Chapter 14 #2
I let the words settle. It feels true in a way I can’t engineer or control.
He was spot on about everything he said.
I have never had a real girlfriend. I have had many partners, sure, but none of them lasted more than a night.
The only consistency I’ve ever had was at the Velvet Stag and even there I usually made sure things were purely physical.
Cat returns to the table, a fresh gloss on her lips, and the tension dissolves like a magic trick when she slides her body closer to mine. Marcus leans back, all bonhomie. “We were just talking about you,” he says.
Cat quirks an eyebrow. “All bad, I hope.”
I let my hand drift to the back of her chair, not quite touching but close enough that the intent is clear. “All good. For once.”
Marcus claps his hands together. “Well then, next round’s on me. And you…” he points to me, then to Cat, “are going to let me pick the wine this time. I want to see how you handle the expensive stuff.”
Cat winks, and I feel her squeeze my thigh under the table and I don’t know if she’s magic, or if it’s just a bug in my own system finally turned into a feature.
But what I do know is this, I don’t want to go back to the way things were before her.
Ever.
After dinner we barely made it all the way into my penthouse fully clothed.
I think we might have even lost one of her shoes from the elevator to my front door, but none of that mattered.
The first kiss is slow, a test, lips barely grazing, then deeper, open, teeth scraping her lower lip.
Her hands come up to my shoulders, nails digging in, and I push her gently
The kiss gets harder, hungrier, as if every hour of restraint during dinner has compacted into this one point in space and time.
I move my hands down, along her waist, over the swell of her hips.
I find the zippered seam of her dress and slide it down.
I slip my fingers underneath, feeling the heat of her skin, the pulse at her side.
She moans, just a little, and rocks her hips into me, and I’m instantly hard, my cock straining against the fabric of my pants.
She tugs at my shirt, untucking it, popping the buttons one by one until her hands are on my chest, flat against my skin. Her palms are hot, her touch greedy.
I lace my fingers through her hair and pull, leaning down to kiss the delicate sun-kissed skin of her neck while peeling the dress off her.
“So, what color should we pick tonight, Mr. St. James?” she asks, voice breathy in my ear.
“None,” I growl, hands sliding up to remove her black lace bra, my lips kissing her shoulder and collar as I move.
“None?” Cat grabs my face and pulls away, forcing our eyes to meet. Our lips so close we share breaths.
I shake my head and close the distance, kissing her again. “None. I want you like this. Just us. No games. No rules. No distractions,” I say, kissing her somewhere different to punctuate each sentence.
“Just me?” she asks again, unsure.
“Only you,” I whisper against her lips, my hands sliding down to cup her ass.
She lets me lift her, wrapping her legs around my waist as I carry her to the bedroom. The bed is made, midnight-blue sheets, the pillows perfectly aligned, just like everything else in my life until she got here.
I set her down, and she scoots back, looking at me with a hunger that makes me want to fucking destroy her.
I strip out of the rest of my clothes, then join her on the bed. We crash together, lips and teeth, hands roaming everywhere at once. I knead her ass, pull her against my hips, let her feel how much I want her. She wraps her hand around my cock, stroking it, and the sensation almost undoes me.
Cat climbs on top, lining up without a second guess and slides herself down on to me. Agonizingly slow, deliberate, wanting to feel every inch. She’s so wet I slide in with no resistance, but the heat is fucking unreal, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from coming right there.
She sets the rhythm. Her hips rolling up to meet every thrust, my hand on her hip guiding the pace. Despite the fact that I am literally inside her, the distance between us is still too far.
I adjust and sit up, grabbing her neck and whisper, “You are so fucking beautiful,” before bringing her forward to kiss me.
Cat moans into my mouth, her pace picking up and I can feel the flutters of her orgasm as it builds. “More,” she whispers and I am all too happy to oblige.
“I love how your body feels against mine,” I murmur, biting her bottom lip.
“I love how wet you are for me every time I touch you.” I thread my fingers through her hair and yank her head back, licking a hot trail along her jaw to her ear and whisper, “And how you say my name when you’re about to come. ”
“Oh fuck, Aiden.” She gasps, scratching at my back, raking her nails down my arms, leaving marks everywhere she can reach. I love it. I want to be marked by her. I want to wear her need like a tattoo.
I flip her over while her body is still clenching around me and fuck her slow at first, then harder, letting go of every bit of control I’ve banked all day, all week, all year.
