Reese pushes off the dresser and takes two slow steps toward me. “Because I’m here by choice. And so are you.”
I scoff. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?” I challenge, stepping closer, heat rising under my skin. “Because it feels a lot like I’ve just been reacting to everything he set in motion. And I’m tired of it,” I admit, quiet and raw. “I’m so fucking tired of not having any control over my own goddamn life.”
He takes one more step, nearly closing the distance. “Then take it.”
I blink. “What?”
“Take control,” he repeats, like the meaning of what he’s saying should be obvious.
“That’s not how this works. I can’t just—”
“You can.”
There’s something different in his tone, something just beneath the surface that I’m not understanding, like I’m meant to dig for it.
“Reese—”
“Do you want to fuck me?”
Oh.
It takes at least a solid second for my brain to come backonline.
“That’s your solution?” I ask, incredulous. “I’m having a fucking existential crisis, and you’re offering sex as a coping mechanism?”
“Seems pretty on brand for you.”
I laugh, and this time there’s actually a hint of true amusement in it.
“I’m offering you control,” he says.
That shuts me up because…yeah, I prefer to bottom, but Idolike to top. And topping Reese?Fuck.
My dick is already hardening in my jeans.
“You want something that’s yours and only yours?” He moves even closer until there are barely inches in the space between us, his voice going lower. “Something that doesn’t belong to Malcolm, isn’t part of his plan, isn’t something he can touch?”
My pulse kicks, and when his eyes briefly glance at my throat, I swear he can see it.
Then his gaze meets mine again. “Then take it.”
Something inside me snaps.
All this time of being pushed and pulled and manipulated and broken, and suddenly there’s something in front of me that isn’t being taken. It’s being offered.
I swallow hard, then…
I shove him.
Reese goes backward without resistance, the backs of his legs hitting the bed before he sits down onto the mattress with a soft thud.
And then I fuckingpounce.
I dive onto his lap, straddling his waist and fusing my mouth to his as I start tearing through his clothes. Our kiss is messy and reckless as buttons pop off his shirt and go flying across the room. After I tug his shirt off his shoulders and toss itsomewhere behind me, I remove my shirt next, the connection of our lips breaking for only a second as I get it up over my head.
