Chapter Sixteen
Gabriel
The Mandarin Oriental lobby always made me feel underdressed.
Above us, a fifteen-foot glass sculpture of ocean lilies hung weightless, casting fractal shadows across polished marble.
I could’ve admired it, but my focus was on the woman beside me, who refused, for the first time in twenty-four hours, to meet my eye.
I led her to the elevator and gestured her in.
“Here.” I held out her room keycard.
Her glance flicked to the gold-embossed sleeve and then to my hand. “You check in under Valor or under an alias?”
“Valor. I don’t believe in hiding.”
She snorted again, almost a laugh this time. “Says the guy who uses private browsing to Google his exes.”
That earned her a smirk. “You’re projecting.”
“I wish.” She palmed the card, stepped out at 31 with a stride that said “fuck you” in Morse code.
We found the suite, a corner double, panoramic harbor view. Extravagant, needed. She was dealing with the weight of the world, I wanted her to relax. I opened the door and followed her inside, preparing to warn her about decorum and tomorrow’s schedule.
And I froze.
Rose petals. Not sprinkled, not in some subtle “suggestion of romance” arrangement, but dumped like a delivery mishap all over the king-sized bed.
Champagne, chilling in a hammered bucket.
A plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries sweating under a silver cloche.
Candles, for fuck’s sake. Dozens of them.
And a discreetly folded card on the pillow: “Congratulations on Your New Life Together, Mr. her discipline, her refusal to give control to anything or anyone. It was, in fact, deeply fucking attractive.
The glass was sweating in my hand. I set it down and got up to change.
In the bathroom, my reflection looked like the opening credits of a legal drama.
I yanked off the tie and started on the buttons.
As I stripped, I could hear her through the wall, muted but unmistakable: the clack of keys, the scrape of luggage wheels, the scuff of heels.
She was pacing, organizing, prepping for battle.
I wanted her.
Not in the abstract, not in some convenient workplace-adjacent fantasy, but here, now, in this suite.
I imagined her on the bed, hair down, mouth pursed in challenge.
I’d wager every dollar in my portfolio that she was thinking the same thing, in some subterranean corner of her brain, even as she locked the door.
The last button came undone. I swapped out pants for fresh ones and ran a hand through my hair. It came away damp. The suit did nothing to hide my condition, but she was behind a barricade, and I’d be damned if I was the one to knock first.
Back in the bedroom, I stood at the window and looked down at the city. Billions in transactions, all flowing through those little points of light. Money was easy. People were not. And Eliza Reeves was a person I had not, despite all my best algorithms, figured out.
I poured another half glass of champagne.
Considered leaving it outside her door with a snarky note, thought better of it.
Instead, I sank into the armchair and picked up my phone, scrolling absently through the day’s news.
No amount of market chaos could distract from the locked door twenty feet away.
I liked the feeling. The friction. The not-quite. It was better than any after-hours tryst, more addictive than a bull run. She’d left me hanging, and the only move I could make now was to wait her out.
The clock ticked past midnight. The city outside hummed on, indifferent to my problems.
She didn’t come out.
Then I realized something.
I made my way to her door.
“You haven’t eaten,” I said.
After a moment, the door opened, and her eyes locked on mine. “Neither have you.”
“You’re running on fumes.”
“I’m running on competence, which is more than I can say for half your acquisitions team.” Her eyes were glassy. Not with exhaustion, but something worse, hurt.
“Was it you?” she asked, voice low enough that the air barely carried it.
The question hit harder than it should have. I’d spent the last decade engineering every variable, every potential outcome.
“You think I want this to blow up?” I said, softer than I intended.
She folded her arms across her chest. The dress she wore was professional but designed to make men underestimate her. It had the opposite effect on me; I found myself focusing on the spot where her pulse hammered under the skin.
“I think you want to control every situation,” she said, “and if the only way to do that is to set it on fire, you don’t hesitate.”
The last word almost broke. There was a raggedness to it, a vulnerability she couldn’t hide even after years of practice. She turned away, facing the blackout curtains, and for a moment I saw her back contract with a silent, stifled sob.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Eliza-”
She spun on me, furious and wild-eyed, and before I could speak she yanked me in by the collar. The first kiss was teeth and suppressed rage, the kind of contact that left both of us breathless and off-balance.
I felt her nails rake down my chest, shredding the logic and restraint I’d spent all day assembling. I grabbed her wrist, pinning it above her head in the door frame, but she twisted free and shoved me back.
“You think you can just-” she started, but I cut her off with another kiss, deeper this time, searching for the edges of her anger.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, half-laughing at the absurdity of it.
“Too late,” she said, and her hands were at my belt, unfastening, yanking my pants down in one violent motion as we moved toward the king-sized bed.
I should have stopped her. I should have calculated the odds, run the scenario, chosen the future in which we didn’t end up tangled on the hotel’s carpet, clawing at each other like animals.
