Chapter 10
Makari
The storm breaks open around us, and a roar of rain slams against the roof, but all I hear is her breathing.
Roxy stands a few steps away from me with her back pressed to the wall like she’s bracing for impact or trying to disappear into the timber. Her hair is damp, clinging to her throat. Her chest rises and falls in angry, uneven pulls.
I saw it hit her.
The recognition.
The memory.
Me.
Her lips part, and something inside me snaps painfully, like a bone breaking clean.
I take a step forward. She takes a step back; instinctive and sharp. Her shoulders hit the wall with a soft thud, and she stares at me like she’s looking at a ghost, or maybe the monster behind the man.
My voice comes out low. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was you.”
“You didn’t orchestrate this?” she asks, voice high. “You didn’t find out who I was, and—”
I shake my head. “How could I have? Don’t you think I would’ve found you sooner, hunted you down, so you’d stop haunting me?”
Her mouth snaps shut. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. I see it when her gaze drags down my chest, then jerks away. I see it when her hand trembles and then clenches into a fist. It’s like she’s fighting her own body.
I should stop. I know that. But there’s a current rushing through me that hasn’t stopped once in six years.
I’ve thought of her ever since that night in the vault.
The white satin bunched around her thick thighs.
The way I lost myself in her, and found myself all over again when she wrapped her body around me.
“I didn’t know,” I say again, voice rougher than I intend.
She lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh formed from disbelief. “And you didn’t remember?”
I drag a hand through my hair, water still dripping from the ends. “I remember pieces.”
“Pieces,” she repeats, bitter. “Would you have actually looked for me, or—?” She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I can hear the hurt in her voice. It’s like a slap in the face—the thought that she might have wanted me to find her.
But something deep inside me, some thorn, stops me from telling her I did look. That I hoped…
I move closer to her. She stiffens but doesn’t run—not yet. Her scent curls around me, warm, spiced. Her memory uncoils in my mind, sudden and visceral: her body under mine, her nails in my shoulders, the way she whispered please before I fucked her.
I inhale sharply. She notices. Her eyes flick to my mouth.
A mistake.
The last string of restraint frays.
“Roxanne.”
Her name tastes like sin in my mouth. I want to chant it as I fuck her again, over and over, making her mine. The want, the need to possess her rises in me like a wave.
She spins toward the door, but I catch her wrist—not hard, just enough. She freezes, breathing fast.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Makari, don’t.”
“Why?” I step into her space. Her back hits the wall again. The heat between us spikes into something savage.
She looks up at me, her eyes bright with fear, anger, or want. Maybe all three. Her voice comes out ragged. “Because this is a bad idea.”
“Most good things are.”
Her breath stutters, and I see the exact moment her defenses falter. Her gaze eases to my throat, then lower. My body responds instantly, violently, recognizing her before my mind can catch up.
God, I’m already undone. Hard and throbbing for her. One look at her and I’m back in that vault, pulling her against me in the darkness, needing her like oxygen. The only thing that could cut through the haze of the drugs and alcohol.
Seven years and nothing—no drink, no woman, no vice—has ever hit me like she does right now.
“Roxy…” I brace one hand against the wall beside her head, caging her in. “If you don’t want this,” I murmur, “you better run. My little hare.”
Her breath catches. A single drop of rain slides down her cheek and lands on her chest. Unable to stop myself, I dip down and lick it off, dragging my tongue up to her pounding pulse. She doesn’t move.
I lower my voice to a growl. “I can’t promise I won’t catch you.”
She doesn’t run.
She grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me to her, and my mouth crashes onto hers. The kiss detonates between us, something more desperate about it now that we recognize one another.
Seven years of denial, half-memories and sleepless nights.
Of wondering why she haunted me for so long when I didn’t even know what her face looked like.
It all explodes in one violent collision of lips, breath, heat.
Her hands drag through my hair. Mine slide down to her waist, her hips, her curves—the ones I remembered without remembering, the ones I dreamed about without knowing why.
This is why she’s been driving me crazy.
I lift her. Her legs tighten around me on instinct, and she gasps into my mouth, the sound nearly buckling my knees. When we reach the wall again, I hold her there with my body, my hands, devouring every inch of her I can reach.
She pulls at my shirt. I push her jacket off her shoulders. She’s warm beneath the damp fabric, soft, alive.
“Mak,” she whispers, and my vision goes red around the edges.
I kiss her again, harder, letting years of hunger pour out uncontrolled.
There is no logic left. No storm. Just her, the heat pulsing from between her legs against my aching dick, her nails digging into the back of my neck as she sucks my bottom lip between hers. I groan into her mouth, thrusting my hips once, hard.
