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“Say it. Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I gasp.
He drives into me with a rhythm that’s punishing and tender at the same time, each thrust pushing me up the piano an inch, then pulling me back down. The keys jangle beneath me, random notes that have no melody but sound like music anyway, sound like the backdrop to whatever this is:this man, this room, this life he’s built around me like a fortress.
“Beautiful,” he grunts, his hips snapping forward. “So fucking beautiful. With your blue hair and your gold hoops and this corset…I’m going to keep this corset on you every time. Every time, Sienna. I’m going to bend you over this piano and lift your skirt and take you from behind while you play me something.”
“Anything,” I manage. “Anything you want.”
“That’s right. Anything I want. Because you’re mine. And I’m yours. And there is nothing—” he drives deeper, harder, and I cry out “—nothing in this world that could make me stop loving you. You understand that? You can’t lose me. You can’t get rid of me. Even if you wanted to.”
The words hit somewhere deep, somewhere that’s been scared and waiting and holding its breath since the beginning. He knows. He’s always known. This man who built me a music room and learned my song and looked at me like I was the answer to a question he’d been asking his whole life;he knows exactly what I need to hear.
“Tell me you understand,” he says, his forehead dropping to mine, his rhythm faltering just slightly. “Tell me you know I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” I whisper, and my voice cracks. “I know. Gray. I know.”
He kisses me.
It’s gentler than the fucking, his tongue sliding against mine with a tenderness that makes my chest ache, and his hand comes up to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. He’s still moving inside me, still hitting that spot that makes stars burst behind my eyes, but the kiss is so soft, so careful, that I feel more tears pricking at the corners of my lashes.
“Now,” he says against my mouth. “Now you can come, baby. Come for me. Let me feel you.”
His hand drops between us. His thumb finds my clit and presses, circling, softening, and the combination of that and his cock filling me and his voice in my ear and the smell of wood and leather…
I shatter.
My back bows off the piano, my head thrown back, and the sound I make is guttural, wordless, swallowed by the acoustic panels and given back to us as a whisper. His name falls from my lips, a prayer I didn’t realize I knew, and he keeps moving, keeps thrusting through every clench and pulse, drawing it out until I’m shaking and gasping and clutching at his shoulders.
“Such a good little songbird,” he growls. “Look how gorgeous you are when you come. I could watch this forever. I could watch you fall apart every day for the rest of my life.”
His rhythm turns punishing. The piano creaks beneath us, the strings humming with every impact, and I’m still coming, still pulsing around him, and he’s close now, I can feel it in the way his thrusts lose their precision, the way his breathing goes ragged, the way his fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise.
“Inside me,” I manage. “Please. I want to feel it.”
His control snaps.
He buries himself to the hilt and holds there. I feel his shaft pulsing, his heat spilling inside me, and he groans my name like it’s being dragged out of him, like it’s the only word he knows. His forehead drops to my chest. His breath is hot against my skin above the corset.
“Fuck, you’re music to my ears, baby.” He sighs, resting his head in the crook of my neck.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
The piano has gone silent. The room holds its breath around us. I can feel his heartbeat against mine, fast and strong and steadying by degrees.
He pulls out, and I make a small sound at the loss, at the emptiness. He guides me up, off the piano, into his arms, and I’m still shaking when he wraps himself around me.
“Listen to me,” he says into my hair.
He pulls back, takes my face in both hands, and looks at me with those eyes that have seen me at my worst and stayed anyway.
“I am going to love you until my last breath,” he says. “And even then. Even after. Because there is no version of me that doesn’t love you. There is no timeline, no universe, no reality where I am not completely, desperately, irrevocably in love with Sienna Rhodes. You hear me?”
“Gray—”
“No.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones. “You hear me? It’s you and me baby, just you and me.”
“I don’t want to be stuck with anyone else.”
