The rhythmic rise and fall of Mark's chest beneath the thin sheet felt absurdly loud in the silence of his room. Moonlight, filtered through the cheap blinds, striped the cluttered floor – textbooks stacked haphazardly, a faded band poster curling at the edges, a single discarded sock near the door he'd deliberately left unlocked. He stared at the ceiling, replaying the kitchen collision on a loop. The fury in her eyes. The brutal, claiming press of her mouth. The shocking, impossible hardness of his own body against her stomach, a sensation that had stolen his breath long before her lips did. Be accessible. Her hissed command echoed, a promise laced with threat. His stomach churned, a mix of lingering humiliation from years of her barbs and the terrifying, unwanted spark ignited by her aggression. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing sleep, willing normalcy, willing her to stay away.
The softest click of the door handle cut through the silence like a knife. Mark froze. His breath hitched. He didn't move, didn't open his eyes, hoping futilely it was just the house settling, or Emily needing a charger.
The air shifted. A subtle wave of Emily's vanilla-coconut perfume, overlaid now with the faint, metallic tang of night air and something uniquely Sarah – expensive shampoo and underlying heat. He felt her presence before he saw her, a crackling energy filling the small space. Slowly, forcing himself to breathe, he cracked one eye open.
She stood just inside the doorway, backlit by the weak hallway light. She'd changed into thin sleep shorts and a camisole top, the pale fabric ghostly in the dimness. Her hair was tousled, her face pale, eyes wide and fixed on the bed. On him. Not on his face. Lower. Her lips were slightly parted, her chest rising and falling rapidly. She looked less like the predator from the kitchen and more like someone who'd sleepwalked into a lion's den, equal parts terrified and mesmerized.
"Sarah?" His voice was a dry rasp. He started to push himself up onto his elbows.
"Don't." Her command was a desperate whisper, cutting through the stillness. It wasn't the sharp command from before; it trembled. "Just... stay down."
She took one hesitant step forward, then another, moving with the stiff-legged gait of someone approaching a live wire. The moonlight caught the sharp angle of her collarbone, the sheen of sweat on her upper chest. She stopped at the foot of his narrow bed, her gaze still locked below his waist. The sheet, thin cotton, did little to hide the inevitable. The memory of her closeness, her fury, had stirred him despite everything, and now her presence, her focused intensity, amplified it. The outline beneath the sheet was undeniable, thickening under her stare.
Mark felt a fresh wave of excruciating embarrassment wash over him, hot and prickling. He wanted to pull the sheet up to his chin, vanish. But her tension held him paralyzed. He saw her fists clench at her sides, knuckles white. A tremor ran through her, visible even in the low light. Was it anger? Disgust? Something else entirely?
"Look at me," he whispered, the plea escaping before he could stop it. He needed to see her face, understand what was happening.
Her eyes snapped up to his, wide and dark and filled with a turmoil that stole his breath. Fear, defiance, and a raw, blazing hunger warred within them. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. "Shut up, Mark," she hissed, the command regaining a sliver of its old bite, but undermined by the tremor in her voice. "Just... shut up."
Her gaze dropped back down, magnetized. She took another step, bringing her to the edge of the bed. The scent of her filled his nostrils – perfume, sweat, and something deeper, muskier, primal. He could see the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. She lifted a hand, slowly, almost against her own will. It hovered in the air for a long, agonizing moment, trembling. The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating, broken only by the frantic drumming of his own heart and her shallow, ragged breaths.
Then, with a sound like a choked sob, her hand darted forward. Not gently. Not hesitantly. With a sudden, almost violent urgency, she grabbed the sheet near his hip and yanked it down.
Cool air hit his skin. He sucked in a sharp breath. There was no hiding now. The proof of his body's traitorous reaction was fully exposed in the dim light, rising thick and heavy from the loose waistband of his boxers.
Sarah froze. A small, strangled gasp escaped her. Her eyes widened impossibly further, staring not with the clinical curiosity he might have expected from the old Sarah, but with absolute, visceral shock. Her breath hitched, stopped, then came out in a ragged puff. The hand that had pulled the sheet was still clenched in the fabric, her knuckles stark white. The other hand hovered near her own mouth.
"Oh god," she breathed, the whisper raw and disbelieving. "Oh my god."
The locker room glimpse had been fleeting, obscured. This was undeniable. Immediate. Real. The sheer, impossible scale of him, even semi-relaxed, seemed to short-circuit her. He saw the tremor in her arm intensify, radiating through her whole body. Her cheeks, pale moments ago, flooded with high color.
She didn't look away. Her gaze traced the thick length, the heavy weight resting against his thigh, the prominent veins beneath pale skin. Her lips parted again, slack. She made another small sound, almost a whimper, deep in her throat. The raw hunger he'd glimpsed flared brighter, momentarily eclipsing the fear and anger. Her free hand, the one near her mouth, slowly lowered.
