Page 237 of These Tears

My mouth opens, but nothing useful comes out.

I look around the parlour as if the answer might be hiding in the skull print on the left, the blackwork designs on the right, and a framed moth with too many wings ahead. ‘Something natural. Maybe. Branches? Antlers? No, that feels a little on the nose. Maybe flowers, but not the pretty-girly kind. I guess.’

The longer I speak, the tighter Elias’ shoulders draw beside me. Sindre watches him for another second like a man measuring how much fuse is left.

Then he steps closer to his giant cousin and gives his shoulder a brief squeeze.

‘Why don’t you sit down and check out some of the stuff in the folders over there?’ Sindre points to a low bookshelf beside a worn leather sofa. ‘I’ll be in the café across the road for ten minutes. The front door will be locked; the treatment room stays untouched – use the design room – and if I return to find either of you near my sterile equipment, I am tattooing a warning label across both your foreheads.’

Sindre is halfway to the door when Elias meets my eyes. The easy irritation he’d worn for his cousin has gone, replaced by something sterner that settles over his face when the bell gives its first impatient jangle.

My pulse answers before the door even closes.

Elias takes my hand in his.

‘Behind the counter,’ he says. ‘Now.’

Without waiting for my input, he leads me past the till and through a black curtain into a narrow room with a reclining chair, leather sofa and shelves crowded with portfolios.

I brace for the argument.

‘Elias—’

His mouth hits mine.

The taste of him knocks the next word clean out of me as my spine meets the wall, his hands already at my coat, my waistband, stripping through the last layers of civility we’ve been hiding behind.

‘What—’ I wrench in half a breath. ‘We can’t do this here.’ My fingers twist into his jacket even as I say it. ‘Someone could come in.’

He catches the change in my breathing before the protest is done. His hand slips beneath my waistband, finds the proof of exactly how little my body agrees with my mouth, and the rest of the argument dies the moment his thumb presses against my heat.

A low, ruined sound leaves him as my body opens for him. ‘Then tell me to stop.’ He drags our jeans and thermal layers down just far enough to free our hips.

‘I said someone could come in.’ I pull his mouth back to mine. ‘I didn’t say stop.’

He lifts me against the wall, shoves between my thighs and drives into me in one hard stroke.

The ache hits us both at once, drawing the same broken exhale from our mouths.

‘Already wet,’ he murmurs against my lips.

My tongue can’t form words while his girth is stretching me so thoroughly.

‘I know you can be a good girl and that’s exactly what you’ll be,’ he rumbles against my lips as he takes a soft nip at my chin and exhales shakily when that final inch of him settles inside me. ‘You came in here with his name still on you.’ His hand closes tighter over my hip, holding me still against the full, ruthless size of him. I can’t make out his face amidst the constellations swirling in my vision. ‘You’re leaving with something of mine.’

My breath falls apart half in surrender, half in defiance. Then his mouth drags along my jaw, and all thoughts disperse again. ‘You’re doing this today, Leah.’ He thrusts once, and a moan wrenches from my lips. ‘And that’s final.’

‘I’m not tattooing your name on my arse,’ I snarl.

His lips capture mine and drown the rest as he starts moving hard and fast before I can weaponise another unnecessary remark – completely unmoved by the fact that there is a counter, a curtain and an entire town of nosy people on the other side of it.

Whatever protest remained on my tongue dissolves into a soft gasp against his mouth.

His hand slides up to cradle the back of my head and keeps me there, sealed to him.

Every thrust punches the air from my lungs, but he doesn’t let the sounds of my pleasure escape – he traps them between our lips until he claims them as his own.

Then he stops abruptly, still deep inside me.