The incoherent sounds she is babbling in my ear, the sound of skin on skin, the bed rocking, the ragged breathing, it’s perfect.
“You are mine, Catalina.”
She comes again, harder this time, the orgasm rolling up her body, making her shudder and clench around me.
When she says my name this time it’s not a moan, it’s a sob.
That’s my undoing. I drive into her, hard, and lose it, coming with a grunt and a growl, collapsing onto her shoulder, breath gone, brain fried.
We lie there for a minute, catching our breath, neither of us speaking. Her hand is on my back, fingers tracing little circles, grounding me.
Eventually, I roll to my side, pulling her with me so we’re tangled together, front to back. I bury my face in her hair, inhale the sweat and perfume, the afterglow.
She shifts, just enough to nestle her ass against my lap. “That was…” she starts.
“Yeah,” I say, not needing to finish the sentence.
She turns, smiles up at me, eyes heavy-lidded and lazy, a different person than the one who started the night. “You gonna make me breakfast in the morning?”
“Whatever you want,” I say.
I kiss her again, soft, and let my hand rest on her hip, memorizing the shape of her, the way she fits against me. I want to keep this moment. I want it to last.
She shifts to face me before drifting to sleep point five seconds after.
Her head fits perfectly in the crook of my shoulder, her leg draped over mine, the whole length of her body radiating a heat that seeps into my bones.
I should sleep, too. I want to. But every time I close my eyes, I see the marks on her wrists, the way she smiled at me over the kitchen island, the way she laughed without self-consciousness or calculation.
I watch her breathe. Slow, even, unguarded. I remember the first time I touched her, how I tried to maintain clinical detachment, how I made a project out of every line and hollow. Now, I can barely keep myself from tracing the length of her skin, learning it all over again.
She shifts, murmurs something, a dream, maybe, or just a static pulse of her brain sorting out the day. I want to ask her what she’s dreaming about, but I don’t. Instead, I hover my hand just above her skin, not quite touching, feeling the magnetism of her body pull at mine.
I think about the way everything has changed.
How my routines have been corrupted, rewritten, recompiled with her as the primary variable.
How the idea of vulnerability, once a threat vector, now feels like something I want to chase down and dissect.
I was obsessed, at first, with the fantasy of the forbidden, the control.
But now, lying next to her in the dark, I realize what I want most is to see what happens when I let go.
I am cataloguing, always cataloguing. The way her hair falls over her face in sleep, the way her breaths hitch when she’s close to waking, the way she always reaches for my hand even when she doesn’t know it.
I list them all, the data points of intimacy, as if the right equation will reveal the secret at the core.
I am so lost in the recursion that I almost miss the chime.
My phone vibrates, low and insistent, on the nightstand. I ignore it at first, but it chimes again, then again, rapid-fire. Urgent.
I disentangle myself from Cat, careful not to wake her, and grab the phone. The message is from an unknown number. No name, no context, just the text:
I know what you’re doing.
There’s a photo attached.
I open it, expecting spam or a misfire, but what I see is worse.
It’s a shot of the the Velvet Stag, from the balcony.
Cat and I, mid-scene, her arms pinned behind her, the rope vivid against her skin.
Our faces are partly masked, but not enough.
You could run this photo through a basic image recon and match us in seconds.
Another text arrives.
Nice harness. Very elegant. Would be a shame if the board, or your investors, saw it.
I feel my blood go cold, then hot. My hand clenches around the phone so hard I’m afraid it might break. I scan the room, as if the sender is here, watching. The moonlight feels invasive, the bed exposed. I look down at Cat, still asleep, still innocent of what’s about to hit us.
My mind splinters into threat analysis. Who took the photo? When? Was it a club member, a plant, a random voyeur? How did they get my number? How many copies exist?
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the screen, the image of Cat and me burned into my retina. For the first time since I started this company, since I built this life, I have no idea what to do next.
I look at her. The way she sleeps. The way she trusts me, even when I don’t deserve it.
I want to protect her. But I don’t even know where the threat is coming from.
I want to wake her, confess everything, plot a counterattack. But I don’t. Not yet.
Instead, I set the phone on the nightstand and crawl back into bed, wrapping myself around her like armor, like a prayer.
She stirs, sighs, and melts into me, never waking.
I lie awake until dawn, counting her breaths and waiting for the next move.