Claimed By The Other Brother (Billionaire Brothers Obsession #2)
Prologue
Scarlett
There are things you can't explain to anyone who hasn't lived them.
Not the way it feels to stand in a gown you spent six months choosing, holding a bouquet of flowers that cost more than your first paycheck, standing at the door at the back of the aisle while the minutes stack up like debt.
Not the way silence sounds when the eyes of your friends and family are on you and the man who was supposed to walk down that aisle, doesn't. Not the way your entire body understands what your mind refuses to accept before anyone says a word.
And certainly not the way it feels to end up in his bed.
Dax Blackwell.
I tell myself, even now, that it was grief.
That it was the champagne and the devastation and the fact that he was simply there on that terrace when everything inside me was caving in.
I tell myself it was a single, catastrophic lapse in judgment—the kind that belongs to the worst night of your life and nowhere else.
Something you bury. Something you never speak of.
I've been telling myself that for months.
Standing in the doorway of his bedroom now, watching him pull his jacket from his shoulders and lay it over the chair with the kind of unhurried precision that tells me he is a man who has never once rushed for anything in his life, I understand that I was lying to myself the entire time.
This was always where I was going to end up.
He turns, his blue eyes finding mine across the room, and the look on his face is the same one that unravels me every single time — not hunger, not arrogance, not the cool dominance that everyone in his orbit mistakes for indifference.
It's certainty. Like I am something he has already decided on.
Like the outcome of this evening was never in question.
My pulse pounds at the base of my throat.
"Stop thinking," he says quietly, and he crosses the room to me.
I open my mouth to tell him that I can't. That I've been thinking since the moment I met him, since that terrace, since New York, since every late strategy session in his office that ended the way they always ended — with his hands on me and all my carefully constructed walls reduced to rubble at my feet. I open my mouth to say all of it.
He kisses me before I get the chance, and every single thought dissolves.
His hands find my waist, pulling me flush against him as his lips move over mine with a slow, deliberate hunger that's somehow more devastating than urgency.
He kisses me like he's savoring something he intends to consume entirely.
His mouth is warm and certain, and I feel it in my stomach, in my thighs, in every place I've spent months pretending I don't think about.
I slide my hands up his chest and grip his collar, kissing him back with everything I've been holding in.
He walks me backward through the suite — past the living room where we'd been talking, past the city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows — his mouth never leaving mine.
When we reach the elevator bank inside the private entrance of his penthouse suite, he corners me against the wall, bracing one hand beside my head as he slows the kiss down deliberately, pulling at my bottom lip, taking his time with me.
His other hand moves down my side, tracing the curve of my waist, the flare of my hip. He kisses my jaw, then the curve of my neck, then back to my mouth — unhurried, thorough, like a man conducting a study.
I slide my hand up to his neck and dig my fingers into his hair, tilting my head back to give him better access, and he takes it, his mouth pressing harder against mine as his palm finds my lower back and pulls me against him.
The pressure of his hard cock against my stomach makes my legs go soft beneath me.
I clutch his shoulder to keep myself upright, and I feel his mouth curve against mine — a quiet, knowing smile that I want to be furious about and can't be, because I am too busy being grateful for the wall behind me.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his blue eyes dark, his breathing controlled in a way mine absolutely is not.
"Come here," he says, and takes my hand.
The instant we cross into the bedroom and the door closes behind us, his lips crash onto mine in an aggressive collision that consumes me completely.
I throw my hands around his neck, rising onto my toes as I return every bit of his intensity.
He tilts my chin, claiming my mouth, devouring it with all the hunger that has been building between us for longer than either of us wants to admit.
His tongue meets mine, and the warmth pooling between my legs deepens instantly.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to pull his shirt over his head and toss it across the room.
He pulls me back against him immediately, his bare skin warm under my palms, and I press into him as he kisses me again, and something in my chest releases — this helpless, aching thing that I've been clenching shut for months.
He lifts me off the ground, pinning me against the door as he tears his lips from mine and brings his mouth to my neck.
He grazes the skin there, biting softly, and I moan, my fingers threading back into his hair.
He turns and carries me to the bed, dropping me onto the mattress with an ease that makes my stomach flip, and I watch him reach for his belt.
He holds my gaze while he loosens it — steady, unhurried — and the patience in his expression is almost unbearable.
He kicks off his shoes, steps out of his pants, and mounts the bed in nothing but his briefs.
I watch how his hard cock is bulging—causing the fabric to stretch, and my body tightens with anticipation.
He settles over me, sliding a hand to my cheek, kissing me softly as he moves against me — and I feel him press against my stomach, and every muscle in my body pulls taut.
He slips his fingers beneath the hem of my dress.
"Leave it on," he murmurs against my lips, his voice low and rough.
"I want to fuck you in it."
The words move through me like heat.
He grazes my entrance through the thin fabric of my panties, and I inhale sharply, my hips shifting toward him instinctively. He strokes the base of the material with his finger — slow, deliberate circles — watching my face while he does it.
I grip the sheets. He lowers his lips to mine, kissing me harder as he slips his finger beneath the fabric and inside me, and I gasp, pulling the sheets into knots.
I arch my back off the mattress, my body tightening around him as he thrusts into me deeper, finding the spot that makes my vision blur.
I writhe beneath him, trembling, completely undone by the slow, precise movement of his hand.
He adds another finger, stretching me, and my thighs shake. He twists his hand, his fingers curving inside me, and I cry out — not quietly, not controlled — a desperate, unguarded sound that I don't have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about.
My orgasm builds fast, cresting higher with every thrust of his fingers, until I come apart beneath him, my body shuddering, pleasure pouring through me in long, unraveling waves. He watches every second of it, his expression focused and intent, like he is cataloging each detail.
He withdraws his fingers and lowers his head, his eyes still on mine, as he licks them clean.
I’m going to lose my mind.
He lowers his briefs, fisting his hard thick cock as he lifts my dress higher and edges toward my entrance.
He rubs against me — teasing, patient, torturously controlled.
I reach for his hips to pull him in, and he resists, dragging it out for another agonizing moment before he pushes forward and thrusts deep, filling me and stretching my pussy walls. .
We both go still.
His breath escapes in a rough exhale, and I feel him everywhere — his hands braced on either side of my head as he gives me a moment to adjust. Then he begins to move, and I stop thinking about anything at all.
He rocks into me in slow, deep strokes that hit the place inside me that makes me want to climb out of my own skin. I wrap my legs around his waist, tilting my hips to take more of him, and he dives deeper, as I moan into his shoulder and grip the back of his neck.
He thrusts harder, faster, and I move with him, matching his rhythm, chasing the pressure building in my lower belly.
He breaks my grip and slips out of me, flipping me over in one smooth motion and pulling me to my knees.
He raises my dress, smooths his hand down my spine, and lands a firm, open-palmed smack against my ass that makes me gasp at the sharp sting of it.
He presses his lips to the same spot immediately — soft, deliberate — kissing the sting away.
Then lower. His mouth finds my pussy opening, and I grip the headboard, my knuckles whitening as his tongue moves up and down against me.
He slips a finger inside while his thumb finds my clit, and I am shaking within seconds.
He positions himself behind me, spreading me open, and leans over my back with his lips brushing my ear. Then he pushes his entire length inside me in one slow, unhurried stroke, and I moan so loudly I have to press my face into the pillow.
He pulls out to the tip, then drives back in. We groan together.
He grips my hair and pulls my head back as his rhythm builds — deep, long thrusts that seem to reach some untouched place and light it on fire. My knees tremble against the mattress. My fingers claw at the sheets. I am completely at his mercy and I have never wanted anything more in my life.