Chapter 23
Siobhan
Mine
* * *
The elevator doors close, and his mouth is on my neck before I can breathe.
He pins me against the wall. Both hands on my hips, lifting me, pressing me into the metal, and his teeth find the spot below my ear that he's owned since the first time he kissed me there and my head falls back and the moan that escapes me echoes off every surface.
His hand pushes up my dress. Finds the edge of my underwear. His fingers slide beneath the silk and into me and I'm so wet his fingers meet no resistance. Two fingers, deep. His thumb finds my clit and presses and my hips buck against his hand and I grab his shoulders and hold on.
"I killed a man for you."
"I know."
"I'd kill a hundred."
"I know."
"You should be horrified."
I grip his jaw. The blood. I trace it with my thumb. The dried rust of a man's life on the skin of the man I love.
"I'm not horrified. I'm dripping. I've been dripping since I watched you break his wrist."
He groans against my neck. His fingers curl inside me and his thumb circles and the elevator is rising…
and I'm rising and the dual motion makes my head spin.
I ride his hand shamelessly, my hips grinding against his palm, chasing the pressure he's building with the devastating precision of a man who's memorized every nerve ending I own.
The orgasm hits fast and sharp. I come on his fingers in the elevator with the city falling away below us, my thighs clamping around his hand, biting down on his shoulder to keep the sound from carrying through the shaft.
He works me through it. Doesn't stop until I'm shaking and pushing at his wrist.
The doors open.
He pulls his hand free. Brings his fingers to his mouth. Tastes me while looking directly into my eyes. The sight of him licking my arousal off fingers that held a knife ten minutes ago makes my clit throb again, the aftershocks of the orgasm reigniting into something hungrier.
"Inside," he says. "Now."
He walks me backward through the penthouse door. His hands on my hips. I'm reaching for his belt, his buttons, trying to get to his skin, and he catches both my wrists. One hand. Holds them behind my back.
"Not yet."
The denial short-circuits me. I've been the one initiating for weeks.
I knocked on the door. I said "let go." I climbed on top of him and held his face and told him where to look.
And now he's holding my wrists and making me wait and the loss of control is a shock to my system that bypasses every analytical instinct I have and goes straight between my legs.
I can't think. I can only feel. And what I feel is his hand in my hair, tilting my head back, his mouth on my throat, and the dress tearing.
He tears my dress.
Not the zipper. Not the buttons. The fabric.
One hand grips the neckline and pulls, and the sound of expensive silk ripping is the most obscene thing I've ever heard.
The dress falls off me in pieces. I'm in heels and nothing else because he pocketed my underwear in the elevator and now, I'm naked in the foyer of our penthouse and he's still fully clothed and bloodstained and the power imbalance makes me dizzy.
He pushes me to my knees.
Not roughly. His hand on my shoulder, guiding me down, and I go because the look in his eyes is not a request, and I don't want it to be a request. I want to be on my knees in front of this man who killed for me tonight.
I unbuckle his belt. Unzip. Push everything down and wrap my hand around his cock. Hard. Hot. The vein along the underside pulsing under my fingers. I stroke him once, twice, watching his jaw tighten, watching the predator flicker behind his eyes.
I take him in my mouth.
His hand fists in my hair. Not pushing. Holding.
I take him deep, hollowing my cheeks, my tongue dragging along the underside, and the sound he makes is raw and broken and MINE.
I set the pace. Slow, then faster. My hand working what my mouth can't reach.
His hips twitch forward, and I let him. I want to feel him lose control the way he made me lose control in the elevator.
He pulls me off. Breathes hard. His cock gleams wet in the dim light.
"If you keep doing that, this ends too fast."
He pulls me to my feet and takes me down to the floor.
The living room floor. Hardwood. Cold against my back, his body burning hot above me.
He settles between my thighs and his mouth starts at my neck and moves down.
My collarbone. The curve of my breast. He takes my nipple in his mouth and sucks and my back arches off the floor.
His hand palms my other breast, kneading, his thumb circling the nipple until both peaks are hard and aching and I'm writhing beneath him.
Lower. His mouth traces down my stomach, over my hip, along my inner thigh. Bites gently. I gasp. He spreads me open with both hands and looks at me and the hunger in his face makes me clench.
"I could eat you for hours."
"Prove it."
His mouth finds me. And this is different from our first night.
This is not exploration. This is a man who has spent ten days studying my body with the focus he brings to war, and he knows exactly what he's doing.
His tongue drags through me, slow, gathering the wetness that hasn't stopped since the back room, and the groan he makes vibrating against me says he'll never get enough of how I taste.
He circles my clit. Slow. Deliberate. The pressure builds in a spiral he controls completely. I try to grind against his mouth and his hand pins my hip to the floor. Holds me still while he works.
"Nico, please—"
"You'll come when I make you come."
His tongue flattens against my clit. Presses.
Then two fingers push inside me, curling upward, finding the spot that makes my vision fracture, and he works both simultaneously.
His mouth relentless on my clit, his fingers stroking inside me, and the dual assault is precision-engineered to take me apart.
He knows the pace. He knows the pressure.
He knows the exact moment to speed up because my thighs start shaking and he GIVES it to me, harder, faster, his fingers curling, and his tongue circling and I come so hard my back lifts off the hardwood.
I scream. His name. Or a sound that was supposed to be his name before language abandoned me. He doesn't stop. Keeps his mouth on me through every pulse, every aftershock, licking me gently as I come down until I'm twitching and gasping and my hand pushes weakly at his head.
He rises over me. Wipes his mouth. The blood on his jaw has smeared with my wetness. Violence and desire mixed on his skin. The sight makes me reach for him.
I'm done being underneath.
I grab his shoulders. Pull him down. He comes willingly. I hook my leg around his hip and roll us and he lets me, lets me take the top, and I reach between us and take his cock in my hand and guide him inside me.
I sink down and the sound I make is guttural and real and I don't care what it sounds like because the fullness of him after the orgasm is overwhelming. Swollen, sensitive, every nerve ending lit, and he fills me completely and the stretch is exquisite.
I ride him. Not the slow tenderness of the night he wept. Hard. My hands on his chest, my hips driving down, taking him as deep as my body allows. He grips my hips and thrusts up to meet me and the collision of our bodies echoes off the walls.
"You feel so good," he grinds out. "God… You're so tight after you come."
I brace my hands on his chest and shift the angle.
Find the spot. Grind against him with every downstroke and the friction is exactly right.
His thumb finds my clit and circles and I'm building again, the third time, and it's building fast because my body is primed and sensitive and his cock inside me and his thumb on me is too much and not enough simultaneously.
"Together," I say. "This time together."
His hips drive up. I press down. His thumb circles faster and I clench around him and the wave breaks.
I come and feel him follow in the same breath.
His back arches off the floor and his hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise and the sound he makes is wrecked and his warmth floods inside me and I collapse against his chest and we're both shaking.
For a moment we just breathe. The floor is hard beneath us. The city glows through the glass walls.
He lifts me.
I wrap around him. Legs, arms, my face in his neck. He carries me across the penthouse. Past the kitchen island where we had breakfast after our first night. Past the hallway where I walked thirty feet in silk and bare feet. To the bedroom. Our bedroom..
He lays me on the bed. The air shifts.
The predator is gone. The primal energy of the floor, the raw possession of the elevator, the violence that started this night.
All of it banks to embers. What's left is the man.
My husband. Looking at me in our bed with gold eyes that have gone soft in a way I've only seen twice.
Once in a dim room in Cambridge when his mother laughed. Once now.
He covers my body with his. Settles between my thighs. Pushes inside me slowly, eyes open, watching my face, and this time is different from everything that came before tonight.
Slow. Deep. His forehead against mine. His hands laced with mine above my head, fingers interlocked, palms pressed together. He moves in long, unhurried strokes that I feel in my chest. Not fucking. Not even sex. A communion that doesn't have a word yet.
I meet him. Every stroke. My hips rising to his. Our rhythm is shared. Neither of us leads because leading implies someone follows and this is neither. This is two people moving together with the synchronization of a single heartbeat.
"I see you," I whisper. "All of you. The blood. The tenderness. Everything."
His eyes are wet. Not tears. The sheen. The gold gone liquid.
"You see me, and you stay."
"I stay."
He presses deeper. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer and the angle shifts and he hits the place inside me that makes everything dissolve.
His pace doesn't change. Slow. Deep. Relentless.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss is soft and the softness after the violence is the most devastating thing I've ever felt.
The orgasm builds like a tide. Not sharp, not fast. A slow swell that starts deep in my center and expands outward. He feels it. I know because his breathing changes and his strokes deepen, and his fingers tighten in mine.
"Now," I whisper. "With me."
We fall together. The orgasm rolls through us in waves. I arch into him. He presses into me. His face finds my neck and the sound he makes is quiet and broken and mine. I hold him inside me while the waves recede and neither of us moves and neither of us wants to.
After…We lie in our bed. Tangled. Sweat cooling. His hand on my stomach, tracing circles I don't think he's aware of. My head on his chest. The hollow below his collarbone. Home.
"I'm falling in love with you," I say. Not because I haven't already realized it. I have. Six days ago, holding him while he slept in Cambridge. But the words have been living in my chest and they come out now because I'm too raw and too honest to hold them anymore.
He goes still.
"I fell a long time ago." His voice is quiet. Just the man. "Eight months ago. At the Ricci function. You were wearing green. You told a man twice your size to go fuck himself and I couldn't look away."
My heart stops. Restarts.
"You remembered."
"I remember everything about you. The green dress. The way you held your glass. The way you didn't look at me once. I told myself I'd forgotten. I lied."
"I didn't see you."
"I know." He pulls me closer. "I chose you that night, Siobhan. Not in the meeting. Not when I said your name. Every strategic reason I gave for this marriage was a lie I told so I wouldn't have to admit I wanted you before I knew if you'd want me back."
The arranged marriage. Reframed. Every calculation revealed as desire. Every strategic justification exposed as a man who fell in love across a room and built an alliance around the excuse to have her.
"So, what do we do now?"
"We survive. We win this war. And then I spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me."
I touch his face. The blood has dried on his jaw. I don't wipe it away.
"I could never regret you."
He kisses me. Soft, long, full of every word he couldn't say for eight months and is saying now with his mouth and his hands and his body still warm against mine.
"Whatever comes next," I say against his lips, "we face it together. No sending me away. No decisions without me. Together."
"Together."
The word seals itself between us. A vow more binding than the one we made at St. Demetrios.
I close my eyes. His hand traces circles on my stomach.
His heartbeat slows beneath my ear. The penthouse is quiet.
The city glows. Somewhere Viktor Reznikov is planning his next move and somewhere Elena Drakos's empty chair is waiting to tell a story and somewhere the war is sharpening itself for what comes next.
But here. In this bed. In this man's arms. There is only this.