10. Sal #2
She was lying in the middle of the bed, the sheets pushed down to her waist, wearing nothing but my t-shirt pushed up to expose her stomach. Her eyes were closed. Her head was thrown back against the pillow. And her hand...
Her hand was buried between her legs.
“Fuck.” The word escaped her lips on a moan. “Sal. Just like that.”
My name.
She was moaning my name.
I stood in the doorway, tray in hands, and watched her touch herself while she whispered my name, a prayer falling from her lips. Her fingers moved in slow circles, her hips rolling against her hand, her breath coming in short sharp gasps.
She was so fucking beautiful.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
“How exactly?”
Her eyes flew open. Met mine across the room.
The sound she made was somewhere between a screech and a gasp. She yanked her hand away, tried to pull the sheets up, her face flooding with color.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough.” I kicked the door shut behind me. Didn’t look away from her. “Please. Continue.”
“I... you... this isn’t...”
“Tell me exactly what I’m doing.” I moved toward the bed, slow and deliberate, watching her watch me. “I don’t want to miss a thing.”
Her face was crimson. Her chest was heaving. Her eyes darted from my face to the tray in my hands and back again.
“Is that... breakfast?”
“It can wait.” I set the tray on the bedside table, my eyes never leaving hers. “This is more important.”
“I can’t just...”
“You were doing fine before I walked in.” I sat on the edge of the bed. Close enough to touch her if I wanted. I wanted. “What was I doing, Camellia? In your head. What was I doing to you?”
She stared at me. Mortified. Aroused. Completely frozen between the two.
“I...”
“Were my fingers inside you?” My voice dropped lower. “Was my mouth on you? Tell me.”
Her eyes changed, the embarrassment burning off into something hungry.
“Your mouth.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “You were... you were using your mouth.”
“Show me.”
She hesitated. Just for a moment. Then her hand slipped back between her legs.
I watched.
I watched her fingers circle her clit, slow and deliberate. Watched her hips roll up to meet her own touch. Watched her eyes flutter closed, then snap open again to find mine.
“What am I doing?” My voice was rough. Strained. “Tell me.”
“Licking.” She gasped. “Slow. Teasing. Making me wait for it.”
“And then?”
“Faster.” Her hand moved faster. Her breathing went ragged. “Harder. Not letting me come until you’re ready.”
“Good girl.”
The words slipped out without permission. But the effect they had on her... her whole body shuddered. Her moan was loud enough to echo off the walls.
“Are you close?”
“Yes.” The word was a whimper. “Sal. Please.”
“Come for me, fiore.”
She came.
Her back arched off the bed. Her mouth fell open on a silent scream. Her whole body convulsed, trembling, shaking, her hand still working between her legs as she rode out the waves.
My name fell from her lips, a broken prayer.
The tray almost fell from my hands.
Almost forgot about the tray entirely. Almost climbed onto that bed and buried my face between her thighs and made every fantasy she’d just described a reality.
Instead, I reached for her hand.
The one that was still wet. Still trembling. Still covered in the evidence of her pleasure.
I brought it to my mouth.
Her eyes went wide. Her breath caught.
I licked her fingers clean.
One by one. Slowly. Thoroughly. Tasting her on my tongue, watching her watch me, savoring every reaction that crossed her face.
“Eat your breakfast.” I released her hand. Stood up. “I already ate.”
She stared at me. Speechless.
I reached into my pocket. Pulled out the black lace panties. Let them dangle from my fingers.
“These were yours.”
Her face flamed. “They must have... I was... I didn’t mean to...”
I folded them carefully. Deliberately. Then tucked them back into my pocket.
“They’re mine now.” I smirked. Winked. “Consider them a souvenir.”
Then I left.
It took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to turn around. Not to go back. Not to crawl into that bed and spend the rest of the day making her scream my name.
But I was a patient man.
I could wait.
