We lay awake for hours, bodies tangled in the narrow geometry of my mattress, sweat drying on our skin. My father’s breathing was loud in my ear, ragged but steady, the sound of a man alive and, for once, unafraid. We didn’t speak for a long time. I traced lazy spirals on his chest, drawing invisible lines through the sparse hair, letting my fingernails catch on the knots of old scar tissue. He’d told me once he got that one from a kitchen accident, but now I wondered how many of his injuries were self-inflicted, little punishments for imagined sins. He curled his arm around my waist and rested his chin on the crown of my head, as if he could fuse us together through sheer persistence.

Eventually, the silence got heavy, not with shame but with a slow, leaking sort of sadness. I could feel it bleeding out of him, the way the pressure behind his ribs crept into the space between us. My own thoughts, sharp and mean before, softened in the hush of his breathing. The shape of his body was familiar, but everything else about him was new. I could not stop wanting to know more.

“Can I ask you something?” My voice was soft, but the words cut him anyway. His whole body tensed, then relaxed, a silent rehearsal for confession.

“Anything,” he said. The word barely made it past his lips. He closed his eyes, like he already knew where this was going.

I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him, not the man who raised me but the man who had just said yes to my every need, my every boundary. “Were you ever happy with her?” I asked. “My mother, I mean. Was it ever real for you?”

A hard swallow. He didn’t open his eyes. “It was real at first,” he said, and his voice came out smaller than I’d expected, a child’s voice inside a man’s ruined chest. “She was the first person who ever… wanted me, I guess. At least, I thought she did. I needed to believe she did.” He wet his lips, eyes still locked shut. “But she never liked sex. Not with me. Not with anyone, I think. She told me that after you were born, she only did it because it was expected. She stopped wanting kids the moment you arrived.” The words spilled out in a rush, as if they’d been waiting for a crack in the dam. “I wanted more. I wanted a big family, noisy and chaotic, but she just… shut down. After that, every touch was a negotiation. Every hug, every…” He broke off and pressed his palm to his forehead, rubbing at the crease that always got deeper when he was close to breaking.

I watched him for a minute, unsure what to do with the admission. Part of me wanted to snap back with something cruel about my mother’s capacity for love. But the rest of me, the part that had always seen through her, just nodded. “She never touched me, either,” I said. “Not once after I turned eight. Even when I broke my arm, she just hovered near the door, never got close.” I took his hand, placed it on my bare hip, and squeezed. “You don’t have to talk about her, if you don’t want.”

He shook his head, jaw trembling. “No, I need to.” He finally opened his eyes and looked at me, tears already gathering at the corners. “You need to know the truth, Jessie. I tried for years to make her love me. I’d buy her things, clean the house, cook dinner, whatever I could think of. It never worked. She didn’t want a partner, she wanted a trophy. Or a punching bag. Sometimes both.” His voice broke then, cracked open by the memory. “When you were little, she’d get so angry when you cuddled with me on the couch. She used to say you’d turn out just like me if I didn’t toughen you up.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “She was right, wasn’t she?”

The laugh twisted into a sob. My father, who I’d watched survive my mother’s hate for two decades, was unraveling in my arms, strings of muscle and nerve gone slack under the weight of it all. His shoulders curled in on themselves, trying to shield his heart from whatever else might come. He looked so small then, so ruined by the simple act of loving someone who never loved him back.

I pulled the blanket higher and rolled closer, pressing my chest against his ribs. I wanted to protect him, but I also wanted him to know he didn’t have to be brave anymore. Not with me. “Why didn’t you leave her?” I asked, not unkindly. “Why stay when it hurt so much?”

He wiped at his face, but the tears just kept coming. “Because she told me I was nothing. Over and over. That nobody else would want me. And I believed her. She said if I left, she’d destroy you, take you away, make sure you hated me forever.” The pain in his voice was sharp enough to cut. “I didn’t know how to be a father. I was so scared of ruining you.”

“You didn’t ruin me,” I said. “You saved me. Every time she hurt you, I saw it. I learned what love should be by watching how you still tried to show up for her. For me.”

He laughed again, wet and shaky. “You say that, but I never knew what I was doing. I just wanted you to be safe. Even if it meant I had to stay.”

We lay there, the old wounds bleeding together. For once, I didn’t feel the need to control the moment. I just let it happen.

