My jaw clenches, fists against the door as Mal plants a hand between my shoulder blades, angling higher—deeper—curving his body over me, his breath ragged in my ear.
Or maybe it’s mine.
I’ve lost track of my own lungs. Of everything except Mal as I push back against him in a silent demand formore.
He groans through a laugh and lets me have it, his steadying arm dropping lower, his hand splayed across my abdomen, and something about his warm palm covering my stomach does me in. I shouldn’t like it—it’s too fucking tender. Toonice. But the beat of skin on skin, the grind of us together, it takes me out of my head, and I let it break me.
I’ll fix myself later.
Mal ups the pace. Deeper. Harder. Faster. I groan like it’s been punched out of me, losing myself to the pressured coil unravelling in my gut beneath the safety of his hand.
I reach back and grasp his hip, his skin hot and thrumming with his own rushing blood.
He bucks forward, taking me with him, and my head finds my forearm.Needsit to stay upright as this thing between us, this heat, this obsession, careens toward a finish line I’m not ready for.
My body has other ideas. I breathe through clenched teeth, soaking up every strained sound Mal makes behind me,committing them to memory. I bear down, pleasure jolting through my burning veins.Fuck.I’m close, so fucking close?—
A door slams.
In the flat.
Thefrontdoor.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Sol’s sunny laugh floating up the hall.
Jack’s low rumble.
I lock up, that caught breath expanding to a knot I can’t expel.
Jack.
Jack.
I start to pull away, panic of a nature I’ve never felt before rearing in the distance in a guilt-fuelled wave.
We have to stop.
We have to?—
Mal’s hand leaves my shoulder blades and slams down on mine, breathing hard at my neck, his sweat and mine slipping down the arch of my spine, pinning my palm to the door. “No.”
A gravelled order wrapped in a plea this time. And I hear what he’s really saying.
Don’t stop. Not now.
We’re so fucking close.
I relent and realise Mal’s rhythm hasn’t faltered, that he’s still grinding into me at a pace that splinters my brain.
Reckless.
Mad.
Relentless.