“Fuck, Len... you have no idea what you do to me,” he rasps, voice thick with something jagged.

His hands map every inch of me like I’m made of secrets he’s been dying to uncover.

Slow. Merciless. Intentional.

Each touch sets off tremors under my skin until I’m gasping—needy, unmoored, half-feral.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he breathes against my mouth, and then he takes it—kissing me like the words alone weren’t enough to bleed the truth out of him. Like he’s trying to drown in me.

I let out this broken little laugh between kisses, the sound raw and tangled in everything I feel.

“You ruined me a long time ago.” I grip the back of his head like I’ll fall apart if I don’t hold on, burying my fingers in his hair.

His eyes lock onto mine. “Lenora Kennedy Wells, you will be my greatest undoing.”

And then his fingers quicken, dragging me toward the edge of something I’ve never stepped off before. Something that feels like dying and living all at once.

“Now let me watch you come undone for me.”

I crash into him, kiss him like it’s the only language I know, like I can pour years of love and ache and longing into the heat of his mouth. My body arches against him, chasing the rhythm, chasing release. His free arm slams against the wall beside my head with this raw, explosive force that makes me flinch—and want—in the same wild breath.

Then his eyes—fuck, those deep eyes—pin me in place.

“Eyes on me, Leni,” he says, low and dark, a whisper soaked in velvet and command. My mouth gapes open while my spine turns to liquid. His thumb drags across my lower lip, slow and firm, just enough to make me freeze.

“I want to watch you let go.”

And I do.

I can’t tear my gaze from his even if I tried. There’s something primal in him now—something untamed that calls to the wild thing waking up in me. I let it out. Let it burn. I meet his eyes without flinching, every wall inside me crashing down. I let him see me—raw, vulnerable, undone.

A silent offering. A surrender.

That smile he gives me? It’s not sweet.

It’s lethal.

Slow and smug and soaked in power, like he’s just won a war. He presses into me, close enough that I can feel the full heat of him. His mouth brushes mine—not a kiss, but a promise.

And when his fingers blaze a line down my throat, I swear I stop breathing.

"Good girl," he whispers against my mouth.

Two simple words shatter everything and suddenly the room tilts sideways.

The gentle pressure of his fingers transforms into something else—something rough, demanding, wrong.