Before he could process the movement, before he could even think to react, her fingers were there. Not tentative. Not curious. Possessive. Demanding. Her cool, trembling hand wrapped firmly around him over the thin cotton of his boxers.
The contact was electric. A jolt slammed through Mark, arching his spine off the bed. A guttural groan tore from his throat, half-pain, half-overwhelming shock. He wasn't prepared. Not for the touch, not for the sudden, intense pressure, and certainly not for the violent reaction it sparked in his own body. Heat surged, impossibly intense, pooling low and urgent.
Sarah gasped again, louder this time. Her fingers flexed instinctively, tightening their grip as if trying to comprehend the impossible girth filling her hand. She could feel the heat radiating through the cotton, the insistent throb of his pulse against her palm. The tremor in her hand intensified, vibrating through her arm. Her other hand finally released the sheet, coming up to cover her own mouth as she stared, transfixed, at her hand wrapped around the massive outline.
"Jesus," she whispered against her fingers, the word muffled but thick with awe and disbelief. "It's... it's real." Her gaze flickered up to his face, then back down, drawn irresistibly. She shifted her grip slightly, her thumb pressing experimentally against the rigid shaft through the fabric. Mark hissed through clenched teeth, his hips jerking involuntarily. The friction, even through the barrier, was maddening.
He saw it then. The flush spreading down her neck, disappearing beneath the thin camisole. The rapid rise and fall of her chest. The darkening of her eyes, pupils swallowing the irises. And the subtle, involuntary shift in her stance, a slight rocking motion as if seeking pressure. Her body, despite the shock, despite the lingering anger he saw tightening her jaw, was betraying her. Violently. The trembling wasn't just from fear or fury anymore. It was the tremors of intense, visceral arousal, shaking her from the inside out.
Her eyes locked onto his again, blazing in the gloom. There was no trace of the dismissive queen now. Only raw need and dawning panic warring on her face. Her grip tightened further, knuckles straining white against the dark fabric. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps that fogged the cool air between them. She opened her mouth, perhaps to issue another command, perhaps to curse, but no sound emerged except another low, helpless moan that vibrated against the hand still pressed to her lips. The forbidden contact, the impossible heat and solidity filling her hand, was unravelling her. The carefully constructed walls were crumbling, leaving only the raw, shuddering core of her desire laid bare in the moonlit silence of his cluttered room. Her body quaked, caught in the violent tremors of a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, rooted solely in the forbidden weight held captive in her trembling hand.
Silence screamed between them, thick as the scent of Sarah's sweat mingling with the lingering perfume she wore earlier – Emily's vanilla-coconut, a jarringly sweet counterpoint to the raw tension. Sarah's hand remained locked around the impossible thickness beneath the thin cotton of Mark's boxers, the sheer heat and solidity burning her palm. Her fingers, trembling violently, explored the outline with a frantic, almost scientific intensity, tracing the swollen ridge, measuring the circumference with thumb and forefinger, the sheer scale stealing her breath all over again.
One moment her touch was feather-light, reverent, as if cradling something fragile and invaluable. The next, her grip clenched with near-bruising force, knuckles bleaching white, fingers digging into the resilient flesh beneath the fabric like claws sinking into prey. It was a silent, primal claim, a possession born of shock and overwhelming need. Her entire body shuddered, wracked by tremors that felt less like fear and more like electric currents short-circuiting her nervous system, emanating entirely from the contact burning her hand.
Mark lay rigid, every muscle locked tight, unable to breathe past the shockwaves of sensation. Her shifting grasp – tender reverence one second, animalistic claiming the next – was a bewildering assault. He felt utterly pinned, not just by her physical hold, but by the raw, unguarded hunger blazing in her wide eyes, fixed unblinkingly on the place where her hand met fabric. His own traitorous body surged in response to her possessive grip, a low groan escaping his lips despite his clenched jaw, only seeming to deepen the flush staining her neck and chest.
Thought evaporated. The years of her sneering dismissal, the sting of her words, the kitchen confrontation – it all dissolved into the white noise of her ragged breathing and the frantic drumming of his own heart against his ribs. Her mind was a void filled only by the heat, the weight, the realness grasped in her trembling fist. The conflicting impulses warred visibly on her face: awe battling a fierce, almost territorial need to control this terrifyingly powerful thing she'd unearthed.
Seconds stretched into an eternity of shared paralysis. Then, with a ragged gasp that sounded torn from deep within her chest, Sarah found her voice. It emerged thin, strained, utterly devoid of its usual confident bite, stripped raw by the force of her fixation. Her eyes finally snapped up to his, wide and dark and brimming with an intensity that stole his breath. "I need to see it."