Page 157 of Break Away
The corner of his mouth moved in a twitch of pure, hateful satisfaction, like he despised how much he enjoyed knowing exactly where my body betrayed me.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, and the words weren’t soft. They were a dare with teeth, his breath hot and ragged against my lips. “Say it like you mean it, and I’ll stop.”
I pulled against his grip, but he held me there, immovable, breathing hard and waiting, every inch of his body wired tight and vibrating with the same furious need tearing me apart.
I lifted my chin until my mouth almost brushed his. “If I wanted you to stop, Easton, you would already know.”
His control snapped.
I saw it shatter in his eyes.
He hauled me off the counter, his breath catching when the turn pulled at his ribs, then backed me across the tiny kitchen with his body pressed against mine, one hand at my neck and the other at my waist. Every step was a clumsy, desperate fight neither of us tried to win cleanly.
My shoulder struck the wall near the hallway hard enough to knock a picture frame crooked with a sickening crack of glass. Easton followed me in, pinning me there with his hips and the furious, devastating weight of his stare.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he growled, his voice rough and ravaged, his forehead pressing against mine.
I grabbed the front of his shirt, twisting the fabric inside my fists, and pulled him closer until there was no space left for anything but this. “Then shut up and show me.”
His mouth slammed back onto mine, and this time there was no pretending the kiss was anything except war, with both of us choosing the same battlefield, the same glorious, vicious ruin
17
Easton
The words were gasoline on the fire already eating me alive.Make me mean it.
I didn’t need a second invitation. My mouth was already on hers, swallowing her next breath, her next challenge, her next lie. I kissed her like I wanted to punish her for existing, for making me feel this, for walking back into my life and acting like she could handle the wreckage she’d left. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a declaration of war fought with teeth and tongue, a brutal, devouring thing that tasted like blood—mine or hers, I didn’t know, didn’t care. It was ours.
My hands moved. One stayed fisted in the thin, cheap fabric of her referee top—The Sin Bin, the irony wasn’t lost on me—right over the rapid, frantic beat of her heart. I could feel it, that wild, trapped-bird rhythm against my knuckles. The other slid from her waist to the back of her thigh, my fingers digging into the soft, giving flesh, hiking her leg up around my hip. She gasped into my mouth, a sharp, startled sound that was pure fuel. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, her short nails biting through the worn cotton of my hoodie, scoring my skin. I lifted her clean off the floor, her back still against the wall, and she wrapped her other leg around me without hesitation, locking her ankles at the small of my back. The move pressed her pussy, hot even through our clothes, against the hard, aching ridge of my cock straining against my jeans, and a ragged, furious sound tore from my throat—half agony, half triumph.
I carried her like that, my mouth never leaving hers, a messy, breathless tangle of lips and teeth and shared fury, walking us blindly out of the narrow hallway and into the bleakmain room. I didn’t make it to the bed. A low, scarred wooden table sat in front of my shitty couch, covered in unopened mail, a skate tool, and a half-empty plastic water bottle. I swept it all off with one violent arm, the crash of the bottle hitting the floor, the skittering of metal, nothing but background noise to the roaring, white-hot static in my ears.
I laid her back on the cool, scarred wood. Not gently. There was no gentleness left in me. It had been burned out seven months ago, scorched away by her absence and my own fucking pride, replaced by this—this acid, all-consuming need to prove something, to claim something, to make her feel even a fraction of the hollowed-out ache she’d carved into my chest. To make her remember.
Her long, thin black braids fanned out around her head like a dark crown against the pale, unfinished pine. Her eyes were wide, dark, and blazing up at me, her chest heaving under that stupid fucking top. No fear. Never fear with her. Just challenge. Just fire. Just the same infuriating, beautiful defiance that had drawn me in and then burned me to ash.
I didn’t bother with her top. My hands went to the waistband of her tiny black shorts, the fabric soft and worn. She was already working on my jeans, her fingers fumbling with the button, then the zipper, her knuckles brushing against the painful hardness beneath. We were a frantic, silent tangle of hands and anger and too many months of wanting to do this while pretending we wanted to kill each other instead. It was ugly. It was perfect.
I shoved her shorts and the flimsy lace of her panties down her legs in one rough, inelegant pull. She kicked them off, the movement lifting her hips, and I nearly lost my mind at the sight of her, bare and spread out for me on my goddamn table. Her skin was a rich, beautiful brown against the pale, unforgiving wood, and she was already wet. The proof of itglistened in the low, shitty light from the kitchen, a slick, inviting sheen, and the sight was a vicious, soul-deep triumph. She could scream that she hated me until her voice broke, but her body had always been a traitor. It always wanted me. It alwaysneededme.
She finally got my jeans open, her hand shoving inside my boxer briefs, her fingers wrapping around my cock. Her touch was electric, rough and desperate, and I hissed, my hips jerking forward into her fist, my forehead dropping to her shoulder. Her thumb swiped over the head, spreading the moisture beading there, and the sensation was so intense it bordered on pain.
“Stop,” I growled, the word less of a request and more of a primal command, torn from a place deeper than reason.
She didn’t. She stroked me, her grip tightening, her eyes holding mine with that defiant, fucking beautiful glare.
I caught her wrist, pulling her hand away and pinning it above her head on the table, my fingers like iron manacles. I used my other hand to finally free myself, shoving my jeans and boxers down just enough. I didn’t give her time to think, to breathe, to come up with another cutting remark that would slice me open. I positioned myself at her entrance, the broad, aching head of my cock nudging against her slick, swollen heat. I leaned over her, bracing one hand on the table by her head, caging her in. My other hand came up, my fingers curling lightly around the front of her throat. Not squeezing. Not yet. Just holding. A reminder. A claim. My thumb brushed the frantic, rabbit-quick pulse jumping under her jaw.
Her breath hitched, her eyes locked on mine, her lips parted, swollen and dark.
“Nobody,” I said, my voice a low, filthy rasp, stripped of everything but anger and a want so deep it felt like dying, “is ever gonna fuck you like I do, Aura.”
I used her name. Not Clarke.Aura. The rule breaking one, I’d hoarded it like a miser, a stolen treasure. Now I weaponized it. Threw it between us like a grenade.
Her name. For this real, ugly, glorious thing between us.
I thrust into her in one brutal, deep, unyielding stroke.
