Adrian’s hands are scorching every inch of my skin like he’s trying to brand me as his all over again. His fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise as he slams me back onto that goddamn leather couch.
The same couch where we’d been sipping whiskey like we hadn’t spent years fucking each other raw before everything went to shit.
“This is wrong,” I gasp, even as my nails rake down his chest hard enough to leave crimson trails behind.
His shirt’s already gone, ripped off in one desperate yank, exposing that sinful torso I used to worship with my lips every night. His muscles are harder now, but his skin still burns under my touch like lightning.
“I don’t care,” Adrian snarls against my throat before his teeth sink into the spot that always made me drip.
“Fuck,” he rasps before his lips close around one stiff nipple, sucking hard enough to make my back arch off the couch. I’m panting like a cat in heat, my fingers tangled in his dark hair, pulling, as he bites down again just to hear me whimper.
Then he’s on his knees between my thighs like a sinner at the altar, his breath hot against my soaked panties. His fingers hook into the lace, rip, and I’m bare before him in an instant.
“Look at you,” Adrian growls, eyes black with hunger as he strokes my clit in slow, torturous circles. “So fucking wet for me already.”
My hips jerk off the couch with a scream as his tongue fucks into me deep and rough before swirling around that throbbing bud like he’s trying to ruin me.
“Adrian…I can’t…”
My vision whites out as he curls his fingers just right there and suddenly I’m coming so hard I see stars, my scream muffled by his mouth crashing back onto mine.
Before I can recover, Adrian’s flipping me onto my hands and knees on that leather couch, one hand fisting in my hair.
“Tell me you want it,” he snarls into my ear, his voice raw with need.
“Fuck you.”
He slams into me with one brutal thrust and I scream as he fills me to the hilt in one stroke.
“Still so tight,” Adrian grits out before pulling back and pounding into me again. The leather squeaks beneath us as he fucks me like he’s trying to break me apart—each thrust so deep I feel him in my throat.
His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise as he drives into me over and over, his cock dragging against that sweet spot inside until I’m sobbing his name like a prayer.
“Adrian…Please…”
“Mine,” he growls against my spine before biting down on my shoulder. The pain sends another shockwave of pleasure straight to my clit as he pistons into me faster, harder.
I’m coming again before I can stop it, but he doesn’t slow down. Just wraps an arm around my throat and pulls me back against him as he chases his own release with ragged breaths against my ear.
But even then, even as we both tremble in the wreckage, he doesn’t let go. Just holds me tighter like he’s afraid I’ll disappear again if he does.
We lie there afterward on the couch, still intertwined, breathing hard, the room spinning around us. The leather is sticky with sweat. The broken lamp casts strange shadows.
My heart is still racing, refusing to slow despite the exhaustion weighing down my limbs.
Adrian's chest rises and falls against my back, his breathing gradually evening out, but his arms haven't loosened their hold on me. If anything, they've tightened, like he's afraid I'll dissolve if he lets go.
The anger has burned away, leaving something else—not peace, exactly, but a kind of exhausted truce. The rage that drove us to this is gone, spent in the violence of our passion, leaving behind a strange hollow feeling.
I can feel every place Adrian touched me, kissed me, claimed me. My skin feels hypersensitive, aware of every point where our bodies connect.
His leg thrown over mine, his arm across my ribcage, his breath disturbing the hair at my neck. It's too much and not enough all at once.
Henri ended our relationship hours ago. He made his choice, walked away, declared us finished. There's no point in feeling guilty about something that no longer exists.
No point in wondering what this means, whether it's weakness or truth or just the inevitable pull between two people who created life together. There's no point thinking about it anymore.
Henri is gone, and Adrian is here, his weight pressing me into the cushions, his breath warm against my neck, his hands still touching me like he's afraid I'll vanish if he lets go.
Adrian’s fingers trace lazy patterns on my hip, spelling out words I don't want to decode. Each touch sends little aftershocks through me, reminders of how thoroughly he's just claimed me.
Or did I claim him? It was hard to tell where one of us ended and the other began.
"The twins," I say suddenly, reality crashing back. "We left them alone upstairs."
"They're in the nursery," Adrian says, his hand still tracing patterns on my bare hip. "The monitors are on. They're fine. I would have heard them."
We should move. Should get dressed, check on our children, pretend this didn't happen. But neither of us moves, both knowing that once we leave this couch, we'll have to face what we've done, what it means, where we go from here.
Adrian's breathing has synced with mine, our chests rising and falling together like we're one organism. His thumb draws circles on my hip bone, a gesture so familiar it makes my chest ache.
He used to do this when we'd watch TV, an absent-minded person claiming that I never thought I'd miss.
"This doesn't change anything," I say, but even I don't believe it.
"It changes everything," Adrian counters, pulling me closer.
I don't argue because maybe he's right. Maybe it does change everything. Or maybe it just confirms what I've been running from all along—that despite everything he's done, everything we've broken, some part of me has always belonged to him.
The chemistry between us isn't just strong—it's overwhelming, consuming, impossible to deny. It's stronger now than when we were young and in love, tempered by pain and longing into something more intense than I thought possible.
"We can't do this again," I whisper.
"We will," Adrian says with absolute certainty. "We both know we will."
The worst part is, he's right. After tonight, after feeling this again, I don't know how to go back to pretending we're just co-parents, just exes sharing custody. The chemistry is too strong, the pull too intense.
Henri is gone. That chapter is closed. And this one, whatever this is with Adrian, has just been violently, passionately, impossibly reopened.