The last of the whiskey burned a slow, pleasant trail down my throat, but it was nothing compared to the fire Rhys’s gaze was starting in my belly.
The space between us on the worn leather sofa had shrunk with every confession, every shared glance, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
The storm outside had softened to a steady, percussive drumming on the roof, a rhythm that seemed to beat in time with my own frantic heart.
His knuckles were white where he gripped his empty glass. “So that’s it, then,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You build walls to keep the bad guys out, and I just run so they can’t catch up. ”
“Something like that,” I whispered.
The admission, raw and exposed, hung in the air between us. My entire life was a fortress of my own design, and this man, this infuriating, perceptive man, had just walked through the gates without even bothering to knock.
He set his glass down on the hearth with a decisive click. The sound was a period on a sentence I hadn’t known we were writing. He turned back to me, his eyes—that impossible shade of storm-cloud gray—pinning me in place. “What happens when you get tired of living in a fortress, Ava?”
My breath hitched. “I… I don’t know. I’m not. ”
“Liar. ” The word wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, soft and devastating. He leaned closer, and the world narrowed to the scent of him—whiskey, woodsmoke, and something uniquely, dangerously Rhys. “I can see it. You’re rattling the bars from the inside. ”
His hand came up, not to touch me, but to hover, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw in the air just an inch from my skin. I felt the phantom touch like a brand.
Every rule I’d ever written for myself—*Don’t be reckless. Don’t be impulsive. Don’t get involved with men who are complicated and transient and the best man at your most important client’s wedding*—screamed at me in a chorus of panicked, logical protest.
I ignored every one of them.
Leaning into that space, I closed the gap.
My lips met the back of his hand, a soft press against his knuckles. A tremor went through him, a current that shot straight back into me. His eyes darkened, the storm inside them finally breaking.
“Ava,” he breathed, a warning and a prayer all at once.
“Don’t,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Don’t say my name like it’s a mistake. ”
Because in that moment, it felt like the only right thing I’d done in years.
That was all it took.
He was on me, not with force, but with a desperate, pent-up need that mirrored my own. His mouth crashed down on mine, and it was nothing like the careful, planned-out kisses I was used to.
This was messy. This was hungry.
It was the taste of whiskey and honesty and a thousand unspoken frustrations. It was a demolition.
His hands were in my hair, tilting my head back as his tongue swept my mouth, claiming and exploring with a confidence that made my knees weak.
I moaned into the kiss, my hands curling in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us at all.
The carefully constructed façade of Ava Morgan, the meticulous planner, the woman who had a color-coded schedule for her own life, crumbled into dust.
This was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos.
We stumbled from the sofa, a tangle of limbs and desperate kisses, and landed on the plush wool rug in front of the fireplace. The flames licked at the logs, casting dancing shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw and the raw want in his eyes.
He pulled back, just for a second, his chest heaving.
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice thick with gravelly desire.
Instead of answering, I reached for the buttons of his shirt, my fingers fumbling with a clumsy urgency I didn’t recognize. One popped off, skittering away into the shadows. I froze, the old Ava horrified by the imperfection, the mistake.
But Rhys just laughed, a low, husky sound. He covered my hands with his own and brought them to his lips, kissing my knuckles.
“Let me,” he said, and proceeded to undo the rest of the buttons himself, his eyes never leaving mine.
He shrugged off the shirt, and the firelight played over the hard planes of his chest, the dusting of dark hair, the tattoos that snaked over his shoulder and down his arm.
He was a roadmap of a life lived, not curated. My fingers itched to trace the lines, to learn the stories.
This was my rebellion. It wasn’t just about Rhys. It was about Marcus and his suffocating, predictable affection. It was about my parents and their impossible expectations. It was about every single box I had ever forced myself into. With every piece of clothing that came off, another rule was shattered. The sensible silk blouse. The perfectly tailored trousers.
My control. My composure. My sanity.
When we were finally bare, skin to skin on the rug in the firelight, he hovered over me, propped on his elbows. He looked at me, *really* looked at me, with an intensity that stripped away every last defense. He didn’t see the wedding planner.
He didn’t see the woman who alphabetized her spice rack. He saw the person I’d kept locked away.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and then he was kissing me again, a slower, deeper exploration that promised to learn every inch of me.
And he did. His hands and mouth were instruments of exquisite torture and dizzying pleasure. He discovered places on my body I didn’t know were sensitive, elicited responses I didn’t know I was capable of. He was both patient and demanding, worshipful and carnal.
He unraveled me, thread by thread, until I was nothing but a raw bundle of need, arching against him, begging for him with words I’d never dared to say aloud.
When he finally pushed inside me, I cried out. It was a feeling of being filled, of being completed in a way that was terrifying and exhilarating. There was no plan here.
There was only this moment. The friction of our bodies, the crackle of the fire, our ragged breaths mingling in the air. He moved with a rhythm that was both primal and intuitive, watching my face, chasing my pleasure as if it were his only purpose on earth.
My perfectly ordered world shattered into a million brilliant, glittering pieces. Control was a lie. Perfection was a cage. This—this messy, glorious, untamed collision—was freedom.
And when my climax ripped through me, a tidal wave of sensation that left me shuddering and breathless, my scream was one of pure, unadulterated liberation. Rhys followed me a moment later, collapsing against me with a guttural groan, his body heavy and warm and real.
We lay there for a long time, tangled together, the fire dying down to glowing embers. His arm was a comforting weight across my waist, his breathing soft against my hair.
I had never felt so exposed, or so safe. He shifted, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder blade.
“You okay?” he whispered into the quiet.
“Yes,” I breathed, and it was the truest thing I’d said all night.
For the first time in forever, I fell asleep without a plan for tomorrow.