Chapter 178 Grief Does Things

Chapter 178 Grief Does Things
Lily

One hand guided himself to my entrance, the head of him hot and thick and already slick with my arousal, while the other braced against my hip. His eyes locked on mine, and for one suspended heartbeat, everything stopped.

The grief was still there. Buried deeper now, beneath the hunger, but visible in the tremor of his jaw and the redness rimming his eyes. This wasn't an escape. This was survival. Both of us, clawing our way back to something that felt like being alive.

"Breathe."

The word was barely a rasp, scraped raw from screaming and sobbing, but it was an instruction. A warning. An offering.

I nodded. Sucked in air.

He pushed inside.

The stretch was immediate and consuming, a fullness that bordered on too much. My head fell back, mouth dropping open, but no sound came out, just a rush of exhaled breath and the distant awareness of my fingernails digging into the meat of his shoulders. He sank deeper, inch by devastating inch, and my body struggled to accommodate him.

"Fuck." His voice broke on the word. "Lily—"

"Don't stop." My heels dug into his back, pulling him closer. "Don't you dare stop."

Something snapped.

His hips pulled back and drove forward in a single thrust that buried him to the hilt. The sound that punched out of me was animal, raw and unguarded, echoing off the walls of the small room. My back bowed, breasts thrusting upward, and his mouth descended on them with the same ferocity he'd shown earlier, teeth scraping, tongue laving, pulling sounds from me that I didn't recognize as human.

He fucked me like he was trying to climb inside my skin.

Each thrust was hard enough to shove me up the mattress, and each time he dragged me back down by the hips, fingers bruising into the soft flesh there, keeping me exactly where he wanted me. The angle was devastating. Every stroke hit somewhere deep and electric, pleasure sparking up my spine with each snap of his hips.

"Look at me."

The command cut through the haze. I forced my eyes open, forced my gaze to focus, and found him staring down at me with an intensity that stole my breath.

"I want to watch you come undone."

His rhythm didn't falter. Deep, grinding strokes that pushed me closer and closer to a cliff I wasn't sure I'd survive. Sweat dripped from his brow onto my chest. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his temple. Every line of his body was taut with controlled violence, the same violence that had shattered furniture and broken drywall, now channeled into something that felt like worship.

My legs trembled. Tightened around his neck. The pressure built again, coiling vicious and bright at the base of my spine, and this time there was no reprieve. No pause. No mercy.

"Jinx—"

"I know." His thumb found my clit, pressing down with exactly the right pressure, and the world went white. "Come for me."

The orgasm hit like a freight train, sudden and devastating and completely beyond my control. My vision fractured into sparks. My back arched so violently that the stitches in my side tore with a distant, irrelevant pop. Every muscle in my body seized and released in waves, pulsing around him, drawing a groan from his chest that sounded like it had been ripped out by the roots.

He didn't stop.

Fucked me through it, into it, past it, until the pleasure blurred into something almost unbearable. My hands scrabbled at his arms, his chest, his shoulders, anywhere I could reach, desperate for an anchor in the storm he'd created.

Then his rhythm faltered.

His hips stuttered, thrusts turning erratic, and his forehead dropped to mine. His breath was ragged against my lips, hot and uneven, and I felt the exact moment his control shattered. A groan tore from his throat, low and broken and full of something that sounded almost like relief, as he emptied himself inside me, his body shaking with the force of it.

We stayed like that for a long moment, tangled together, breathing the same air. His weight pressed me into the mattress, solid and grounding, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held on.

His face buried in the curve of my neck, and I felt rather than heard the sound he made, half exhale, half something wetter.

"I've got you," I whispered into his hair. "I've got you."

His arms tightened around me, crushing, desperate, and neither of us let go.

I stayed.

How long, I couldn’t say. Time stretched and twisted in the darkness, measured not by clocks but by the slow unraveling of panic in the boy pressed against my chest. My world shrank to the steady rise and fall of his ragged breath, to the ironclad grip of his arms laced around my waist, unyielding at first, desperate, like I was the only thing anchoring him to this world.

Minutes, maybe hours, passed like this. Long enough for his frantic breathing to slow, each inhale and exhale gradually smoothing out, as if the storm raging inside him had finally started to abate. Long enough for his death grip to melt, fingers unclenching, clutch relaxing into something softer, something that felt almost safe. Long enough for the tremors that wracked his body to taper off, his muscles no longer convulsing with remembered fear.

I counted the minutes, watching the numbers tick by in my mind.

Five.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

I wasn’t taking any chances. He needed rest more than anything else, rest so deep only complete exhaustion could drag him under. I would have waited all night, all week, if it meant keeping him safe.

When I finally dared move, I did so with a care I didn’t know I possessed. Inch by inch, I slipped my hand from his hair, holding my breath. His brow furrowed, lips twitching. My heart stuttered in my chest. His hand flexed against the blanket, reaching, searching for me.

And then, nothing. His fingers stilled. Another slow, heavy breath.

Still asleep.

Okay.

I started to ease myself out of his embrace, one arm at a time, peeling free inch by painstaking inch. Every muscle in my body ached with protest. My ribs were bruised, my shoulder throbbed, and my leg screamed in agony. By the time I’d managed to slide to the edge of the bed, I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.

“Don’t wake up…” I breathed, barely more than a thought, a prayer whispered into the shadows.

Slowly, I pushed myself upright, moving with the sluggish caution of someone navigating a minefield. The instant I put weight on my left leg, pain exploded through my hip. My knee buckled, and I crashed to the floor with a muffled thud, barely catching myself before my shoulder slammed into the nightstand. Stars burst behind my eyelids, and I froze, mind blank with terror.

Please. Please, don’t wake up.

I twisted around, heart hammering. Jinx hadn’t moved. He was still sprawled across the bed, one arm stretched out to the empty space where I’d been, fingers curled around nothing. In sleep, his face looked impossibly young, all the hard lines smoothed away. There was a peace there I’d never seen in daylight, something vulnerable and heartbreakingly fragile.

A sharp ache twisted inside me. He needed this. More than I needed my pride, or comfort, or even dignity.

I let myself crumple against the floor, waiting for the dizziness to pass. “Smooth, Lily,” I muttered, voice thick with sarcasm. “Real graceful.”