Page 16 of The Silent Hour

I forced my eyes open, meeting his dark gaze. The intensity there made my breath catch. His fingers continued their devastating exploration, finding the spot that made my thighs tremble.

"I want to hear you," he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "I want to know what you sound like."

I met his eyes, letting him see exactly how much I wanted this. "Then you should probably fuck me."

Something shifted in his expression—the last thread of restraint snapping. In one fluid motion, he stood, lifting me with him. He carried me down the hallway like I weighed nothing, his steps long and purposeful, and my legs wrapped around his waist on instinct. His mouth found mine in the dark corridor, and the kiss was nothing like the careful ones from the sofa—this one was hungry, open-mouthed, tasting of whiskey and desperation.

His hand gripped my thigh hard enough that I'd feel it tomorrow.

The bedroom door hit the wall with a dull thud. He set me down on the edge of the mattress, and I barely had time to register the dark sheets, the low light, the sheer scale of the room, before his shirt was gone—ripped off, not unbuttoned, buttons pinging against the hardwood somewhere I couldn't track. His belt buckle clanked once, loud in the quiet, and then his pants were on the floor.

I was already working the shorts down my hips, kicking them free, hooking my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and shoving them down my thighs. He moved to help, his hands rough and efficient, and then we were both naked, and the cool air of the penthouse hit every inch of skin that wasn't pressed against his.

He was beautiful. I didn't have time to be embarrassed about staring because he was already pushing me back, his weight settling over me, his hands pinning my wrists above my head. The position arched my back off the mattress, my breasts pressing against the solid wall of his chest.

His mouth moved down my throat, my collarbone, the valley between my breasts. He kissed the curve of one, then the other, and when his tongue circled my nipple, I bucked beneath him hard enough that his weight shifted.

"Ethan—"

He didn't answer. His hand released one of my wrists and traveled down my body—over my stomach, my hip, the inside of my thigh—and I felt my legs fall open for him without my permission. His breath was hot against my ribs, and then he was moving lower, his lips tracing a path down my stomach, his stubble scraping against the sensitive skin.

His hands hooked under my knees, pushing them up and apart, and I felt his breath against me—hot, uneven—and understood exactly where he was going.

"No."

The word came out sharper than I intended. His head lifted, dark eyes finding mine in the dim light. A question lived in the set of his jaw.

"Not that," I breathed, my voice raw. "I want you inside me first."

Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or approval—and then he was moving, reaching for the nightstand with the kind of fluid efficiency that told me he knew exactly where everything was in the dark. His hand found the drawer, pulled it open, and came back with a small square packet.

Gold foil. Of course it was gold foil. The man who ordered takeout in Mandarin and bought books he didn't want because someone else had touched them had gold-foil condoms in his nightstand, and I should have laughed, but I couldn't because he was tearing it open with his teeth, and the sound of the foil splitting made something low in my stomach clench.

He rolled the condom on with one hand, the motion quick and practiced, and then he was over me again, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his forearm braced beside my head. His other hand slid beneath my thigh, hitching my leg high around his hip, and the angle was obscene—I could feel the blunt head of him pressing against me, hot and insistent, and my whole body trembled.

"Look at me," he said.

I did. His eyes were black, the pupils blown so wide there was almost no brown left, and the expression on his face was something I'd never seen on anyone—hungry, wrecked, barely controlled. He looked like a man standing at the edge of something and deciding to jump.

He pushed inside me in one long, devastating stroke.

The sound that left me wasn't a moan. It was closer to a scream, guttural and raw. My nails raked down his back, leaving welts I'd apologize for later, and he didn't flinch. He buried himself to the hilt and held there, his jaw clenched, his breath shuddering against my temple, and I felt every inch of him—the stretch, the fullness, the impossible heat of him inside me.

"God" he breathed, and the word cracked in the middle. "Julia—"

"Don't stop." The words came out broken. "Don't you fucking stop."

He didn't.

He pulled back and drove into me again, harder, and the force of it shoved me up the mattress. My head hit the headboard with a dull thud I barely registered because the second stroke was already landing, and the third, and then he was moving in a rhythm that felt like it was tearing me apart and putting me back together in the same breath. His hand found my hip, fingers digging in hard enough that I knew there would be bruises—five perfect fingerprints in the shape of his grip—and he used the leverage to pull me onto him with every thrust.

The room filled with the sound of it—skin against skin, the wet noise of his body driving into mine, the headboard knocking against the wall in a steady, percussive rhythm. His mouth found my throat, and he bit down, not gently, and the sharp burst of pain bloomed into something molten that pooled low in my belly.

"You feel—" He couldn't finish. His next thrust cut the sentence in half, and I cried out, my back arching off the bed.

His hand released my hip and found my throat. Not squeezing—holding. His palm warm and broad against my windpipe, his thumb pressing into the pulse point beneath my jaw, and the feeling of it—the controlled, deliberate pressure—sent a jolt of electricity straight through my core.

"Tell me if you don't like this," he rasped against my ear, his voice wrecked.