Page 108 of On Thin Ice

I tried to speak—to tell him I was close, that I needed him to touch me—but all that came out was a broken whimper.

He bent low over me, pressing his chest to my back, and the heat of his skin, the weight of his body, made everything inside me go tight.

“I can’t,” he gasped into my ear. “I can’t. Fuck, Bell. I’m gonna?—”

“Do it,” I begged, voice ragged. “Come in me. Fill me up. Fucking claim me.”

He moaned—a desperate, wrecked sound—and pounded into me twice more before he froze, his cock buried deep as he poured into me with a groan torn straight from his chest.

I felt every hot pulse.

Every shattered breath.

And it undid me.

I came with my own broken sob, untouched, spilling across the blanket as his arms wrapped around my torso and held me like I was all he had left.

We stayed like that for a moment—tangled, trembling, spent—his mouth pressed to the sweat-damp skin of my shoulder, murmuring my name like a prayer.

Like a confession.

Like something he didn’t yet know how to say.

Then he collapsed on top of me, his full weight pressing me into the mattress in a way that should have felt suffocating but wasn’t. His hips gave small, shallow thrusts, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving me just yet, each tiny movement sending aftershocks through my oversensitive body.

I felt his fingers thread through my hair, gently working loose the elastic that had somehow managed to keep my bun intact through everything. He spread the strands across the pillow, combing through them with a tenderness that contrasted sharply with the desperation of moments before.

His lips found the back of my neck as he dropped soft, almost reverent kisses along my hairline, down to the curve where my neck met my shoulder. Words I couldn’t quite make out vibrated against my skin—too quiet and too broken to understand, but I felt their meaning in the gentle press of his mouth, in the way his arms tightened around me like he was afraid I might disappear if he let go.

Outside, a car door slammed. “Feliz Navidad, David!” a neighbor called out, their cheerful voice filtering through my haze of love and lust and reminding me that there was a whole world beyond this room, beyond the space where Ethan and I had momentarily fallen apart and found each other again.

At my back, he tensed at the sound, but didn’t pull away. Instead, he pressed another kiss to my shoulder, and I knew that whatever storm had driven him to this point had broken, leaving behind something fragile and new in its wake—something we’d have to navigate when morning came.

But for now, I let myself sink into the promise of his touch, knowing that whatever happened next, this part of us at least remained unbroken.

CHAPTER26

I blinked against the pale winter light bleeding in through the blinds, my limbs heavy with exhaustion.

The first thing I registered was the soreness. A deep ache low in my back, between my thighs, and across my hips. I groaned and shifted onto my side, feeling the protest of overstretched muscles and the dull throb of bruises that hadn’t even formed yet.

Last night came back to me in flashes.

Ethan’s teeth biting into my shoulder.

His fingers tunneling into me roughly.

His shaking hands gripping my hips.

The wet heat of his tears on my skin as he’d broken apart inside me.

The way he’d growled “mine,” and how I’d believed him.

I reached across the mattress, my palm sliding over empty, cold sheets.

Something heavy settled in my chest—disappointment, though I didn’t know why. After everything that had happened, the desperate way he’d claimed me afterward, of course he’d run. Of course he’d retreat.

That was what Ethan did when things got too real.

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