The brat is still in there. Just scared. I can work with scared.
I hook my fingers under the hem of his shirt and wait. Just let my hands rest against his stomach. Asking. Benji lifts his arms, and I pull the cotton over his head. The claiming bite sits right there on his shoulder in the dim light. My breath catches. I've seen it a hundred times, but tonight it looks different. Deliberate.
He doesn’t wait for me to return the favor. He yanks my shirt over my head. "Stop looking at me like that," he snaps, the words coming out breathless. Being touched carefully is one thing. Being looked at carefully is something else entirely.
We hit the mattress. Benji drags his nails down my side, sharp against my ribs, and the sting grounds me. It’s him sayingdon’t treat me like glass. I won’t. But I am going to put my mouth on that mark instead of my teeth, and I’m not going to hide behind a single smirk.
I touch him the way I’d approach a massive back piece. Focused. Patient. We kick our jeans off until it’s just skin on skin. The lean, wiry muscle of him, the freckles on his shoulders that I’ve been sketching from memory for months.
My fingers drop between his legs, finding him slick, warm, and wet. His body is ready. It always is when I’m this close. I work him open slowly. Two fingers, careful, watching his face instead of my hand. His lip catches between his teeth. His hips push up into my touch, his eyes fluttering shut.
I add a third finger. His hand twists into the sheets, and he lets out a sound that’s half-sigh, half-whine. I pause. He cracks one eye open.
"Don’t you dare stop."
I press a kiss to his hip and keep going.
I move up, finding the claiming bite. I drag my tongue over the raised ridges of the scar. The gentleness makes him shiver. His hand tangles in my hair and yanks.
"Are you going to fuck me or write me a poem?" His voice is sharp, but it’s shaking.
"Benji," I say. Just his name. His grip loosens a fraction.
I line up my cock and push in. Slow. So fucking slow it hurts. Inch by inch. Benji’s eyes fly open, and we’re face to face as the fullness hits us both. The mate bond screams, loud and deafening without the anger to buffer it. I hold still, letting us both adjust.
"Fuck," he chokes out. His hand grips the back of my neck—hard, bratty—but then his thumb traces the line behind my ear. Soft. Real.
I start to move. We find a deep, grinding rhythm that has nothing to do with performance. It’s just pressure, a refusal to leave any space between our bodies. I frame his head with my arms, his legs wrapping tight around my waist. He keeps looking away, but every time I catch his gaze, his eyes are a little wider.
I want to tell him he’s beautiful. That I’ve been drawing his face for months, and the real thing is better than every page. But my mouth has never been the useful part of me. I let my hands do the talking. Steady and careful.
"Right there," he orders, his voice cracking.
I adjust the angle, grinding deep against his prostate, and watch his mouth fall open.
"Don't stop," he pants. Then, quieter. "Don't leave."
I press my forehead against his. "I’m here." I keep the pace. My hands are finally steady, the tremor completely gone.
He bites my shoulder. Sharp and sudden, his teeth digging in hard enough to leave a mark. I grit my teeth and push deeper. He pulls back, pressing his face into the exact same spot, breathing me in. I feel his wet eyelashes against my skin. Neither of us says a word about it.
My knot starts to build. Not the frantic swell from the alley, but a gradual, heavy pressure at the base of my cock. Benjifeels it. I see the exact second he registers the stretch. Instead of bracing against it, he rolls his hips, pushing into the stretch, taking me deeper. The active acceptance of it nearly wrecks me.
The knot pops past his rim, and we lock. The stretch forces us both still. I’m buried deep inside him, stuck, and neither of us wants to go anywhere. I grind in slow pulses. His slick hole clenches around the knot, my dick throbbing inside him, the bond singing.
I dip my head back to the claiming bite. I press an open-mouthed kiss to the scar, the mark I left when I was terrified and out of control. My mouth on it now is the apology. I can feel his pulse racing under the skin. Benji shivers.
His hand tightens in my curls, holding me against the mark.Stay where I put you.
I reach down between our bodies, wrapping my fingers around his hard, leaking cock. I stroke him, deliberate, my thumb dragging over the head. Benji comes with a sound I’ve never heard from him—small, unguarded, surprised. His body seizes around my knot. I follow him right over the edge, my face buried in his neck, groaning as I spill into him.
The bedroom is quiet. Our breathing evens out, the sweat cooling on our skin. The knot holds us together, a warm pressure that used to feel like a trap and now just feels like home. My forehead rests against his. His hand is in my hair, fingers moving in slow, lazy circles.
The old instinct fires. The rusty, reliable post-sex pullback. Crack a joke, grab my phone, put some air between my chest and his. I feel my body start to shift, just a fraction of an inch.
Benji’s hand slides to the back of my neck. His fingers press into the muscle, his grip firm. He felt it. He felt me start to retreat.
"Stay."