Page 170 of Carrick
I stared at the message for a long time. The kind of long that didn’t tick on clocks. Then I shut off the screen and sat there, unmoving. In the silence. In the dark. Thinking of a girl with haunted eyes who trusted me with everything she had left. And a boy with the same eyes, already halfway over the edge of something sharp. Waiting to see if anyone would reach for him before he fell.
32
Bellamy
Waiting didn’t feellike dying. It felt like the slow suffocation that came first, the kind that blurred hours into a pulse and stretched silence into a scream. I knew the plan. The risks. The routes. I knew Carrick would walk into that meeting with the same cold precision he had carried through war zones and body-littered rooms. My mind understood. But my body didn’t care.
Panic throbbed beneath my skin, hot and relentless, like it needed somewhere to go. I had showered three times, each one hotter than the last, scrubbing until I burned, but the restlessness clung to me like smoke. Every breath fed the spin, each thought looping tighter than the one before. Why had Rayden insisted on meeting in person? What if it was a trap? What if he ran? What if he already had?
No matter how tightly I closed my eyes, the noise didn’t stop. It rose like something wild, clawing through my chest, refusing to be caged. I wanted to scream. Break something. Drink until the edges blurred. But I didn’t. Beneath the panic, something sharper waited. Not peace. Not comfort. I needed to come undone, to be unraveled by someone who could see how close I was to the edge and choose to stay, anyway. I needed the achepulled from my ribs; the tension scraped from my spine until all that remained was the truth. I didn’t want to be brave. I wanted to be still. I needed someone to carry the chaos I couldn’t hold anymore and make it quiet.
I moved before I could stop myself. Straight to Carrick. I didn’t knock. I opened his door like a woman walking into church, ready to confess what she could no longer carry alone. He sat at the edge of the bed, shirtless, polishing his boots with the slow rhythm of a man who had already made peace with war. One forearm rested on his knee. His gear bag lay open beside him, untouched. But he wasn’t focused on any of that. He had seen me. His head lifted. Our eyes met. The air between us went still, thick with heat and knowing.
The tension wasn’t new, but tonight it crackled, charged with something heavier and more urgent. My nipples tightened beneath my shirt. My thighs pressed together before I even realized why. The moment held like the second before thunder.
Then he rose, slow and deliberate, a man made of gravity and control. His gaze dragged over me, steady and searing, like it already knew every secret I hadn’t spoken. His chest lifted with one sharp breath. A flicker passed through his jaw, not hesitation, but restraint.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Each step brought him closer, and it felt inevitable. I stayed where I was, trembling with breath I couldn’t catch. He held his distance, not to delay, but to command the space between us. The waiting had become part of the power.
“Bellamy,” he said—his voice all velvet over gravel.
My thighs trembled. Breath caught. And just like that, I knew—I wasn’t just aching. I was in heat.
He said my name again, not as a greeting, but a sentence. A claim. A quiet command from the only man who could bring meto my knees with a single look. I opened my mouth, no sound. Just a small, helpless shake of my head.
Carrick came toward me like a tide I had no chance of stopping.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Heat climbed my legs, coiled low in my belly, each step he took drawing that fire higher.
When he reached me, his fingers brushed my cheek, his thumb ghosting just beneath my eye—and that barely-there touch sent a jolt through me so sharply, my body leaned in, starving for more. “You’re spiraling,” he said, low and sure, like he already knew the answer.
I nodded, breath catching. My lips moved again. Still no words.
“You want me to stop it?” Another nod. This one sharper. Desperate. “Use your words.”
Swallowing against the tight knot in my throat, I forced in a breath that felt like a battle. “I need you to take it,” I whispered, voice fraying at the edges. “All of it. I can’t shut my brain off. I need help.”
His jaw flexed, slow and hard. And then I saw it. The shift. The flicker of dark fire in his eyes, the way his shoulders pulled back, the way his gaze dropped over me like a blade being unsheathed. He needed this too, just as much as I did. He needed something he could control before going into a situation where so much would be uncertain.
His fingers slid into my hair—slow at first, then gripping tight. He yanked gently, just enough to force my chin up, exposing my throat, my pulse pounding against the skin he hadn’t even touched yet.
“You need my control,” he said, and this time it wasn’t a question.
It was a prophecy. “Yes,” I breathed.
“You want to hand over every last piece of yourself. Let me strip you bare. Ruin the panic. Burn the thoughts out of you until all that’s left is need.”
My breath stuttered. “Please.”
The moment his mouth found mine, the world fractured. He kissed me like he owned the air in my lungs, like my breath only existed if he allowed it. My knees gave, but he held me fast—steady, commanding, relentless. Nothing about it was soft. It was heat and hunger, all sharp edges and need. His tongue slid deep, deliberate, tasting me like he’d gone too long without and couldn’t afford to stop now. I moaned into him, and he drank it down like a man desperate for more.
His hand traced down my side, pausing at my waist—part threat, part claim. Each stroke of his tongue felt like a signature, branding me from the inside out, rewriting every man who came before.
When he finally pulled back, I was wrecked—breath ragged, body trembling, every part of me steeped in him. His hand slid from my hair, and his voice followed, low and wrecked, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere dark.
“Strip.” The word cut through the air with precision, not raised, not rushed—just absolute. It slid beneath my skin like tension drawn taut, threading through every nerve with the kind of command that didn’t need to be repeated. Then came the second blow, soft but inevitable. “Now.”
That single word unraveled something in me. Not from fear. Not from shame. But from a need so sharp and consuming, it felt like oxygen after drowning. There was no hesitation. No theatrics. Just movement—pure and instinctive—as my fingers found the hem of my tank top and peeled it over my head. Goosebumps bloomed instantly, rising across my bare arms and chest as the cooler air hit me. My nipples pushed against the soft fabric of my bralette, hardened not by intention, but by reaction—because even without touching me, Carrick was in my skin now, bending the air between us.
