Chapter 6
Caden
We ride up in the silence that's been building since the car. I stand beside her and watch the floor numbers climb and feel her awareness of me the way I've been feeling it all night.
I set the alarm. Check the study sensor out of habit — green, no movement — and turn around.
She's standing in the middle of the living room still in the dress. The full length of her back exposed to the light, her wrap dropped over the chair arm. Arms crossed, looking at me with an expression I haven't seen on her face before. Desire.
"I know you want me," she says, as if speaking to herself as much as me.
"I've wanted you," I say, "since the moment I met you.”
I cross the room.
I stop close enough that I can smell her — the perfume she's worn all night and underneath it her skin, warm from the gala, from the car, from whatever's been running through her while she stood in that museum with her back bare and her composure intact and my hands two inches away.
I stop close enough that she has to tilt her head back to hold my gaze and she does it without stepping away, chin up.
I put my hand on her jaw. Slow. I bring her mouth to mine.
She kisses me back without reservation. Her hands come up to my chest and grip and I feel her fingers curl into the lapels of my jacket and I walk her backward until her shoulders meet the wall and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes through me like a current, low and wanting, and I pull back just enough to look at her.
Her lipstick is gone. Her eyes are dark. The composure is gone and what's underneath it is exactly what I knew was there — fury and want and the particular expression of a woman who has finally stopped reasoning with herself. This woman, finally free from the shadow of her loveless marriage.
I reach past her and find the back of the dress. One clasp, then the second. The silk goes slack and she catches it at her chest with one arm, reflexively, and I take hold of her wrist and move it aside.
She lets me.
Vivi attacks my clothes with greedy hands—jacket shoved off, shirt ripped from my waistband, palms sliding over my chest like she’s memorizing every ridge and muscle.
When her fingers find my skin she makes this needy little sound that goes straight to my cock.
I let her explore, watching the hunger flicker across her face, until I can’t wait anymore.
I scoop her up, her legs wrapping around my waist, and carry her to the bedroom. The second her back hits the mattress she reaches for the headboard like I told her to. Good girl.
I start slow and cruel, tasting every secret place she’s kept hidden.
The frantic pulse in her wrist. The sensitive spot just beneath her ear.
Her tight nipples, sucked deep into my mouth until she’s whimpering.
Down her stomach, biting gently at her hipbones.
When I settle between her spread thighs, she tries to tug me up.
I don’t move.
Instead I spread her open with my thumbs and drag my tongue through her soaked folds in one long, filthy lick.
She’s dripping, sweet and musky, and I groan against her cunt like a starving man.
I lick and suck and tease her swollen clit until her hips are jerking, then fuck her with my tongue while my thumb circles that sensitive bundle of nerves.
She’s shaking, thighs trying to clamp around my head.
"Caden—fuck—please."
I slide two thick fingers inside her, curling them against that spot that makes her back bow off the bed, and latch my mouth around her clit, sucking hard.
She comes with a broken cry, pussy gushing on my tongue, thighs trembling violently.
I don’t stop. I keep licking her through it until she’s whimpering and oversensitive, then I finally crawl up her body.
Her eyes are wild, cheeks flushed, lips parted.
"Look at me," I command, gripping her jaw.
She does. And I slide my fingers—still slick with her cum—into her mouth so she can taste herself. Her tongue curls around them obediently and my cock twitches against her thigh.
I line myself up and push inside her in one slow, relentless thrust.
She goes rigid, a sharp gasp catching in her throat as her pussy stretches around my cock. She’s impossibly tight, hot, and so fucking wet I have to clench my jaw to keep from losing it immediately. I stay buried to the hilt, letting her adjust, feeling her walls flutter and clench around me.
Then she rolls her hips, greedy and demanding.
I pin her down with a hand on her hip. "Not yet."
I fuck her exactly how I want, with deep, lazy strokes that drag against every sensitive inch inside her.
I watch her face the entire time: the way her mouth falls open, the way her tits bounce with every thrust, the desperate little sounds she makes when I grind against her clit.
She scratches down my back, nails digging in hard enough to sting, and I growl in approval.
I pick up the pace, slamming into her harder, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room. When she starts to come again I don’t let her hide it. I tilt her face toward me and hold her gaze while her pussy spasms and milks my cock like a vice.
"Fuck, Vivi—good girl. Let me feel it."
She shatters, crying out my name, body seizing beneath me. The feeling of her coming around my cock rips my own orgasm out of me. I bury myself as deep as I can go and come hard, pulsing inside her, groaning her name into her neck while I fill her up.
We stay locked together, panting, sweat-slick. I stay inside her even as I soften, not ready to lose the connection.
After a minute I feel her tremble. When I pull back, her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.
"Hey," I murmur, brushing my thumb across her cheek. "I’ve got you."
She looks at me like I’m something sacred and dangerous all at once—completely stripped, completely mine.
"I'm not sad," she says quickly. "I'm not — it isn't—"
"I know," I say.
I roll to my back and bring her with me, her head on my chest, her hand flat over my heart. She settles and I feel her breathe.
I've kept a clean record for seventeen years. No dependencies. Nothing that could be used as leverage, nothing I'd compromise the job to protect. I learned that lesson once and I learned it permanently.
She's a mob widow who reads a room the way a trained eye does and spotted the Morozov watcher before I pointed him out. She doesn't need protecting the way people need protecting. I know this.
I've been careful for seventeen years and it hasn't mattered at all because she was in a file on my desk six days ago and now she's here, and I've known since the conference room that I was already too far in to find the exit. I just hadn't wanted to look at it until now.
She's asleep before I finish the thought. I know the moment — her breath changes, the small tension that's always in her even at rest smooths out, and she goes soft and warm against my side.
She's mine.
The only thing that's changed is that now she knows it too.
I pull her closer. She makes a small sound and doesn't wake.