Page 35 of Wells

Cera is right here, close enough to touch. With Ronnie's death stirring up everything with my father that I thought was buried, I'm already wound too tight before Cera becomes the immediate problem in front of me.

My forearm is rigid beside her hand. My breath stalls and my heartbeat punches in my throat. The old warning about money and exposure flashes sharp enough to taste metal.

I know the danger in the room. I know what happens when control slips.

Cera doesn't move back, and neither do I. She stands up to face me.

Her eyes drop to my mouth, then lift, locking onto mine. Those deep brown eyes grab me.

Fuck it.

I close the distance, her mouth meeting mine before the thought finishes. The kiss is not soft. It is not tender. It is heat and pressure and the snap of something that has been pulling tight for weeks, finally breaking.

Cera's hands go to my chest, fingers curling into my shirt.

The kiss breaks for air, and Cera presses her center into me. The chair rolls back and hits the credenza with a dull crack. Her hands drop to my belt, and every question I didn't ask is answered before I can form the words.

The relief hits harder than the lust. I was not reaching alone.

Cera's hands work the buckle, and the urgency roughens my breathing.

I turn her to the desk, and she braces her own hands flat on the wood without instruction. The sight of her bent forward, ready, sends heat crashing through my chest hard enough to blur the edges of the room.

I push her skirt up over her hips and drag her underwear down, tossing them on the floor at her feet.

Pulling my wallet from my back pocket, I know I should stop. I have a clean break. The functional part of my brain stays online even while the rest of me is gone. I rip the foil, roll the condom on, the delay almost unbearable.

Cera shifts her weight forward and spreads her stance.

Neither of us says a word. I grip her hip, fisting her skin as I line myself up and push into her in one stroke.

She gasps, and I push again, this time harder.

"Keep going," she pants, her voice rising with the thrust.

Her body takes me, the tight heat erasing any thought. My breath turns ragged. She rocks back into me and meets every thrust, setting the pace as much as I do.

"Fuck, yes."

I don't know which one of us says it.

The desk edge bites into my awareness, the last ordinary thing in the room. My hand slides up her spine, fisting the fabric of her blouse, holding her in place while I lose every shred of control I thought I still had.

"Don't stop. Don't fucking stop."

I don't stop. I can't stop. The rhythm turns brutal, and every bit of what I have been holding back drives into it.

Cera doesn't just take what I give her. She matches it, then she commands it, and that undoes me more than the act itself.

She arches under my hands, and the movement sends me deeper. A sound tears out of her throat, broken at the edges, and the cadence of it eggs me on, feeding on the frenzy of it all.

I almost freeze. The momentum carries the next drive before the rest of me catches up, but something stutters hard enough to register.

The sound she makes as she approaches her climax is familiar, a vague déjà vu.

It's not the words or the tone but the rhythm, how her breath catches before the sound breaks loose, the exact shape of her pleasure when it cracks her open. I can't put my finger on exactly what.

The thought knifes through the haze and lands wrong. My pulse spikes in a direction that has nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with something I cannot afford to process right now.