CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
I curl my fingers around her neck, sweeping my thumb over the point of her frenzied pulse and readying myself for the erotic bob of her inhaling my release. “Such a good girl for me. Swallow every drop. Let me feel it.”
She does, her throat rolling against my palm, and it’s clear this simple act is as mind-altering for her as it is for me.
After tucking myself away, I crouch before her, tug on the pillow so she shimmies off it, and regard how her juices are glazing it. “You made a mess, darling.”
Her attention darts to the glistening leather before her lips part, her translucent thirst layered with raw huskiness from my cock branding her vocal cords. “I really did.”
If we had more time to play and for proper aftercare, I’d test her limits harder, but due to our constraints, I settle on an implied order to see how she receives it. “A polite houseguest would clean up after herself. Do you have good manners, Zara?”
“The best,” she whispers. Then, without further prompting, she ducks her head and drags her tongue along the seam where her pussy just was, licking up every pearly droplet she left behind with those haunting emeralds yoked to mine.
“Christ,” I hiss, feeling jealous of her mouth and crazed that I can’t keep her in this room for the rest of our days.
I’m so fucked. How the hell do I get us through this when every solution includes torment?
She must’ve seen that pass over me because she’s frantically searching my face.
“You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect.” Scooping her up, I cradle her against my chest and breathe her in for a beat.
Then I cart her to my bathroom to wipe her off with a warm cloth and spread some soothing salve on her sore ass as she eyes me skeptically in the mirror.
With her in my arms again, I stride back out to the living area, grab her a bottle of water from the fridge, and settle into the chair with her on my lap.
“Drink this.” I uncap the bottle and hand it to her. “All of it.”
Her lungs inflate, and it makes my chest ache. She’s not used to being taken care of. I want to keep her here and dote on her until she’s so spoiled that she never settles for anything less. But things will only be worse for us if I don’t make my expected appearance.
“This isn’t how I would’ve done this if we’d planned … I don’t want to leave you. I’d tuck you into my bed until I got back, but that’s—”
“No.” She shakes her head, swallowing a sip of water. “It’s fine. I need to go back to my suite.”
It’s for the best, so I let it go. But I hold her, and she nuzzles her face against my neck, all naked and spent and smelling like vanilla, cherries, wine, and sex. She keeps drinking while I scratch up and down her arm and string my fingers through her hair and will myself to do what I need to do.
There’s no music playing. It’s silent, save for our calming breaths and the sweet sound of her swallowing.
But she reminds me of a candlelit orchestra, where the notes and whimsy and rumbling bass of synergy seep into the crevices that light can’t reach.
Astonishing art, gleaned in the dark. I hope she maintains that because I’ve made things exponentially worse for her tonight.
And there are too many constraints on me to sufficiently detail the darkness that lies in front of us.
She finishes her water, pecks my cheek, and climbs off my lap to retrieve her clothes.
I switch my suit out with a fresh one from my closet while she’s getting dressed, and by the time I emerge back in the sitting room, with my cuff links in hand and my suit jacket draped over my arm, she’s buckling her high heel.
“Why tonight? Why here, if you don’t …” She’s rarely bashful, so I relish the sight of her satiated and nervous.
“Because of you,” I repeat her words from earlier. “Because I wanted this.”
A soft smile blooms on her cheeks, along with the sweetest blush as she parrots the response I gave. “Good answer.”
It’s not a good answer. This was selfish, and as much as I adore that unusual innocence mantling her, I have to let her go.
“I need you to do some things for me,” I say as I fasten my second cuff link.
“Okay,” she whispers, sensing the shift.
“When we get to your floor, go into your suite and order room service. You need to eat—something healthy—and it will provide a record of you being in your room.”
I shrug on my suit jacket, and she grabs her purse from the love seat while I continue, “If anyone questions what happened tonight, this is the story: You were with Cash. I found out and was irritated because I needed you to consult on a confusing translation of a legal proposal that I’d been working on with Mercy.
To make matters worse, Cash wasn’t supposed to be dating employees.
But true to form, he turned off your phone so you didn’t know I was texting you and provoked me until I came to the Underground so I would lose a bet with him.
By that time, Mercy had gone back to the penthouse, so we needed to meet her there.
We worked for a while, you hung out with Mercy and Tessa, and then you went home.
Starving because you’d only had some snacks. ”
“Got it,” she says with her poised composure.
But I know her better now. She’s feeling abandoned, and there’s not much I can do about that tonight.
I guide her through a passageway behind one of my bookshelves that leads to a stairwell, and we descend to her floor. As we navigate the corridors, things get twisted and challenging.