He turned, face pressed to my neck, and held on like he was drowning. “You love me more than she ever did, Jesse,” he whispered. “You love me so much it hurts.” The tears, silent now, tracked down his face and soaked my skin. “I never dreamed anyone would love me this way.”

I stroked the back of his head, fingers gentle, careful not to spook the animal part of him that always expected pain. “I do,” I said. “And I always will.”

His body shook with the force of another sob, but this time he didn’t pull away. He let himself cry, shoulders shaking, breath coming in gasps. All the years of holding it in, poured out in a single, shattering release.

For the first time since I’d claimed him, my father let me see him exactly as he was: not broken, not weak, but wide open and alive, every raw edge bared to the only person in the world who wouldn’t turn away. I kissed the wetness from his cheeks and held him through the night, my anger at my mother dissolved into something close to pity. She could have had this. He would have given her everything he was. Had tried to. But she couldn’t accept it.

After a while, his breathing slowed. His arms loosened around my waist. In the half-light, I saw the lines of his face relax, the old pain draining away, replaced by a soft, exhausted peace. Silence settled over us like a blanket. We didn’t speak again that night. We didn’t have to. Everything that mattered was already said, written on our bodies in sweat and salt and the impossible, forbidden love that no one could ever take away.

We woke in the same position we’d fallen asleep in, fused along every possible line, my father’s arms a cage that I never wanted to escape. He was still holding me when the sun burned its way through the blinds and split the room into alternating bars of white and shadow. For once, the first thing I noticed wasn’t the thickness of his cock pressed up against my thigh, or the sharp need that always seemed to spring to life whenever I touched him. Instead, I just breathed him in. His scent was everywhere: salt and skin and the faint, bitter trace of sweat in the hollow of his throat.

I watched him wake, eyelids twitching as he fought his way to the surface. The first thing he did was reach for me, hand sliding up my spine, fingers splaying at the back of my neck like he thought I might disappear if he let go. I didn’t say anything. I just let him hold me, our faces close enough that I could count the flecks of gold in his eyes. There was no shame, no embarrassment about what we’d shared in the darkness. Only the lazy, post-cry calm of people who’d survived something and come out stronger.

He brushed my hair behind my ear and smiled, small and unsteady. “How do you feel?” he asked, like the answer might change everything.

I considered. “Hungry,” I said, and he laughed, a real one this time, a sound that lit the morning brighter than any sunbeam.

“I can make eggs,” he offered, and I shook my head.

“Not that kind of hungry.”

He sobered, the look in his eyes darkening to something deeper, more dangerous. “Jesse, we—” His words trailed off, as if he’d realized too late there was nothing left to warn me about.

I rolled onto my back and pulled him over me, guiding his hips with a sureness I’d never let myself use before. My body was still slick from the night before, but the ache between my legs had renewed itself, sharp and greedy. “I want you,” I said, clear and bright. “But not like last night.” I took him in my hand, felt the tremor in his whole body as my grip closed around the length of him, and pulled it up against my bare stomach. There was something greedy in the way I stared at him. Like if I could just hold him tight enough, all the broken places in both of us would press together and make something whole. My thumb drew a circle at the tip, and for a second I thought he’d lose it just from that, the way his eyes closed and his jaw went slack. I let him throb in my fingers, slow and steady, a live wire I could shape to my will. He watched me, half in awe, half in horror, like he was afraid the power he’d given me would turn mean at any second.

“I want you to make love to me.” The words cracked the air between us like a match in a dark room, and I think we both flinched at how easy I made it sound. The word “love” had never been safe in this house, certainly not in this room, and now here I was, demanding it like it was my birthright.

For a long, terrible heartbeat, he just stared, every muscle in his face working overtime to decode the invitation. Then his eyes fluttered shut and he let out a breath that was almost a sob, and for the first time in my life I saw exactly who my father was: the kid who was never chosen, never really cherished, paralyzed by the chance that someone might actually want him. He brought his hand up to my cheek, thumb trembling as it traced the ridge of my cheekbone, and then he kissed me. Not like before. Not the way desperate men kiss to silence a memory but with the slow, searching hunger of someone who’s convinced this is a dream and doesn’t want to wake up.

