The shirt was gone. I didn't just push it off his shoulders, I ripped it the rest of the way. A sharp, satisfying tear of fabric. It was the sound of a leash breaking. It joined the wreckage of my dress on the floor—two costumes for two different plays, both useless now.
He wasn't just shaking.
He was vibrating. A low, dangerous frequency humming through the corded muscle of his arms, the rigid line of his back under my palms. He was a bowstring pulled taut, and I was the arrow.
I didn't pull back to look. I bit his lower lip. Not a love bite. A claim. I tasted the copper tang of my own split lip reopening, and his sharp inhale was the sweetest music.
"Why?" I demanded against his mouth, my voice guttural.
His answer was a growl, swallowed by my kiss. He understood. It was terror. The terror of finally having the thing you've starved for after a decade of famine. The terror that it might be poison.
His hands weren't careful anymore. They were mapping, possessing.
