The first press of him against me is a shock every time; he’s thick, hot and unrelenting. My body tightens on instinct. Ari doesn’t give me much time to sort myself out. One hand fists in my hair and yanks my head back. The other grips my hip hard and pins it to the desk, arching my back enough to make me gasp.
“I’ll ask you again, detka,” he says, voice low and vicious. “Do you want me to make you feel good?”
“Yes,” I whisper, already shaking.
“Yes, what?” he growls.
“Fuck— please.” He pushes forward in one punishing thrust that opens me in a single stroke and drags a noise out of me so rough it hardly sounds like mine. He pulls back only far enough to do it again, the force of it making the desk jerk against the floor. My vision goes a bit blurry when he finds exactly the right angle and keeps hitting it like he’s trying to breaksomething open.
There’s no softness in it, no patience either. It’s anger, want, and passion, all of it shoved into the same space until I can’t tell which is which. The office fills with the sounds of it — skin, heavy breathing, the ugly little noises I can’t hold back once he gets properly into me.
Ari pants and grunts behind me, releasing my hip to cover my mouth, the other hand still in my hair, his breathing hot against my neck. Every thrust slams into me hard enough to make my arms shake; I’m barely holding myself up.
My cock is trapped between my body and the desk, the friction driving me mad in time with him, and I’m swearing steadily now under my breath, because it’s either that or beg, and I’m trying, however nobly, not to do that while I'm still angry.
As if Ari read my thoughts, his hand moves from my mouth and slides around my hip and closes around my cock.
He strokes me roughly and possessively, in sync with the thrusts, and the calluses on his palm drag over me in a way that makes my whole body jolt. He bites down into my shoulder, sharp enough that I know there’ll be a mark, and that’s it. After a few hard jerks from his hand, I come with a cry, I have absolutely no chance of swallowing, spilling over his hand and the desk, in one humiliatingly immediate rush.
Ari doesn’t stop. He fucks me through it, harder if anything, his own breathing going ragged now, and I canfeel him getting close in the way his whole body changes — tighter, rougher, less controlled in the thrusting. He buries himself right to the hilt with one last brutal snap of his hips, slaps a hand over his own mouth, and comes hard enough inside me that I automatically clench around him.
For a few minutes, neither of us moves or speaks. Then I try to say his name and only get halfway there before he turns my head enough to kiss me over my shoulder.
It’s different this time. It’s still deep, still filthy, but slower now, his mouth softening on mine in a way that makes something in my chest ache so badly I almost tell him to piss off out of self-defence.
When he finally pulls back, his thumb drags over my lower lip. “Don’t shut me out again,” he murmurs, his voice still rough but stripped of the earlier edge.
I don’t make promises I can’t keep. “I won’t,” I say, meaning it as completely as I can.
We put ourselves back together in silence, the same motions as always, only my legs are less steady than I’d like, and Ari’s mouth — because he’s still a smug prick — keeps threatening to turn into a grin.
We leave separately, back into the base’s ordinary rhythm as if nothing’s happened except I’ve got his teeth marks on my shoulder, and his cum still cooling inside me.
When I’m alone again, the anger doesn’t come roaring back the way I expect. It’s still there, obviously, but it’scalmed into something usable instead of something corrosive.
What unsettles me the most is how close I was to letting it fester inside me until it became something uglier than anger. It wasn’t actually directed at Ari, Mason, Niko, or even me. It’s all of it. The constant business of being watched and pretending it doesn’t matter. The pressure of caring and having nowhere respectable to put it. The fear is that if I keep swallowing everything, one day it’ll come back up in a way I can’t pull back.
Ari hasn’t fixed any of that, but he hasn’t let me lie to myself either. He gives me the choice, he always does, even when he’s being an unbearable bastard about it, even when he’s pushing so hard I can feel the shape of his fingerprints long after the fact.
I choose, that’s what matters to me.
I smooth my uniform back into place, breathe until my pulse drops, and sit with the simple truth underneath all of it. I’m not angry because I care too much. I’m angry because I’m scared of losing people, and I don’t know how to stop it.
But next time I won’t wait until it turns into something this volatile. And even if I did, I know exactly who’ll drag it out of me anyway.
The anger is still here for most of the next day, but it feels quieter now, almost packed down. It hasn’t gone anywhereovernight, but it’s stopped leaking out through my mouth, which is probably a mercy for everyone involved.
I get through most of my day on autopilot, doing the bare minimum required of me, trying my hardest not to be a problem, and not looking for Ari because, honestly, I feel bad.
That lasts until the early evening, at which point I decide I'm being ridiculous and need to speak to him properly.
I know where he’ll be.
So I go to the corridor where his office is, get halfway down, and turn back. I chicken out, rush back to the mess hall, and have a drink. Then I go back to the corridor and talk myself out of going to his office at least three times.
At this point, I'm irritated with myself.
I wait long enough that it won’t look like I’ve been circling him all evening, then head directly for his office and knock once before stepping inside without waiting for an answer.
