Page 71 of Riot

Our bodies, bare and glistening under moonlight, pressed together in that pool like we were the only two people left in the world.

I thought about his lips on mine, warm and sure. The feel of his hands on my waist. The way the water wrapped around us asif it were blessing our moment. I’d never been kissed like that. Not with tenderness. Not with restraint. And never in a way that made me feel like I was in control.

It felt so wrong and so right at the same time.

Wrong, because I barely knew him. Because just days ago, I was nothing more than a kept girl in a house. My body had been my own in name only. My choices were illusions. My voice, an echo no one heard.

But with Riot…

With Riot, I felt something I hadn’t felt in ten years.

Free.

Not just in the physical sense, but emotionally. Spiritually. My heart wasn’t beating in a cage anymore. It was beating for me.

And that pool, that moment in the dark with him, it didn’t feel like a risk. It felt like a reclamation.

Our naked bodies in the water didn’t make me feel ashamed or exposed. They made me feel bold. Like the girl I could’ve been if I’d never been taken. Like the woman I was becoming now. My scars hadn’t disappeared, but for the first time, they didn’t feel so heavy.

Boaz and that house of horrors felt distant. Like a chapter from someone else’s life.

Even the grief over my father, which had swallowed me whole just yesterday, didn’t feel as sharp. It was still there—tight in my chest—but dulled somehow, like Riot had wrapped it in warmth and pressed it gently into the background.

I knew I should be more cautious.

I should be afraid of what all this meant—what I was feeling.

But lying in his bed, in one of his oversized shirts, in a home that smelled nothing like fear…

All I wanted to do was fall.

And maybe, just maybe, let him catch me.

After a while, I finally pulled myself up and headed for the shower. My body still buzzed with the memory of last night—the weight of Riot’s chest against mine, the warmth of the water, the way he held me like I was something fragile and sacred. But what snuck up on me most was the thought of his dick.

God.

I hadn’t seen many—maybe one or two in my whole life—but his? I didn’t even need to look to know it was big. Ifeltit. Pressed against me beneath the water, heavy and thick, making it impossible to ignore. The memory alone made heat pulse between my thighs.

It wasn’t just the size. It was the presence of it. The promise.

That ache between my thighs stirred again as I stepped under the stream of hot water, letting it rush over my skin. I bit my lip, closing my eyes, trying not to replay the feeling of his hands on my waist, his lips brushing mine, the slow roll of restraint in his voice when he told me no.

He wanted me.

But he didn’t take.

And somehow, that made me want him even more.

The bathroom was warm with steam as I stepped out of the shower, skin flushed and scrubbed clean. I wrapped a plush towel around my body and another around my hair, then walked barefoot back into the bedroom. The air felt lighter today, less haunted.

On the bench at the foot of the bed sat the shopping bags Riot brought in last night—crisp, glossy, with the kind of high-end branding that my father had gotten me accustomed to before I was kidnapped.

I opened the first bag and gasped softly.

Color.

So much color.

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