37. Celine
CELINE
Lena is folding her clothes into the suitcase Priya sent over from Zurich, the one with the wheel that still hasn’t been fixed, and she’s humming something under her breath the way she used to before any of this started.
“The doctor cleared me to travel properly,” she says, tucking a sweater into the corner.
“Regular checkups instead of the facility. I miss the house, Celine. I miss my own bed and the creak outside my door and the soap that smells like Mom’s.
” She looks up, smiling, entirely unaware of what she’s about to ask.
“You’ll come with me, right? Pack a bag, we’ll go home together. ”
I stand in the doorway of the guest room and the question sits there longer than it should before I answer it.
Home. The house on Mercer Street, the floors that creak in three places, the kitchen where I burned eggs what feels like a lifetime ago.
My house. Our house. The only thing our parents left us, the place I have ached for in quiet, physical ways every single night I’ve slept in a penthouse fifty-three floors above the city.
“I’ll help you pack,” I say.
It isn’t an answer. Lena, sharp as she’s always been even now, catches it.
“That’s not a yes.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “I don’t think I’m coming, Lena.”
She stops folding. Looks at me properly, the way she looks at me when she’s deciding whether to push or wait. “Because of the contract? The appearances?”
“No.” I say it honestly, surprising myself with how easily it comes. “Because I don’t want to leave.”
I help her finish packing. I arrange the car, the security detail Roman insists on for the drive even though the threat is gone, because some habits don’t unlearn themselves overnight.
I hug her at the door for a long time, longer than the goodbye actually requires, and she pulls back and looks at me with an expression I recognize from every important moment of our lives together.
“You love him,” she says. Not a question this time.
“Yes.”
“Then go tell him that instead of standing here telling me.”
She kisses my cheek, climbs into the car, and is gone, the broken wheel of her suitcase the last thing I see before the elevator doors close on the lobby below.
I stand in the foyer of the penthouse for a long moment.
Then I go to find him.
He’s at his desk, jacket off, the late afternoon light coming through the window behind him in a way that makes the whole office feel softer than it usually does. He looks up when I come in.
“Lena get off alright?” he asks.
“She did.”
“You didn’t go with her.”
“No.” I close the door behind me, not for privacy from anyone, just because this conversation needs a closed door the way important conversations always seem to in this apartment. “She asked me to. Genuinely expected me to say yes.”
“And you didn’t.”
I cross the room and stand in front of his desk, the way I have a dozen times before in anger, in fear, in every difficult conversation we’ve had since I found page fourteen all those months ago. This time feels different standing here. Quieter.
“I’ve spent months looking for a way out of this,” I say.
“You know that better than almost anyone. Two lawyers, an offshore diagram with six entities mapped across four jurisdictions, a locked room I still haven’t found the key to.
I haven’t stopped looking because I failed.
I want you to understand that clearly. I am, if nothing else, very good at finding things other people don’t want found. ”
“I know that.”
“I’m telling you I’ve stopped looking. Not because the door doesn’t exist. Because I don’t want to walk through it anymore.
” My voice doesn’t waver, though something in my chest does, the vertigo of saying a true thing out loud for the first time.
“I had a real choice today. My own house, my own bed, my own life waiting exactly where I left it, completely free of you and your council and everything this contract has cost me. And I stood in that doorway and I realized I didn’t want any of it if it meant not having this. ”
He’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch him try to find words, his jaw working once the way it does when something costs him more than he’s used to spending.
He doesn’t find them.
He stands instead, comes around the desk, and the look on his face is something I haven’t seen from him before, not the controlled intensity of every other moment between us, something rawer and considerably less certain of itself.
His hand finds my jaw. I let him tip my face up toward his.
The tenderness fractures into something sharper, hungrier. Zane pulls me in and kisses me like he has been starving for this exact moment.
There’s nothing careful about it this time. His mouth claims mine, deep and demanding, and I kiss him back just as fiercely, my hands fisting in his dress shirt. All the months of push and pull, of almosts and what-ifs, pour out between us in the golden light flooding his office.
He walks me backward until my hips hit the edge of his desk. Papers scatter. Neither of us cares. His hands slide down my body, gripping my waist, then lower to my ass, pulling me hard against him so I can feel how much he wants me.
“Say it again,” he rasps against my mouth, voice low and rough.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper.
He groans and spins me around, bending me forward over the desk. My palms press against the cool wood.
He yanks my skirt up over my hips in one rough motion, exposing my thighs and lace underwear. His hand comes down in a firm, sharp spank on my ass. The sting blooms hot across my skin and I gasp, arching back into him.
“Fuck,” he mutters, voice thick. Another spank lands on the other cheek, harder this time. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
He smooths his palm over the marks he just left, then reaches around to cup the gentle swell of my belly.
