Chapter 10
BEA
I look. I can’t help it. Can’t look away.
All of him. Unapologetic. Unhidden. Hard and ready and watching me watch him with that infuriating satisfaction in his eyes.
What am I doing?
He’s on me before the thought finishes.
His mouth crashes into mine, hungrier than before. His weight presses me into the mattress, solid and warm and inescapable. His hands find the zipper at the back of the red dress—the dress he chose, the dress he made me put on—and pull.
The fabric loosens and falls away from my shoulders. Cool air hits my skin.
“This is wrong,” I whisper against his mouth.
He pulls back. “Does it feel wrong?”
I can’t answer.
Because it doesn’t. It feels inevitable—like a bullet I’ve been dodging since the elevator. Since he trapped me there and called it a choice when it never really was one. Since I met his gaze and saw exactly how this would end for me.
He kisses me again, slower this time. His hands slide the dress down, easing the silk from my body inch by inch until it gathers at my waist… then my hips… and finally slips away completely.
I’m in my bra and underwear. Exposed and vulnerable.
His hand finds the clasp at my back.
“You’re my boss.” The words come out breathless. “You’re a criminal. This is—”
“This is you making a choice.” The clasp releases with a soft click. “Feel it. All of it.”
The bra falls away.
Instinct takes over. I move to cover myself—hands crossing over my chest in some last grasp at modesty, at control.
He catches my wrists. Pins them above my head with one hand.
“No hiding.” His eyes travel down my body. “Not from me. Not anymore.”
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it everywhere. But there’s something else underneath the fear. Something hot and reckless and completely unlike me.
He lets go of my wrists.
I don’t move them.
“Good girl.”
There it is again. Those two words.
His mouth finds my neck. Teeth grazing. Tongue soothing. Then he moves lower.
I thought he’d be fast. Rough. Take what he wanted and be done with it.
I was wrong.
He moves with intention. Every touch is a question my body answers before my brain catches up. His hands skim down my sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts, and I arch into him like I’m begging.
Maybe I am.
His mouth closes around my nipple. I gasp—sharp, involuntary—and my fingers dig into his shoulders. He doesn’t stop. His tongue circles, teeth tugging just hard enough to make me whimper.
“Raffaele—”
“Not yet.”
He moves to the other side. Takes his time there too. I’m squirming now, hips lifting off the mattress, searching for friction he won’t give me.
His mouth travels further. Across my ribs. Down my stomach. His fingers hook into my underwear and drag them down—his eyes never leaving my face.
I’m naked now. Bare beneath him. Nowhere to hide.
He settles between my legs, then looks up at me with those dark eyes.
“Say please.”
The audacity. The absolute fucking audacity.
I could give him what he wants. Let the word slip out, soft and needy, the way he clearly expects. Let him have this victory along with everything else he’s taken tonight.
But I can’t. I won’t. If I’m going to lose myself in this, I’m not going to make it easy for him.
“Go to hell.”
He laughs against my inner thigh. The vibration shoots straight to my core.
“Trust me, sweetheart. I will.”
Then his mouth is on me, and coherent thought becomes impossible.
His tongue finds exactly the right spot. Exactly the right rhythm. I’m gasping within seconds, fingers twisting into his hair, pulling him closer even as some part of me wants to push him away.
I don’t push him away.
I hold on. Let him take me apart. Let the pressure build until I’m shaking, until I’m right there, until—
He stops.
“Say please.”
Bastard.
“I hate you.”
“Say it anyway.”
“Please.” The word tears out of me. “Please, Raffaele—”
He rewards me immediately.
I shatter within seconds. The orgasm rips through me, and I hear myself cry out—his name, or something like it—my body arching off the bed, his hands holding my hips in place while he works me through it.
When I come back to myself, he’s watching me with that satisfaction in his eyes, like he just proved something.
I hate how much I don’t hate any of this.
I’m still trembling from the aftershocks when he flips me over.
No warning. No pause. One moment I’m on my back, boneless and spent, and the next I’m on my knees facing the window, his hand pressing between my shoulder blades, pushing me down until my cheek rests against the cool glass.
So much for gentle.
The city sprawls beneath us. A million lights. A million lives. People walking home, hailing cabs, living their ordinary existences with no idea what’s happening forty-five floors above them.
No idea that I’m pressed against the window of a penthouse, naked and willing, about to let a criminal fuck me senseless.
His hand slides up my spine before wrapping around my throat from behind.
Not squeezing. Just holding. A reminder of who’s in charge.
“Look at it.”
Then he’s pushing inside me.
One thrust. Deep. Filling me completely.
I cry out—the sound muffled against the glass—and my hands scrabble for purchase on the smooth surface. There’s nothing to hold onto. Nothing to ground me except his grip on my throat and the relentless pressure of him moving.
