Page 67 of The Beast

I arch into his touch, a moan slipping past my lips before I can stop it. It’s been so long since I felt his touch. Tender and desperate all at the same time, yet mixed with a wildness that is almost primal. As if I’m sustenance. As if he’ll die if he can’t have me.

Sparks race to my core as his mouth closes over my breast, hot and wet and devastating. He traces his tongue around one nipple, teasing, before drawing it into his mouth and sucking hard enough to make me gasp as liquid heat races through my veins.

“Gabriel.” His name is a plea, a prayer, a curse.

He switches to the other breast, lavishing it with the same devoted attention, and I thread my fingers through his hair—longer now than he used to wear it—and hold him against me. Every pull of his mouth sends sparks cascading through my nervous system. Every brush of his teeth against a nipple makes me squirm and writhe.

I need more. Need everything. Need to feel him inside me, filling the emptiness that’s lived in my chest for years.

I reach between us, fumbling with his belt, and Gabriel groans against my skin, the vibration traveling through my body like an electric current.

“Bella, wait⁠—”

“No waiting.” I get the belt undone, work open the button of his pants with fingers that won’t stop shaking. “We’ve waited five years. I’m done waiting.”

“He pulls back enough to meet my eyes, and what I see there makes my heart stutter. Vulnerability. Fear. Hope so fragile it looks like it might shatter at the slightest touch.

“Are you sure?” His voice is a whisper. “After everything I’ve done?”

I press my palm against his chest, feel his heart racing against my hand. “All I’m sure of is that if you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Amusement fires in his eyes. And while the vulnerability doesn’t disappear, something else rises alongside it—something dark and hungry and utterly male. Then, without another word, he flips us so I’m beneath him, pressed into the cushions with his body covering mine.

The rest of our clothes disappear in a frenzy of pulling and tugging and desperate hands. And then there’s nothing between us—no fabric, no lies, no five years of misunderstanding. Just skin against skin, heat against heat, breath mingling with breath.

He settles between my thighs, and I can feel his cock, hard and ready, pressing against me, and the anticipation is almost unbearable. I’m wet. Aching. Empty.

And I so desperately want to be filled.

“Bella.” His voice is wrecked, stripped down to nothing but need. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you want this. Even if you hate me. Even if you never forgive me. I need to know this is what you want.”

I look up at him. This man I loved. This man I lost. Who completely broke me.

And who I want right now more than anything in the world.

“I already told you,” I whisper. “Please, Gabe. I want you inside me.”

He pushes inside me with one long, relentless stroke, and I cry out—from the stretch, the fullness, the overwhelming sensation of having him inside me again after so long. I moan, arching up. Wanting more. Wanting all of him. “More.” I dig my nails into his back, feel the raised ridges of scars beneath my fingers. “Please, Gabriel. Please fuck me harder.”

He does.

It’s not gentle. It’s not tender. It’s five years of grief and rage and desperate longing channeled into something primal, something elemental. He drives into me with a ferocity that borders on violence, and I meet him thrust for thrust, our bodies crashing together like storms colliding.

The pleasure builds like a wave, like a wildfire, like something too big to contain. Every stroke hits that spot deep inside me that makes stars explode behind my eyes. Every roll of his hips grinds against my clit, sending shockwaves rippling through my body.

“Christ, Bella.” His voice is ragged, desperate.

“I know.” I pull him closer, wrap my legs around his hips, so he sinks even deeper. “I know. Me, too.”

He buries his face in my neck, and I feel his breath, hot and ragged, his body tense and tight, like he’s holding back the explosion to come.

“Bella.” My name on his lips, over and over, like an incantation. Like a spell to ward off all the darkness that’s lived between us. “Bella, Bella, Bella.”

I don’t know who’s destroying whom anymore. Maybe we’re destroying each other. All I know is that I want to rip him apart. To shatter him. To break him down completely. Not as punishment, but as repentance. So that somehow we can move forward past the pain.