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You find him in the motor pool after midnight, sleeves shoved to his elbows, jaw lit by the piss-yellow security lights. He’s elbow deep in a Humvee’s open bay, grease on his knuckles, the kind of sweat that only comes from making a problem submit.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” he says without looking, that lazy Texas drawl dipped in gasoline. “Or did you come down here to nag me about paperwork again?”
“I came to tell you you’re an asshole,” you snap. “And your little public comment in the briefing? Unnecessary.”
He straightens. Wipes his hands on a rag. Smiles in that knife bright way that says he enjoys being the problem. “Aw, honey. It wasn’t unnecessary. I was right. You just freeze when someone barks loud enough. Cute as hell, though.”
“You humiliated me.”
“You needed it.” He tosses the rag aside and steps closer, boots ringing on concrete. His eyes dip to your mouth, your throat, back up. “And if you didn’t want the attention, you shouldn’t make those little sounds when you’re mad. Gets a man thinkin’ things.”
Your teeth click together. Fury spikes hot in your chest. “You’re insufferable.”
“Am I?” His mouth quirks.
“You humiliated me in front of everyone,” you snap. “For what? A laugh? To prove a point?”
He tilts his head, calm, infuriating. “Maybe I just like watchin’ you get riled up. Pretty when you’re angry.”
You take a step forward before you can stop yourself, chin lifted. “You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re wound tight as a tripwire,” Graves says, amused, eyes glinting. “And I think you don’t hate it as much as you pretend.”
You bark a bitter laugh, more teeth than humor. “You’re delusional.”
He just grins wider, easy and cocky, like your anger feeds him. “Maybe. Or maybe you like someone finally callin’ your bluff, princess.”
You shoulder past him, harder than you need to, just to feel him give. He doesn’t. He shifts, lets the shove roll off him like surf off rock, and murmurs, “There she is.”
“Don’t you dare- ” you start, but he steps into your space, and your back hits cold steel.
“Careful,” Graves says, soft as gun oil. “You’re lookin’ for a fight you can’t win.”
“I’m looking for an apology,” you spit. “Or are you incapable?”
He laughs under his breath. “Sure I am.” He braces an arm beside your head on the hood, leans in like a secret. “But you don’t want sorry. You want satisfaction.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“And you’re shaking.”
You push him first- palms to his chest, teeth bared. He catches your wrists, slams them to metal above your head, pinning you with the lazy strength of a man who never doubts he’ll win. You buck; he cages you closer. Your noses nearly bump. His eyes go bright and mean.
You swallow rage like whiskey. “I hate you.”
His mouth curves. “Good. Hate me with your legs open.”
You lunge to bite him. He meets you; mouths colliding, teeth clacking, a kiss like a fistfight. He tastes like heat and smugness and always the last fucking word. His thigh shoves between yours, drags up. You gasp and he eats the sound.
“Hands stay,” he orders against your lips, releasing your wrists slowly. You keep them where he put them- defiant, obedient, both. He palms your jaw, slides down, settles just beneath the hinge.
He tips your chin high with the heel of his hand, holds, doesn’t squeeze. “Tell me what you want, angry girl.”
“I want you to shut up.”
“Consider it service to the community.”
He goes for your belt, effortless, practiced, and your pants drop. He drags you to the edge of the bumper, one big hand on your hip, the other still warm at your throat, thumb stroking idly like he’s taming a colt. The cold air hits you; the heat of him chases it.
“Messy already,” he says, sliding his fingers through your slick. You bite a sound back. He smirks. “There’s my apology.”
“Go to hell.”
“Ladies first.”
A fingers drive in, obscene, knuckle-deep, finding you like he’s mapped you already. He curls just enough to make your knees threaten to buckle. You cling to the hood, glare burning, breath ragged.
He watches your face while he works you, interested more in your tells than his own impatience.
“This what you came down here for?” he goads. “Wanted Daddy to fix you?”
“Fuck you,” you grind out, and then gasp when he pushes another finger in, palm grinding your clit on the heel of his hand.
“Sweetheart, you are.”
He works you open with slow, devastating precision, every curl calibrated, every drag of his fingers timed to your breath. Your hips try to twist and he pins them. Your mouth opens, his hand at your throat reminds you who’s writing the rhythm.
“You get bratty when you’re scared,” he says conversationally, like he’s discussing the weather. “And you picked me for this ‘cause you know I won’t flinch.” His thumb strokes idly at your pulse.
The first time he takes your breath, it’s gentle. His palm firms, tilting your chin higher. The pressure is steady, his other hand never stopping, fucking you on two fingers. The world narrows to pulse and heat and the bright edge of less air, more him. He releases the pressure before your panic even thinks about waking, and your inhale is a shuddering sob that spills into a moan.
“Atta girl. That sweet little sound.” He kisses the hinge of your jaw.
The second time is sharper. He tightens while he drags those fingers just so, and your body goes urgent, needy, right up to that flashing brink… and then he lets you breathe. You break around his hand, noisy and ruined, clutching at metal while your orgasm saws you open.
He doesn’t stop.
“G-Graves- ” You sob, hips wriggling and his fingers tighten around your throat again, cutting off any further protest.
“Shh, pretty girl. One more,” he says, almost sweetly and fucks his fingers into your cunt until your kicking the bumper, pushing away from his hand with your heels, hips bucking. Your vision fuzzes at the edges and just when you lift your hand to tap, he releases your neck, flooding your lungs with oxygen and your body with an orgasm that has your back bowing off the hood, moans echoing the motor pool.
He withdraws, slick shining on his knuckles, and you gasp- half-curse, half-loss.
He turns you, presses you to the Humvee’s hot fender, your stomach hitting metal, breath jolting out of you. His body lines up at your back- hard, unignorable mass. That hand returns to your jaw, slides down, rests over your throat.