He sets a pace that’s nothing like before. No patience now. No teasing. Just raw, driving need.
“Everyone down there.” His voice is rough against my ear. “They have no fucking idea who really runs this city.”
He pulls out. Slams back in. I moan loud enough that I’d be embarrassed if I could think straight.
“Not Vincenzo. Not the Morenos. Not any of those assholes at the gala tonight.”
His fingers tighten on my throat. Not enough to cut off air—just enough to remind me that he could.
“Raffaele D’Amico.” He growls his own name like a threat. “And I’ll kill anyone who dares touch what’s mine.”
Mine.
The word makes me clench around him. Makes me push back, meeting his thrusts, chasing the pressure building low in my belly.
I’m not his.
But my body tells a different story. My body is arching, grinding, desperate for more of whatever he’s willing to give.
He moves harder. Faster. His free hand grips my hip, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises I’ll feel tomorrow.
I don’t care.
I want the bruises the proof that this happened. I want to press my fingers against them tomorrow and remember exactly how it felt to be—
Tomorrow.
A flash of clarity cuts through the haze. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and realize what I’ve done. Tomorrow I’ll have to look at him across a desk and pretend this didn’t happen. Tomorrow I’ll regret every sound I’m making, every way I’m responding, every inch of control I’m surrendering.
And yet, I don’t care.
I reach back, trying to touch him, guide him, have some say in what’s happening to my own body.
He catches my wrist. Pins it against the small of my back.
“No.”
One word. Absolute.
His other hand tightens on my throat, holding me in place while he sets a rhythm I have no control over. Deeper. Harder. Taking exactly what he wants, exactly how he wants it.
This is what he likes. Having me helpless. Having me take whatever he decides to give. My pleasure, my body, my responses—all of it choreographed by him.
And the worst part?
I’m dripping for it.
“Bea.”
He groans it against my neck. Raw and wrecked. Nothing like the controlled man in the expensive suits.
I did that. I made him sound like that.
The thought tips me over.
The orgasm tears through me—harder than the first, deeper, the kind that starts in my core and radiates outward until I’m shaking, clenching, crying out against the glass.
I feel him follow seconds later, his thrusts going erratic, his grip on my throat tightening as he spills inside me with a groan that vibrates through my entire body.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
His hand is still on my throat. His body still pressed against my back. The city still glitters beyond the window, indifferent to everything that just happened.
He releases my throat. Presses his lips to the curve of my neck—almost tender, completely at odds with what we just did. Then he pulls out slowly, and I feel the loss of him like a physical ache.
I lie there on the bed—exposed, with his release dripping down my thighs.
The city lights paint the ceiling in shades of silver and gold. I stare at them because I don’t know where else to look. Don’t know what happens now. Don’t know the protocol for this—for lying naked in your boss’s bed after he just fucked you against a window.
Is he done?
I feel the mattress shift.
He’s not done.
His hand wraps around my ankle, pulls me toward him across the sheets until I’m flat on my back and he’s settling between my thighs.
Missionary this time. Face to face. No hiding.
I can see him in the darkness. The sharp lines of his jaw. The hunger in his eyes—not sated, not even close. If anything, it’s sharper now. Like what we just did only whetted his appetite.
I turn my head to stare at the window instead. The skyline. Anywhere but his face.
His hand catches my chin. Forces me back.
“Look at me.”
I don’t want to. Looking at him makes this personal. Looking at him makes this something other than what I’m trying to tell myself it is.
But I look.
Dark eyes. Jaw tight. That hunger burning behind everything.
He pushes inside me again.
I gasp—still sensitive, almost too sensitive—but he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t slow down. Just starts moving with the same relentless focus he brings to everything else.
This is just a path through.
I hold onto that thought. Cling to it.
The sex is a tool. A strange way to navigate a strange job. That’s all this is. Transactional. A currency, like he said.
He thrusts deeper. My back arches off the mattress.
It doesn’t mean anything.
His eyes don’t leave my face. Watching every reaction. Every gasp. Every moment I try to look away and can’t.
It can’t mean anything.
He sent the other girls home. The ones who usually fill this space on his schedule. He’s been building this hunger all week—denying himself, controlling himself—and now I’m the one paying for it.
I broke his routine. Now I’m fixing it.
His pace quickens. I feel another orgasm building despite everything, my body responding to him whether I want it to or not.
It’s going to be a long night. One of him taking what he wants, and me giving it. Over and over until he’s satisfied, until he’s worked this hunger out of his system, until I’m too exhausted to think about what any of this means.
I close my eyes.
His hand tightens on my jaw.
“Eyes on me.”
I open them.
And I let him use me.