I lift her before she can protest, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and carry her to my bed.
She weighs nothing. She weighs everything. Four years of wanting compressed into the woman in my arms, and my hands are shaking with the effort of not taking what I have craved since the night my brother brought her home.
I lay her across the sheets and follow her down, settling my weight between her thighs. The contact makes her gasp, makes her hips roll up to meet mine, and the friction against my cock nearly undoes me.
My hands find her zipper, drawing it down slowly when I want to tear the fabric from her body. She lifts her hips, helping me slide the dress away. Then she is laid out beneath me in nothing but plain white cotton, and I have to close my eyes against the intensity.
I want to flip her onto her stomach and take her from behind. I want to wrap her hair around my fist and pull until her throat is exposed. I want to mark every inch of her skin so anyone who sees her knows she has been claimed.
"The word is compass," I manage instead, the last shred of conscience I possess forcing the offer through my teeth. "You say it, everything stops."
She nods once, and that is enough.
I kiss my way down her body, learning her responses. The spot below her ear that makes her gasp. The curve of her collarbone that makes her shiver.
When my mouth reaches her breast through the cotton, she arches into me with a moan that makes my cock throb.
I remove the bra with hands that want to shake and close my mouth over her nipple. She cries out, fingers diving into my hair, and I have to grip the sheets to stop myself from grinding against her like a desperate teenager.
Lower. I need to taste more of her.
When I reach the cotton between her legs, I look up at her face. Her eyes meet mine, and she nods.
I remove the last barrier and put my mouth on her.
The sound she makes is guttural and honest, and it takes every ounce of discipline not to lose myself. She is wet, swollen, ready for me, and I want to replace my tongue with my cock and bury myself so deep she forgets her own name.
Instead, I read her body with focus. The rhythm that makes her hips roll. The pressure that makes her thighs clench around my shoulders. The specific angle that makes her hands fist in the sheets.
My grip tightens on her hip, a fraction too hard. She gasps but does not tell me to stop. The pace accelerates before I deliberately rein it back. A growl escapes when she arches into my mouth, and the sound is more animal than human.
I am performing a version of myself that is softer than my nature, and the effort costs me physically. My jaw aches from holding back. My fists tremble from the strain of not taking everything I want.
But it is working. Her resistance is dissolving, replaced by genuine need.
She will come with my name in her mouth. Not my brother's. Mine.
I add a finger, then two, curling them inside her while my tongue maintains its relentless rhythm. Her inner walls clench around me, and I imagine how she will feel wrapped around my cock, how tight, how hot, how perfectly made for me.
"Nico." Her voice breaks on my name, her thighs trembling around my shoulders. "Fuck, please, I'm so close—"
"I know you are." I lift my head just enough to meet her eyes, letting her see how wrecked I am, my mouth glistening with her. "Now tell me what you need."
Without a single word, she reaches for me, pulling me up her body with desperate hands. Her fingers find my shirt buttons, fumbling, tearing when they will not cooperate fast enough. I help her, shrugging out of the fabric while she attacks my belt.
When her hand wraps around my cock, I have to close my eyes and breathe through the sensation. The reality of her touch is more devastating than any fantasy.
"Condom," I manage. "Nightstand."
She finds it, tears the packet with her teeth, and rolls it onto me with hands that tremble. The sight of her touching me, preparing me to enter her, nearly sends me over the edge before we have begun.
I settle between her thighs and press forward, watching her face as I sink into her inch by inch. Her mouth falls open. Her back arches. Her nails dig crescents into my shoulders as her body stretches to accommodate me.
"Fuck." The word escapes me, raw and honest. She is tight, so impossibly tight, and hot, and wet, and I have to hold completely still or this will end too soon.
She rolls her hips, impatient, demanding, and I lose the battle for control.
I thrust into her with a force that makes the headboard crack against the wall. She cries out, her legs wrapping around my waist to pull me deeper. I set a punishing rhythm, each stroke harder than the last, and she meets me thrust for thrust.
The sounds she makes are obscene and perfect, whimpers and moans that fuel the fire burning through my veins.
I watch her face, cataloguing every expression, building a map I will use to destroy her more thoroughly next time. The way her brow furrows when I hit a particular angle. The way her lips part when I grind against her at the apex of each thrust. The way her eyes flutter closed when the pleasure becomes too much to witness.
But it is not enough. I need her to shatter. I need her to come apart with my name on her lips.
I shift my angle and slide my hand between our bodies, finding the swollen bundle of nerves above where we are joined. My fingers circle in time with my thrusts, and her response is immediate, devastating, her inner walls clenching around my cock as she climbs toward the edge.
"Nico." My name tears from her throat. "God, Nico, I am going to—"
"Do it." I drive into her harder, my fingers relentless. "Give it to me, Arianna. Let me feel you squeeze every inch of me."
She breaks with a scream that will echo in my memory until I die. Her body convulses around me, pulling me deeper, and the sensation triggers my own release.
She could have stopped me at any point, and she chose not to.
She chose me.