Tonight we’d crossed a line. Some invisible barrier neither of us had yet to breach. As if my declaration at the gathering confirmed years of what he already knew, but still needed to hear. I held out my arms. He stepped between them and wrapped his hands around my waist. A sigh escaped me as I sank into him, letting his own arms hold my weight and lift me up.

“I want this dress off you,” he whispered in my ear.

It wasn’t a request. He delivered the order like a lover, but I could hear the leader under the words, and it brought something sharp and feral out of me.

Even if he’d asked gently, kindly, I couldn’t deny him anything. Not with that look in his eyes. The one he wore whenever he knew he’d won and wanted everyone else to realize it a second too late. I stepped out of his hold, unzipped the dress, and let it fall to the floor.

I hadn’t worn a stitch of underwear under the yards of emerald fabric. The chill on my skin all night became worth it just for this moment. He licked his lips, and I quivered, my knees knocking together.

I reached for his shirt. “Your turn.”

He stripped as fast as me, despite having worn more clothing. “I know I said, lady’s choice, but I had something else in mind.”

Curiosity thoroughly piqued, I shrugged and watched my ‘I don’t give a shit reaction’ make his already rigid cock jump against his belly.

He seized my face in his hands. “You so fucking know what that does to me.”

His kissed me hard, his teeth and hands and face and tongue all pressed to mine. It wasn’t graceful, but damn it felt good. He released me with a little jerk, then wrapped his arms around me again, and this time, lifted me off my feet into the air. I curved my legs around his body, my pussy already wet as it met the bare ridges of his lower abs. Damn, what did I do to deserve this for the rest of my life? Perpetual karma. Naked karma. Beautiful karma.

It wasn’t gentle, the way he lowered us to the bed. It was more of a freefall with his elbow and bicep cradling our impact.

The world slowed around us, a bubble serrated us from the rest of the world. In here, he’d be Pierce, the man I loved despite my best effort to sabotage it. And out there, where politics and family names mattered, we’d reign.

He scanned my face and traced the outer edge of my jaw with this thumb. “What are you thinking?”

I caught his digit with my lips and sucked it in for a moment. “I’m thinking I need you inside me, right now.”

His eyes shuttered, and I felt that tiny flutter in the pulse of my clit. “I’ll give you everything you need and more, Baby Girl. But I want one thing from you first.”

He leaned in and captured my lips softly, once, twice, a third time, drawing me tighter into him by the waist a millimeter at a time with each kiss. My body started to ache, demanding the attention he promised and slowly dealt out.

“Please…” I broke away and murmured against him.

“Patience. Roll over.” His breath fanned my mouth in heat and damp that instantly made me think of those beautiful lips put to good use down lower. Then his words sank in, along with the command.

“Wh—“ He gently angled my hip toward him and cracked a hand across the softest fleshiest part of my ass, interrupting me.

The strike snapped through me. A rubberband crack filled the room, and I blinked up at him in surprised arousal. Before I could ask him to do it again, he repeated the motion, eyes wide watching my every twitch.

It hurt, but it was so much more. The bloom of pain gave way to a bone deep wave of pleasure I couldn’t label. Even as my flesh stung my pussy clenched tight, needing to be filled.

I still didn’t want to beg him, but I might just ask a few times in loud repetition. “Please, fuck me.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. A spike of fear shot through me. I’m shaking in his arms, my body out of control with longing. “No?”

“I’m not going to fuck you tonight. I’m going to slide inside your body, without a condom, and I’m going to make love to you.”

The addition of the word threw another layer over us. Blanketing us in a current of tension I could almost pluck.

He arched his hand over my ass. The graze stung as it passed over the sensitive hot spots. My thoughts flew out of focus when he trailed around the back of my thigh. Then he lifted it up over his own hip, so my calf rested against his ass.

I swallowed and waited, my heart beating louder in time with the arousal pulsing through me. He reached between us, and when the head of his cock slid along my seam, I shuddered. So very close to coming already. He could finish me like that. Nothing more than gentle, steady pressure with the blunt end of him.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, his voice deeper, grated on the edge of his own control.

I nodded frantically and tried to move my hips to maneuver him where I wanted. Where I needed. But he held me still, taking his time.

Only when I let out a whimper did he give in and slowly start to press inside me.

“If you force it, I’ll pull out and start over.”

I slid one arm under his neck, and the other hand I anchored behind his bicep, my fair skin an interesting contradiction to his black ink. He continued his achingly slow and steady assault, and I dug my nails into his skin. “If this is making love, I think I want to go back to mindless fucking. Right now, I’ll take you slamming me against a wall over this torture.”

That earned me a nip on the nose with his teeth. “You say the sweetest things.” But he obliged and slid a little faster until he’d fully entered me. We could stare into each other’s eyes in this position, our legs and arms entwined.

And then the blanket was back, layered in emotion and sexual tension. “Kat,” he said.

I shook my head, seeing where this was headed.

I was scared.

I was terrified.

I wanted it more than anything.

“Kat,” he repeated.

I waited, my body pulsing around him, my heart beating frantically in my chest. My fingers even felt like they had a heartbeat of their own.

“Pierce,” I answered.

He cupped my cheek and looked deep into my eyes. “I love you.”

The words fluttered between us. So big and so tiny and so…perfect.

I should end this now, run away, and get out before I hurt him. Before I hurt him so much, he can’t get back. But I couldn’t. Him saying the words made it so much more real than simply knowing how he felt.

I knew I was supposed to say it back. The words stuck tight in my throat, and no matter what my heart said, it felt like a lie.

I loved him. As much as Bianca. More than anything else. But I couldn’t say it. Pulling the truth out into the open invited corruption and abuse and a way for him to break me. The only way I could still be broken.

“You don’t have to say it,” he said, after a long drawn out moment.

And I saw in his eyes it was true. I didn’t have to say the words. It wasn’t something he needed to hear, because he already knew.

I reached out and drug his face to mine. Kissing him with every word I couldn’t say and every word he deserved to hear.

He arched into me the second our lips met, and I latched my teeth into his bottom lip.

Our lovemaking switched from soft to fucking in a flash of a second. He rolled over and used his knees to press up into me. Fast and furious and so good. I could only hold on to him as he drove into me.

Mindless was a middle ground between where you belong and where you should be. I’d found myself there in his arms between his bed and our history. Between our past and pain. Between the present and the future we might build together. Like a thunderclap, I caved to his demands. Not just the ones he made with his body, but the ones he etched into my heart.

It took seconds for my orgasm to surge through me. Another second for his to follow. We smacked together, my stubbornness against the steel of his pride. He held himself inside me as he shuddered hard, his legs quaked, fingers dug into my skin, enough to make me want more. And we both exhaled heavily on the other side of the storm.

When he slipped out of me, I wondered if I’d get pregnant from this. The idea felt too big in my head, so I let it go and settled in the curve of his arm. My heartbeat slowly returning to normal, my skin dotted with sweat.

“I mean it. I love you, Kat,” he said it again.

Spoken soft and gently after sex, the words weighted less, and I smiled at the thought of this man, this incredible man, loving someone like me. A tear slipped from the corner of my eye, but I dashed it away. Hoping he didn’t see.

A monster.

A shrew.

Neither of us bothered to get up and flip off the light. And when he let out a loud snore, I whispered over the sound of my pounding heart, “I love you too.”