It didn't frighten her. She kissed me back with the same force, her tongue sliding against mine, her hands dragging my shirt up, her fingers on my stomach, my ribs, my chest. Her touch was searching, urgent, the touch of a woman who wanted to know what she'd find underneath the quiet and was done waiting to discover it.
I pulled her jacket off. She yanked my shirt over my head. Her hands spread across my bare chest and her fingers found the scars. Old, military, the record of a life spent in places where people tried to kill you. She didn't flinch from them. She pressed her mouth to the scar below my collarbone, her lips hot against the raised skin, and her mouth on that old wound sent my hips forward against hers.
"Lola." Her name came out wrecked.
"Don't stop." She pulled back just enough to look at me. Then her hand came up and gripped my jaw, hard, turning my face toward hers when I would have buried it against her neck.
She couldn't have known what she was doing. Couldn't have understood that what she'd just demanded, her hand on my face forcing my eyes to hers, was what I'd spent twenty years refusing to give anyone. Be here. Be present. Be seen. I'd spent my adult life making myself invisible, existing in the margins where nobody looked. This woman had her hand on my jaw and her eyes locked on mine and she was refusing to let me vanish.
I pulled her shirt over her head. Unhooked her bra with one hand, a skill I hadn't used in years. She was gorgeous. Full, curved, and soft, her skin warm under my palms. I cupped herbreasts, my thumbs dragging across her nipples, feeling them stiffen under my touch.
She arched into me, her head falling back against the wall, her hips rocking forward. I bent my head and took her nipple into my mouth, sucking, circling with my tongue, and the moan she let out echoed off the walls of the empty corridor. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, pulling me closer, her body pressing against mine with an urgency that matched my own.
I unfastened her jeans. Pushed them down her hips, her underwear with them. She kicked them off while I worked my belt open. She watched me, breathing hard, her back against the wall, her body bare in the dim light. She watched me steady. Unafraid. Her brown eyes tracked every movement of my hands. My chest ached for more.
I lifted her. Her legs locked around my waist, her arms around my neck, her back braced against the timber. I held her there, one hand under her thigh, the other gripping her hip. Her face was inches from mine. Flushed, open, lips swollen, chest heaving.
She was twenty-seven and burning alive. I hadn’t burned in so long I’d forgotten the temperature. The fourteen years between us existed in the contrast of my scarred hands against her smooth thighs, in the control I was losing and the fearlessness with which she was taking it from me.
"Look at me," she whispered.
I was already looking. I couldn't stop.
I pushed into her.
Her breath caught. Her mouth fell open. She was wet, ready, tight around me in a way that blurred my vision. I sank into her slowly, feeling every inch, feeling her body stretch to accommodate me, feeling her fingers dig into the back of my neck as the fullness registered. She made a sound, low, broken,and her head dropped against my shoulder and I held still, buried inside her, letting her adjust.
Then she lifted her head. Eye to eye, her face inches from mine, her body wrapped around me in a dim corridor between the bar and the clubhouse.
"Now," she said.
I moved. Deep, controlled strokes that made her gasp with each one. My hand gripped her thigh, holding her up. My other hand was flat against the wall beside her head. Her back slid against the timber with every thrust. She held my gaze the entire time. Every other woman I'd been with had closed her eyes at some point, retreated into sensation, let the moment become private. Lola watched me come apart for her, and the exposure of it, the raw vulnerability of being seen while I was this far gone, broke open a part of me that wasn't going to close again.
I wasn't just inside her. She was inside me. Behind the walls, underneath the silence, in the place I’d kept empty because filling it meant admitting I wanted things and wanting things was a liability. She was there now. Looking at me with those dark eyes, her body gripping mine, her breath coming hard against my mouth, and the truth landed clean. This wasn't a woman I was going to forget. This wasn't a night I was going to file away. She'd found me in the corner of a dark bar. She'd refused to look away. I was never going to recover from it.
The rhythm broke. I drove into her harder, faster, and she met me, her hips rolling to match mine, her breath coming in short, sharp sounds against my lips when she pulled me in and kissed me mid-stroke.
I shifted my grip, lifted her higher, changed the angle. The next thrust made her cry out, loud, her nails raking down my back, her body shuddering.
"There," she gasped. "Right there, don't stop…fuck…”
I kept the angle. Relentless. Feeling her tighten around me, feeling the tremor building in her thighs, in her stomach, in the arms locked around my neck. I reached between us, pressed my thumb against her clit, circled. She came apart. Body clenching around me in waves. A cry that bounced off the corridor walls. Her face changed. Pleasure wrecked her. Her eyes finally closed. She let go.
I followed seconds later. The orgasm hit me hard enough to buckle my knees, a rough, guttural sound buried against her neck, my hips stuttering as I came inside her. I pressed her into the wall, both of us shaking, both of us breathing like we'd been underwater.
I held her. Her legs still locked around me, her breath warm against my skin. Her heartbeat hit my chest. Rapid. Then slower.
I lowered her gently. Her feet found the floor. She leaned against the wall, her eyes half closed, her lips parted. For one second her gaze held that same fierce heat, like I was something she'd found that she hadn't known she was searching for.
Then reality arrived. Quiet. Cold. Frost over both of us.
She bent down. Picked up her clothes. Dressed quickly, efficiently, not looking at me. Her not looking at me was physical. I pulled my shirt on. Buckled my belt. The corridor was narrow enough that we were still close, our shoulders almost touching, the warmth of her body reaching mine through the cool air.
"This didn't happen," she said. Her voice held. Her hands didn't.
"No," I said. "It didn't."
She looked at me. One last time, her gaze holding mine in the dim light, and everything she wasn't saying was visible in them. The same thing I wasn't saying.
