Chapter 15 #2
I stand, free my cock, and drive into her in one hard thrust. She's tight and soaked and she takes me with a broken sound that goes straight through my control.
I fuck her against the dressing table, one hand in her hair, the other pinching her aching nipples while she braces in those heels and shoves back to meet every stroke.
“Look,” I tell her.
She looks. Naked except for my necklace and the shoes I bought her. Me buried in her pussy to the hilt. Her mouth open. Eyes dark. The wild, pleased flush of a woman who knows exactly what she's doing to me.
“Mine,” I say against her shoulder, and bite.
She comes hard around my cock, shaking, pussy fluttering, trying and failing to stay quiet. I fuck her through it without mercy, chasing my own edge, and bury myself deep when I finish, cock pulsing as I empty into her, hot and thick, holding her hips flush to mine until the last of it is spent.
We stay locked for a breath. Then I pull out, still half hard, and the wet slide of me leaving her makes her whimper.
I'm not finished.
I turn her, guide her down onto the rug on her hands and knees, then further, until her cheek presses to the soft pile and those red soles kick up behind her.
I pin her prone with a hand between her shoulder blades and sink back into her pussy from behind, slick with my cum.
From this angle I can go deeper. I do. Hard, grinding strokes that pump the first load further in as I work toward a second.
“Again,” she whispers into the rug. “Yes...”
I fist her hair. Spank her ass mid-thrust. Bite the top of her shoulder when she clenches around me. She comes again, muffled against the floor, and I follow her over, buried deep, cock jerking as I fill her a second time, pinning her flat until it's done.
For a few seconds the only sound is our breathing and the distant murmur of men downstairs. Her cheek stays pressed against the rug. I ease out carefully, cum already threatening to spill down her thighs, and gather her up against my chest.
She laughs into my throat, glowing and filthy in the best way.
“Your captains are waiting.”
“They can wait another minute.”
I kiss the place I bit, then her mouth, softer now.
When her legs steady, I help her stand. In the adjoining bathroom, we clean up with the quiet efficiency of people who still have a room full of men to face.
Back in the dressing room, I fasten my trousers and zip her back into the gown, careful with the lining and the little hook at the top.
She smooths the velvet over her hips, checks that the diamonds sit right, and leaves the shoes exactly where they belong, on her feet.
I take my jacket from the hook. The crown stays on the dressing table. She picks up her handbag and waits beside the door, still wearing the diamonds and the shoes.
We go downstairs together.
Voices carry from the library, two men disagreeing over something on the table. I open the door with Tessa beside me. Kirill looks up first. Within a second the room is quiet, and the captains are on their feet.
She glances from them to me. Her hand settles more firmly around my arm.
I bring her to the chair beside mine. The men wait until she sits, gathering their glasses out of her way. Klim remains near the door, where he can see the entrance hall and the table.
“Go on,” I tell Kirill.
He lays a payment confirmation in front of me.
“The full amount. It came through this afternoon. The truck's back at Depot One, empty. Police have been notified.”
I draw the sheet closer. Beneath it he's put the figures for the stolen equipment, the gate repair and Aleksei's care and lost working time.
The total matches what I told him to recover.
Our customer's replacement was paid for earlier in the week.
This money restores what we spent answering for Luka's attack.
Tessa looks at the paper without reaching for it. She knows about the theft and the guard who left in an ambulance. I told her on the day it happened, while I was still at the depot wanting to hear her voice.
“From Luka?” I ask.
“He paid. Devon and two others withdrew their work. They told him the rest would follow if he kept the load.”
Kirill sets their written withdrawals beside the confirmation. I recognize Devon's name at the top. A week ago, he wanted until the next morning to decide whether his lunch mattered more than the man bleeding at our gate. When he chose to keep our business, the others had someone to follow.
They know what our protection is worth. Some learned it when their own customers decided an unsigned promise meant they could keep the money. They won't give up my yards and my men's help to subsidize a fight Luka started for himself.
Kirill watches me finish reading.
“You told me to call the next one,” he says.
“You did.”
He allows himself a small smile. I slide the papers back to him, feeling a satisfaction that reaches well beyond the recovered sum. The men in this room saw our gate broken. Now they can carry a different account to the people who work for us.
“Tell the crews the loss is covered. Aleksei's pay continues until he can return.”
Kirill nods. I remember the keys sticky with blood in my hand and resist the wish to treat this sheet of paper as a complete answer. The money pays for what can be replaced. Aleksei still has to recover, and the men who struck him aren't sitting in this room.
Klim steps closer to the table.
“Luka wants the meeting confirmed.”
Kirill takes a second page from his folder. October tenth is written beside The Ninth Masque. The charity ball occupies the main room that evening. The proposed meeting uses my office upstairs, before the public doors open.
“Before the ball,” Kirill says. “One last parley. Devon and the other two will witness it. Luka's agreed to the escort.”
Klim rests his hand on the back of an empty chair.
“Paying the loss doesn't buy him admission.”
“They want to hear Bogdan refuse him,” Kirill says. “Then he can't claim we offered him terms behind their backs.”
I look at the three names beneath the proposed date. Those men have already put their business at risk by withdrawing it. They want to know I'm not making a private arrangement that leaves them outside it. Kirill has given them a way to hear my answer for themselves.
Tessa turns toward me.
“At the club?”
“In my office, before the doors open.” I look at Klim. “Bring him in for the meeting and take him out when it's over. He doesn't wander.”
Klim confirms it. Kirill waits with his pen resting across the page.
Luka has paid because the men he needs have begun to leave him. He still wants to stand in front of witnesses and argue that my freight routes and club money should be shared. I can refuse him in front of the same men who made him repay the loss.
“Confirm it,” I say.
Kirill writes beneath the date, then puts his pen away. He gathers the confirmation and the withdrawals, leaving me the meeting sheet. The captains take their coats from the chairs.
Tessa stays beside me until the last of them has gone. She follows Kirill's departure with her eyes, then looks at the paper in front of me.
“They stopped talking the second you came in.”
“They'd had time to say a great deal.”
Her mouth curves. She knows where I spent that time, and I like seeing her enjoy the knowledge.
I set the meeting sheet in the desk drawer and stand.
Beyond the open door, light falls from the dining room across the hall.
I can smell roasted garlic and rosemary as we reach it.
Two places wait at the smaller end of the table, with low candles between them and a bowl of miniature pumpkins beside the window.
Tessa pauses before taking the chair I hold for her.
“I'm keeping the shoes on.”
“I hoped you would.”
She sits, smoothing the velvet over her knees. When she reaches for her napkin, the central diamond moves with her, throwing a small point of light across my hand.
I sit opposite her and leave my phone in my pocket.
Luka has until October tenth to decide what he wants to say to me.
Tonight, I want to hear her.