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A piece of the tension in my heart loosens so suddenly it almost feels painful.

We’re both breathing hard now. Me because my entire body is lit up with anger, humiliation, want, and relief. All of it mixing together until I can’t separate one from the other.

“Look here, Tristan. I’m gonna be plain as fuck with you,” I say, my voice low and trembling with raw honesty. “The thought of Jake in this apartment makes me feel insane. Hearing that he was here the same day you had me bent over my father’s desk and fucked me like I was the only thing you wanted makes something black and sick twist deep in my gut.”

His brows dip, and something shifts behind his eyes, but I keep going. Because now that the words have started, my mouth doesn’t seem to know how to close.

“I can handle being used,” I continue, my voice rough. “I can handle being wanted in pieces. I can handle being ruined in private if that’s all you’ve got to give me. But I cannot and will not stand the thought of sharing even a corner of you with that man.”

His eyes narrow, and something dark flashes across his face.

“You don’t get to say that to me like you own me, Maksim.” He grits out. His grip on my throat stays firm and unyielding. It’s not enough to choke, but just enough to remind me exactly who has me pinned here.

“Oh, I want to own you, Tristan.” The words tear out of me, raw and unhinged. “I want every piece of you he used to have. I want you to look at me the way you used to look at him. I want your body, your attention, your fucking soul, and your whole life to revolve around me.” My chest presses hard against his with every breath, and I don’t back down from a single syllable. “You’re mine. Not his. Mine. I don’t give a fuck if you never say it back. I’ll burn every bridge he tries to rebuild with you. I’ll crawl so deep under your skin that the only person you think about every day of your life is me.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Tristan grits out through clenched teeth, like he’s using the last threads of his patience.

The threat in his voice only draws a wide, unhinged smile from me.

“Make me.”

The words barely leave my lips before he snaps.

He crashes his mouth against mine in a brutal, punishing kiss and a raw, unchained sound tears out of me before I can swallow it. Something between a moan, a gasp and a confession, because yes, this is what I wanted.

The kiss isn’t soft, and that makes it so us. He kisses me like he’s trying to shut me up, punish me, devour every reckless word I just threw at him and every feeling underneath them. I kiss him back just as violently, pouring every ounce of jealousy, obsession, and desperate need into it. His tongue invades my mouth, claiming, dominating, and I let him suck on it like he’s starving because I am too.

His hand stays locked around my throat, holding me exactly where he wants me while his other hand fists in my hair, yanking my head back to deepen the kiss. It’s messy. Angry. Perfect. I can taste the frustration on his tongue, the barely-leashed violence, and I give it all right back to him.

When his teeth bite and sucks on my bottom lip, my knees threaten to give out, and I know, with humiliating certainty, that it’s his hand at my throat keeping me upright. The realization sends a wicked shiver through me, making my pulse jump so hard it almost hurts. If he notices, he doesn’t say a word. He just breaks the kiss abruptly, breathing hard, chest rising and falling as if he’s been running instead of standing two feet from wrecking my entire nervous system.

My dick is painfully hard and straining against my jeans like the unashamed fucker it is. I try to hold his gaze, but my eyes betray me anyway.

They drop to his mouth—to those perfectly sculpted lips, still so close—before dragging back up to his eyes.

And God, he is beautiful. The most devastatingly, unfairly good-looking man I have ever stood in front of in my entire life, and the fact that he is looking at me right now, as if I am both the best and worst decision he has ever made, does something irreversible to me.

He leans in again, slower this time, until his lips brush the shell of my ear and his breath skims hot over my skin. My pulse stutters and my cock twitches.

“You want to act crazy? Fine.” Tristan’s voice drops into a low, husky growl against my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “But you’ll do it on my terms. You’ll choke on my cock and gag on my name while I fuck every last drop of that jealousy out of you tonight,” he continues, quiet and devastating. “You’ll beg like the desperate, unhinged little slut you are. And when I’m done with you, you will remember with absolute clarity exactly who is in control here.”

Chapter 19

TRISTAN

I don’t give him a chance to recover from what I’ve just said.

With my hand still wrapped around his throat, I pull him away from the wall and walk him backward toward the bedroom, our mouths crashing together again in a filthy, desperate kiss that feels more like a collision than anything tender. He stumbles once, but he doesn’t fight me. If anything, he leans into it, into me, making this ruined sound against my mouth as if he’s starving and I’m the only thing in the room that can feed him. The raw sound shoots straight to my dick.

The jealousy pouring out of him should piss me off. It should make me step back, tell him to get a grip, and remind him he doesn’t get to act as if he owns any part of me. Instead, it does something far worse. It puts a match to something dark and possessive in my chest, something that should have stayed buried. The way he looked at me out there—raw, obsessive, almost broken by the force of what he felt—got into my head in a way I don’t want to examine too closely, because if I do, I might have to admit I liked it. Worse, I might have to admit I wanted more.

By the time we reach the bedroom door, I’ve got him pinned against the frame, devouring him. This kiss is deeper now, slower in rhythm but no less violent in intent. I taste wine and rage and that bitter, addictive sharpness that is uniquely his. Nobody else tastes like that.

He bites my bottom lip hard enough to sting, then drags his tongue over it like an apology he has absolutely no intention of meaning.

“Fuck,” I growl against his mouth as I shove the door open and drag him inside. “You drive me out of my goddamn mind.”

The second we’re inside, I kick the door shut and push him up against it. My hand stays wrapped around his throat as I kiss him harder, filthier, all the restraint I’ve been carrying tonight finally burning off. I feel him everywhere. His hands gripping my shirt, his hips pushing forward, every desperate, wanting sound he makes vibrating against my palm. When I grind my clothed hard cock against his and hear him whimper into my mouth, something in me pulls tighter.