Chapter 24 - Catherine #3
“Valentina.” My voice drops to the register that Kaiden calls my “dangerous voice.” Low.
Measured. The kind that requires leaning in to hear, which means the listener is already in my territory.
“You’re new. I understand that. You don’t know the dynamics of this room yet. So let me save you some time.”
I place my hand over hers—the one on Kaiden’s arm—and lift it off. Gently. The way you’d remove something that doesn’t belong.
“This man is mine. That’s not a claim I’m making—it’s a fact I’m stating.
The ring on my finger, the necklace on my neck, the dress I’m wearing—all from his family.
The room you’re standing in is his parents’ house, which is also my house.
The bed upstairs is ours. Every person at this party knows that, and the ones who’ve tested it have regretted it. ”
Valentina’s composure is cracking. The smile going rigid.
“So here’s what I’d suggest for your first month in the neighborhood: introduce yourself to the right people, learn where the good coffee is, and develop a very clear understanding of which men in this community are spoken for. Starting with this one.”
I turn to Kaiden. Rise on my toes. Kiss him—not for Valentina, but not not for Valentina. Long enough to make a point. Deep enough to make a statement.
When I pull back, Kaiden’s eyes are dark. His hand has found my waist. His mouth is curved in the particular smile that means he is profoundly, dangerously turned on and doing his best to hide it in a room full of his parents’ colleagues.
Valentina is gone. I don’t know when she left. Don’t care.
“That,” Kaiden says against my ear, “was the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life. And I need to take you upstairs immediately.”
“It’s not midnight yet.”
“I don’t give a fuck what time it is.”
His hand tightens on my waist. His mouth brushes my ear. “Upstairs. Now. Before I do something to you against this food table that gets us both in trouble with our parents.”
I take his hand. We walk through the party. Up the stairs. Down the hallway. Into our room. The door shuts behind us.
The party is still happening below us. I can feel the bass through the floor—the vibration of a hundred people celebrating, the countdown still hours away. Up here, the music is muffled. The room is dark except for the light from the hallway under the door and the moonlight through the curtains.
Kaiden locks the door. Turns. Leans against it. Looks at me.
I’m still vibrating from the Valentina thing.
The adrenaline hasn’t settled—the particular chemical rush of a woman who has just marked her territory in public and is still running on the primal satisfaction of it.
Her hand on his arm. The casual possession of it.
The assumption that she could touch what’s mine and I’d tolerate it.
She put her hand on him. She touched him like he was available.
And the rage I felt—not the performed kind, not the ice princess kind—the animal kind, the one that bypasses logic and goes straight to the wiring that says “this is mine and you will remove your hand or I will remove it for you”—is still running through my blood like a current.
I want him. Not the gentle version. Not the careful version that’s been managing my injuries for weeks.
The version that matches what I’m feeling right now—possessive, dark, the particular need that comes from seeing another girl touch your person and wanting to erase every trace of her proximity with your own.
I cross the room. Take his tie in my fist. Pull. He comes off the door. His mouth meets mine—hard, open, the kind of kiss that’s a claim rather than a question. I pull the tie tighter, forcing his head down to my level, and bite his bottom lip hard enough to bruise.
He groans. His hands go to my hips—rough, grabbing, the grip that says he understands what this is and he’s here for it.
“That girl touched you,” I say against his mouth.
“I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t. But she did. And now I need to—” I pull back. Look at him. His eyes are black. The tie still in my fist. “I need every part of you to remember that you’re mine. Not hers. Not anyone’s. Mine.”
Something detonates behind his eyes. The careful Kaiden—the one who holds me through nightmares and checks on my ribs—evaporates. What replaces it is the version I’ve been craving all night. Dark. Hungry. The boy who calls me his and puts his hand on my throat and means it.
“Then take what’s yours, Cat.”
I push him backward. Into the chair by the window—the one we never sit in, the one that exists for tossing clothes and now exists for this.
He sits. I straddle him. The gold dress rides up around my thighs, the slit splitting open.
His hands are on my bare legs immediately—palms flat, sliding up, the gold fabric bunching around his wrists.
I pull his tie over his head. Unbutton his shirt—fast, not careful, the buttons protesting.
My mouth finds his neck. His collarbone.
