Page 83 of Mine After Midnight

He pulls me into the crowd. The music is loud enough to rattle my ribs. Ryan’s hands settle on my waist, tentative at first, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll protest his touch. I lift my arms, letting the rhythm take over me. It’s easier that way, when I don’t have to think. When there’s just movement and heat and bodies pressed close together. He relaxes when I don’t pull away. His grip tightens slightly.

‘Are you back for good?’

‘I don’t know.’

His hand brushes down my arm before shifting back to my hip. A ripple of something rolls down my spine, as if my body knows before I do. Ryan’s saying something else, but I don’t hear it. My pulse spikes, anticipation inching through me like poison. Across the room, through a blur of flashing lights and moving bodies, I see him. Ash is leaning against the wall, and the oxygen leaves my lungs at the sight of him. He’s in a dark shirt, his sleeves pushed up, with one leg propped up against the wall. He tilts his head in the way he often does when he’s analysing me. He’s watching Ryan’s hands on me like he’s calculating the exact force it would take to break them.

Ryan misreads my reaction as nerves. He smiles. ‘You’re tense.’

He pulls me closer, his confidence growing. His hand slides lower on my waist. Ash moves. He strolls unhurriedly through the room. People dart out of his way almost instinctively, as though something in them recognises a predator entering the water.

He stops directly behind Ryan, close enough to make him stiffen before he even turns around. Ash’s voice is calm. A little too calm.

‘Take your hands off her.’

Ryan blinks, confused. ‘Sorry, man, we’re just—’

‘I know exactly what you’re doing and what your intentions are.’

Ash’s eyes flick to me for half a second, and my God, there it is. That look. The heated possessiveness that makes me feel like he owns me.

Ryan squares his shoulders, trying to recover. ‘She doesn’t seem to mind.’

Ash steps closer. Now there’s barely an inch between them.

‘She doesn’t mind a lot of things,’ he says evenly. ‘That doesn’t mean you get to touch what’s mine.’

Ryan looks at me, perplexed, as if he can’t picture Ash and I together. ‘You know this guy?’

‘Oh, she knows me.’ He looks at me again. ‘Don’t you, Bryn?’

My name in his mouth is a warning and a promise at the same time. Ryan’s hand drops from my waist. Smart boy.

Ash doesn’t cast Ryan a second glance. ‘You can go.’

His tone indicates it’s not a suggestion. Ryan hesitates one second too long. Ash leans in just enough for only Ryan to hear him, but I catch it anyway.

‘If you touch her again,’ he murmurs, his voice silky, ‘I’ll make sure the next time you see her is from a hospital room.’

Ryan goes pale, backing up immediately and disappearing into the crowd without another word. Heat spears through me as the universe becomes just us. At least that’s how it feels, even though we’re in a crowded room surrounded by all types of people. Ash steps into the space Ryan left behind. His hand finds my waist, and somehow it feels different. He holds me as if he’s laying claim to something that was always his. My breath catches, not because he’s touching me, but because of how he does it. His palm spreads against my hip, his thumb settling instantly into the dip in my waist like it remembers exactly where to go.

Ryan touched me like he was hoping I’d let him; Ash touches me like he knows I will.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I whisper, but I don’t move away.

His other hand slides up my spine slowly and deliberately until his fingers curl around the back of my neck. His forehead brushes mine.

‘You let him,’ he says quietly.

‘I can let whoever I want,’ I shoot back, but my voice lacks bite. His thumb strokes my hip once, slowly enough to make my knees weaken. ‘You’re shaking.’

‘I’m not.’

His mouth curves slightly. He tightens his grip just enough for me to feel how strong he is.

‘Your body doesn’t lie to me, Bryn.’

The music pounds loudly around us but everything feels far away, as though the party is happening in another world entirely. I should push him away. I should remind him that he doesn’t get to show up and claim me like I’m his property whenever he feels like it. Instead, I slide my hands down his chest and see the smallest loss of control take over him. That’s the thing about us: it’s never just him overpowering me; it’s the way I undo him right back.