My arms went around his neck, locking him in place, and I felt him start to shake. His hands moved down my sides, palming my ribs, my hips, worshipful and uncertain, like he still thought I’d disappear. I spread my legs for him, too hungry to be shy, and he settled between them, his cock resting against the inside of my thigh. He hesitated, forehead pressed to mine, and I realized he was waiting for me to say it was okay. That he could have this. That he could have me. His daughter. His lover.

So I reached down, guided him to where I wanted him, and whispered, “Don’t think. Just feel.” Then I pulled him in, hard enough that the first push was a single, perfect shock of heat all the way through my belly.

He didn’t move at first. He just held himself there, breathing ragged, letting the reality of it settle in both of us. I tilted my hips to meet him, greedy for more, and the movement coaxed a moan out of his chest. A high, keening sound that made me think of animals in pain or prayer. I loved it. Loved that he couldn’t hide from me, that I could see every shattered hope written on his face as he started to move. His first thrust was slow, almost apologetic, but I answered it by wrapping my legs around him and dragging him in deeper.

“Don’t be gentle,” I said, teeth gritted against the fullness of him. “I don’t want gentle. I want you.”

He looked at me like I’d just handed him the answer to every question he’d ever asked. His hands knotted in my hair, pulling my head back so my throat was bared to him, and he started to fuck me with an intensity that bordered on desperate. Every motion was deliberate, every snap of his hips a kind of confession. He made no attempt to hide the sounds he made, each gasp and groan a thread pulling us closer together.

The world outside the room narrowed to a single point: the two of us, sweat and skin and the animal need that had kept us alive through years of quiet starvation. The mattress creaked beneath us, the headboard banged against the wall, but I didn’t care if the whole neighborhood heard. I wanted everyone to know that he was mine now, and I was his, in all the ways that had always mattered but never been allowed to show.

His eyes stayed locked on mine for as long as he could manage, but when the pleasure got too sharp, he buried his face in my neck and started to cry. Not loud, not ugly, just quiet streams of tears that soaked my skin as he thrust harder, like he thought he could drive all the sadness out of himself and into me. I held him tighter, nails digging into his back, and the pain seemed to ground him. He bit down on my shoulder, not enough to break the skin, just enough to make the world stop spinning for a second.

I felt the heat building inside me, slow and steady, a spiral that kept tightening but never quite snapped. He must have felt it too, because he started to whisper in my ear, voice hoarse from crying. “I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Over and over, like he thought the words might undo all the years he’d spent being nothing to everyone else.

I didn’t want apologies. I wanted him to keep going, to keep fucking me until the rest of the world fell away and there was nothing left but us. “Don’t stop,” I said, and he didn’t. He picked up the pace, rough now, and I arched up to meet him, our bodies slamming together with enough force to rattle the bed frame. I’d never been more alive, more present in my own skin. Every nerve ending felt like it was on fire, every inch of me tuned to the rhythm of him inside me. “Love me, Daddy,” I panted. “Love me.”

He reached between us, thumb finding my clit, and the edge I’d been skirting for so long finally gave way. I came hard, head thrown back, legs locked around his waist, my whole body clenching down on him like I could draw him inside my bones. The sound that came out of me was nothing like a woman, more like a wounded animal, raw and wild and completely unguarded. He felt it, the way I squeezed around him, and lost whatever was left of his control. His hips jerked erratically, and then I felt the heat of him spilling out inside me, a flood that left me gasping, empty and full at the same time.

Daddy stayed inside me for a long moment, arms wrapped around my shoulders, his body shivering with the aftermath. I could feel his tears on my skin, mingling with the sweat and spit and everything else we’d traded. I didn’t move, didn’t want to break the spell. For the first time, I was sure he wouldn’t either.

When he finally pulled out, I was sore and leaking, but I didn’t care. I pulled him back down on top of me, refusing to let him go, and he curled into my side like a child, breath hitching as he tried to get himself under control. I stroked his hair, fingers gentle, and waited for him to speak.

He didn’t, not right away. He just lay there, cheek pressed to my chest, listening to the frantic drumbeat of my heart. After a while the shaking stopped, replaced by a soft, exhausted heaviness. He looked up at me, eyes swollen and red, and tried to smile. “I don’t deserve you,” he said, voice so hoarse it was almost gone.

