Page 39 of The Final Cut

“No hiding.”

“Someone will hear.”

“Let them.”

Her laugh turns into a ragged moan when I press her leg open further for me and spear my tongue in her pussy again.

This part I can do. I can give her a place to put the shaking. I can take the edge of her fear and turn it into heat, into pressure, into the brutal mercy of a body that can still feel pleasure after surviving horror. I can hold her open and make her stay here, in this shower, under my hands, with me.

She comes with my name dragged out of her throat, hips bucking against my mouth, fingers slipping on wet tile.

I stand before she has finished trembling.

She grabs at me, greedy now, and I thank every vicious god I’ve never believed in because I need her greedy. I need her demanding. I need proof she still wants things for herself.

I turn her toward the wall.

Slow enough that she can stop me if that’s what she wants. Thankfully she doesn’t.

Her palms hit the tile. Her head bows. I run one hand down her spine, over the curve of her hip, and bend her over the shower bench. Water runs along her back in shining lines. My body goes painfully hard at the sight of her like this, trusting me with her back even though the whole world has taught her better.

I grip her hip and line up behind her, then push into her in a single hard stroke because god help me but I can’t wait for finesse. Not today.

The sound she makes nearly puts me on my knees.

She is hot and tight around me, and for a second the whole world becomes water, skin, breath, her hands flat against tile while mine hold her steady. I give her what she asked for. Hard. Deep. Controlled only by the thin, savage thread of not hurting her in any way she does not choose.

I pull out, and she pushes back against me before I have time to complete the next stroke. Hard. Fast. Urgent. Fucking me.

“More,” she says. “Harder. Faster. Fuck me, goddamnit.”

My forehead drops between her shoulder blades for half a breath.

Then I give her more.

The bench hits the wall with each thrust. Water sprays against glass. Her voice breaks and keens, then finds itself again. I slide one hand beneath her, fingers circling and pinching until her legs shake and her back arches. The fear in me does not disappear. It burns with everything else until I cannot tell one fire from another.

She comes again with my arm locked around her waist.

I follow hard, teeth gritted, body shaking with the force of it. I hold myself over her afterward, one hand on the wall, the other splayed across her stomach, feeling her breathe.

For a while, that is all I do. Feel her breathe.

Her hand covers mine.

“I’m here,” she says. “I’m good. We’re good.”

My eyes close, and I squeeze her gently. I hate that she knows that’s what I need. I love that she gives it to me anyway.

The shower runs until the water starts to cool. I clean her carefully, despite the way she rolls her eyes when I become too gentle. She cleans a smear of mud from my forearm with her thumb, stubbornly focused as if that small task matters.

Maybe it does.

When we step out, I wrap her in one of the thick towels from the shelf. She lets me. Her hair drips down her back. Her face looks softer now, exhaustion finally pressing through the rage.

I carry her into the bedroom, her legs wrapped around my waist, because I want to and because she does not argue enough.

“Homer is on the bed,” she says.