He kisses me back like he's starving for it, and for a moment it's just that. His mouth, copper and heat, and I sigh against his lips.
He stands, pulling me up with him, mouth still on mine. I fist his shirt, drag him closer, and we stumble out of the bathroom doorway together. His hands in my hair, my body melting into his, and for the first time there's no ghost between us. No name I couldn't say. Just his mouth and copper and heat.
I shove him.
Both palms flat against his chest, hard enough that his shoulders hit the bedroom wall and the impact knocks a breath out of him.
Good.
Before he can process it, I'm on him. I fist his ruined shirt and yank him down to my mouth. This isn't a kiss. This is a siege. My teeth scrape his bottom lip, my tongue shoves past, and he groans into me like I'm pulling it out of his chest with both hands.
He grabs my hips—
I grab his wrists. Slam them against the wall on either side of his head.
"No." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "My turn."
He could break my grip in a heartbeat. He keeps his hands where I put them. Doesn't move. Doesn't take.
That.That's what I need.
Adrian never held still. Adrian grabbed. Adrian took. Adrian decided when and how and whether I got to feel anything at all. And if I pushed back, if I saidnoornot like thatorstop, his hands got harder. His voice got quieter. His control got tighter until there was no air left in the room for mine.
Cole holds still. Cole holds still andshakes.
I press into him. My hips flush against his, my stomach against the hard length of him through his pants. He's shaking. Cole Tanaka, who killed a man tonight with these hands, isshakingbecause I pinned his wrists to a wall.
"He never let me take." The words come out before I'm ready for them, dragged up from somewhere deep and ugly. "Three years of marriage and he never let mehave."
His whole body is locked tight. Giving me what I need the only way he knows how. By holding perfectly still while I take it.
"Good boy."
A sound escapes him. Wrecked. Desperate. His head drops back against the wall.
"Hai."
My jaw unclenches. My shoulders drop. Like a fist I've been holding for eight years finally opening.
I release his wrists and shove him toward the bed. He goes. Sits when the backs of his knees hit the mattress, looks up at me with those dark eyes and waits.
My shirt is gone. I don't remember taking it off. Somewhere between the wall and the bed it just stopped existing.
His breath catches when I climb onto him, knees on either side of his hips, my weight settling onto him. His hands hover at my sides, not touching, not until I say so. Buttons scatter across the sheets when I yank his shirt open, and the gauze on his knuckles is bright white against my skin when I press his hands to the mattress.
"These hands." I trace the edge of the bandage on his right hand. The one I wrapped ten minutes ago, careful and tender. "I cleaned them. I took care of them." I grind down against him, his cock hard through his pants, and his breath punches out. "Now they don't move until I say."
He clenches the sheets, knuckles white under white gauze. When I drag my nails down his bare chest he hisses through his teeth, red tracks on skin already bruised from whatever Adrian managed to land before the end.
Good. He fought back. I hope he was afraid.
"So beg."
"Onegai—" It rips out of him. "Angelina,please—"
"Please what?"
"Anything." He's panting, undone, every muscle in his body taut. "Whatever you want. I can’t..." A broken sound. "Please."