Page 66 of Make Them Bleed
“You,” I say, reckless with honesty. “No metaphors. Just—” I catch his bottom lip between mine and bite, gentle, and the breath he releases is not safe for my equilibrium. “—this.”
His mouth curves. “Demand granted.”
He’s different like this—still Arrow, still careful, but there’s a charge to him, a quiet command that pulls my spine straight and my knees weak. He drags his mouth along my jaw to the place beneath my ear that makes my breath stutter. He finds it like he mapped me in a past life and left a pin.
“Look at me,” he murmurs, and I do, because the way he asks makes obedience feel like a secret I get to share. His gaze locks with mine as he kisses me again, deeper now, and it’s a small, devastating thing, to be seen and wanted at the exact same time.
“Hands,” he says, voice a notch rougher. “Here.” He guides them up, palms flat on his chest. Heat. Muscle. His heart a frantic metronome under cotton. “Good.”
“You’re bossy,” I breathe, but the tease shakes.
“I prefer dominant,” he counters, and moves his hand to the back of my thigh, coaxing my knee to hitch his hip. I go weightless for a second, laughing into his mouth as my boots squeak against the door. He steadies me like it’s nothing, like I weigh less than the thought he’s been carrying around for years.
“Wall,” I whisper. “You promised me a wall.”
“This works,” he says, pressing my body to the door. He kisses me like he’s checking off a list he wrote in the middle of the night: mouth, cheek, throat, back to mouth—careful, insistent, unhurried and somehow starving. When I tug his hair, just enough to test the edge, he answers with a low sound that ricochets straight through my restraint.
“Arrow,” I gasp, and he smiles against my skin.
“Use your words,” he says, maddening and hot. “You want pace? You want slow? Fast? Tell me.”
“Both,” I say, shameless. “Slow enough to make me crazy, then fast enough to undo me.”
His laugh is a huff against my collarbone. “Copy.”
We find a rhythm. He kisses like a musician who has finally learned the song he wrote before he knew what writing was for. He’s meticulous—small adjustments, tiny tests—and demanding in a way that makes me feel safe being greedy. His fingers bracket my jaw; his thumb skates the corner of my mouth, and the eye contact as I chase his finger with my lips is so intimate I nearly combust.
The coffee carrier gives up and slides off the table with a soft clatter. We both freeze, then dissolve into breathless laughter, foreheads pressed. He rests there a second, eyes closed, and I trace the line of his cheekbone with my fingertip, memorizing the tiny constellation of freckles there like I’m going to need them to navigate later.
“I’m still mad at you,” I whisper, because truth is a thing I promised to keep between us.
“I know,” he says, equally soft, equally true.
“And I still want you,” I add, the words buzzing in the inch of air between us.
“I know that too,” he says, and the flicker of a smile is all heat and fondness and caution. “I won’t mistake one for permission to ignore the other.”
“Good,” I say, and kiss him for that alone.
He breaks away only to frame my face in his hands. “Breathe with me,” he murmurs. “Five.” He counts with me, inhales and exhales matching, our chests rising and falling in sync until the edges blur and my pulse stops sprinting. “Better?”
“Yes,” I say, partly because the breathing helps and partly because the way he takes charge without taking over makes my bones feel like a home I want to live in.
“Now,” he says, a hint of command returning. “Bedroom or couch?”
“Door,” I say, defiant and laughing. “Finish what you started.”
He kisses the corner of my mouth, pleased. “Yes, ma’am.”
There’s a careful impatience to him now—one hand sliding under the hem of my hoodie to the small of my back, palm hot against skin, drawing a gasp I don’t bother to hide. The other hand anchors my jaw gently, tilting, adjusting, finding the angle that unspools a sound from me so wanton I slap my free hand over my own mouth.
He pulls it away, slow and certain. “No hiding,” he says, voice a low rasp. “I want to hear you.”
“Demanding,” I accuse, already giving him what he asked for.
“Only because you follow orders selectively,” he says, and then shows me exactly how much trouble a mouth and a door can be.
He slides my yoga pants off, and flings them across the room as he sets me down. He sinks to his knees, like he’s ready to worship at this altar.
