CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AXEL
Within a second of ending my call, I scoop Zara into my arms. Her eyelids are hooded from her climax, but her pine-needle irises are barbed with defensiveness.
She assumes I’m angry about her eavesdropping, that I’m hung up on her relaying intel that compromises my job.
I have a lot of thoughts about her and the information I just received, and none of them even skirt the margins of wrath.
All I see is the flushed face of the woman brave enough to seize what she desired in an awkward situation, trusting enough to lay her needs at my feet, loyal enough to be conflicted because her allegiances are at odds. Despite her nefarious profession, she’s good to her very core.
And then there’s the sexy indent beneath her ribs, the swell of her perky breasts, the dimples above her heart-shaped ass—pieces of her that pulse with the word mine.
Her tears shattered me last night. This is my brand of restoration for us both.
I shove my computer and untouched dinner aside and lay her atop the desk, stomach down, legs kicked apart.
After swilling my drink and holding two ice cubes in my mouth, I crouch behind her, licking a path from her clit to the rose between her cheeks, dipping inside her opening along the way.
She writhes from the sensitivity, purring from the relief it extends and bucking from the mild discomfort.
Desperate for her flavor to coat my tongue, I trail the torturous route several more times. I can never get enough of her. But eventually, when tremors are sailing through her limbs, I unbuckle my pants, unsheathe my leaking cock from my boxer briefs, and remove the tape from her mouth.
She spits out the panties and huffs, “Your door.”
Determined to keep her squirming at the thought of being caught or being watched, which is something she’s expressed keen interest in, I don’t tell her I have a remote lock that I employed as soon as my receptionist left.
Instead, I drag my dick back and forth over Zara’s chilled cunt until I’m certain she’s about to combust, even having just come on my shoe. By far the most erotic experience of my life.
“All the more reason to stay quiet for me, my daring Thorn.” With an unforgiving thrust, I fill her like her body is craving.
The plug in her ass cramps everything. A fit so tight that stars dance before me.
Blood rushes against my eardrums in a whooshing roar.
I’m dizzy with the taste and scent and feel of her.
So fucking responsive and inviting. Hot and cold at once.
I stall to regroup, to get my bearings—something I’ve never struggled to do before Zara.
But I’m not just inside her. It’s like she’s inside me—a poison without an antidote, like I first thought. Death has never sounded sweeter.
“More then,” she begs, surrendering her fears about the call and the door to the euphoria she’s reaching for.
Without slowing my tempo, I pluck a small bottle of warming oil from my barely-hanging-on pants, squirt some on my fingers, and slink them down to stir her clit. She’s still chilled to the touch, so the contrast in sensations strikes her just as I hoped.
“Fuck,” she mutters through a moan, boldly rutting into my hand. “Oh, yes.”
She’s phenomenal like this. She’s phenomenal always.
Here though, stretched out before me—wanton and pliable, her mahogany hair mussed and fanning her muscular back and my desk, her resistance lower, the sumptuous flare of her hips, and her rapture painting my shaft and dripping down her thighs—it’s more than I ever thought I’d have.
Every moment with her is greater than the sum of all my highlights.
“That’s my greedy girl.” I glide my other palm over her smooth, sweat-slicked skin, following the path on her spine, massaging the tension from her muscles, relishing every sinful moan that tumbles from her lips, until I travel the stretch of her arm, taking her hand in mine.
I hover over her, clothed but bare, pumping with feral yearnings and breaking for this woman.
Christ. I think I must’ve fucked her about twenty times in the last few days, but every time is like the first. A test of my control, winning even when I lose it.
“Come for me, darling. You’re too breathtaking. I won’t last long with you like this.”
Her only response is a whimper—maybe too dazed to form words—but as my lips dust her shoulder blade, her inner walls clamp around my length, throttling it with her exaltation.
Sensing her stifled scream, I bring our joined hands to her mouth, muzzling her gasps as she spasms in my embrace. “Shh, baby. I’ve got you.”
Blind to anything other than the duplicitous angel writhing beneath me, I piston my hips with a ferocity to chase the oblivion that is so uniquely her.
The air is steamy, more reminiscent of a sauna than an office.
And my balls draw up with the vanquishing pleasure that will ripple through me.
