Chapter 54: I Dont Want to Hurt You

Dove" Her name comes out strangled. "You feel, I can’t!"

"You can." She rocks her hips experimentally, a slow grind that has them both gasping, and the stretch of him inside her lights up every nerve ending she has. "You’re doing so good."

His hips twitch again, that same helpless, involuntary jerk, chasing more of her, and this time she lets him, rolls her hips down to meet him halfway, and the sound he makes—raw, guttural, half her name and half a prayer—unravels something tight and possessive in her chest.

She braces both hands on his chest and starts to move, slow at first, finding the angle that makes her vision white out at the edges, and Thorne lies beneath her like an offering, like he’s been waiting his whole life to be looked at the way she’s looking at him right now—not with disgust, not with fear, not with the memory of some other woman’s cruelty stamped over his scars.

Just want. Just her, choosing him, over and over, with every roll of her hips.

"Look at me," she pants, when his eyes start to flutter shut under the weight of it. "Thorne. Eyes on me."

He forces them open, gold burning bright in the dark, locked on her face like she’s the only solid thing left in his entire ruined world, and she rides him harder, chasing her own pleasure now, unashamed, uninhibited, every gasp and moan bouncing off cracked tile and broken glass.

"That’s it," she breathes, voice fraying. "That’s my good boy."

His whole body shudders, hips twitching up to meet her even though she never told him he could, and this time she doesn’t stop him—just presses her palm flat over his heart, feels it hammering under her hand, fast and wild and entirely hers.

She keeps sinking, slow, working her body down around him, and somewhere past the halfway point a sharp line of pain opens up low in her belly, bright and clean, different from the ache of stretching.

Dove’s breath catches. Her thighs go tight against his hips, frozen mid-motion.

"Dove?" Thorne’s voice comes out thin, careful, every muscle beneath her going still like he’s bracing for something. "Dove, what..."

She doesn’t answer right away. She’s too busy breathing through it, through the sting that flares and then starts to fade into something duller, something that twists into the pleasure instead of fighting it. Her hands press flat against his chest, grounding herself there, feeling his heart slam against her palm.

Then she feels it. Warmth, different from the heat already pooling between them, trickling down to where they’re joined.

Thorne feels it too. She watches it happen in his face—the way his gold eyes drop, the way his nostrils flare, the way every line of his body goes rigid in an instant.

"You’re bleeding." His voice cracks clean in half. His hands fly to her hips like he’s going to lift her off him, panic blowing his pupils wide, claws threatening at the tips of his fingers even though he’s fighting to keep them sheathed. "Dove, I hurt you, I need to—we need to stop, I shouldn’t have let you!"

"Hey." She presses down harder on his chest, not letting him rise, not letting him pull away. "Hey. Look at me."

"You’re bleeding," he says again, like the words are the only ones left in him, like his whole body has narrowed down to that single fact. His hands hover at her waist, trembling, not lifting her, not pushing her away, just shaking there like he doesn’t trust himself to touch her and doesn’t trust himself not to.

"It’s supposed to happen." She keeps her voice low, even, the same voice she used to talk him down from his own mind two minutes ago. "Thorne. It’s normal, it’s okay."

"It doesn’t look—" His throat works. "You flinched. I felt you flinch."

"Because it hurt a little." She shifts, just slightly, testing, and winces despite herself, a small involuntary sound that makes his whole body lock up again. "But it’s fading already. I promise. This is what happens the first time. It’s supposed to hurt a little and then it’s not supposed to anymore."

"I don’t want to hurt you." The words come out ragged, stripped of every ounce of control he’s spent the last twenty minutes clinging to. His eyes are too bright, too wet at the edges, gold gone glassy with something that isn’t arousal anymore, something closer to fear. "I never wanted—if I’d known, I wouldnt have..."

"You didn’t do anything wrong." She leans down, slow, and presses her forehead to his, breathing him in, giving him a second to just feel her there, solid and present and choosing to stay exactly where she is. "My body. My first time. This is just what it costs. It’s not a big deal."

"It’s blood," he says, like that word alone should end the conversation.

"It’s blood," she agrees. "And it’s fine. Look at me."

He does. His hand comes up—not to push her away, not to lift her off him, but to cup her cheek, thumb brushing just beneath her eye where, apparently, a single tear has slipped free without her noticing. He wipes it away with a gentleness that doesn’t match the size of his hand, the claws retracted now, nothing but blunt warm fingertips against her skin.

"You’re crying," he says, quiet, wrecked.

"It stings," she admits. "That’s all. It’s not—I’m not hurt hurt. I promise."

His thumb traces along her cheekbone, back and forth, like he needs the repetition to believe her, like he’s trying to map the difference between pain and pleasure on her face and getting lost somewhere in between.

"Tell me to stop," he says. "Please. If you need me to stop, tell me now, because I don’t think I can ask twice."

Dove holds his gaze and, very deliberately, rolls her hips.

The sting flares again, sharper for a second, and then smooths out into something that makes her breath catch for an entirely different reason, heat rushing back in to fill the space where the pain had been.

"Don’t stop," she breathes, voice gone rough. "I want this. I want you. All of you."

His whole body shudders beneath her, a full-length tremor that she feels everywhere they’re connected, and something in his face breaks open—relief and want and disbelief all tangled together, like he still can’t quite accept that she means it.

"Okay," he whispers. "Okay. Slow. Please, slow."

"Slow," she agrees.

She sinks the rest of the way down in one long, unhurried glide, and this time the stretch of him swallows the last of the sting whole, replaces it with a fullness so complete it steals the air out of her lungs. Her hips finally meet his, skin to skin, and she realizes distantly that she’s taken every inch of him, that there’s nowhere left to go, that he is seated inside her completely, and the thought alone sends a fresh wave of heat rolling through her.

"Oh," she says, soft, almost disbelieving.

Thorne makes a sound low in his chest, something between a groan and a prayer, his hands finally settling at her hips—not gripping, not guiding, just resting there like he needs the contact to stay tethered to the moment.

"You’re shaking," he murmurs, echoing her own words back at her from earlier, and there’s a rough thread of wonder in it now instead of concern.

"So are you," she points out, breathless, because he is, fine tremors running the length of him, muscle twitching under her palms where she’s braced against his chest.

"You feel—" He stops. Swallows. Tries again. "I don’t have words for what you feel like."

"Don’t need them." She rocks, slow and careful, testing the ache that’s already fading into something molten, and his hips jerk up to meet the motion before he catches himself, before he remembers he’s not supposed to move without her say-so.

"Sorry," he gasps immediately. "Sorry, I didn’t—"