The tattoo over his heart. I bite down—hard enough to leave a mark, hard enough that tomorrow when he takes his shirt off in the locker room every boy will see it and know.
He hisses. His hand goes to my hair—pulls, tilts my head back. His mouth on my throat. Teeth. Tongue. The spot below my ear that short-circuits my nervous system.
“Jealous,” he says against my skin. Not asking. Knowing. “You’re jealous and it’s making you fucking feral.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
I slide off his lap. To my knees. Between his legs. His eyes go wide—then dark, then darker, his jaw locking as my hands find his belt.
I unbuckle. Unzip. Pull him free. He’s hard—has been since the bathroom, probably since I walked down the stairs in this dress, definitely since I stood in front of Valentina and said “this man is mine” with the particular authority of a person who kills people who take things from her.
I take him in my mouth. Not slow. Not teasing. Deep, immediately, my hand wrapping around the base. The sound he makes—guttural, involuntary, his head falling back against the chair—sends a pulse of heat through my entire body.
His hand in my hair. Not guiding—gripping.
Holding on. I work him with my mouth and my hand, the rhythm aggressive, the particular energy of a girl who is not performing a favor but executing a claim.
Every stroke says “mine.” Every swirl of my tongue says “not hers.” The taste of him—salt and skin and the particular flavor that my body now associates with home—makes me moan against him, and the vibration makes his hips jerk.
“Fuck—Cat—” His hand tightens in my hair. “Stop. If you don’t stop I’m going to—”
I pull off. Look up at him. His chest is heaving. His shirt is open. The mark I left on his neck is already darkening.
“Stand up,” he says. His voice has dropped to the register that rewires my brain. The command voice. The one that should scare me and instead makes my thighs press together.
I stand. He stands. Walks me backward until my calves hit the bed.
“Turn around.”
I turn. Face the bed. Feel him behind me—the heat of his body, the particular charge of being unable to see what he’s going to do next. His hands find the halter ties at my waist. Unknot them. The top of the dress falls—my breasts bare, the gold fabric pooling at my hips.
His hands slide up my stomach. Cupping my breasts. His mouth on the back of my neck. His thumbs circling my nipples and the sensation—the dual input, his mouth and his hands—makes me arch back against him.
“No panties,” he discovers. His hand sliding under the dress. Finding me bare. “You came to a party with a hundred people and no underwear.”
“Surprise.”
“You’re going to be the death of me, Catherine O’Farrell.”
His fingers slide against me. I’m wet—embarrassingly, devastatingly wet, the kind that’s been building since the bathroom before the party and escalated through the Valentina confrontation and is now a situation that his fingers are making significantly worse.
He pushes two inside me. I bite down on my lip to keep the sound quiet—the party, the parents, the hundred people below us.
His thumb finds my clit. Circles. His other hand wraps around my throat from behind—gentle pressure, grounding, the particular hold that empties my brain of everything except sensation.
“This is what jealousy gets you,” he says against my ear. “This is what happens when my girl marks her territory in front of the whole party and then walks upstairs with that look in her eyes. You wanted to claim me? I’m claimed. Now let me show you what that means.”
His fingers curl. Hit the spot. My knees buckle and his arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me standing. The orgasm builds—fast, urgent, the kind that’s been simmering for hours.
“Come,” he says. Not asking. “Right here. On my hand. While a hundred people are downstairs drinking champagne and you’re up here falling apart for me.”
I break. My body locks. His hand tightens on my throat and his fingers keep working and the orgasm rips through me in a wave that makes me grab the bedpost to stay upright.
The sound I make is muffled by his palm moving from my throat to my mouth—covering, containing, the particular gesture of a person who is committed to making me come but also committed to not alerting the caterers.
He gives me exactly three seconds to recover. Then he pushes the dress down. It pools at my feet. I step out. I’m naked except for the heels and the jewelry—the Celtic knot necklace, the Claddagh ring, the gold against my skin.
“On the bed,” he says. “Hands and knees.”
I climb onto the bed. The position—exposed, presented, the particular vulnerability of a woman on her hands and knees waiting for the person behind her. But it’s not vulnerability. It’s choice. It’s the deliberate decision to give my body to someone I trust in the way I want to give it.