Page 99 of The Endless Want

“I won’t,” he says, voice low, rough, and frighteningly honest. “Not this time.”

He kisses me.

It’s not a sweet kiss, not at first. It tastes like missed sleep and old anger, like the silence that’s pressed between us for months, raw at the edges.

But I don’t pull away. Instead, I let myself thaw millimeter by millimeter. His palm slides into the small of my back, anchoring me, and for a second, I’m weightless—off-balance, unmoored. Then he steadies me, fingers splaying against the ridges of my spine, and the uncertainty I’ve been holding collapses under its own weight.

I let myself fall into him, eyes closing.

He pulls away first, just far enough to rest his forehead against mine. I can’t quite read the look in his eyes—there’s too much there, years and years of unfinished sentences—but his breath is uneven, and his hands are shaking.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something soft, something stupid, and instead just stand there until his hands begin to roam my body.

“Mackenzie left twenty minutes ago,” I say against his mouth. “She took the long way out so she wouldn’t have to look at either of us.”

“And the two on the step?”

“Paid not to hear anything. Ronan’s very clear with them about it.”

He huffs a laugh into my hair, and it’s the first easy sound he’s made in months.

My clothes soon come off, and he caresses my belly before letting me see his glorious form in turn. I find myself being flipped around, shoved toward the arm of the couch where I lean and hang on.

My hair falls over my face, tickling my cheeks. His hands slide up, splayed against my ribs, greedy and cautious at once. He fits behind me with an ease that makes something twist down low—a bitter, lovely nostalgia.

The edge of the couch arm presses into my palms. I don’t mind; I want that pressure, need it to keep me tethered.

He hesitates, just for a second, breath ghosting across my shoulder. “If you need me to stop, just say.” The words come out like he hates saying them, but means every syllable.

I don’t answer, not with words. I reach back and anchor his wrist, guiding his palm over my stomach, my breast, the places where I still want to be held. He groans, a soft sound, almost wounded. I can feel him hard and sure, pressed against me, and some primitive part of my brain unfurls, starved.

I feel him up against me moments later, and I whimper as the ache it gives me shoots through me. I’ve never wanted it so much.

Hormones. Desperation. Love. The reason doesn’t even matter.

“Please,” I hear myself saying. With a growl, he obliges, slamming into me only to pull back just a little.

I call out, and he reaches out to grab my hair, tugging at it like an anchor. Something about his possessiveness right now makes my center burn with desire.

For once, there’s no audience. No prying eyes, no hidden agendas. Just him and me and the too-bright morning leaking in from the kitchen.

He’s rough but measured—I can feel restraint trembling under every motion, like he’s fighting the urge to go feral. I wonder if he’s scared of breaking me, now that I’m carrying something so fragile, or if it’s guilt, coiling through his veins in place of old rage.

I slam backward into his hips, hungry, our shapes aligning and colliding with need. The pleasure is immediate, all-consuming, flooding my system and erasing the months of absence in a single, blinding instant.

I moan, more animal than woman, and he clamps my hair tighter, control slipping with each thrust.

I can’t help it—I’ve never been quiet, never learned how. Air rattles in my chest, and the world narrows to the points where our bodies join.

My knees shake and tremble so that only his thrusts, so deep he’s a part of me, keep me upright. I buckle under the weight of multiple waves of pleasure, making me lose my grip on reality.

I’m saying his name like a chant, and as the room stops spinning, something wracks me one more time at the force of his peak inside of me.

When it is over—when my breath finally returns and the world slowly knits itself back together—I lie beside him on the small couch, my head resting on his shoulder, the safehouse settling into its late-morning quiet around us.

We don’t speak. We don’t need to. For the first time in a long time, the silence isn’t a battlefield. It’s a beginning.

CHAPTER 31