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Pressure starts building deep inside me.

I feel it gathering with every movement, winding tighter and tighter until I can’t tell where my body ends and the sensation begins.

My breaths turn uneven. My grip on his wrist grows painful. The mirror swims in and out of focus.

“Look at me.”

I drag my eyes up to his. Big mistake.

The second I meet his gaze, whatever fragile control I’m clinging to starts slipping through my fingers.

“That’s it,” he says, almost like he’s talking me through a fall.

Heat floods through me. Every nerve feels exposed.

My thighs tremble around him. My stomach tightens. The pressure keeps climbing, stretching me to the edge of what I can bear.

“Bane…”

His name breaks apart in my mouth.

The cry almost tears out of me before I realize I’m coming.

The sound disappears between us as he kisses me through the aftershocks. My heel slips against the vanity, and somewhere nearby I think I hear glass rattle. The edges of my vision blur and swim.

For a couple of heartbeats, I stop being the Emma in the mirror, Emma from the tabloid photos, Emma who spends night after night waiting in empty hotel rooms.

I exist as sensation alone.

A pulse. A hunger. Pleasure running through every nerve.

He holds me through it, one hand cradling the back of my head and the solid weight of his body keeping me pinned exactly where I am. I shake helplessly against him, and he doesn’t let go.

Only when the rush begins to ease do I notice the strain in his expression.

His mouth crashes into mine again, harder this time, deeper, as though he’s trying to pull every last piece of me into himself.

He growls, soft and guttural, and yanks me toward him hard enough that I almost slide off the countertop.

My palms slap against the cold marble to catch myself. My knees press into his hips as he shoves his trousers down far enough to free himself.

He holds me there for a beat, chest rising and falling. Flushed, and desperately ready.

The sight of him nearly tears a sob out of me.

One hand settles at my hip as he uses the other to guide himself between my legs. The blunt head brushes against skin that’s already tender enough to make breathing difficult.

His gaze drags over me, taking everything in.

Then he pushes inside.

I clap a hand over my mouth before the scream can escape, but it breaks through anyway, muffled against my palm. Bane hisses through his teeth.

He leans over me, one hand braced against the mirror beside my head, his jaw locked tight.

Each breath leaves me in a gasp. Heat floods through my body, overwhelming me with pleasure and pain.

They keep folding into each other, impossible to separate. I’ve never felt this full, never felt my body stretch around another person this way.