My hands slide under her shirt, and her breath catches. She meets me with equal force, matching pressure for pressure, want for want. Her fingers travel down my chest, yank up my shirt and make me shiver as they dig between my abs and my belt.
It’s reckless, dangerous, and the most alive I’ve felt in years.
Her lips find my jaw, my throat, that pulse point that’s never made me flinch for anyone. I shudder. She notices.
“Makari…”
She says it like a plea, a curse, a memory. I answer with my mouth at her neck, with my hands anchoring her hips as her body arches into mine. Then, I can’t hold back anymore.
Tearing myself away, I set her feet firmly on the ground.
With both hands I rip the front of her pants—the button flying off into the room, the zipper making a horrible tearing noise—and yank them down to her ankles.
Roxanne steps out, her hands on my shoulders, but before I stand again my fingers dig into her hips and I bury my face in her clothed pussy, inhaling.
She smells divine. She clings to me like she’s falling, and I’m the closest solid thing she can find. Her thighs part, and I know she’s remembering how I ate her out in the bank vault like it was my last meal. How I made her come until she trembled, before I fucked her.
I need her.
Standing again, I press my forehead to hers, breathing hard. “Tell me to stop.”
She doesn’t. Instead, she whispers, “Don’t.”
And that’s all it takes.
I carry her to the table—rough wood, steady legs—and set her down, my mouth never leaving hers for more than a heartbeat. Her hands pull me closer, and the last pieces of restraint vanish. I pull her panties down her voluptuous legs, and I kick off my trousers, cock bobbing against her heat.
In a haze of ecstasy, I plunge into her. The past and present merge, her pussy stretching as she moans under me, nails raking through my hair.
I’m not going to last long. I’ve been starving for years, and never realized until this very moment. Until seeing her.
As I pump into her, the table scraps across the floor with each thrust, and my mind spirals with the truth: nothing has been as good as this.
Nothing ever will be. No matter how many men I kill, no matter how much money I make, I would give it all away to be buried deep inside Roxanne Adler with her moaning my name.
I hold her face in my hands when she pulls me down into another kiss, open and desperate, and for the first time in a decade, I feel something—not escape, not distraction, but want. It’s real, and it consumes me, creating a fire in my gut as I plunge my tongue between her lips and taste her.
She’s everywhere—her voice in my ear, her body tightening against mine, her breath turning into soft, helpless sounds that make my grip on sanity snap.
With every thrust, that flimsy blouse that has been distracting men all day slips a little lower, revealing more of her supple breasts.
I press my mouth there, bite the skin and leave red marks so they’ll all know she’s mine.
I lose myself—completely, willingly—in the woman I had once and never forgot.
And when she breaks under me, when her fingers dig into my hair and she gasps my name again, I follow her over the edge with a force that leaves me shaking.
For a long moment, the only sounds are the storm outside and the ragged breathing between us.
I rest my forehead against hers. My whole body feels raw, scraped open, every nerve exposed.
I can feel her heart pounding against my chest like it did all those years ago—the little hare I’d caught in my trap.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Had I dreamed of finding her again? Yes; but it seemed an impossibility. And not like this, never like this. Not in a goddamn abandoned cabin in the woods during a lightning storm.
Not with the woman I’ve employed to hide all my secrets, who seems to loathe me one moment and stalk me the next.
I pull back slowly, brushing my thumb along her cheek without thinking. Her eyes close, just for a second—and something inside me tightens painfully.
Then she inhales, sharp and steadying, and the moment shatters.
She slides off the table, straightens her shirt, smooths her hair. In moments she’s decent again, though the cut of the blouse still tugs at my attention; makes my spent dick twitch in interest.
But she doesn’t meet my eyes. Not once.
The storm outside has passed, leaving the air bright and sharp. I feel exposed suddenly, not just physically, but cracked open like a stone that was meant to stay buried for centuries. She grabs her coat without looking at me.
“We should get back,” she says, voice cool, professional, infuriatingly composed.
I stand there, shirt undone, breathing hard, watching her rebuild her walls brick by brick.
“Roxy.”
She pauses at the door, but still doesn’t turn around.
“We’re going back,” she says quietly, “to what we were. Boss and employee.”
A muscle in my jaw twitches. “Is that what you want?”
“It’s what makes sense.”
She opens the door, and a damp breeze rushes in, sending goosebumps up my forearms.
I’ve gutted men for less than what I feel right now—this hollow, burning, losing sensation.
I don’t say another word. Neither does she.
She steps outside and, for the first time in a very long, dangerous life, I’m left standing alone and feeling it. Wondering if taking what I wanted all those years ago was putting the nail in my own coffin.