Chapter 4
KAIRO
"Summer?"
She’s staring at me from the edge of the table, biting her bottom lip.
The look in her eyes isn’t fear, and it isn’t defiance either.
It’s hunger, something I didn’t plan for yet.
I’ve waited seven years for this moment, every detail mapped out, every crack in her armor measured and exploited.
But this? This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight.
She launches off the table and crashes into me.
Her mouth collides with mine like she’s starving, her hands fist in my shirt, nails digging in hard enough to sting.
For one dangerous second, my control vanishes.
I catch her, one arm banding around her waist, the other gripping the back of her neck, and I kiss her back like I’ve been dying to for years.
She tastes like champagne, salt, and my own blood.
I spin her around and bend her over the table. I need to be inside her. Plates scatter, and a glass shatters on the marble as I shove the red silk up over her hips and groan at the sight of her, bare, glistening, perfect.
“Kairo …” She says my name like a prayer and a curse.
I free my cock and push inside her in one rough thrust. She cries out, back arching, fingers clawing at the tablecloth.
She’s impossibly tight and hot, wetter than she has any right to be after everything I’ve already put her through tonight.
I don’t give her time to adjust, I fuck her hard and deep, as the table scrapes across the marble with every brutal thrust.
More plates crash, the champagne bottle tips and explodes in a wet shatter, and I don’t care. I grab a fistful of her hair and yank her head back.
“Look at me while I ruin you.”
Her eyes meet mine over her shoulder, glassy, desperate, tears clinging to her lashes.
She pushes back against me, meeting every thrust like she needs this as badly as I do.
The candles flicker wildly beside us as hot wax spills across the white linen.
I reach for one of the candles without pulling out of her, and she whimpers when she sees it.
I tilt it.
A thin stream of hot red wax lands across her lower back. Summer gasps sharply, her pussy clenching violently around my cock, and the sound she makes goes straight to my balls.
“Fuck …” she chokes out.
I pour another line higher up, watching the wax harden on her skin as I keep fucking her.
Every drop makes her tighten, makes her moan louder as her thighs shake against the edge of the table.
I then set the candle down, grip her hips with both hands, and drive into her.
The table lurches forward as another plate hits the floor.
She comes suddenly, violently, crying out my name as her walls pulse around me.
I grit my teeth and hold back, fucking her through it until she’s shaking and sobbing.
I pull out, flip her onto her back in one rough motion, and shove back inside her with a single brutal stroke.
Her legs wrap around my waist, pulling me deeper.
I reach for the candle again without slowing down, the flame flickering wildly as I tilt it over her chest.
Hot red wax spills across her breasts.
Summer arches sharply with a broken cry, her nipples tightening instantly as the wax lands on sensitive skin. Another stream, then another, thick drops rolling over her curves, hardening fast. Her pussy clenches viciously around my cock with every splash of heat.
“Fuck … Kairo!” she screams.
The mix of pain and pleasure makes her eyes roll back.
I keep thrusting deep and steady, watching the red wax streak across her tits while I fuck her.
She looks obscene like this, flushed, marked by me, completely ruined on my dinner table.
I set the candle aside, lean down, and drag my tongue over one wax-covered nipple, tasting wax and salt and her.
She shudders hard, another orgasm already building.
I bite down gently on the hardened wax, peeling a piece off with my teeth while I grind deep inside her.
She moans, loud and broken, her hands flying into my hair, nails scraping my scalp.
I can feel her tightening again, fluttering around my cock.
“Come for me again,” I growl against her breast. “Let me feel you fall apart while I’m buried inside you.”
She does.
Her whole body seizes, back bowing off the table as she comes with a silent scream, eyes squeezed shut, tears slipping down her temples.
Her pussy milks me so perfectly I can’t hold back anymore.
I thrust deep one last time and come hard, flooding her with pulse after pulse while groaning her name into her neck.
I stay inside her, hips twitching, pressing as deep as I can while emptying myself completely.
For a long moment, the only sounds are our ragged breathing.
The dining room is destroyed, plates shattered across the marble, champagne pooling under the table.
The table itself is shoved nearly three feet from where it started.
Red wax is streaked across her breasts, her back, and the white linen like war paint.
Summer lies beneath me, chest heaving, eyes half-lidded, looking completely wrecked and impossibly beautiful. I brush a strand of hair off her damp forehead, surprisingly gently. My thumb traces her swollen bottom lip.
This wasn’t the plan.
None of this was.
I was supposed to break her tonight.
Instead, she just cracked a wall open inside me.
I pull out slowly, watching my cum leak from her swollen pussy.
The sight satisfies the primal and possessive part in me as I push it back inside her, which earns me a groan.
When I scoop her up into my arms, she’s limp, exhausted, so much so that she doesn’t fight me.
Her head rests against my shoulder as I carry her out of the destroyed dining room.
“You’re going to be the death of me, Summer Rayne,” I murmur against her hair.
She doesn’t answer.
But her fingers curl weakly into my shirt like she doesn’t want to let go. And that scares me more than anything else tonight.
I carry her down the corridor to my room.
