Mason’s hands are rough on my leggings. Thick fingers search until he finds what he’s looking for, and then he pushes me back harder against the gate and pinches my clit in retaliation.
Sensation—pain wrapped around pleasure wrapped around frustration—speeds down my nerves. I try to clamp my legs shut and trap his hand in place but he’s too strong. I squeeze him with more force, and his cock jumps in my hand. I shove at him with my free hand, trying to get some space to breathe, but he puts his palm on the side of my neck. Pressure there forces my head back and up so he can bite me. Emotion presses out at my ribs. It makes the air useless.
He pinches me again and it’s not fair that it makes me moan. It’s not fair that he laughs. I have him in my fist. I’m not letting him get away with this. Never in my life did I think I would be pushed up against the wall with my hand caught between thousand-dollar slacks and hard flesh. Flesh that responds to pressure and hard pulls. Mason’s going to use all his power to hurt me. Physical power. Financial power. He’s going to use it to hurt me, and hurt my father, and I’m not going down without a fight. Not this time. I bent over his chair and took his belt for him. Maybe that’s what made me different.
Or maybe it’s just fear.
Anyone who saw us now would know we were battling. My head keeps knocking against the gate. I’m landing kicks, putting my knee into it, kissing him back. Every time I push him away, I want him closer. I can’t loosen my grip on him without finding him again, squeezing harder. Summer air curves down the street and brushes past us. We could get caught here, fighting like this, but I don’t care.
Let them find us.
It goes back and forth and back and forth, and I’m lost in it. He pinches hard, with abandon, and I very nearly collapse against him. But I don’t, I don’t. I stay on my feet. He rubs a relentless circle over my clit. I grit my teeth. It’s not right, wanting to come from this. It’s not right to do it. I shouldn’t do it, but if he keeps this up, I won’t have a choice.
Mason makes a sound that’s part grunt, part question. It’s like he’s reached into my body, past my heart, and pulled me toward him by the spine. By some part of me I can’t deny, as much as I want to. He sweeps his tongue over my lip. It skims where he’s bitten, where he’s bruised. The world tilts. Or my balance does. He licks those small wounds, those tiny hurts that he made.
He licks them again.
All at once, I know what he’s asking.
Are you going to keep fighting me forever? Are you ever going to let me win?
And I know the answer.
Yes.
It’s work to unclench my fists, but I do it. I part my lips for him. I put my palms on the sides of his neck and feel his pulse thundering underneath the skin.
It’s even more work to stop fighting.
Surrender, it turns out, is more difficult than violence. I have to make myself soft against screeching metal. I have to give in. It doesn’t matter how ashamed I am for wanting it.
I feel the change in Mason’s breath the second I let go of the fight. It runs along his entire body. Everything about him shifts. He’s not forcing me back into the wall, trapping me—he’s kissing me into it. Like he’s hungry. Like he’s starving. He trails his lips to the line of my jaw and the side of my neck, and I run my fingers through his hair. His palms slide down to my ribs, my hips, under my shirt. To the waistband of my leggings.
He pushes them down, along with my panties. Quick movements. He pushes them down until he can put his shoe on the fabric and shove them the rest of the way to the ground. My clothes become bands around my ankles.
Mason kisses me one more time, his tongue deep, and then he pulls back, eyes glittering and green. He looks at my lips. He looks at the place he’s marked most recently, and then he turns me around. Puts both hands up on the metal gate. He keeps his left hand over mine and reaches between my legs, hissing a curse at what he finds there.
Wet.
I’m so wet for him.
Sharp, electric anger softens into aching heat. Mason presses close, running his fingertips over the welts he made. He’s careful about it, but nothing in his touch says I’m sorry. He’s not sorry. He makes a sound that’s half-satisfied, half-seeking. He’s proud of the marks. He likes them. But he could do more. I can feel that decision, too. It doesn’t make me cower against the gate and hope he’ll forget about me. It makes me push back into him. Another challenge. Do it. Because you love this. Because, in spite of myself, I need it from him.
Mason nudges my thighs another inch apart, his fingers hot on my skin.
He lines himself up.
His hand goes over my mouth at the same time he thrusts in.
My cry is muffled by his palm. Good thing, because someone would find us if they heard. It sounds like he’s hurting me. He is hurting me. His cock is huge, thick, relentless, and I’m sensitive from when he fucked me earlier. I have a wild panic that he won’t fit, even though he has before. The stretching is so much. I can feel him rearranging me all over again, feel him demanding space in my body, and more than that, I can feel myself giving it to him. I’m sore but I’m so wet. It hurts but I want it so much.
He sinks himself home. Mason’s body is against mine. No space between us. He’s pinning me to the door with the full length of him. Impaling me up against the wall. He pulses inside me, working his hips so he can get another fraction of an inch deeper. Deeper still. Impatience radiates through him like the tremors before an earthquake. I hold my thighs apart as much as I can with my leggings around my ankles. I’d be embarrassed by the sounds I’m making into his hand if I had it in me.
I don’t.
My mind is full of night air and burning buildings, tearing cloth and hard man. Pain and heat. Surrender and fear. Sex won’t save the building from the flames. It might not save my family from ruin. But it’s all I have.
And all I want.
Mason presses his lips to the side of my neck. The stretching pain begins to dissipate, replaced with a heady warmth that’s almost like pleasure, and I roll my hips back into it. Mason’s grunt is all sensation against my skin. “Do that again, you sweet little thing. Do it again. Felt so good.”
I do it again.
He rewards me with his hand between me and the metal gate. His fingers are gentle but insistent on my clit. He wasn’t gentle before, and I’m so raw that I tense against him, working myself back onto his cock. All this bruising pain does something to me. I can feel every inch of him. I can feel where I’m wrapped around him. I can’t help responding to his touch. I can’t help the way it makes my hips dance.
Mason’s forcing them out of me, all these movements, and that’s what he uses to find the rhythm and fuck me.
I’m completely swept away. There’s nowhere to go with his body caging me against the gate. I have no choice but to take him. No choice but to fuck him back. One hand tightens over my mouth, and the other pushes me back harder against him as he works me. A terrible pleasure builds. It’s wrong, to get fucked outside on the street. It’s wrong to like it. It’s wrong to be so powerless and so wet for it.
The breeze changes, and over the scent of Mason’s skin, I smell the fire. It’s on the air, everywhere. I feel the breath he takes. His lungs rise against my back and hitch.