A lit match held to a kerosine-soaked cardboard box—explosive and obliterating.
I sink my teeth into her skin and smother my groan as I jolt into her with jagged pumps. Her back arches in response, which somehow deepens my already-up-to-the-hilt position and has my final thrusts growing more aggressive, draining every morsel of ecstasy from us both.
We stay that way—with our chests heaving, our heartbeats pounding in tandem, her cocooned by my frame while we mantle my desk—until this high-rise office is aglow with the sun’s retreat into the Mississippi River, declaring the last minutes of our workplace tryst. We’re spent from a day teetering on the edge and ultimately skyrocketing to a mind-blowing release.
And I refuse to peel her off this wood slab that means nothing to me without her understanding that she is my everything. “Tell me you feel it. Please, Zar, tell me you feel this.”
A tear soaks into my index finger, one that must’ve rolled down her cheek. One that prickles my skin with a lethal wound.
I won’t survive if she chooses to leave me.
It will be as if the entire world were crashing down on my back, burying me at last. She doesn’t see how her mere existence enables me to carry it.
The load feels heavier than ever, but only because the fear of her absence haunts me like a lead galaxy on top of everything else.
Only having her my arms strengthens me to keep going.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and my stomach wrenches.
“Sorry?” I parrot, bracing myself.
She shakes her head, more drops of her regret sprinkling my fingers. “I don’t know how to do this, how to do my job and be with you without—”
“Stop,” I demand. “What are you apologizing for?”
“For the … I’m sure you’ve put two and two together.”
My anxiety wanes as I realize what she’s referring to. I stand, reluctantly pulling out of her and tucking myself away. “You’re sorry for Lev Popov’s informant missing?”
“Yes,” she pants, still somewhat breathless.
After removing the plug from her ass, I lift her into my arms, resuming my seat and situating her on my lap. “I don’t fucking care about that.”
She hisses as I unclasp her nipple clamps and set them aside, but she has the most authentic veil of innocence blanketing her, naked flesh and naked of her refined mask. “You don’t?”
“I do, but not for the reasons you think.” I reach for my glass, pop a melted ice cube in my mouth, and soothe her nipples, which are undoubtedly stinging.
My thoughts are composed when I straighten, stringing my fingers through her tussled hair, the drive to shield her from the whole goddamn world piercing my bones.
“I don’t care what your job was or what you came for.
I don’t care what you’ve done. I only care that you stay. ”
“Stay?” She pauses there, peering out the wall of windows at the tangerine sky and maybe the freedom the city affords. “What happened to your mom, Axel? I grasped what you alluded to about your father, but why was she in that house fire?”
I knew she’d heard my conversation with Ryker last night, so I’m not surprised by the question. Not if she noted the parallel between my mother and her. I hope she understands that I’d never allow their fates to align, but even if she does, it spears me to admit how immensely I failed.
“She wasn’t supposed to be there. For a long time, I believed she’d snuck in after the fire began and killed herself.
I had a few other theories, but that was the only one that made sense.
” Bile singes my throat as I force out the truth.
“A couple of years ago, I discovered that after she told the man she’d been having an affair with what I was planning to do to my father, he knocked her out and put her in the house. I hadn’t known she was there.”
Her lips curl into a frown as she presses her hand to her sternum, willing her heart to slow—something she seems to do when she’s overwhelmed. “Why would he do that?”
Skating my fingertips across her molten skin, I scratch her thighs.
“She’d gone to him, urging him to leave his wife since she’d soon be free.
He refused and got scared that she’d blab about the affair.
He was part of a group that considered cheating treason because it put the entire organization at risk.
And lucky for him, I’d already set the scene for an accidental fire at her residence. ”
“KORT was the organization?” she guesses correctly.
“Perhaps.”
“Loyalty is important to them,” she muses, brushing past my noncommittal answer.
“Yes.”
“And you …” She glides her fingertips over my jaw, the bristle of my scruff calming me in anticipation of her inquiry. “Why were you willing to do that to your father? Not that what he’d done to you didn’t warrant it, but …”
She already knows me well enough to understand I wouldn’t have killed him for how he treated me.
“He threatened my mother and my siblings, and I knew his threats weren’t idle. I’d seen him follow through on them … most notably, with another woman.”