She's out before I reach the door, her breathing deep and even, her body slack against my chest. I kick the door open and lay her on the bed.
The red dress is twisted around her waist, stained with wax, champagne, and sweat.
I pull it off her carefully, working it down her legs without waking her.
She doesn't stir. I toss it on the floor and pull the sheet up over her.
She looks different like this, smaller, softer, all the sharp edges filed down by exhaustion.
Without the fury, sarcasm, and the survival instinct burning hot behind her eyes, she looks like the girl I first saw seven years ago.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her sleep.
Seven years.
I was twenty-three, fresh out of college, in my first week in the family business, sitting in Mario Rayne's living room while he pitched me some half-assed proposal with weak numbers and amateur security.
I wasn't listening because he’s an idiot.
I was about to say no to the whole thing and walk out.
Then she walked through the room.
Her hair still wet from a shower, bare feet on the hardwood, a stack of books in her arms. She didn't look at me, she didn't look at her father.
She walked through like we didn't exist, like whatever was in those books mattered more than two men sitting in her living room deciding the shape of her father's future.
She disappeared down a hallway, a door closed, and I sat there staring at the empty space she left behind.
I said yes to her father's deal that night, not because the numbers worked, but because I needed a reason to come back to that house.
I had men on her within the month, not close, never close enough for her to feel them, but they were always there.
I knew where she went, who she talked to, what she ate, and when she slept.
I knew when she sat in her car in parking lots and cried because her father was cruel over breakfast. I knew when she laughed at her desk at the job she thought was legitimate because some kid in the mailroom brought her coffee and said something stupid.
I knew everything about her, and she didn't know my name.
Her father kept her sheltered, no college, no real freedom, just the family business she didn't know was dirty, and the walls of a world she couldn't see past. He kept her ignorant and useful, a daughter who filed paperwork, answered phones, and never asked why the numbers didn't add up or why certain men came to the office after dark.
And the men who got too close to her, I handled.
The first one was some kid from down the street, he took her to a movie, bought her flowers, and thought he had a chance.
I had someone sit him down in a parking lot and explain the situation.
He never called her again, she probably thought he lost interest.
The second one was bolder. He took her to dinner twice and kissed her at her front door. I broke his jaw myself. Drove to his apartment, knocked on his door, and hit him before he finished saying hello. He moved out of state the following week.
By the third, I didn't need to do anything physical, word was out.
Summer Rayne was untouchable, and everyone assumed it was her father being protective, the overbearing father who worked for the mafia, keeping his princess locked in a tower.
It wasn't him, it was never him. He didn't care enough to protect her, he barely looked at her unless he needed something signed or someone to pour his drinks at dinner.
It was always me.
Every lonely night she spent wondering why no one stayed.
Every time she looked in the mirror and thought something was wrong with her.
That was me. I did that. Then one day, I was away, and the person who was supposed to keep tabs on her didn’t.
She went to a party with a friend, and that was the night she gave her virginity to some random guy at the party.
Some loser who didn’t deserve her, who didn’t deserve that treasure.
I couldn’t kill him, even though I wanted to, but the person who didn’t do their fucking job, yeah, he got what he deserved.
He took away something I could never get back.
But I did learn my lesson, and from that moment I released the reins on her.
Maybe if I weren’t so strict, she would have waited.
When the port job went sideways, I knew before the dust settled what I was going to ask for.
Mario came to me begging for his life, and with a list of his assets, his properties and shares, it was a desperate offer.
I let him talk, I let him empty his pockets onto my desk one pathetic item at a time.
And when he was finished, when there was nothing left, I told him what I wanted.
His face went white. I'll give him those thirty seconds of being a good father.
Thirty seconds where he looked at me, and I could see him calculating whether he loved his daughter more than he loved his own survival.
He didn't.
I look down at Summer sleeping in my bed, my cum still inside her.
The wax marks on her skin, faint red lines across her back and her breasts that will fade by morning.
Her lips swollen, fingerprint bruises forming on her hips from where I held her against the table.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I've been ruining her life since before she knew I existed.
"I've been watching you for seven years, Summer," I say to the dark room.
She doesn't hear me, she's too far gone, breathing slowly and deeply, her face turned into my pillow.
I reach out and push a strand of hair off her forehead.
She shifts in her sleep, turns toward my hand, and presses her cheek into my palm.
An unconscious thing, a reflex, she doesn't know she's doing it, and that makes it worse.
I don't pull my hand back, but I lie down beside her and pull her into me, her back against my chest, my arm around her waist. She fits against me without waking, her body curling into mine like it knows where it belongs even if she doesn't yet.
I press my face into her hair and breathe her in, listening to her slow, even breathing.
This wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
Seven years I waited. Seven years of watching, protecting, claiming her from a distance. Every man I removed, every opportunity I stole, every night I made sure she slept alone.
And now she’s here, in my bed, marked by my hands, my mouth, and my cum. She sleeps like she trusts me not to hurt her, and I never would. She has no idea what she is to me, what she always has been, and she has no idea that I would burn everything to the ground if I lost her.