I laughed, a real one, and kissed the top of his head. “Nobody deserves anybody,” I told him. “That’s not how it works.”

He squeezed my waist, his hand spanning the width of my hip. “She always said I was too needy. That I’d suck the life out of anyone stupid enough to love me.”

“She was wrong,” I said. “You never asked for anything. You just waited. I’m not waiting anymore.”

I thought he might cry again, but instead he cupped my face in both hands and kissed me, slow and deep, like he was memorizing every detail. We lay tangled like that for a long time, the mess of our bodies and our lives leaking out onto the sheets, and nothing felt more right than the idea of staying like this forever.

Eventually, he rolled onto his back and pulled me with him, so I was sprawled across his chest. I could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady, a counterpoint to my own. He stroked my back in lazy circles, fingertips tracing the curve of my spine.

“I don’t know what happens next,” he said, and I could tell it terrified him to admit it.

“We don’t have to know,” I answered. “We just have to keep moving forward.”

He nodded, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips. “You’re stronger than I am.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I want you anyway.”

He laughed, a small, incredulous sound. “I was so scared you’d hate me forever. That you’d see what I really am and run.”

“I did see,” I told him, and kissed the corner of his mouth. “And I’m still here.”

He pulled me in again, arms wrapping around my shoulders, and I let myself melt into him. For the first time since last night, the air in the room felt light, like we could breathe without choking on regret or fear. The sun shifted through the window, creeping higher, painting the wall with gold. I traced the light on his skin, every freckle and scar,

“You’re mine,” I said, and he nodded, eyes red but clear.

“Forever,” he promised. “No matter what.”

I believed him. For the first time in my life, I believed every word. It was scary, but he was worth it.

My father wasn’t old, but he wasn’t a young man, either. His body needed time before it was ready to love me again. I found I liked it that way. When he wasn’t trying to poke his dick into me, he took care of everything else I needed.

We ate in bed, naked and happy, crumbs scattering across the sheets. I didn’t care. The apartment was a disaster, my life even more so, but for the moment, everything was exactly as it should be. I watched him, the way he buttered my toast before his own, the way he smiled when he thought I wasn’t looking. My father, my lover, my everything.

I thought about the future. About what it would mean to keep loving him in a world that would never understand. I didn’t care. I’d already burned down every bridge. All that mattered was the man sitting beside me, the man who had finally, truly learned how to love. But the world was still there, waiting just outside my door.

While Dad was washing the dishes, I lay in bed with my eyes closed. Fingers stroking between my legs as I pictured a life with this man. We would be happy. Completely in love. Insatiable.

“God, you’re beautiful.” I opened my eyes to find my father standing in the doorway. I showed him how wet my fingers were. Wiggled my eyebrows. Watched his cock rise to the occasion. “Jesse, may I please make love to you again?”

“You don’t get to come again,” I warned. “I’m not ready to give you a baby yet.”

His breath caught and I realized what I said. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to take it back. Having my father’s baby would be wonderful. That baby would be loved in ways I never had. By both parents.

“Jesse,” he gasped, and I loved the way he said my name, as if it were both an apology and a plea. “Please, baby. I need to be with you. That’s all.”

My legs opened wide in invitation, and I welcomed him back into my arms and into my body. Squeezed around my father’s cock as he rested his weight on me. Draped my arms over his shoulders and gazed into his eyes.

“How’s this?” I asked, running the soles of my feet against his legs.

“This is perfect,” he breathed. Daddy propped up on both forearms to look at me. Concern wrinkled his brow. “Jesse…”

“Shhh.” I put my hand on his chest, feeling the frantic stutter of his heart. “Just feel it. Don’t talk.” Both hands stroked his chest. “Just love me.” My eyes flicked down before meeting his again. “Just love me, Daddy.”

When he started moving, I didn’t stop him. Didn’t want to stop him. Let my mouth hang open at the incredible feeling of his cock slithering against the walls of my pussy. Listened to the little groans and gasps of pleasure. Measured the building need as he moved harder and faster.

“Slow,” I whispered. “Gentle.” My hands held his cheeks as I kissed him. “Love me.”

Dad obeyed instinctively. A lazy smile crossed my face. The control was exquisite. Better than any orgasm I’d ever had.

