Chapter 17
17
NICK
S he's still on her knees when I close the distance between us, her breath shallow, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of anticipation. The collar gleams against her throat, the ruby-red silk dress abandoned at her feet. The air between us crackles with restraint. Not hers. Mine.
I circle her slowly, fingers brushing the top of her head as I move behind her. She doesn’t follow me with her gaze. Good girl.
"Naked."
She rises gracefully to her feet and obeys without hesitation. What little she has left on slips from her body like she’s shedding expectation itself. When she is naked and waiting, I press my hand to her lower back.
"To the bed."
I don’t raise my voice. I never need to. My control is threaded into every syllable, a leash she’s learned to follow without ever feeling bound. That’s the paradox of us. She kneels, but never from weakness. She submits because she’s stronger than anyone who ever tried to control her. And I see her.
That’s the damn problem.
When she stretches across the bed, I follow. Leather cuffs secured to the headboard wait in silence. I attach one to each of her wrists, then to each of her ankles. She doesn’t flinch. A blindfold slips into my hand.
"Do you trust me?"
She nods, voice low. "Yes."
"Say it."
"I trust you, Nick."
I slide the blindfold over her eyes. Then I wait. I let her feel the silence. The anticipation. I know what it does to her, what it does to that mind of hers. She’s already cataloging every sound, every brush of air, every shift of weight in the room. Her body arches at the whisper-soft touch, breath hitching.
"Still?"
"Yes," she breathes.
My palm smooths over her ribs, down her stomach. Then nothing. I don’t touch her again for a full minute. Two. Maybe more. She whimpers. The sound is fragile, craving.
Then she speaks. "Nick… please."
"You want release?"
"Yes."
"Then listen."
I settle beside her, fingers tracing the line of her collarbone. Slow. Deliberate.
"I walked away because I had to. Cerberus recruited me. Fitzwallace understood that the threat from those who had held me wasn’t just to me alone, but to you as well. He knew that in order for both of us to survive, I needed to become someone else. I needed to forget the man who held your face in his hands and dreamed about a life with you."
She shudders. Her knees draw up instinctively, but the cuffs keep her open, stretched, vulnerable.
"Why?" she whispers.
I lean in, my voice a breath against her skin. "Because focusing on those who had all but destroyed me and having some kind of control was the only thing keeping me alive. If I had stayed with you, Cherise… I would have broken. And I couldn’t afford that."
My fingers trail down her hip, slipping between her legs.
"You never broke," she says.
I push two fingers inside her. Wet. Tight. Ready. She gasps, hips lifting.
"No," I growl. "But I never healed, either. I wasn’t ready to… not until you walked back into my life. And now you're mine."
I fuck her with my fingers in slow, unrelenting thrusts. Not fast enough to push her over, but deep enough to make her squirm.
"You won’t come until I say."
"Nick… please…"
I twist my fingers, angle them up.
"You want release? You beg. You give me the truth."
Her lips part. Her voice is barely a whisper. "I—I still love you. I never stopped. Even when I thought you were dead. Even when I hated you."
“Even as you married and built a life with Hector?” I ask, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“Especially then. I tried to bury you deep in my memories, but I held those memories dear and when they began to burn the brightest, they lit my way back to you.”
I groan, low and deep. When I pull my hand away, she cries out.
"Not yet."
I move down the bed and replace my fingers with my tongue. I lick her slowly, every stroke precise, a command.
Her hips buck.
"Still."
She moans, breath ragged.
"Please, Nick… please… I need?—"
"You need what?"
"You. Please, I need to come. I can’t… I can’t hold it."
I bite gently at her inner thigh. "You will."
Then I take her again with my mouth, one hand gripping her hip, the other covering her ribs to keep her still. I work her mercilessly until she’s thrashing, moaning, begging without words.
"Now," I command.
She breaks. It crashes through her like a storm. Her cry is muffled against her arm, body arching high. I don’t stop. I keep going until she’s sobbing, wrung out and trembling, and then I push her over again.
Only when she collapses fully do I unclip her wrists, pull the blindfold off, and cradle her against my chest.
She doesn’t speak at first. Just breathes. Shaky. Spent. Real. Her hand clutches my shirt.
"That," she whispers, "was not just control."
"No," I say. "It was a promise."
I brush her hair back, press a kiss to her forehead.
"There’s something you need to know… I never stopped thinking of you, either. I never let go of the dream that someday we would find our way back to each other."
She tenses slightly. Not fear. Instinct. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
"Logan got a hit on your old license."
She pulls back just enough to look at me. "My nursing license?"
I nod. “Interpol flagged it. Two days ago. Black file access. Not standard. Not even high-clearance. This was deep ops—off the books, eyes-only. A directive that doesn’t officially exist."
Her eyes widen. "What does that mean?"
"It means someone with serious access authorized a termination protocol."
"You mean…"
"Yes. It was a hit order, Cherise. Signed under a black directive."
“Does Interpol authorize executions?”
“Not so much authorize as obey orders to turn a blind eye.”
She goes still.
"But I’m not in Interpol. I never was."
"You were in their system. The moment you resurfaced, someone tagged you."
Her voice is quiet. "Hector."
"Maybe. Or someone who owes him. Either way, you’re not just a ghost from his past. You’re a threat."
She pulls the blanket tighter around herself, gaze hardening. "Then it’s time we start acting like it."
I wrap my arms around her again and whisper her name like a vow.
Because I know what comes next. We’re not just the hunters anymore. We’re among the hunted. And the kill order has already been signed.
