CHAPTER 9 — THE NIGHT THAT DIDN’T FIT THE CODE OF ETHICS #2
My heart beat so hard the city in the glass seemed to tremble.
I thought about Bram. About Odette. About the disciplinary summons, the test, Celia, all the doors I couldn't open without someone accusing me of invading my own life.
Then I thought about his hand stopping before it touched my face, the way he waited for my choice even when his desire was visible in his breathing, his jaw, the tension in his shoulders.
There was a difference between being pressured and being desired with space to say no.
I knew enough of both now not to confuse them.
“No.” I turned slowly, and the proximity almost stole the rest of the sentence. He was there, tall, warm, his eyes locked on mine with a contained hunger that woke every inch of my skin. “I want you to stop deciding distance for me.”
Cael didn't move immediately. That mattered.
It mattered more than any promise. He stayed where he was, letting me take the last step, and I did.
I touched his rolled sleeve first, then his forearm, feeling under my palm the tension of muscle, the quickened pulse he was trying to hide.
His breathing changed, and mine followed, as if my body had chosen a language older than fear.
“Lucia.” The name came low, almost a boundary and almost a surrender. “If this happens, it doesn't erase the conversation. Tomorrow there will still be a hearing, a blocked leave request, Bram, Odette, and a pregnancy that needs protecting from all of us—including what we feel right now.”
“I know.” I slid my hand up to his chest, feeling his heart pound under his shirt. The discovery gave me a sad satisfaction, because he was also less controlled than he seemed. “That's why I'm choosing now, before tomorrow tries to choose for me.”
He kissed me as if the sentence had broken something neither of us intended to fix that night.
There was no violence in the gesture, but there was urgency—a deep, contained surrender that released the moment his mouth found mine.
His hand went to the back of my neck, the other to my waist, and I felt the care in how he held me before I felt the hunger.
Cael kissed the way he spoke when he stopped hiding: direct, attentive, incapable of wasting what he received.
I clung to him without pretending moderation.
His shirt wrinkled under my fingers, and the low sound that came from his chest sent heat rushing through my body with an almost embarrassing force.
He pulled back just enough to search my eyes, a silent question before going further, and I answered by pulling him back, because that night I didn't want to be protected from desire as if it were another restricted room. I wanted to be heard inside it.
The path to the bedroom wasn't elegant. We bumped into the side of the sofa, the folder slipped from the table, and a page fell to the floor without either of us bending down.
Cael stopped at the bedroom door, breathing heavy, his hands firm on my waist, and looked at me as if he were still giving me one last exit before anything became harder to undo.
The tenderness of it almost disarmed me.
“I want to.” I spoke before he could ask, because I couldn't stand anything else coming between wanting and choosing. “And if you ask me again like I don't know my own mind, I'll take it as an insult.”
His mouth finally curved—small, brief, warm—and that subtle shift in his face felt more intimate than any promise I hadn't asked for. “Noted.”
He slid my blouse off slowly, not like someone eager to reveal, but like someone who didn't want to miss the moment I allowed it.
Cold air touched my skin, then his hands followed—warm, open, moving across my back with a reverence that didn't match the hunger of his kisses.
I undid his shirt buttons with fingers less steady than I would have liked, irritated by my own nervousness, and he let me lead, still enough to give me time, too alive under my hands to seem passive.
When the shirt fell, I touched his skin with both palms. His chest was firm, warm, marked by a thin scar near his ribs and a tension that trembled beneath my touch.
Cael closed his eyes when my mouth found his jawline, and that small surrender shot through me with a pleasure that wasn't just physical.
At the hospital, he'd seemed so impossible, all command and distance, but here, under my hands, he was human enough to tremble.
He laid me down carefully on the bed, but the care didn't erase the intensity.
The weight of his body on mine was an answer I didn't know I needed until I felt it.
I opened my legs to accommodate him, and the pressure of his hips against me pulled a sound from me I would have swallowed if I were still trying to seem invincible.
Cael trailed his mouth down my neck with calculated slowness, stopping where my pulse gave away how much I wanted him.
“Don't hide this from me.” His voice was rough against my skin, barely controlled. “Outside this bed, you can fight me on anything. Here, if I do something you want, I want to know.”
The words hit me between my legs before they reached my pride. I pulled his hair hard enough to make him lift his head. “Then do it right and pay attention.”
Something dark passed through his eyes. Not anger.
Pleasure. Inverted obedience, maybe. His hand slid down my waist, undid the button of my pants, and stopped again, waiting for my body to follow the choice.
I lifted my hips to help him, and the fabric slid down my legs along with any pretense that this was some confused impulse.
I was there, lying in Cael Hawthorne's bed, almost naked, pregnant with his child and furious at half the world, and still the desire was too clear to apologize for.
His mouth moved down my breasts, kissing, biting lightly, sucking until my breathing turned ragged and useless.
When his fingers found me through my lingerie, my body arched before I could stop it, and he rested his other hand on my hip to keep me close, not trapped.
The difference mattered. Each touch seemed to ask and answer at the same time, and I found myself opening to him with a trust that scared me because it wasn't naive—it was chosen despite everything.
Cael slid the last piece off me with a slowness that almost made me curse him.
Then he looked. Not in a way that diminished me, not like a man claiming a possession, but with a hunger so concentrated I felt heat rise to my face and spread through my entire body.
I was going to say something sharp, anything to give me back control, but he put his mouth on me before the words could form.
The world narrowed to his tongue, to the pressure of his fingers on my hip, to the way my own pleasure built in layers—insistent, deep, without asking permission from the part of me that still wanted to think.
I gripped the sheet, then his hair, then my own breath, until he raised his eyes and forced me to face the whole scene: me open to him, him between my legs, his mouth wet, his eyes dark with desire and attention.
Shame tried to surface. Pleasure swallowed it before it could form a word.
“Cael.” The name came out broken, more plea than warning, and I felt the word leave my body as if it had waited too long to exist that night.
He moved up my body, kissing my belly with an unexpected tenderness that made my eyes burn dangerously, but he didn't linger there as if he had any claim on the future.
He simply passed over it, reverent and restrained, until he reached my mouth.
I tasted myself on him and moaned against his tongue, because the intimacy was too raw to fit any polite version of the two of us.
I undid his belt in a rush, pushed his pants down with the help of his hands, and felt his body finally against mine without enough barriers to protect anyone.
He was warm, heavy, hard, and the pressure of his cock against my thigh pulled a wave of desire from me so strong I forgot for a second how breathing worked.
Cael reached for protection in the drawer, and the sight of that care almost broke me in a strange way, because we were already too late for irony, but not too late for respect.
“Look at me.” He rested his forehead against mine when he came back, one hand beside my face, the other adjusting our bodies with care. “If you change your mind, if anything feels wrong, you tell me.”
“I'll tell you.” I held his face between my hands, forcing him to receive the truth without turning care into distance, without turning my choice into just another case to manage. “Now come.”
He entered slowly, and still the impact moved through me completely.
It wasn't just physical, though my body felt everything with an almost painful clarity: the stretch, the weight, the deep pressure, his pause to let me breathe, the involuntary clench of my muscles around him.
It was also the look. Cael looked at me as if entering my body were both a responsibility and a chosen ruin, as if every inch demanded his complete presence.
I dug my fingers into his back and pulled, unable to bear so much restraint.
“Don't treat me like I'm going to break.” My voice came out hoarse, pressed against his mouth, and my nails dug into his back as if my body wanted to sign its own decision too. “I didn't come here to be preserved.”