I watched his face as he made love to me. Gave voice to the idea niggling in the back of my mind. “Do you want me to have your baby?” I whispered.

He shuddered, his entire body going rigid. For a moment, he was utterly silent, breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his mouth. Then, softly: “Oh, God, Jesse. Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Then say it,” I ordered. “Tell me you want to come in your daughter. Tell me you want to breed me.”

My father moaned, the sound broken and wild, and I could see tears shining at the corners of his eyes. “I want to,” he said, voice hoarse. “I want to so bad, baby. I want to give you everything. Please.”

“Louder.” I shoved my hips up at his cock, letting him feel every inch, every hot, wet pulse of my cunt as it milked him. “I want to hear it.”

He lost the last of his dignity, grabbing my hips so hard I knew there would be bruises tomorrow. “Let me come in you,” he begged. “Please, Jesse. Please let me fill you. I want you to be pregnant with my baby. I need to come inside you so fucking bad.”

I laughed, mean and sweet, and kept him right at the edge, squeezing him tight every time he tried to let go. “You’re not ready yet,” I said. “You have to really want it. You have to earn it, Daddy.”

He sobbed, not even pretending to be strong anymore. “I can’t,” he gasped. “I can’t hold it back, baby. Please, Jesse, just let me—” His hips jerked, desperate, but I clamped down, holding him in place, giving him the strength he didn’t have.

I slowed, grinding down hard, rolling my clit against the root of his cock until I felt the familiar heat building low in my belly. I let it ride, let it climb, knowing that every second I spent torturing him only made the final release better. My body coiled tighter. Hungrier.

“Multiple orgasms are supposed to help a woman get pregnant,” I told my father. “Want to watch me come, Daddy?”

It wasn’t really a question. And the answer didn’t matter. I wasn’t the one that had to control myself. I gave myself to the pleasure of my father’s cock and writhed under him, making him whimper with need. When I came, it was a shockwave, my whole body seizing up, every muscle tightening around him as I howled his name into the hollow of his throat.

He thought I would let him finish then. I could see it in the way his face softened, the way his arms went slack with relief. But I didn’t. I smiled up at him, waiting for him to realize. Or to beg.

“Christ, Jesse, I thought…”

“That we were making a baby right now?” I smiled at the thought. “I want your baby, Daddy. I do. But not yet. I want to enjoy the man I’ve waited a lifetime to have this way.”

He nodded, a wild, desperate motion, and clung to me even tighter. Need radiated from him as his hungry mouth sucked at my throat. Fingers digging into my back and ass and thighs.

We stayed like that for a long time, bodies pressed together, the air heavy with the scent of sex and tears and something sweeter, a hope so fragile it hurt to even name it. I felt him soften against my thigh, the tension draining away by slow degrees. Eventually, his breathing evened out, and he looked at me, eyes red but clear.

“I love you,” he said, and there was no shame left. Only the raw, unguarded need of a man who had surrendered everything.

Chapter 22

I woke up before the sun had done anything more than stretch its fingers under the shade. My first thought was that I’d died and been reincarnated as the world’s luckiest housecat: I had warmth, a safe bed, and a man’s arm wrapped around my bare waist so tight it was as if he’d fused me to his chest in his sleep. I was weightless, sated, suspended in a state of post-orgasmic grace. For a full minute I didn’t move at all, just listened to the way my father’s breath whistled against the top of my head, the gentle click in his sinuses at the end of each exhale. I ran a thumb along his wrist, feeling the life pulse underneath. I could have lain there forever.

But my body had other ideas, and after a while the ache between my legs returned as a gnawing need, an itch that had only grown hungrier with every night we spent together. I stretched out, careful not to dislodge him, and let my toes tangle with his on the rumpled sheets. The entire apartment was a mess of aftermath: empty glasses on the nightstand, the scent of sex clinging to the walls, my underwear abandoned somewhere between the bed and the kitchen. I inhaled deeply, letting the smell of sweat and love and history fill my lungs.

When I twisted around to face him, Dad didn’t wake. His face was slack and boyish, hair sticking up at odd angles, stubble grazing my forehead where he’d fallen asleep mid-kiss. He looked younger, almost innocent, and for a second I had to remind myself that everything we’d done was real. He had wanted it. I had wanted it more. He’d given himself to me fully the night before, and I had made him mine in return. I loved him, not just as the man who’d kept me alive all these years, but as the only person who could ever understand this animal part of me.

