Bane swallowed, but didn’t say anything.

I shook my head, dropping my gaze down to my toes. Then I turned around and charged for the door, ready to flee his boathouse, even naked. I was done asking, and begging, and bargaining. I was done seducing, and luring, and hoping. If he didn’t want me after this admission, we were done.

I didn’t even want him to be my friend. Like I could really be friends with Bane Goddamn Protsenko. Every word to leave his mouth was foreplay.

“Jesse,” he growled. I ignored him, yanking my duffel bag to get my clothes. Before I could unzip it and pluck them out, Bane slammed me against the wall of his kitchen. The thud of my back crashing against it pounded between my ears. I was ready to slap his stupidly gorgeous face when I felt his cock springing free from his wetsuit, hot and velvety against my opening. He wrapped my legs around his waist and crashed his fist to the wall above my head.

“Fucking dammit, Jesse!”

“Leave me alone, then,” I yelled in his face. “Just let me leave.”

“Never,” he snarled, biting my neck. Hard. “And ever.” He dragged his nose down to my shoulder, sucking a sensitive spot on the curve of my collarbone. “And fucking ever.” He thrust into me, nailing me to the wall and filling me to the hilt. A moan escaped between my lips. He was big, and long…and bare.

“You want to be fucked?” he spat out the words, his face so intense I shivered under his touch. “Just remember, Snowflake—you fucking begged for it.”

He pounded into me, each stroke harder and deeper and more punishing. My body felt like a dormant nest of fireflies lighting up together in batches. I felt their lights flicking, their wings zapping over every inch of my flesh. I felt every inch of him inside me, the titanium hoop of his piercing scraping my walls, and it still wasn’t enough.

I was desperate. I was feral.

I clawed at his face, tears streaming down my cheeks and onto my neck, and he licked them, laughing as he fucked me harder, not giving much damn about who or what I was, just like he’d said he would. Taking me the way I wanted to be taken. Not gently, nor apologetically. Like an equal. Like a captured soldier, in a war where pleasantries and fake condolences weren’t necessary.

“Harder,” he taunted. “I’m denting your ass from the inside. Least you can do is leave a pretty little mark on me.” Roman laughed, smashing his lips to mine with a kiss that made it clear that he owned my body—every inch of it—and all the things inside it. Every thought and heartbeat. Every painful breath. His.

I raked my fingernails down his back, returning the violence when his tongue went to war with mine. Heat pooled in my lower stomach, his cock stretching me out and swelling inside me, twitching, circling, pounding.

“That’s my fighter.” He chuckled, adjusting our position by hoisting me upward by my ass with his rough fingers with one hand while twisting my nipple with the other. I squeaked, watching as he lowered his beautiful face to suck the pain away, so hard yet so delicate, and even though there was nothing I wanted more than to run my hand through his strings of golden mane, I held myself back.

This time, the trembling started from my fingertips, working its way up and heating my body like a blanket. I was coming, but this time it felt different. Like an epiphany. I reached for his ass to squeeze as I shuddered between him and the wall, but he swatted my hands away, pushing me off and splaying his fingers over my neck, pinning me to the wall.

“I’m not your goddamn girlfriend, Jesse. You don’t get to squeeze my ass unless it’s to hold back a choke from my cock pounding into your mouth. We clear about that?”

I didn’t know what it was about his dirty brazen words that completely unraveled the old Jesse, but she was back, and she was clasping his cock in her sex in a vise, like a fist, laughing into his face with wild abandon.

“Jesus,” came from somewhere in the back of my throat as I came around his shaft, shaking violently. He only pumped harder, and my back was burning from the friction against the wall.

“Coming,” he said, just one word, and I nodded, thinking he was going to finish inside me, but he pulled out slowly instead, his swift movement radiating self-control, and angled his tip so that he came all over my clit. White spurts of cum grazed the delicate flesh of my sex, and he swirled the cum with his cock, rubbing it into my already sensitive yet neglected clit. The second orgasm burst out of me like fireworks. I sifted through his hair and brought him closer for a greedy kiss, biting his lower lip and tugging way too hard.