His touch is possessive but reverent, fingers spreading wide over the curve that has become much more obvious these last weeks.
He leans over me, chest against my back, and presses a hot kiss to the side of my neck.
“Look at you,” he says, voice dark and low against my ear. “Carrying my child and still choosing to stay. So fucking beautiful like this.”
I moan softly at his words and the way his hand keeps stroking over my belly.
He spanks me again, lighter this time, then slides his fingers between my legs, pushing my underwear aside.
I’m already soaked. He groans when he feels it and circles my clit with two fingers before pushing them inside me.
“Zane,” I gasp, pushing back against his hand.
He fucks me with his fingers, deep and steady, while his other hand stays on my belly, holding me like something precious and claimed at the same time. The golden light pours over us, warm and unforgiving, catching every movement as he works me closer to the edge.
He pulls his fingers out suddenly and drops to his knees behind me. Before I can catch my breath, his mouth is on me, tongue dragging through my folds, licking and sucking with raw hunger.
I cry out, my forehead dropping to the desk. He eats me like a man who has finally been given permission, groaning against my pussy, one hand still resting protectively on the swell of my stomach.
He eats me with filthy dedication, tongue fucking into me before returning to my clit, sucking hard while two thick fingers push back inside my pussy. My legs shake. I moan loudly, pushing back against his face, chasing the pleasure.
“Zane—oh fuck—”
He spanks me again, harder this time, the sharp sting mixing perfectly with the wet heat of his mouth. Then he stands up behind me, breathing hard. I hear his belt and zipper, and a second later his thick cock is rubbing against my soaked entrance.
He leans over me, chest pressed to my back, one hand gripping my hip while the other slides around to rest possessively over the swell of my belly.
“Look at how perfect you are,” he growls against my ear, voice rough with lust. “So full with my baby and still so fucking wet for me.”
He pushes inside me in one deep, powerful thrust. I cry out at the stretch, at how full he makes me feel. He groans loudly, staying buried deep for a moment, letting me adjust around his thickness.
“Fuck, Celine,” he rasps. “You feel even better like this. Carrying my child… it does something to me.”
He starts fucking me hard, deep thrusts that rock my body against the desk. Every stroke is strong and deliberate.
The sound of skin slapping skin fills the office, mixing with my moans and his low grunts. He spanks me again, then soothes the sting with his palm, all while keeping one hand spread wide over my pregnant belly like he can’t stop touching it.
“Yes—harder,” I gasp, pushing back to meet every thrust.
He gives me exactly what I ask for. His hips snap forward, fucking me deeper, faster. The desk creaks beneath us. He leans down and bites my shoulder, then soothes it with his tongue.
“You’re mine,” he says, voice dark and possessive. “This belly, this pussy, everything. All mine.”
The words send heat rushing through me. Pleasure coils tight and fast in my core. He reaches around and finds my clit, rubbing tight circles while he keeps pounding into me. I’m so close already.
“Come for me,” he demands, spanking me again. “Let me feel this pretty pregnant pussy come on my cock.”
I shatter with a loud cry, clenching hard around him as the orgasm crashes through me. My legs shake violently. Zane groans deeply, fucking me through it, drawing it out until I’m whimpering.
He pulls out suddenly, spins me around, and lifts me onto the desk. He spreads my thighs wide and pushes back inside me in one smooth thrust, this time face-to-face. The new angle makes me moan loudly. He grips my ass with both hands and fucks me deep and steady, eyes locked on mine.
His gaze drops to my belly between us, watching it move every time he thrusts. His hand returns to it, stroking reverently over the curve.
“Fuck, I love how you look like this,” he breathes, voice strained. “So full with me. So beautiful.”
The combination of his words, his cock hitting that perfect spot, and the raw emotion in his eyes sends me over the edge again.
I come hard, crying out his name as my walls pulse around him.
Zane follows right after with a deep, guttural groan, burying himself to the hilt as he comes inside me, pulsing hot and thick.
We stay like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing hard in the golden light. He kisses me slowly, tenderly, one hand still resting protectively on my belly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, the words simpler now than they were an hour ago, settled in a way I didn’t expect them to be.
“I know.”
“I still need you to understand what I told you in your office. About the file. About how this started.” I tilt my head to look at him. “Choosing to stay doesn’t erase that. I need you to know I’m choosing it with my eyes open, not because I’ve forgotten.”
“I know that too,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that sounds, for the first time since I’ve known him, almost humble. “I’m not going to mistake this for forgiveness. I know the difference now.”
I settle back against him, the city outside doing what it always does, indifferent and ongoing, and for the first time in months I let myself simply exist in this moment without calculating what comes next.
It’s enough, for tonight, that I’m exactly where I choose to be.