The air in my loft was thick with the scent of turpentine and the electric, heavy ionized smell of the thunderstorm rattling the window-panes. I stood there, frozen, the flickering streetlights from the Newark alleyway casting long, skeletal shadows across the floorboards. I didn't breathe. I didn't move. I just stood there like a fool, like a girl who had finally stepped off a cliff and was waiting for the ground to shatter her bones.
Because that is exactly what Josh looked like. He looked like the end of the world.
He stood in the center of my studio, his massive frame dwarfing the half-finished canvases and the chaotic stacks of sketches. He was big and hard and scarred and mean. Muscles were everywhere, thick arms that looked like they could snap a man in half, broad shoulders that blocked out the light, and abs that looked like bricks stacked under skin.
Those dark, lethal veins ran down into the sharp V at his hips, leading lower to where the trousers barely held on.
He just stared at me. His eyes cut through the dim light like a knife, sharp and cold and utterly uncompromising. That stare made my knees shake. It made my skin prickle and my thighs go sticky because it wasn't just the kind of stare two best friends give each other. It wasn't the look we had shared over takeout pizza or when he was helping me hang a heavy frame. This was the kind of stare a wolf gives his prey right before he takes a bite.
My throat locked up. I was staring too hard, biting my lip until I tasted copper, feeling far too much for a man who didn't belong to me.
With trembling fingers, I reached for the hem of my shirt. I pulled it over my head, letting it fall into a heap of discarded fabric on the dusty floor. I followed with my jeans until I was standing there in nothing but my black lace lingerie. I felt exposed, raw, and desperate. I crawled onto the edge of my bed, the silk sheets cool against my heated skin, before I stood back up and walked toward him. I leaned in, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, and whispered in his ear. I told him to do all the things I knew he would never admit he thought about during our quiet moments. My lips parted. My breath came in short, shameful pants.
His gaze dropped. He looked at the lace barely covering me, at the droplets of sweat clinging to my collarbone, at the shape of my breasts pushing up against the wire.
And he smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't a friendly one. It was cruel. Knowing. Dangerous. A smile that made me want to scream and run and stay all at the same time. I didn't move. I couldn't. My thighs trembled as the heat rolled off my skin like I was going to melt into the brick wall behind me.
When he finally stepped closer, he caught my chin with one rough, calloused hand. He tilted my face up to meet his eyes, and I almost cried from the sheer intensity of it. I could see it in him. The hunger. The filth. The fact that he had been waiting for this just as long as I had.
"You want this," he said, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that settled deep in my gut. "Say it."
"I want it," I whispered. My voice was so small, but it sounded like a thunderclap in the silence of the loft.
"Say it right, Viv."
I shivered, the sound of my nickname on his lips feeling like a brand. "I want you to touch me, Josh," I breathed, the words spilling out of me in a rush of honesty. "I want you to do everything. Everything I shouldn't let you do. Everything I've thought about for years. I want you to ruin me."
He growled. It was a feral, animalistic sound that vibrated through his chest and into mine.
Before I could even blink, his hands were on me. He grabbed my ass, his large palms covering me entirely, and lifted me like I weighed nothing. He dropped me onto the marble surface of my dressing cabinet, the cold stone a shocking contrast to the fire in my blood. He shoved his knee between my legs, spreading me wide, and buried his face straight between my thighs. He was starving for it.
His tongue hit me like a lightning bolt.
I screamed. It wasn't cute or quiet or girly. It was a feral, filthy sound that burst out of me the second his mouth found me. He latched on like I belonged to him. Like my body was the only thing that could save him from the storm outside. His tongue didn't just lick, it devoured. It was rough and slow and deep, sliding through my folds like he wanted to learn every secret I had ever kept from him.
"Fuck," I cried, my fingers clawing at the cold marble edge behind me. My legs were shaking as he spread them even wider, shoving two thick fingers in without a single word of warning. "Oh my God, oh my fucking God, Josh!"
I called out his name and I didn't care. I didn't care that he was the Sterling heir. I didn't care that he had a life of duty and expectations waiting for him. I was soaked and desperate. My body arched off the table, caught in the crossfire of his tongue flicking against my clit with a rhythm so perfect it felt like he had studied me in his dreams.
He didn't respond with words. He just groaned, a deep, rough noise that rumbled against me and made my back slam into the mirror with a sharp cry. I was shaking, panting, so close to the edge that I could feel the tension in my spine. His fingers pumped in and out of me, wet and fast, while his mouth never left me for a second.
"Please," I begged, my head tossing back. "Please don't stop. I'm so close, I swear I'm... fuck!"
My body locked up. My thighs clamped around his head and I screamed again, a broken, ruined sound. I came so hard I saw stars. My vision went white as my body clenched around his fingers, gushing over his mouth. He didn't stop. He grabbed my hips and dragged me further down the counter, keeping the pressure exactly where I needed it until I was a sobbing, wrecked mess.
When he finally stood up, his mouth was glistening and his eyes were dark and wild. He let the trouser fall from his hips, and I felt the air leave my lungs.
He was thick, hard, and veined, leaking at the tip like he was angry. My breath caught. I had always wondered what he looked like under those tailored suits, and the reality was terrifying.
"I can't," I whispered, my eyes wide. "Josh, it's too big."
He smirked. That filthy, cocky smirk. "You'll try," he said. He wrapped one hand in my hair, jerking my head back so my spine arched. "Open, Viv. Let me fuck that smart little mouth."
I did. I let him push in, tasting the salt and the heat of him. He shoved in until he hit the back of my throat, holding it there while I gagged, my mascara running down my face. I let him use me. I let him fuck my mouth like he owned it, like he had waited years to see me drool around him.
Then he spun me around. He slammed my chest against the cold marble, my ass up and my legs spread.
"Look at this," he growled, his hand dragging between my legs to spread me even wider. "You really want me to ruin it, don't you?"
I nodded frantically. I needed to feel him. I needed to know what it felt like to be taken raw and rough by the man I loved, the man who only ever looked at me like a best friend until tonight.
He slammed into me.
I screamed as he stretched me wide, pressing past every wall I had. He didn't slow down. He fucked me like I was made for it, his hips slamming against me with every filthy slap of skin on skin. He grabbed my throat from behind, his voice a hot, brutal growl in my ear.
"Come for me, Viv. Let me feel you ruin yourself for me."
I came so hard my vision went white for the second time. My legs gave out and my pussy spasmed around him, refusing to let go. When he finally roared my name and flooded me with heat, I felt a sense of completion that terrified me.
The silence that followed was heavy. We stayed like that for a moment, both of us panting, the only sound the rain hitting the roof. Josh slowly pulled away and reached for his phone, which had been buzzing incessantly on the counter.
The screen lit up the room.
Vanessa - Final Cake Selection
The air in the room turned to ice. Josh didn't say a word as he reached for his $3,000 suit. The spell was shattered. The "best friend" was gone, and the "Billionaire Heir" was back. He dressed with clinical efficiency, not looking at me as he straightened his cuffs.
"I'll call you tomorrow, Viv," he said, his voice cold and professional.
He walked out, the heavy door of the loft clicking shut behind him. I sat there on the cold marble, my body still humming from his touch, and looked at the calendar I kept by my easel. I picked up a red marker and crossed off the date.
89 days until the wedding.