“In the coming days and until I say otherwise, you will not seek me out. We will only discuss work. We will not be alone together.”
“Right.” There’s a faint scoff mixed in with that, her etiquette training already fraying.
It’s as if my intestines were simulating that painful unraveling. My stomach spasms, but there is no way around this. “This is important. You were right when you said this was complicated. There are—”
“Lines,” she fills in.
I wasn’t planning to go in that direction, but as we keep walking, I decide to lean into that for now. “Maybe that makes you feel boxed in, but the lines I’m proposing are for your protection.”
“Like the age difference? I’m twenty-nine, so who does that protect?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I wink at her, trying to keep it light. “I think we’ve blown past that one, but it was accountability for me and protection for you. I raised children the same age as you.”
“Your siblings.”
“Yes, but … obviously, that doesn’t matter to me now.” Just before the covert entrance near her suite, I stop and find it agonizing to even look at her gorgeous face, but I don’t reveal that. “It wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”
“Then this must be the line about never being with a woman twice,” she states cooly with a venomous bite. “Who does that protect, Axel?”
“Depends on perspective,” I respond, loathing the rejection cloaking her.
She ponders that for about three seconds, in which the silence in this dank corridor is deafening, until she finally slices through it with a pronouncement that is false, but an echo of the story that might salvage this damn mess.
“I’m sure. It’s fine. I enjoyed my one night. You forgot to have me sign an NDA.”
“Zara,” I warn because even if I should send her away, believing that to her core so her actions reflect it, I can’t.
“Don’t.” She raises a palm to me. “This isn’t on you. I’m … it’s hard being away from my brother this long. That’s all. And a night with your family—the music and your nephew and so much life during dinner. And then everything else … I’ve got my head on straight again though.”
“You don’t,” I protest, leaning against the wall to discourage her retreat. “And I will not leave you like this. Take a minute.”
“That’s not necessary. I need to order room service and wait to hear from you about this solution you’ll be working on.”
She starts to push against the recessed door in the wall, and it cracks a few inches, but I grab her hip.
“This is what needs to be done right now. Do you trust me?”
She laughs, though it’s cynical and jaded and full of more pain than any sound should be. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“Good,” I praise, that knot in my stomach climbing to my chest. “You shouldn’t. Don’t let your guard down here. It’s safer inside my walls, but still not safe. So, I’ll do my job, and you’ll do yours—both of us working without harming the other or their families.”
Her focus shifts to the light filtering in from her hall. “Okay. And other than that, what’s the goal?”
I rub my hand over my jaw, so goddamn frustrated. “First, we survive.”
“That’s all I ever do.” She sighs, resigned. But as she nudges the door open to go, she turns to me, her voice a delicate wisp and her eyes moonlight on a mossy oak. “Just one question. And please, give me the respect of answering honestly.”
“Of course.”
“You told me to lock the door.” She slings that like an accusation, though it’s soft and graceful, like she’s trying not to hate me. “Do you regret it?”
Do I regret it? Regret her?
Towing her against me, I sweep her hair back and move my mouth to her ear.
“You could lodge a bullet in me tomorrow, Zara, and as I took my last breath, I still couldn’t find it in me to regret a single moment with you.
” I pull away and drag my thumb over her trembling lip, my chest cracking wide open. “Go.”
She struts to her door without looking back while I hide in the shadows, and once she’s inside her suite, I whip out my phone and dash through the tunnels toward Magie Noire.
Pulling up my Contacts, I dial an enforcer who is skilled at hunting people down. He also happens to be part of my sister, Rena’s, family and KORT. But the latter would be a drawback if I didn’t believe he’d handle this precisely the way I asked.
“Yeah?” Gage clips. “It’s late. And I’m not who you’d normally call.”
“I see we’re starting with the obvious, so I’ll follow suit. The job I have for you requires the utmost discretion. For now.”
“Until it doesn’t,” he supplies, understanding that he’ll be both my clandestine asset and my intentional leak.
“Yes.”
“Shoot,” he says as I briefly hold the phone between my ear and shoulder so I can spin my watch, willing the ceramic ball to seek out the red pocket.
Come on, twelve.
“It’s regarding someone who worked with the assassin Stone Gallagher.”
“The legend.”
His realization arrives as my ball lands on twelve, and tranquility washes over me.
“That’s the one,” I confirm before I provide the rest of the details, and he guarantees me that he’ll get me what I need.
Roulette is said to be the devil’s game. It makes sense that it’s what I find comfort in.
Never dismiss the house edge.