Page 85 of Controlled Burn
“Look at me.” The command cracked clean.
Her gaze lifted, glossed, and furious and helpless. “I hate you.”
A slow, unkind smile cut through his beard. “Liar.”
He worked her with ruthless precision—thumb circling, his body anchoring hers, his other hand steady at her throat to make each breath a choice. Her hips rolled against him without permission, chasing whatever he gave and hating herself for it. His mouth hovered, denying the kiss she reached for out of instinct, power in the restraint, control in every inch of withheld contact.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he said. “Tell me you want soft. Gentle. Tell me you don’t want me to ruin you.”
Her breath broke. “I want—”
He pushed her further, relentless. The room narrowed to heat and his voice and the hard plane of the wall holding her up. She trembled against him, the tension snapping through her like a wire pulled too tight.
“Say it,” he demanded.
It ripped out of her, raw. “I want to be wrecked.”
He took her mouth like he was collecting a debt—hungry, possessive—swallowing the sound she made as her body broke apart against his, loud and violent and beyond pride. He held her up as she shattered, his grip steady at her throat, not choking, just controlling the rise and fall as the aftershocks tore through her.
When it eased, when her head thudded against the wall and her breath skittered into silence, his hand gentled by a fraction. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth like maybe he’d say he was sorry.
He wasn’t.
He pulled away like he’d touched a brand.
“Look at you,” he said, voice roughened, guilt sparking and dying out fast. “My dirty little rookie. All yours. All mine.”
Tears tracked clean lines through the heat on her cheeks. Shame and want twisted tight in her chest until she couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Get out,” she whispered.
He stepped back. Breath ragged. Victory and self-loathing warred in the set of his mouth. He paused in the doorway, looked back at the ruin he’d made and the pride she still refused to drop.
“I’d do it again,” he said quietly. “And so would you.”
The door shut.
Talia slid to the floor, legs shaking, hands cupped over her mouth to trap the sound. Everything in her pulsed and ached, and still it wasn’t enough. She could feel him on her—his hands, his breath, the press of his body—feel the bruises waking under her skin, shame melting back into hunger.
She hated him. She wanted him.
He was the only man who could burn her down and make her beg for the match.
She pressed her palm hard between her thighs, as if she could slow the pounding there. She didn’t want comfort. She didn’t want soft.
She wanted to be owned. Taken. Shattered.
And God help her—she knew she’d ask him for it again.
Chapter 31
Smoke Memory
The station was quiet in that deceptive early-morning way. Pale light filtered through grimy windows, casting long, ghost-thin shadows across the polished bay floor. Everyone else was either still asleep or out back, smoking and pretending things were normal. Pretending nothing in their tight-knit, toxic little world had cracked open and spilled out.
Talia moved like a phantom through the halls. Silent. Careful. Her body ached—not with the soreness of drills or duty, but with the ghost of last night. Of Dean.
Her thighs still burned from where he’d pinned her. Her shoulder throbbed where it had slammed into the wall. And her throat… her throat still carried the echo of his hand. She could feel the weight of it, like a bruise blooming beneath her skin. Still hear his voice, dark and slurred and cruel:
