Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brie
The suite smells faintly of bergamot and fresh linen, like calm made tangible—a cocooned hush settling around us, the faint creak of polished floorboards beneath my boots. I set my overnight bag beside the door, unsure whether to exhale or keep the armor on.
Paris hums through the windows. Distant horns, a scatter of laughter, a song from somewhere down the street. The atmosphere feels different here, lighter, though my mind hasn’t caught up with my body’s arrival.
Adrien stands at the window, shirt unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves rolled, the city lights cutting sharp angles across him.
He hasn’t said much since we landed. Silence suits him when he’s calculating outcomes, but tonight it feels like distance.
I think he’s still carrying the weight of that phone call, the gravity of what waits for us tomorrow.
I remove the gun I packed—something I could easily do as we flew on a private plane—and place it on the console table.
The metallic click fractures the quiet—an indecent sound in a room built for intimacy and candlelight.
He glances over his shoulder but says nothing.
The lamp beside him gilds the planes of his face in warm gold, softening everything that makes him appear untouchable.
“Are we really doing this your way?”
“It’s a solid plan.”
“If your father follows through… what happens to Eddie?”
He exhales through his nose, a small, tired laugh. “He loses his job. No matter what, he’s out. And my father will follow through. He always does. Eventually—but not necessarily in the way you expect.” There’s no hint of reservation. He’s set. Determined.
I smile, faint. “That sounds familiar.”
He turns fully then, leaning against the window frame, sleeves rolled to his forearms. “That’s a polite way of saying I’m impossible.”
“I didn’t say that.”
His mouth curves. “You were thinking it.”
He picks up the bottle of wine that room service left—something French and elegant, naturally—and uncorks it with the ease of someone raised around ritual. “Would you like a glass?”
I nod, crossing to him. Our fingers brush as he hands it to me, and something uncoils between us.
“To Paris,” he says softly. “And to surviving what comes next.” Our glasses touch with the soft chime of inevitability. His knuckles graze mine, the clink of crystal between us almost obscene in its intimacy.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “I’ll drink to that.”
The wine is cool and dark, grounding. The reminder of what waits for us tomorrow turns the wine dry on my tongue.
He watches as I sip, eyes mapping my face as if committing it to memory. I’ve been watched before, but never like this—never by someone who seems to see what’s beneath the polish.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“That you’re hard to read.”
“Good. That makes two of us.”
He sets his glass aside and steps closer, close enough that his warmth seeps into me. “You don’t have to keep pretending you’re fine,” he says quietly.
“I’m not pretending.” My voice catches on the half-truth.
He brushes a strand of hair from my temple, his thumb skimming the edge of my jaw. The touch isn’t practiced—it’s hesitant, searching. His skin is warm, a whisper of callus that feels disarmingly human for a man who wears wealth like a second suit.
Every muscle in me wants to step back—to keep control—but my pulse betrays me, leaning into the heat I’ve been pretending not to feel.
“It’s not all on your shoulders, you know. If you’re worried, share. Let me carry the weight, too.”
“That’s not how I work.”
“I know.” His breath grazes my cheek. “But maybe it’s time to evolve.”
His thumb traces my lower lip; silence thickens between us.
His mouth finds mine, tentative at first—as if seeking permission rather than conquest—then deepens, slow and certain, until the world dissolves into the taste of red wine and breath and something dangerously close to hope. I press closer, feeling the steady beat of his heart through his shirt.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Will I always crave you? Always need you?”
I open my mouth to tell him that no, time changes all, but he stops me from speaking with a brush of his lips. “I hate how much the answer is yes.”
“Nothing is forever, Adrien.”
“Then don’t promise me forever,” he says quietly. “Just…stay.”
I don’t answer him. I take his hand and pull him toward the bed.
His hands find my hips, drawing me against him, and I feel myself giving in—not because I’ve lost control, but because I want this… I want tonight.
The glass clinks faintly as I set it down, the sound impossibly loud in the hush between us.
He traces his fingers down my spine, unhurried, reverent. We should be planning. Reviewing contingencies. Preparing for what happens after we expose Magpie. Instead, we’re here—in a Paris hotel room pretending we have time.
Every movement feels like discovery. Every breath like confession. Every touch a truth neither of us can take back.
When his mouth finds mine again, the kiss deepens until thought dissolves into sensation and tomorrow becomes a problem for people who aren’t us.
His breathing turns ragged. Beneath my palms, his heart drums staccato.
“God, Brie.” He breathes between kisses, his fingers finding the hem of my fitted t-shirt, pulling it over my head. “I want you all the time. Every moment. Everywhere.”
“That’s not quite possible.” I press my lips to his throat as I take my turn with his shirt buttons—the casual linen he wore for the flight, rumpled now. “Let’s settle for now.”
His hand slips between my legs, palming me through the thin lycra of my leggings. The friction makes me gasp.
I mirror his action, palming his hard length through his trousers, earning a groan and a soft nip on my earlobe.
I move to his belt and fumble—too many thoughts competing for attention, too much awareness that tomorrow everything changes. When I lean back to see the buckle properly, I’m caught by his dark, hungry gaze.
The moment his pants hit the floor, he steps out of them and crowds me backward. My calves hit the bed and suddenly I’m falling—caught, controlled—and he’s over me, pressing me into the plush duvet.
“Don’t call it settling.” His voice is rough, possessive.
His lips cover mine and his tongue invades as his hand slides up to cradle my neck, his thigh pressing between my legs, his erection digging into my hip through the stretch of his boxer briefs.
“You’re a fucking dream,” he groans.
I finger his hair, holding him so I can see his eyes. I’ve been called many things—asset, operative, honey trap—but a dream doesn’t sit well. “Dreams end. Fantasies lose their luster.”
His hips rock forward, his muscled thigh pressing harder against my core through the lycra. His hair is tousled, undone, his breath shallow, but god, the way he’s looking at me—like we’re solid, permanent—it’s unnerving.
With every shift of his torso, heat spirals through me.
My sports bra and panties, his boxer briefs—thin barriers that somehow make the friction more intense.
We’re grinding against each other on top of a plush comforter, desperate and frustrated and neither of us willing to slow down enough to properly undress.
He licks and sucks at my neck, his fingers yanking my sports bra up, freeing my breast, teasing my nipple between his fingers.
“Tell me you’re mine.”
My back arches and I twist from the sensitivity. “I’m yours.”
He stills. “What’s with the smile?”
“I’m happy.” The admission surprises us both.
This time, he smiles—rare, genuine, devastating. My fingers caress his ear as my gaze traces the hair that’s flopped over his brow. “You’re mine too, you know? It’s a reciprocal kind of thing.”
“I’m absolutely yours.” He chuckles, then his hips resume their rhythm, shifting my thigh up so I’m cradling him. With each thrust his erection drags over my core—just lycra and cotton between us, so thin I feel every ridge, every pulse. “You’ve ruined me for others.”
We kiss like we’re not planning to betray his family tomorrow. Like we’re not risking everything. Like we have forever.
The pressure builds—his weight, his rhythm, the friction against my clit through thin fabric—until I stiffen, brought to the brink by just this.
He pulls back, watching my face as I come apart beneath him. “Beautiful.”
Deft hands glide my sports bra up and I arch to help him remove it. As I relax back into the down comforter, still trembling, he trails kisses down my body—between my breasts, over my ribs, my belly.
He backs up, hooks his fingers in my panties and the lycra leggings together, and slides them down my hips. I lift, helping him maneuver them off, legs together, then up and free. He sends them sailing across the room.
Looking supremely satisfied with himself, he sits back, spreading my legs wide. His thumb traces through my center. “Gorgeous.”
He settles between my thighs, running his nose along the inside, inhaling. Then he parts me with his fingers and drags his tongue through me slow enough to make me shake.
I gasp. He grins like he’s won something. And then he maps me with his mouth. Licking and sucking until I can’t stay still.
I bite my lip to keep from saying his name too loudly behind hotel walls, some last thread of discipline that dissolves when his tongue circles my clit and his fingers curl inside.
I’m twisting beneath him, dripping, eyes squeezed shut as stars explode behind my eyelids in a whitewash of light.
When I open my eyes, he’s looking up at me—pleased, awed, possessive. He presses his face into my inner thigh, then pushes up the bed, quickly ridding himself of his briefs.
I reach for him—his length hard and proud against his abdomen, skin flushed, thick and veined. My fingers wrap around him and he hisses.
I bend forward, intending to return the favor, but he pushes me back gently. “Next time. Right now I need—”