The question sat in my head as I walked down the hallway. What were we? Partners? Co-conspirators? Something more? The answer felt just out of reach, shifting every time I tried to pin it down.
Rather than answer it in words, I simply walked toward the war room for the day’s work. Plans to finalize. Moves to make. Logan Caldwell to destroy.
But something was different.
I felt... lighter. Looser. A weight I hadn’t known I was carrying had lifted from my shoulders. There was an energy in my step that hadn’t been there before, a looseness in my shoulders that felt foreign after years of constant tension.
My men noticed.
Of course they noticed. They were trained to read people, to pick up on the smallest changes in behavior and body language. It was what made them good at their jobs.
Julian straightened when I passed him in the hallway. Gave me a nod that said more than words ever could. Hendry was already at his post outside the war room, and the look he gave me was knowing. Almost smug.
They could see it. Written all over my face, probably. The change that had come over me since Camellia Brennan landed in my warehouse in a ruined wedding dress.
She wasn’t a guest. Not anymore.
She wasn’t a prisoner.
She was mine.
The good mood lasted exactly as long as it took me to reach the war room.
Vera was already there, and one look at her face told me the morning was about to turn.
“You need to see this.” She turned her screen toward me. “Greta Caldwell’s lawyers filed it an hour ago. And they didn’t just file it. They leaked it.”
I read.
It was a lawsuit, technically. Defamation, emotional distress, a long list of expensive words that meant nothing except we have more lawyers than you do.
But the lawsuit wasn’t the point. The leak was the point.
Greta had handed the story to every gossip page in the city before the ink was dry, and the story was simple and vicious and built to stick.
Camellia Brennan, the unstable ex. The jealous, obsessive woman who had invented an affair out of paranoia, humiliated a good family at a wedding, and then vanished, unhinged and vindictive.
There were quotes from unnamed friends. There was tender concern for her fragile mental state.
There was a soft, devastating paragraph about poor pregnant Rosalie, the real victim, terrorized by her own sister’s breakdown.
It was good. That was the worst part. Greta had taken the truth and turned it inside out, and a city that loved a scandal would swallow it whole.
“They’re not trying to win in a courtroom,” Vera said quietly. “They’re making sure that if Camellia ever tells the truth, no one believes her. They’re erasing her. Quietly. Legally. Before she can open her mouth.”
My jaw was tight enough to crack.
“Where is she?”
***
I found her in the garden.
I almost didn’t show her. For one selfish second I wanted to bury it, handle it myself, keep that look off her face. But she’d had a lifetime of people deciding things for her own good. I wasn’t going to be one more.
So I handed her my phone.
I watched her read it. Watched the color drain out of her face and then flood back in. Watched her eyes move down the screen line by line, her breath going shallow.
“They’re saying I made it up.” Her voice was very quiet. “That I imagined the whole thing. That I’m a danger to her.” A sound came out of her that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She’s carrying my fiancé’s baby and I’m the danger.”
“Camellia...”
“They want everyone to think I’m insane.
” Her hands had started to shake around the phone, her eyes wet and bright and furious all at once.
“So that when I finally tell the truth, I’m just the crazy ex.
So that no matter what I say, no matter what I prove, I’m the villain before I open my mouth.
They’re not just taking my life. They’re taking my side of the story. ”
The first tear spilled over. She swiped it away like it had insulted her.
“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” I said.
She went quiet for a long moment. When she looked up, the tears were still there, but underneath them something had gone hard and bright and dangerous.
“Then let them write it.” Her voice didn’t shake.
“Tomorrow night, that gala. Half the people who read this will be in the room.” She handed me back the phone, and her hand was steady now.
“I’m going to walk in on your arm and I’m going to look so happy, so calm, so completely sane, that every single one of them starts wondering which story is the lie. ”
I looked at her. At the tear tracks she hadn’t bothered to hide and the steel underneath them.
Something in my chest pulled tight, and I chose not to name it. Not yet.
“That’s my girl,” I said.