Page 57 of The Next Lie

Something in my chest breaks clean down the center. I thrust into her in one hard motion.

She cries out against my neck, nails digging into my shoulders, body arching beneath me. I stop once I am fully inside her, forehead pressed to hers, breath caught somewhere between my lungs and hers.

Control is a living thing.

Mine is bleeding out.

“Fuck, Reva,” I groan. “You’re perfect.”

Then I move.

Not gently. Not with the softness I might have used if the day had not already put its hands on her. I drive into her with a rhythm built from fear and fury and the savage relief of having her alive beneath me. Every thrust says what I cannot make clean enough for language.

Stay.

Breathe.

Do not leave this house where I cannot reach you.

Do not make me imagine a world without you in it.

Her legs wrap tighter around my waist, pulling me deeper. She is loud now. Broken open and not trying to hide it. Tears slide from the corners of her eyes, but she does not turn away. She does not disappear.

She is here. With me.

Her eyes begin to slide closed.

“Look at me,” I command, my hand fisting in her hair enough to bring her focus back to mine.

Her eyes open. That nearly finishes me.

I see every version of her there. The child in the closet. The woman who came to Noir with a dead man’s name on her tongue. The reckless, furious girl who walked into a grave today because not knowing hurt worse than remembering.

“I see you, Reva,” I say, my voice rough enough to tear. “All of you. And I’m never letting go. Do you hear me? Never.”

She breaks around me.

My name leaves her mouth like a wound and a prayer, and I follow a second later, losing the last of my control with a low, guttural sound that does not feel human. I hold her through it, through the shuddering aftermath, through the way her body clings to mine as if the world outside this room has finally gone quiet.

For a long time, neither of us moves.

I stay over her, still inside her, my face buried in the crook of her neck. Her fingers are tangled in my hair. Her breath warms my shoulder. I feel the small tremors moving through her and hate every cause that is not me.

I am the dominant. The tyrant. The man who believes control is the only thing standing between life and ruin.

But lying there with Reva beneath me, alive and warm and finally still, I understand a truth I do not like.

I cannot control everything. I can only hold what the world keeps trying to take.

Eventually, I shift enough to look at her.

The rage has burned down to something quieter and more dangerous. Possession, yes. Fear, if I am honest enough to name it. Love, if I am drunk enough to let the word live.

I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb.

“You’re staying in this house, Reva,” I say. “No more trips to the past. No more secrets with Ever. Do you understand?”

Her eyes are heavy, exhaustion dragging at her. “I understand.”