Claimed for one last night

Chapter 1

Amelia POV

THE TENT IS suffocating, not because of the heat but because I'm acutely aware of every sound outside these canvas walls. His hand slides across my collarbone and my entire body goes rigid. Not from desire yet—from the sheer terror that someone will hear us. Thirty meters. That's the distance between our tent and theirs, and it might as well be paper thin given how sound carries across the campsite at night.

"Relax," he murmurs against my shoulder, and the command itself sends a flutter through my stomach that contradicts every rational thought screaming at me to stop. "They're asleep. Everyone's been asleep for hours."

But I know better. My mother doesn't sleep deeply. She never has. Dad's a heavy sleeper, sure, but my brother Brock has a way of appearing at the worst possible moments, and his presence in his tent just beyond ours feels like a living thing—a threat hovering just outside the realm of possibility.

"This is insane," I whisper, but I don't pull away. I never pull away. That's the problem. That's always been the problem.

Ethan's mouth finds the sensitive spot below my ear and my resistance crumbles like it always does. The boy I've known for two weeks—really known him, in every way that matters—has some kind of dark magic embedded in his touch. Two weeks of this. Two weeks of sneaking around, of moments stolen between activities, of secret conversations that feel like they belong to no world but ours. My parents think we're just getting to know each other. They have no idea that I'm already drowning.

"You want me to stop?" His voice carries that edge of challenge, like he already knows the answer. His free hand moves lower, across my ribs, and I feel the trap snapping shut around me.

"I want you to be quiet," I breathe, even as my hips shift toward him. Even as my body betrays every sensible bone in my skeleton.

He laughs—actually laughs—and the sound is low and dangerous and absolutely intoxicating. His fingers find the waistband of my shorts and pause there, waiting. Testing. Seeing if I'll stop him this time. We both know I won't.

"You're shaking," he observes, and it's not a question. His touch is methodical now, deliberate in a way that suggests he's memorizing every response. Like he's building a map of me. Like he plans to use this map later, somewhere else, in some future I can't quite visualize.

"Because you're insane," I counter, but I'm already lifting my hips to help him slide my shorts away. The night air hits my skin and for a moment—just a fraction of a second—reality crashes in. What am I doing? Who am I becoming? This isn't me. I'm the careful one. The girl who thinks before she acts. The one who's never done anything truly reckless in her life.

Then his mouth is on my neck again and the self-recrimination evaporates.

He's slower this time, not rushed like the first time we did this. That first time was frantic and desperate and over almost before it began, both of us practically vibrating with adrenaline and terror and something neither of us had a name for. This time feels different. This time feels like he's trying to prove something to me, or maybe to himself.

"Look at me," he commands, and his eyes are serious now. All the teasing has drained from his face, replaced by something that looks almost vulnerable. Almost like he's about to ask me something important and is terrified of the answer.

I should look away. I should do a lot of things I'm not doing.

"I'm seventeen," I whisper, and it's partly an explanation and partly a confession of guilt that's sitting heavy in my throat.

"I know," he says simply. "Does that bother you?"

The question is loaded. It's not asking if I'm uncomfortable with the age gap. It's asking if I'm about to disappear. If I'm going to wake up tomorrow and pretend this never happened. If I'm going to break his heart before he even realizes it's fully invested in someone else's hands.

"No," I lied. Or maybe it's not a lie. Maybe I'm telling the truth and just can't admit to myself that I'm already thinking about how to end this. How to let him down gently enough that he won't realize I'm doing it for his own good, and for mine.

His hands are more confident now, sliding down my ribs, across the plane of my stomach. Everything feels like it's happening in slow motion and double time simultaneously. My nerve endings are screaming. My brain is foggy with something that tastes like lust and smells like his cologne and the fabric softener on his t-shirt that's currently being discarded into the darkness.

"I've been thinking about you since the moment I met you," he says, and the confession hangs between us like a question mark. Like he's asking permission for this to mean something. Like he's asking me not to hurt him.

I know then, in that crystalline moment where clarity cuts through desire, that I'm going to lie to him. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually. When the time comes to let go—and it will come, because this is impossible, because this kind of intensity can't sustain itself across time and distance and the practical realities of two different futures—I'm going to tell him something that isn't true. I'm going to make it easier by making it seem like my choice was simple. Like I stopped loving him at some identifiable moment rather than admitting that I'm about to choose my life over him.

The thought is so sharp and so clear that I almost miss his next move entirely. But then he's shifting his weight and positioning himself and the past few moments of foreplay have led to this inevitable conclusion—the one we both knew was coming the second he crawled into my tent through the side opening that doesn't zip all the way.