Page 142 of What We Burn

The pressure of his fingers and his mouth and the knowledge that it’s this—the ruin of me, the mess and the pain and the ugly animal part nobody is supposed to love, let alone crave—that gets him desperate. There’s no judgment. Just hunger, and every second it builds, I split wider.

I want to hide, and I want to let him keep going until the world fades to red static and relief.

He sucks at my clit, massages my inner walls with his tongue, then pushes his fingers in deeper, curling.

My thighs jerk and I gasp, the lurch of pain like it might ruin the whole thing, until it doesn’t, and I realize it’s just the new baseline—I exist in scar and ache and the aftermath of violence, but there’s still pleasure in it. Maybe more than ever.

“Don’t stop,” I say, and my voice is so raw I barely recognize it.

He answers by flattening his tongue and working it in slow, brutal circles, then flicking the tip against the side that always gets me fastest.

I buck, fists gripping the comforter, the dark behind my eyelids turning liquid.

Holden groans into me, and the vibration sends a shudder up my spine. I open my eyes and he isn’t even pretending at detachment—his own cock is out, hard, and he jerks himself off while he works his mouth, the look on his face like he’s taking sacrament.

It makes me want to say, “thank you,” but that’s the one thing that would actually offend him. He pulls his fingers out, holding them up to the light, inspecting the streaks of blood, then spreads me wider with his thumbs, looking like he might tear me open on purpose.

The drag of his stubble, the heat of his mouth—he laps at me until my thighs tremble and I come with a violent, ugly sound that I know the whole apartment can hear. I don’t fucking care. He lets me ride it out.

“Feel better?” he asks, looking up at me from between my thighs.

“Almost,” I say, reaching for him.

“You don’t have to ask me twice, wildcat. I cannot wait to get my dick inside you.”

He shifts up the bed, but instead of pushing inside me, he drags the head of his cock through the mess between my legs.

“Tell me what you can take.”

“All of you.”

His eyes hold mine. “That wasn’t the question.”

“Slow at first,” I whisper. “Then I want you to fuck the pain out of me.”

“That I can do.”

He pushes into me one devastating inch at a time. When my breath catches, he stops.

“Good pain or bad?”

I roll my hips, taking him deeper. “Good. Now stop treating me like I’m breakable.”

He pulls back then thrusts into me, and I shriek at the stretch of it.

“Oh, fuck!”

For a second, it’s too much and then Holden is kissing me, open-mouthed and deep, and I taste myself and the tang of blood and whatever new thing I’ve become.

He starts fucking me, hard and steady, one hand at the back of my head and the other bracing my hip so I can’t back away even if I wanted to. I claw at his back, my nails dragging over tattooed skin, and I arch up into each thrust like I want to fuse with him.

“You’re an animal,” I moan. Holden drives into me again, harder, the mattress shifting beneath us. Every stroke pushes warmth through my abdomen, replacing the deep ache with something I can use.

He reaches between us and brings his fingers up.

They’re streaked red.

“Open.”