Page 67 of Crave

He looked up, met my gaze for a second. “So that’s that.”

“Unless he crosses me again.” The threat came out easy, but it tasted hollow the second it left my tongue. I meant it, and I didn’t.

But before I could say another word, he lunged at me, catching me off guard, smoothing his mouth onto mine. Tentative at first, as if testing what I’d do. Then it turned into a kiss that was all heat and ache and a desperation filling my hollow chest. And he hooked his hands around the back of my neck, dragging me closer, as if afraid I’d push him away.

I should have.

But I kissed him back. Hard. Because why the fuck not?

I didn’t often kiss. The paid ones didn’t expect it, and I never offered. Even the nights stretching till dawn, the ones I could barely remember after, kissing was a formality. A signal that business had started. Nothing more.

But this—

This was nothing like that.

It was like it had used to be.

Tristan’s lips were soft, trembling with an honesty he couldn’t fake. He tasted like rain and nerves, and when his mouth opened with mine, I forgot what keeping distance even meant. I slipped my hands on his waist, sliding around his soaked shirt to the heat of his back, and felt sweat-covered skin as I hauled him away from the car door and into me. He pressed closer, and I deepened the kiss, tongue meeting his in a rhythm burning straight through reason. If he hadn’t pulled back, I could’ve stayed there forever. Lost in a danger I hadn’t learnt how to fight. But he did, resting his forehead on mine, breaths shaking between us, eyes closed as if trying to hold himself together.

Then he said the words that struck me like a match to petrol, “I want you to fuck me.”

Don’t get me wrong, I knew what this was: punishment, rebellion, some way to scrub out that bastard who’d hurt him. Anyone else and I’d have let it stay that way. A transaction. A fix. Nothing leaving a mark. But with him, it wasn’t that clean. I wanted him to feel it. To know what it meant when I touched him. So doing it like this, now, after all that felt wrong.

Didn’t matter. I was gonna do it anyway.

Especially when he turned in my arms, grinding his arse back into me, making me hard and willing, and toying with his belt. He then tilted his head so I could catch the shadow of a smirk, offering himself up like a sweet he knew I couldn’t resist.

“Jesus, pretty boy,” I breathed. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

He looked back at me through the wet strands of his hair, and the streetlight hit his skin in slanted gold, rain tracing over his neck like it couldn’t help itself. Whatever self-control I’d been clinging to snapped. So I yanked open the driver’s door, rummaged for the stash of condoms and lube I kept for occasions such as this, then made quick work of wrapping and slicking myself up.

Then with one hand on his shoulder, I bent him over the car, shoved his jeans and briefs low, the city’s hiss our only witness to our depravity, and he splayed his hands on the roof of the Audi for me to line up and push in. I took it slow at first, the heat of him swallowing the cold right out of the night. And he was tight, perfect, taking me like he meant to, as if this was where we’d always been heading. The sound tearing out of me as I eased myself inside him wasn’t normal. It was feral.

Then he moved, pushing back, straightening and wrapping an arm around my neck from behind, tilting his face towards me. And as I buried myself deep, my breath caught in my throat, waiting for him to feel me. Know me. And Christ, he was poison. So fucking pretty and so fucking mine in that moment, I knew I was in danger of never crawling out of this. Especially when he met my gaze, and I saw a flicker of surprise. Shock. Raw hunger with nowhere left to hide.

Fuck, I wanted it. Wanted it all. So I kissed him. Claiming his mouth as my own. And I eased my cock out of him to the tip, then thrust back in, finding a rhythm making the world fall apart around us. And he clung to me, body liquid heat, melting into every drive of my hips.

My mouth found his again, catching his bottom lip between my teeth as I slid my hand around his waist, under his soaked shirt, desperate for skin. I traced the line of him. Toned stomach, smooth chest, up to the hard peaks of his nipples, before slipping higher, under his collar, grazing the pulse in his throat with my fingers. And when I slid those fingers between his lips, he took them without hesitation, eyes half-shut, a low moan swallowing against my skin as he sucked me in, slow and filthy.

Christ, it was hot. The night. The rain. The sound of us.

Breath crashing, bodies colliding, every thrust a promise I had no intention of keeping. And I kissed the side of his neck, tasting rain and sweat, desperate to tear off every scrap of clothing between us just to feel him. All of him. Knowing I’d never get to, my groan broke rough against his ear as I snapped my hips forward, the sharp slap of skin on skin lost in the flow, and I pulled my finger from his mouth, caught one of his hands, laced our fingers tight, slamming it to the car roof.

“Gonna paint my car for me, pretty boy?” I wrapped my other around his cock. Hot, slick, pulsing in my grip.

“Fuck…” he breathed, pleasure in one word.

He pushed back into me, meeting every thrust, torn between the drag of my hand and the stretch of me inside him. Then he came. Hard and brutal. White streaks splattering across black metal, the sight searing into me as I kept him there, milking him through it. His whole body trembled around me, and I lost it, driving deep, forehead pressed to his shoulder blades as I spilt into him, breath tearing out in broken growls sounding nothing like control.

We stayed like that for a while as the world crept back in with the hiss of tyres through puddles, the gutter-drip patter of rain, the distant laugh of someone who’d had too much and nowhere to go. The city was still ugly. But right then, pressed together in the dark, it felt almost sacred. Ours.

Then a passing truck roared by, shaking the ground beneath us, and the spell broke. I eased out of him, breath unsteady, and slipped off the condom, flinging it into the shadows. We pulled ourselves together, fingers clumsy, silence thick, once again securing our jeans and belts. And when he turned to face me, I caught the sight of his flushed face, hair a wet mess, lips swollen and split open again. Too beautiful. Too real.

I kissed him.

And he kissed me back.

For a second, there was only that. His fingers sliding through my fade, mine searching under his top for skin, both of us pretending the night could stay suspended. Then my burner started buzzing in my pocket. Sharp, insistent, reality clawing its way in. I didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to move. So I kept kissing him, fishing blindly for the phone until I tapped it on.