Violet’s POV
The apartment door barely closes before his mouth finds mine.
I kiss him back with all the wanting I've been swallowing for weeks—desperate and graceless and nothing like the controlled woman I perform for everyone else. My fingers tangle in his hair and pull, and the groan that escapes him vibrates against my lips like permission to take whatever I need.
Zachary's hands are everywhere. In my hair, tugging until my head tips back and his mouth can find the pulse hammering in my throat. Sliding under my shirt, palms hot against skin that hasn't been touched like this in so long I'd almost forgotten what hunger felt like. Pulling my hips against his until I feel exactly how much he's been holding back, the hard length of him pressing against my stomach through too many layers of fabric.
"I need—" I start, but I don't know how to finish the sentence because I need everything, all of it, all of him.
"I know." His voice comes out wrecked, barely recognizable. "I know, I've got you."
I tear at his buttons while he walks me backward, and we don't make it past the hallway. My shoulders hit the wall and I don't care, don't care about anything except getting his shirt open so I can press my palms against his chest and feel his heart slamming against his ribs as hard as mine.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, and I wrap my legs around his waist, gasping when he grinds against me through denim and cotton and every other barrier I suddenly resent with violent intensity. The friction is almost enough and nowhere near enough simultaneously, and I rock against him chasing something I can't quite reach.
"Please," I hear myself say, the word escaping without permission. "Zachary, please—"
Clothes come off in pieces. My shirt abandoned somewhere on the floor behind us. His belt clattering against hardwood in a sound I don't track because his mouth has found my breast through the lace of my bra and my brain stops processing anything except sensation. My jeans require both his hands and his teeth, the button giving way to fingers that have lost all patience, the zipper dragging down while his mouth traces lower.
He drops to his knees in the hallway and pulls the denim down my thighs, and I have to brace my hands against the wall to stay upright when his breath ghosts across the thin cotton still covering me. His fingers hook into the waistband and drag those down too, and then there's nothing between his mouth and my skin and I stop thinking entirely.
His tongue finds me with devastating precision, and I cry out loud enough that some distant part of my brain worries about neighbors. He doesn't seem to care. Just pins my hips to the wall and licks into me like he's been starving for exactly this, like the taste of me is the only thing he's wanted for months and now that he has it he refuses to rush.
"I can't—" My voice breaks on a moan. "I need you inside me, I need—"
He rises with fluid grace and lifts me again, and I feel him freeing himself from his pants, feel the blunt pressure of him notching against my entrance. Our eyes meet, and something passes between us that transcends the physical—an acknowledgment that this changes everything, that there's no going back from here.
When he finally pushes inside me, my head falls back against the wall and the sound I make is nothing I'd let anyone else hear. Raw and unguarded and completely beyond my control.
He doesn't start slow. Takes me with the urgent rhythm of someone who's been holding back for far too long, and I meet every thrust with demands of my own. Harder. Deeper. More. The words spill out between gasps, and he gives me everything I ask for, his fingers digging into my thighs hard enough to bruise.
"Look at me," he rasps, and I force my eyes open to find his face inches from mine. The intensity in his expression makes something clench low in my belly. "I want to see you when you come."
The orgasm hits like a wave I didn't see building, crashing through me with a force that tears his name from my throat. He watches me fall apart with eyes that memorize every tremor, every sound, every shudder that wracks my body while I clench around him.
We move to the bedroom eventually, though I couldn't say how we get there. One moment I'm pinned against his hallway wall trying to remember how to breathe, and the next he's spreading me beneath him on sheets I'll smell on my skin for days.
His mouth traces paths that make me shake—down my sternum, across my ribs, along the sensitive crease where thigh meets hip. He takes his time now, counterpoint to the urgency from before, and the contrast makes everything sharper. I feel worshipped and devoured simultaneously, and the combination is destroying me in ways I never want to recover from.
His fingers find places that make me beg, stroking inside me while his thumb circles the spot that's still swollen and oversensitive from before. I writhe against his hand, chasing the pressure, whimpering when he pulls back just enough to make me desperate.
"Please," I gasp again, and the word has become prayer. "Please, Zachary, I need—"
"Tell me." His voice is rough velvet against my thigh. "Tell me what you need."
"You. Inside me. Now."
He rises over me, and when he slides home I feel complete in a way that terrifies me. His forehead drops to mine, and for a moment we just breathe together, adjusting to the fullness of him, the intimacy of being joined with nothing between us.
Then he starts to move, and coherent thought becomes impossible.
When I come apart the second time, I'm saying his name like a confession—like it's the only word left in my vocabulary, the only truth I have access to. My nails rake down his back hard enough to leave marks he'll feel tomorrow, and I don't care. I want him to feel me. Want evidence of this carved into his skin.
He follows me over with his face buried in my neck, and the sound he makes—broken and reverent and completely undone—shatters something fundamental in my chest. Something I've been protecting for so long I forgot it was even there.
We lie tangled in his sheets while our breathing slows, and I trace patterns on his chest without thinking about what they mean.
I should feel scared. Should feel the familiar panic of having let someone too close, given someone too much.
Instead, I just feel like I've finally stopped running and discovered the place I was running toward was here all along.