming as it gives way.

“Empty threats, little mistake,” he says, voice flat and certain. His hand comes up around my throat. Not choking, just holding as he shifts us to the side, pressing me back against colder metal where the heat of skin hasn’t touched. “You won’t live long enough to do anything to me.”

I dig my nails into his back, gasping again as the cold bites. Before I can make sense of what he means, his mouth is on mine once more.

“Even if you could,” he adds against my lips.

“F-Fuck you,” I force out as another orgasm tears through me. My head lolls back, the room tilting around the edges, and all I can feel is him inside me, around me, owning me.

“If you insist.” He says, pulling us away from the cable machine and out into the hallway. He finds my bedroom across the hall and carries me into it, tossing me down on the bed.

Before I have the time to complain about the sudden absence as the heat claws its way up my throat, he’s pulling me on top of him.

His hands settle on my hips with terrifying calm, guiding me down until I feel his cock pressing against me, thick, insistent, and already pulsing with anticipation.

The stretch makes me gasp, make my knees tremble on either side of him. He doesn’t help. He doesn’t rush. He holds me there, letting gravity and his grip do the work until I am sinking onto him inch by inch, breath by ragged breath.

I whimper, hands bracing against his chest, already shaking.

He thrusts up once, sharp and deep, and I cry out despite myself.

He doesn’t give me time to adjust. His hands take control, lifting and pulling my hips down onto him in a brutal, unrelenting rhythm. I’m riding him, but I’m not in control. He is. Every movement is his design, every thrust another crack through what remains of me.

My hands slip against his chest, damp with sweat and the shake of exertion. I bite my lip, hard, and taste copper.

My thighs ache from holding myself up, trembling as I fight to meet each upward thrust, every deliberate drag of him through flesh already tender. He makes no move to stop—only to guide, to hold, to push me down harder when I try to ease up.

I try to speak. Try to ask, for what, I don’t even know.

He grabs a handful of my hair and tilts my head back, exposing my throat.

"Ride me," he whispers, his other hand still locked at my hip. "Or I’ll hold you above me and do it myself until your body gives out."

✧ ✧ ✧

I don’t know when I stop counting thrusts and start losing hours.

When I come back to myself, the heat is gone.

Not fading. Not simmering. Just… absent.

The sudden quiet inside my body is almost as unsettling as the fire was. My skin feels oversensitive and wrong, like everything has been rubbed raw from the inside out. My limbs are heavy, useless, my muscles aching deep in a way that makes even breathing feel like work.

I try to inhale and have to stop halfway through, chest tight and sore, lungs burning as if they’ve been pushed past what they were meant to handle. Every breath comes shallow, careful, like my body is afraid to ask for more.

The room swims when I shift. My head throbs, a dull pressure behind my eyes, and it takes a few seconds too long to realize I’m in my own bed. That the light coming through the window is wrong. Higher. Brighter.

Morning.

Whatever happened, however long it lasted, it ran its course.

And it left me hollowed out in its wake.