Something broke in his face. The restraint, the control, the distance he kept between what he wanted and what he allowedhimself to have. It cracked wide open and what was underneath was raw and hungry and completely, devastatingly mine.
He kissed me. Harder than I’d kissed him, his hands in my hair, his mouth demanding. He stripped me out of my clothes with an efficiency that made the first time look leisurely, his hands pulling my shirt over my head, unclasping my bra, shoving my jeans and underwear down in one motion while his mouth never left my skin. He kissed my throat, my collarbone, bit down on the curve of my shoulder and the sharp sting of it made me gasp and arch into him.
He turned me around.
His hand on my hip, firm, guiding, spinning me so my back was against his chest. His mouth found the side of my neck, hot, open, teeth and tongue, and his hands came around to my breasts, palming them, rolling my nipples between his fingers until I was pressing my ass back against him, feeling how hard he was against me, needing more.
“Hands on the dresser,” he said against my ear. A command, quiet and certain, that went through me like electricity.
I put my hands on the dresser. The wood was cool under my palms, the mirror above it showing me my own face, flushed, wrecked, and behind me, Doc, shirtless, his jeans open, his eyes fixed on my body with an intensity that made my breath stall in my chest.
I felt him line up behind me, one hand on my hip, the other sliding between my thighs to find me already soaking wet. His fingers stroked through me once, twice, his thumb circling my clit until my arms were shaking and I was pushing back against his hand, chasing it.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
“You. Inside me. Now.”
He pushed into me in one slow, devastating stroke.
I cried out. My fingers curled against the dresser, my head dropping forward, my body stretching to take him. The angle was different from last time, deeper, fuller, and every nerve ending I had lit up at once. He held still for a second, buried to the hilt, both hands gripping my hips, his breathing ragged against the back of my neck.
Then he moved.
Long, deep thrusts that rocked me forward on my hands, that made the dresser knock against the wall, that filled the room with the wet, obscene sound of him fucking me. I watched us in the mirror, his jaw tight, his eyes dark, the muscles in his arms flexing every time he drove into me. My own face, mouth open, eyes glazed, a woman I barely recognized but was starting to know.
“Harder,” I said. Because I could say it now. Because my voice worked here, my wants counted, my body was mine to use however I wanted.
He gave me harder. His hips snapped against mine, the sound of skin on skin sharp in the quiet room, and I braced my arms and took it and wanted more. The pressure was building, coiling tight, every thrust pushing me closer. His hand slid from my hip to between my legs, his fingers finding my clit, rubbing in tight circles while he fucked me deep, and the combination of his cock, his hand and the sight of us in the mirror was going to break me apart.
“Tell me,” I gasped. Barely a voice. Barely a breath. “Tell me I’m yours.”
His rhythm faltered. Just for a second, a hitch in his breathing, a tightening of his grip on my hip that told me the words had hit him the same way they’d hit me.
“You’re mine,” he said. Raw, wrecked, his mouth against my shoulder. “My good girl. Mine. You hear me?”
I shattered. The orgasm tore through me, my whole body clenching around him, my legs shaking, a cry ripping out of me that I couldn’t have held back if I’d tried. He followed me over, burying himself deep, his groan muffled against my skin, his hips grinding against mine as he came, both of us braced against the dresser in a tangle of sweat, skin and shaking limbs.
We stood there for a long time. His arms around me, his face in my hair, my hands still flat on the dresser because I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me if I let go.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“So are you.”
He laughed. A real sound, rough, warm, pressed against the back of my neck. He pulled out slowly, then turned me around and pulled me against his chest and just held me. Standing in the middle of his room, both of us spent, his heartbeat hard and fast under my cheek.
I’d asked for what I wanted and I’d taken it.
We were stillin his room when the knock came.
Razor, through the door. “You’re going to want to come out front.”
I dressed fast. Doc faster. We went through the corridor, through the bar, out into the lot, and I saw the car before I processed what it meant.
A black Mercedes. Rental plates. Parked in the gravel lot between the row of bikes like a glass ornament on a workbench. The driver’s door was still open. The interior light was on.
My mother got out first. Valentina Carrington, sixty-one, five foot six in heels she shouldn’t have been wearing in a gravel parking lot. Blonde hair set in a style that hadn’t changed intwenty years. Pearls at her throat. A cream wool coat that definitely cost more than the bar’s monthly profit. She looked at the bar and the compound at the back, the way she’d look at something on the bottom of her shoe.
My father was behind her. Richard Carrington. Taller, grayer, the kind of man who wore authority the way other men wore cologne. His face was the careful mask I’d grown up reading, the one that meant he was furious but would never, under any circumstances, show it in public.
