Chapter 7 #2
"This is a mistake," he says quietly, but his hands don't leave my back.
I turn to face him. "Is it?"
"Yes." He looks at my mouth, then lower, taking in the way the dress fits. "But I'm going to make it anyway."
The admission hangs between us. No pretense, no games. Just honest acknowledgment that we've been building to this since Prague and neither of us knows how to stop.
"Your family is downstairs," I point out.
"I know."
"They could hear us."
"Then you'll need to be quiet." His hand comes up, cups my jaw, thumb brushing my lower lip. "Can you do that, Isabella?"
The challenge in his voice makes my breath catch. He's already taking control, already testing how far I'll let him go.
"Yes," I breathe.
"Good."
He kisses me then. Nothing gentle about it, nothing soft or exploratory.
His mouth takes mine like a decision already made—hard, certain, one hand fisting in my hair to angle me exactly where he wants me.
The other presses flat against the small of my back, pulling me flush against him until there's no space left between us, until I can feel every place his body meets mine.
It's claiming, consuming, and when his tongue strokes against mine I stop thinking entirely—just feel, just respond, heat pooling low and fast while my brain tries and fails to catch up.
I kiss him back just as fiercely, hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. The burns and bruises don't seem to matter now.
He backs me toward the bed, breaks the kiss long enough to say, "Tell me to stop."
"Don't you dare."
His eyes darken, control fraying at the edges, hunger he's been leashing for days finally slipping free. "Then understand what you're agreeing to. I'm not going to be gentle. Not this first time."
"I don't want gentle."
"What do you want?"
The question demands honesty. I let him see exactly how much I've been holding back. "You. All of you. The way you are when control is the only thing keeping you from coming apart."
He kisses me again, harder this time, walking me backward until my legs hit the bed. The dress that he took such care to zip gets unzipped with far less ceremony, silk pooling at my feet in a whisper of expensive fabric hitting hardwood.
I'm left in borrowed underwear, heels I haven't removed, standing in his bedroom while he looks at me like I'm something he's been starving for.
The weight of it moves over my skin like a physical thing—starting at my face, dropping to my throat, lower.
My nipples tighten against the thin fabric of my bra. Heat blooms low in my belly.
Every instinct I have says to cover myself, to deflect, to make a joke that breaks the tension. I don't move. I let him look, and the act of holding still under that gaze feels like the first surrender.
There's a giddy feeling to it, as if I'm having my first taste of a really good wine. I examine the feeling with what's left of my functioning brain—this surrender feels like power.
"Beautiful," he says, voice rough. "But I need you to understand something."
"Tell me."
"This doesn't change anything. You're still under my protection, still my priority. But in here, right now, you're mine in a different way." His hand trails down my throat, between my breasts, lower—a slow, deliberate inventory that leaves heat in its wake. "Say you understand."
"I understand."
"Say it properly."
The command drops through me like a stone through still water. We're already falling into the rhythm of what we discussed last night, moving by instinct rather than words.
"I'm yours," I say clearly. "Right now, in this moment, I'm yours."
"Better."
His approval does something to me I wasn't prepared for—loosens something I've been holding wound tight since Prague, maybe longer. Like permission I didn't know I needed.
He guides me onto the bed, follows me down, cages me with his body. "Remember what we discussed last night. But I need to know if you've ever done this before."
"Sex? Obviously."
"Not sex." His hand slides up my inner thigh, deliberate and achingly slow, stopping just short of where I want him. "Power exchange. Real submission. Trusting someone to take you apart and put you back together."
I've had lovers. Relationships that were pleasant, competent, forgettable within a season. None of them ever made me feel like I was standing at the edge of something vast.
"No," I admit. "But I trust you to show me."
"Then we start here." He unhooks my bra with one hand, draws it away, and looks at me the way men look at things they intend to keep. "You tell me if something's wrong. You tell me if you need to stop. But otherwise, you let me lead. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
The addition catches me for half a second. I know the conventions even if I've never practiced them. "Yes, Sir."
"Better."
His mouth finds my breast and rational thought dissolves. He takes his time—tongue and teeth and careful attention, learning what makes me gasp, what makes my back arch off the mattress.