The urge to wake him grew until it was unbearable, and I gave in with a slow, predatory roll of my hips. I maneuvered myself so I was straddling his thigh, my wetness leaving a slick trail on the dark hair there. His cock twitched against his belly, half-hard in sleep, and the sight of it made my mouth water. I took him in my hand, gentle but firm, and guided the tip to the place that throbbed and ached for him. My pulse stuttered as I pressed the head of his cock against my pussy, just enough to feel the heat, to let my body remember how it felt to be split open by the man beneath me.

I paused there, just for the fun of it, and watched as his breathing changed. His brow furrowed, the kind of micro-expression you’d miss unless you spent every waking minute obsessing over a man’s face. His hand, which had fallen slack on the mattress, curled instinctively around my thigh, and a low groan rattled out of his chest. I pressed down harder, letting my pussy engulf the head of Daddy’s cock, and gasped at the rush of sensation. Curled my toes in pure glee.

Dad woke with a gasp, blue eyes wild, pupils blown wide. “Jesse—?” he mumbled, the word stretched out by sleep.

I put a finger to his lips. “Don’t talk yet. Just feel.”

I sank onto him, taking him inside inch by inch, careful to draw out every second. He was so hard it almost hurt, and the fullness was a shock of heat all the way through my belly. I ground my hips in a slow, lazy circle, watching his face for every reaction. He shuddered, arms wrapping around my waist, but I batted his hands away. I wanted to control this. I wanted to make him beg.

“Look at me,” I commanded, and he did, eyes locked on mine with a kind of desperate reverence I’d never seen before. “Keep your hands behind your head.” He hesitated, then obeyed, interlacing his fingers and tensing his arms so that his biceps bulged under the strain.

I started to ride him then, not fast, but with a rhythm that was all about control. I set the pace, rolling my pelvis forward and back, watching the way his cock glistened every time I lifted off, the way his jaw clenched when I squeezed down around him. The pleasure built slow, a tide that threatened to drown us both. I arched my back, letting my hair fall in a curtain around my face, and smiled down at him, daring him to speak.

“Is this what you want?” I taunted. “To wake up with your daughter riding you? To have her use your cock like it’s the only thing in the world that matters?”

His voice shook. “Yes,” he whispered. “God, yes.”

I leaned forward, hands planted on either side of his head, and bent down to bite his lower lip. “You’re not allowed to come,” I told him. “Not until I say so.” Then I clenched down, hard, milking him for every last ounce of self-control.

Dad bucked up, desperate for more, but I denied him, slowing my movements to a near stop. I could feel his cock throbbing inside me, the veins pulsing against my walls, and I relished the power of it. I squeezed my thighs together and shimmied my hips, letting the friction build to an unbearable pitch. Every nerve in my body was tuned to the moment, every muscle focused on wringing the most pleasure out of each second.

“Do you love me?” I whispered, my lips brushing his ear.

He shuddered, voice cracking. “More than anything, Jesse. More than life.”

I straightened, cupping my breasts in my hands, and began to ride him harder. The slap of skin echoed off the bedroom walls, a metronome of desire that grew louder with every thrust. My clit brushed against the base of his cock, and I moaned, letting my head fall back, eyes closed in bliss. I could feel the orgasm building, a pressure that threatened to split me apart.

It could have ended me, but I forced myself to slow, to savor the moment, and opened my eyes. The morning sun had risen, filling the room with a pale gold light that made everything look holy. I stared down at my father, his face shining with sweat and adoration, and felt a surge of love so fierce it made my throat ache.

I wanted to give him everything. I wanted to show him that he was good, that what we had was beautiful. I wanted to break the last of the chains my mother had wrapped around his heart.

It was almost comical how easily my body betrayed me, how quickly I lost control despite every intention to drag out the moment. My thighs shook as if every muscle fiber had been rewired for hunger alone, sweat slicking my skin and turning the effort of riding my father into a kind of holy exertion. With each grind of my hips, the tension in my core wound tighter, a filament stretched to the point of snapping. He grabbed fistfuls of the sheets, knuckles white, his chest arched up into mine with a feral desperation that made my heart lurch.

His moans grew guttural, torn from somewhere ...