But when she dropped to her knees and took me into her mouth, all I could do was hold onto the desk and pray the blackout curtains were as good as advertised.
She was angry, reckless, but there was desperation in the way she moved, like she needed to prove something to herself, or maybe just drown out the day with a better kind of pain.
She sucked hard, hollowing her cheeks, and I had to grip the edge of the desk to keep from fucking her face outright.
I waited until she looked up at me, eyes red, a tear escaping despite her best effort.
I knelt, pulled her up, and kissed her hard, not caring that she’d just had me in her mouth.
“The bed,” I said, not quite a question.
She nodded, breathless, and in seconds I had her dress yanked up to her hips - no panties again, this woman was going to wreck my life. I ran my fingers over her, feeling how wet she was, how ready, how angry.
“You want this?” I asked, letting the tip of my cock rest against her entrance.
“I need it,” she said, voice almost pleading.
I drove into her, hard, and she bit down on my shoulder to keep from screaming. I’d never wanted to mark someone so badly.
Everything about us was rough, the hands, the breathing, the way we used each other, but there was a frantic tenderness in the way she clung to me.
The thrusts were unrestrained, all rage and need, but then her legs locked around my hips, ankles crossed, and she dug her heels into my ass, commanding me to stay.
I gave in. I slowed, not out of mercy or self-control, but because I needed every second to memorize the way she felt.
The heat, the impossible pressure, the way her body tried to keep me inside her even as she shuddered and gasped.
Every time I pulled back, she clamped down, refusing to let go.
Her hands were in my hair, on my jaw, clawing at my back, as if she wanted to tear me apart and hold me together at the same time.
She was wild, purposeful. I’d always imagined her as clinical, controlled, the world’s youngest surgeon with a mind like a scalpel.
But this was different; she was as unhinged as I was and twice as hungry.
She dragged her tongue up my throat and bit my jaw.
I caught her wrist midair when she tried to reach for me, pinning her arm over her head.
She arched into me. I kissed her, really kissed her, deep and messy, lip bruising, because I needed her to taste how far gone I was.
She responded by melting, though her hips still moved with me.
We found a rhythm, violent and perfect, and the room vanished.
There was only the way her body fit mine, the way her nails raked my shoulder blades, the guttural noises she made.
She was shaking, hips lifting to meet every thrust. Her breath hitched, then caught, and she let out a high, half-choked sound that vibrated through my chest.
She tried to speak, but all that came out was my name. I bit her neck, savoring the way she writhed beneath me.
She started to unravel, her whole body seizing tight, and I felt her nails dig in so deep I knew she’d leave marks. I wanted her to. I wanted proof tomorrow that this happened. That I didn’t imagine it. That she let me in, even just for one more night.
She came with a ferocity that stunned me, her back arched, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wild and wet. It wasn’t pretty or polite. It was a breakdown, a giving up. I lost it with her, let go of every edge of control I’d held for years, and it was chaos, blinding and absolute.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
I kissed her neck, tasted sweat and salt and her perfume.
I shifted my angle and felt her whole-body arch against mine as the ripples of her had my body going wild, her nails relaxing from my back.
I was right behind her, letting go in a way I never did, because for once I wanted the mess. I wanted her.
I rolled her over and we collapsed, tangled, her head on my chest, both of us panting.
I stroked her hair, smoothed it back from her face. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer, just curled tighter against me. For a few minutes, we just breathed.
Eventually, she shifted, disentangling herself from my arms. She fixed her hair in the mirror, expression gone flat and professional, and adjusted her dress with military precision.
“I should go,” she said.
“Eliza-”
“Don’t,” she said, not unkindly. “Let’s just… get through tomorrow.”
She left without looking back.
I spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, replaying every second in reverse. The violence of it, the need. The way she’d looked at me when she came, like maybe, for half a second, she’d let me in.
My phone buzzed, I expected another panicked update from the Singapore team, or a bland status report from one of the fixers. Instead, it was a photo, taken from our office, showing the two of us together on her desk. Below it, a single line of text:
You’re not as subtle as you think, Valor.
My heart stopped, then hammered harder. Someone knew.
Not just about the logs, or the pending disaster in my pipeline. Someone knew about her.
I scrolled back through the photo, zooming in until the pixels blurred. It was me, pinning her to her desk, obviously. I’d built my life on reading between the lines. This was a threat.
I thought of Eliza, alone in her room, the locked door between us. I wanted to tell her, warn her, but I knew she’d never forgive me for implying she couldn’t take care of herself.
I closed my eyes and listened for footsteps in the hall, expecting trouble from any direction. But the hotel was silent, and for the first time since college, I felt something very much like fear.
Not for myself. For her.
It was a strange thing, to realize you’d failed to protect someone you’d promised yourself not to hurt.
And that it might be too late.