Not obedience. Aim.
He moved again. Slower for a heartbeat but only because I’d asked. Then, not slow at all.
“Hand,” Colt said.
I immediately gave it, and he planted my palm on the jamb. He pressed it there until the door took some of me.
“Stay,” he said, voice low enough I could feel it vibrate.
We stood in the foyer with my back against the closed door. I wondered if anyone outside could see through the glass. Colt’s thigh slotted mine and closed the last inch between us until there was no more space. Heat soaked through layers. His shape answered every doubt I had in exactly the wrong way.
The class ring had left a clean crescent along his cheekbone; purple climbed under it and shaded his eyes. My knuckles brushed near the mark and Colt didn’t flinch. All of his attention stayed on my face, heavy as a hand.
“Open,” Colt said.
Without hesitation, I did. His lips met mine and our mouths burned hot. His breath crowded me; the chain clinked and gave a small, pleased sound.
He turned my head with two fingers. Demand disguised as placement. His stubble scratched against my throat as a spark ran down my spine.
And kept going.
His palm slid down my chest.
Slowly, deliberately. Before it finally settled on the notch where breath turns personal.
“Better,” he said, against my mouth.
“Colt—”
“Yes.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
The foyer suddenly felt smaller. Wood pressed against my back as my breath fogged the glass in the door.
I felt exposed. Anyone could see, even my nosy neighbor.
Colt stepped in harder, and my body shifted so fast I hated it. He noticed; and he liked it. He made it worse as his hips set anangle my bones learned the instant he commanded. He dragged tension along my jaw and back to my mouth. Then down to my hip to keep me exactly where he wanted me.
“Say it,” he demanded. “Say you want it.”
My mind flashed back to the graveyard.
“Make me,” I said, aiming for a different energy this time.
And he complied.
Colt took the next sound straight from my mouth and gave me nothing to hide behind, no words with which to obscure myself.
His forearm was close enough to feel as his torso pinned by using no pin at all. His thigh drove a new inch of angle until the doorframe didn’t complain and neither did I.
“Knees,” he said. “Get down there and see how hard you’ve made me.”
I was there in a flash. Colt’s jeans, his boots. The scent of protection and danger that clung to him.
I worked his belt to the side. Next, button, zipper. Thick denim, Colt’s thighs.
