Page 17 of The Silent Hour

"I like it." The words came out strangled, barely audible. "I like it, I like it, don't stop—"

His grip tightened—a fraction, barely anything—and my vision went white at the edges. He fucked me like he'd been holding back for hours—days, maybe. His hips drove forward with a violence that had nothing to do with gentleness and everything to do with need, and I matched him stroke for stroke, my heels digging into the small of his back.

"Harder," I heard myself say, and the word came out ragged, barely human.

He complied. His pace shifted—faster, rougher, each thrust punching the air from my lungs with a force that bordered on pain. The hand on my throat held steady, controlled pressure that made my pulse hammer against his palm like it was trying to escape. My nails found his shoulder blades and dug in, and the sound he made—a low, pleasured groan that vibrated through his chest and into mine—told me he liked it.

This was nothing like I'd expected.

Nothing like the careful man who'd bought me a book and ordered takeout in Mandarin and poured sparkling water without being asked. This was something else entirely—something raw and animal and necessary.

He felt incredible. Every inch of him filled me completely, stretching me in ways that made my eyes water, and the angle—god, the angle—hit the spot inside me that made stars bloom behind my eyelids with every thrust. The condom was barely a barrier; I could feel the heat of him through the latex.

His hand left my throat and found my hip again, flipping me with a single powerful motion that left me gasping. The mattress shifted beneath my knees as he pulled me back against him, one arm banded across my chest, his other hand fisting in my hair and pulling just hard enough to arch my spine.

"Like this?" he rasped against my ear, and the vibration of his voice against the shell of it sent shivers cascading down my neck.

"Yes." The word was barely breath. "Yes, yes, don't stop."

He didn't. Each thrust landing deeper than the last, and the wet, obscene sound of our bodies meeting filled the room alongside my moans and his ragged breathing. His teeth found the tendon in my neck and bit down, and I came apart, my body clenching around him in waves that seemed to go on forever.

His rhythm faltered—just once, a stutter in the relentless pace—and then he was driving into me with a desperation that told me everything. Three strokes. Four. His arm tightened across my chest, his hand still fisted in my hair, and on the fifth stroke he went rigid against me, every muscle in his body locking tight as a sound tore from his throat—raw, broken, nothing like the controlled man who'd ordered takeout hours ago.

I felt him come inside me, his hips jerked against mine in sharp, involuntary spasms that pressed me harder into the mattress. His forehead dropped between my shoulder blades, his breath scalding against my sweat-damp skin.

For a long moment, neither of us moved. The room was quiet except for the sound of our breathing—his ragged and uneven, mine still catching on the aftershocks of my own orgasm. His weight pressed me into the mattress, solid and warm and real, and I let myself feel the full weight of it—the heaviness, the warmth, the way his heartbeat hammered against my back like it was trying to sync with mine.

Then, slowly, he softened inside me. His grip on my hair loosened, fingers uncurling with a gentleness that felt incongruous after the violence of what had just happened.

His arm slid from across my chest, his hand coming to rest flat against my sternum, and I could feel the slight tremor in his fingers—the only remaining evidence of what he'd just lost control of.

He pulled out carefully, his breath catching once—a small, involuntary sound—and then he was gone, the absence of him leaving me suddenly cold. I heard the soft sound of the condom being disposed of, the faint creak of the mattress as he shifted, and then his hands were on my hips, turning me over with tenderness.

His dark hair stuck to his forehead, damp with sweat, and his eyes were still blown wide, the pupils swallowing nearly all the brown. There was a flush high on his cheekbones that I'd never seen there before, and his lips were swollen from kissing, from biting, from whatever this had been between us.

He looked down at me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, and then he lowered himself beside me, one arm sliding beneath my neck, the other draping across my waist. He pulled me against him without speaking, and I went—my body curling into his on instinct, my forehead finding the hollow of his throat, my hand settling over his heart.

His pulse was still fast beneath my palm.

This was normally the part where I’d detach, murmur something about an early meeting, and start gathering my clothes from the floor. My usual post-sex script involved a strategic retreat, a quick bathroom trip that turned into getting dressed, a fist bump of a goodbye at the door.

The unspoken rules of my hoe-phase were clear: no lingering, no overnight bags, certainly no falling asleep with your limbs tangled together while his heartbeat slowed against your back. But my body stayed put, heavy and still, my cheek pressed to the sweat-damp skin of his chest.

CHAPTER FIVE

PRESENT

THE ROOM WAS A SEALED vault, the heavy velvet curtains pulled flush against the window frames, blocking out even the memory of moonlight. The only light was the faint, polluted amber of the city, sieved through the slats of the wooden blinds.

The air conditioner droned a constant, low note beneath the metronomic tick of the mahogany anniversary clock on the hall table—a sound that usually measured our quiet evenings. Down the hall, our daughters slept under butterfly quilts, each stitch placed by my mother’s hands.

And here I was—knees pressed into the mattress on either side of his head, my weight and pussy settled fully against his mouth.

A fine tremor ran through my thighs where they met the rough stubble of his cheeks. My fingers were locked on the carved oak of the headboard, knuckles bone-white and straining.

I held my bottom lip prisoner between my teeth, biting down on the gasp that threatened to escape. I’d woken to the shift of his body beside mine, the mattress dipping and rolling me into the furnace heat of him—a gravitational pull I never learned to resist.

His hands slid up my inner thighs, a slow, deliberate ascent that left a trail of goosebumps in their wake. I was already awake, my pulse a frantic drum against my ribs, waiting for the familiar weight of his mouth. We stayed like that for a breathless moment, his fingers working at the hem of my silk nightgown with practiced patience, gathering the delicate fabric inch by torturous inch.