When he finds the right pressure, the right rhythm, I have to turn my face into the pillow to muffle the sound.
The awareness of his family one floor below should dampen this. It doesn't. It sharpens everything.
My hands find his hair, fingers tightening. He allows it for exactly as long as he decides to—then catches both my wrists and pins them above my head with one hand, forearm crossing both of mine.
"My pace," he says against my skin, mouth moving to my ribs, my stomach. "My rules. You take what I give you, when I give it. Not before."
Pinned and waiting, something fundamental shifts in me. Every anxious calculation I've been running since Prague goes quiet. There's nothing to manage here, nothing to strategize. Just his hands, his mouth, and the slow unraveling he's engineering with absolute precision.
I stop bracing and simply feel.
He works his way lower, mouth tracing a slow, deliberate path down my stomach, pausing at my hip bone long enough to make my breath stutter.
He draws my underwear down with the same unhurried patience he's applied to everything else—taking his time, letting the anticipation build until my thighs are trembling before he's even touched me there.
His hands slide under me and grip, positioning me exactly where he wants me.
When he finally settles between them, he looks up at me—expression stripped of everything except hunger and intention.
"I'm going to taste you now." His breath is warm against my inner thigh. "And you're going to stay quiet. Can you do that?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Good girl."
The praise hits me like a physical thing—warmth spreading through my chest even as his mouth finds me, and then I stop cataloguing reactions because there's nothing left in my mind but sensation.
He takes his time, unhurried and devastating, learning me the way he'd learn a problem worth solving.
Tongue and pressure and the occasional scrape of teeth that makes my hips jerk against his hold.
He reads every response, adjusts without hesitation, drives me higher and then eases back just before the edge until I'm trembling and desperate and entirely his.
When I start to break—a sound escaping that would carry—his hand comes up and covers my mouth. Firm, deliberate.
"Quiet," he murmurs against me, and the vibration alone nearly finishes it.
He takes me over the edge with his mouth and fingers working together, holding me down while my body shakes apart, muffling every sound I can't contain.
He doesn't stop when I come—draws it out, relentless, wringing every aftershock until I'm pulling at his hair because the pleasure has crossed into something overwhelming and I can't take any more without screaming.
He pulls back slowly, presses a single deliberate kiss to my inner thigh, and looks up the length of my body with an expression that is pure male satisfaction. "Beautiful. But we're not done."
My chest is still heaving when he stands and strips—shirt first, careful around the bandaged burns, then jeans, then everything else. He's all scar tissue and controlled power, bruised from the work that nearly killed him, and looking at me like I'm the only thing in this room.
"Do you need a minute?"
"No." I reach for him. "I need you."
"Then you'll have me." He comes back down over me, settles his weight between my thighs, braces on his forearms. "Slowly. I'm not small, and you're still shaking."
He pushes inside me by increments, watching my face the entire time—cataloguing every flicker of expression the way he'd catalogue a threat assessment, that same focus turned entirely on my pleasure.
The stretch is significant, the pace torturously controlled, and his breathing goes ragged with the effort of holding back.
Every muscle in his body is locked against the urge to take.
"Okay?" he asks when he's seated fully, jaw tight.
"Yes." More than. Completely.
"Look at me," he says. "Keep your eyes on me."
He starts to move—still measured, still deliberate, building the rhythm from the ground up.
I watch his face and see what it costs him.
The tight set of his mouth. The way his eyes want to close and he won't let them.
Control as an act of will, maintained for my benefit, and the knowledge of it winds something impossibly tighter inside me.
"Remy—"
"I know." His hips roll deeper, harder. "Hold on."
The warning is the only one I get before the restraint breaks.
The change is absolute. He pins my wrists above my head, and every careful measured stroke becomes something else entirely—fast and relentless and consuming, driving the breath from my lungs in short sharp gasps I have to fight to suppress.
His free hand slides between us, thumb finding the place that makes my vision fracture at the edges, and he works me with the same merciless precision he applies to everything.
"Look at me," he says again, voice wrecked. "Don't close your eyes."