He crowds you down onto the bumper, kicks your ankles apart. Metal bites your thighs. He frees himself with a clink of metal; the blunt heat of his cock nudges your entrance.
“That’s it.” He rasps in your ear, cooing. “Gonna take it?” he asks, voice rougher now. “Gonna let the man who embarrassed you fuck you stupid so you forget your own name?”
Your mouth opens- another barb loading.
“Breathe,” he says, and pushes. Slow. Deliberate. Deep. The blunt head of his cock slides against you, thick, heavy, smearing you open. He thrusts in slow enough to be cruel and deep enough to yank a strangled sound from your lungs.
Air deserts you. Your glare shatters. He carves a place for himself in you and stays, palm steady at your throat, and groans in your ear, “That’s my girl.”
You choke, nails squealing on paint.
“Shh,” he coos, mocking and fond. “I’m here.”
You feel every inch as he bottoms out. He stays, buried to the root, one hand braced on the hood beside yours, the other returning to your throat like it belongs there. Your breath stutters. Your cunt flutters helplessly around him.
“Pretty.” He hums, thumbing at the drool gathering on your lips.
Then he fucks you like a confession. Hips snapping, rhythm ruthless, each thrust a punctuation to the filth he pours into your ear. “Look at you. Thought you hated me. Turns out you just needed a man who knows how to handle you.” His fingers flex at your throat. “Breathe when I give it back, take me when I take it. That’s the deal.”
You try to snipe back, some reflexive bite, but he tightens just a fraction and steals the comeback right out of your mouth. The spark in your brain turns to a bright hum- need and trust and greedy dark. He releases; you drag in a ragged breath and keen.
“Yeah. There she is. Greedy little oxygen thief.” He shifts his stance and finds a new angle- the one that leaves you scraping at the hood, legs useless. Hips snapping, dragging you onto him, using your body to prove every ugly thing you accused him of and making it feel righteous. You hiss, curse, buck, and he loves it. He gives you no space to think, only to feel- hard, fast, relentless.
“You like being good for me, don’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“Say it prettier.” He croons, filthy and fond.
“Fuck! Fuck you- hah- Jesus- Please, Graves-! Don’t stop! Oh god- Whatever you do- please- don’t stop!”
He groans like you reached inside him. “Knew you had manners somewhere.”
His hand firms, pressure blooming under your jaw- there you are. The world narrows to pulse and pound, to the exacting on/off of less and then more. He releases before panic can show its teeth; your inhale rips out of you, breaking on a moan you can’t swallow.
You’d tell him to choke- on pride, on you- but you can’t form it. He cycles you again- press, edge, mercy- and your body surges toward it like a starving thing. You hate the whimper that slips free. He chases it with a rough kiss.
This time when he covers your mouth with his palm as his hand holds your throat, your body lights up like a switchboard. You chase the brink like it’s oxygen itself. He modulates pressure with obscene competence- on, off, edge, mercy- until tears wet your lashes and your cunt throbs mean around him.
He adjusts, changes angle, finds the one that turns your spine to sparking wire. The hood bites your palms. Your thighs quake. The hand at your throat tightens a hair- enough to steal the word hate and leave only need. The release hits like a trap snapping shut.
“Gr-Graves- ” you gasp, and then the sound becomes nothing human at all.
“Come for me,” he orders, and tightens just as he buries himself deep.
You shatter. Noise spills out of your nose and his palm into the humid air as your orgasm rips through you, violent and helpless. He releases your mouth, eases your throat, and the rush of air is almost as erotic as the pulse milking him. He chokes, swears, holds you flush and gives it to you, spilling thick and hot inside, a low groan sawn from his chest.
For a long beat, the only sound is the tick of cooling metal and the ragged dovetail of your breaths.
He stays inside. His hand slides from your throat to your jaw, thumb stroking, touch suddenly gentle, like he’s smoothing ruffled feathers he riled on purpose. “You good?”
You can’t help the laugh that wobbles out of you. “Holy shit. Yeah.”
He huffs a satisfied sound, kisses your temple like that’s something he does. Carefully, he eases out, catches you when your knees threaten to quit, and turns you to sit on the bumper. He shrugs out of his jacket and tucks it around your shoulders like the bullying bastard never existed.
“Water,” he says, already moving. He brings a bottle, presses it to your mouth. You drink. He watches your throat work, pleased. “You did good.”
You let your eyes open. Meet his. “You talk too much,” you say hoarsely, and then, because you can’t help it, “smug bastard.”
He grins, teeth and victory. “Earned.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
He tips your chin up with a knuckle. “You love it.”
You do. God help you.
Graves wipes his hand with a shop rag, then, more carefully, wipes you. He doesn’t make it sweet. Doesn’t make it tender. Makes it precise. Like maintenance on a weapon he intends to use again.
“Next time,” he murmurs, eyes cutting up to hold yours, “you come to me before you decide I’m an asshole in public.”
“Next time,” you counter, breath finally steady, “you ask before you put your hand on my throat in front of a room full of operators.”
His grin is sharp enough to bleed on. “Princess, this was me asking.”
You roll your eyes, but your pulse gives you away. He hears it, of course he does. The bastard always did have an ear for your tells.
“Text me when you want mean,” he says, stepping back, putting the engine bay between you like that can hide the heat. “Or when you want nice.”
“Nice?” you echo, derisive.
He shrugs. “I got range.”
You hop off the bumper, legs still loose, jacket slipping. “What if I want both?”
Graves’s gaze drags over you, slow as a palm. “Lucky you, darlin’,” he says, voice turning that dark, dangerous honey that started all this. “I got lungs full of air and all night to share it.”
You hate him a little.
Unfortunately, you also want him a lot.