* * *
I watch her sleep like a man marking coordinates—every breath she takes, every shift beneath the sheets, every vulnerable inch of skin that isn’t already mine. Her body’s wrecked from what I did to her, and she needed every second of it. So did I. Not just because I needed to take control, but because I needed to give her something real. Something that stripped both of us down to the bone-deep truth.
The room still smells like us. Sex. Sweat. Submission. Her knees are bruised, thighs trembling even in rest. But she didn’t break. She begged, yes. Whispered my name like prayer and plea. But she held.
And I finally let go.
I told her things I’ve never said out loud. About why I walked away ten years ago, why I vanished instead of risking her getting caught in the blast radius. I talked while she was blindfolded, while she was bound, while her body trembled with need and denial, held at the edge until she sobbed with it. I told her about control—how it’s the only thing that’s ever made the world make sense and how losing it with her is the one thing that’s never felt like failure.
She heard every word. And when I let her come—finally, completely—it wasn’t about power. It was about the truth. About letting her know, without question, that she’s not a means to an end. She’s the goddamn reason I’m still breathing.
I step away from the bed, drag on a pair of black pants, and head toward the far corner of the suite where the op terminal waits in low light. The secure line blinks. I already know who it is before I answer.
“Talk,” I say.
Logan’s voice comes in clipped. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Define problem.”
“Juliette Morin. Dead. One of Vallois’ security team found her in his private villa outside Cap d’Ail. She didn’t just die—she was made an example of.”
My pulse drops into a slow, lethal rhythm. “How?”
“Her neck snapped; her throat punctured with a diplomatic pin. Instant. Precise. Clean, except for the message.”
“Shit.”
“She was still wearing her dress from last night. No signs of a struggle, no defensive wounds. She let them in.”
“Anyone else on-site?”
“Only staff. All clean so far, but someone got to her. Someone close. She was silenced.”
I grind my jaw. “Which means Vallois is either cleaning house—or someone higher just took her off the board.”
“Exactly.”
“Pull all the footage. I want eyes on every approach vector around the villa. Private cameras. Traffic cams. Satellites. I want it burned to ash.”
“Already on it.”
I kill the line and stare at the screen for a long second. Juliette was many things—opportunistic, manipulative, cold—but she wasn’t reckless. If she got herself killed, it means someone just torched a loose end before it started unraveling. She was supposed to be the one pulling strings. Covering tracks. Managing logistics.
So why do I feel like she was just a pawn?
Cherise stirs behind me. I hear the rustle of sheets, the soft intake of breath. When I turn, she’s sitting up, the blanket falling low on her back, baring the scratches I left last night in a moment of possession I didn’t bother to temper.
She looks at me like she already knows something’s gone sideways. “What happened?”
I step closer, crouch beside the bed, and brush the hair from her face. “Juliette’s dead.”
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t flinch. “Vallois?”
“Maybe. Or someone he works for. Logan said she was found outside his villa. No signs of a fight. Executed and with a diplomatic seal pin stabbed into her neck.”
She exhales slowly, tension bleeding into resolve. “They’re cleaning house.”
“Yeah.”
She pulls the surrounding sheet, but it’s not about modesty—it’s armor. “She was high level. If they’re willing to take her out, we’re closer than we thought.”
“Maybe too close.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, let my hand slide across her back, fingers trailing over the bruises I put there. “We thought Vallois and Hector were running the show. But this... this feels bigger. More organized. Like they’re just fronts.”
“You think someone else is pulling the strings?”
I nod. “Juliette’s not the kind of target you kill unless you’re trying to silence more than gossip. This is a cover-up. Professional. They used her and threw her away the second she became a risk.”
She doesn’t blink. “So, we hit back. Expose the whole damn nest.”
There it is. That fire. That refusal to flinch when the darkness deepens. It’s why I brought her in. Why I didn’t bench her after Paris. She doesn’t break—she sharpens.
I slide my hand under her jaw and tilt her face up. “If we do this, there’s no going back. We won’t just be ghosting one man. We’ll be unraveling a network that’s been protected by diplomatic immunity, money, intelligence assets.”
“I don’t care.” Her voice doesn’t shake. “I’m done watching monsters pull strings from the dark. If I’m going down, I’m dragging them with me.”
My chest tightens. “It’s not just about risk. It’s about trust. Because the deeper we go, the fewer people we’ll be able to count on. Cerberus won’t be able to shield us forever. And once we cross this line…”
She places her hands in mine. “We’ve already crossed it, Nick.”
She’s right. We have. Every time she slipped into that collar. Every time she knelt when I asked and fought when I needed her to.
I lean in, press my lips to her forehead. “Then we burn it down together.”
She shakes her head, voice low. “They wanted me silent. That’s what this is about. They think I know too much. I’m not sure if I do or not, but Hector can’t control me anymore.”
“No,” I say, voice sharper than I intend. “It’s more than that. They want to erase you. Which means you were closer to something than even you realized.”
She blinks. “What?”
“You were his wife. You saw many things: names, invoices, shipments routed through shell companies. You don’t need to remember it all—just the fact that you had access is enough to get you flagged.”
She lets out a short, bitter laugh. “So, I was dangerous and didn’t even know it.”
“Which makes you even more dangerous now.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “Then let’s stop running. Let’s hit back before they try to finish the job.”
I stare at her for a long second. Then nod once. “We start with Vallois. We find out who gave the kill order, and we expose every name on the list.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “We go all in.”
A new message pings the ops line. I grab the encrypted tablet and unlock it.
Logan’s voice comes through, tight and grim. “We’ve got a clean shot from the villa’s external camera. Confirmed ID on the body. It’s Juliette. No mistake.”
“How fresh?”
“Less than three hours. The kill was precise. No forensic trace left behind. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”
I exhale through my nose. “Looks like the guest list just got shorter.”