Chapter 37
The house has gone quiet in a way that only happens when the sun starts bleeding out across the horizon, orange and violet casting through the windows.
I’ve been moving through this compound for hours—calls, encrypted messages, standing in the command center with maps and files spread across every surface while my mind kept drifting to the east wing, to the room where I know Mackenzi is waiting.
As much as I want to have this discussion, the ambassador’s business with the cartel has the entire team spun up, strategizing how to keep Mackenzi protected without getting ourselves entangled in a war we didn’t sign up for. And to be honest, I needed a few hours to get my thoughts together.
My boots are soft against the marble as I climb the stairs, each step heavier than the last. The weight of the past twenty-four hours sits in my shoulders, in the tension tightening the column of my neck.
I should be thinking about exit strategies and safe houses, about how to extricate an ambassador from the clutches of a group who don’t let its assets go easily.
Instead, I’m only thinking about her.
The door to her room is slightly ajar when I reach it, a sliver of lamplight cutting across the darkened hallway. I push it open, expecting to find her reading or watching something on her phone, anything to pass the time.
She’s in bed, but she isn’t sleeping. Mackenzi is curled on her side, facing away from the door, the sheet pulled up to her chin, her body language radiating a closed-off hostility that hits me like a physical blow the moment I step inside. “We need to talk.”
“Then talk,” she snips, not bothering to face me. Her voice is different, harder.
“Mackenzi—” She still doesn’t move. Her eyes stay fixed on some imaginary spot on the wall. I can see the pulse fluttering in her neck, the way her chest rises and falls too quickly beneath the thin cotton of her tank top.
“Just leave, Damon. Please.” Her voice cracks on my name.
“Look at me,” My voice is rougher than I intend, gravel and command mixed together.
“Getting dumped by a father and son back-to-back. Is it genetic? Or is it just me?”
“Look at me, Mackenzi.” Quick, long strides carry me across the room, and I lean over the bed, my hands cupping her jaw with a gentleness that contradicts the storm raging on my chest. I turn her toward me, my thumbs pressing into the soft skin of her cheeks, forcing her to meet my eyes.
“Is that what you think? You think I’d risk my reputation and livelihood over something I’d give up over a mild inconvenience? ”
Her eyes are wet when they finally find mine, shimmering with the tears she refuses to let fall. “It’s not a mild inconvenience,” she whispers. “He’ll hate you.”
“He already hates me.” The words come out before I can stop them, the bitter truth spilling between us.
“That’s not funny.” Her hands grip my wrists and her fingers dig into my skin, anchoring herself to me even as she tries to push me away. “You know we can’t do this. He’s your son. I’m his?—”
“Ex-girlfriend,” I finish, my hold tightening slightly. “A relationship that ended before I ever touched you. Before I ever kissed you. Before I ever looked at you and saw someone I couldn’t live without.”
She shakes her head, her lower lip trembling. “Dam?—”
“I don’t think you understand, trouble. We’re doing this. There isn’t a version of this where I willingly walk away from you.”
“Damon—”
“I don’t think you understand,” I repeat, and my voice drops even lower. I lean closer, close enough that I can feel her breath ghosting across my lips and see every fleck of gold in her chocolate-brown eyes. “I love you.”
The words hang in the air between us, heavy and terrifying.
“It’s like I was wandering this world, lost, and the universe aligned every star in the sky just to lead me to you,” I continue, my thumbs stroking her cheekbones as my eyes search hers with an intensity that feels like it could burn through skin.
“I love you like obsession and devotion are one. I love you like you’re the last thing I’ll see before I die, and the only thing I want to remember when I’m gone. ”
Her breath catches, a sharp inhale that hitches in her throat.
“I love you like I’ll kill for you,” I whisper, my forehead coming to rest against hers, my hands still cradling her face.
“Like I’ll die for you. Like there’s no force on this planet that could make me let you go.
Not my son. Not your father. Not the cartel.
Not common sense or decency. Nor the knowledge that I’m too old for you, too broken for you, or too fucking dangerous to be trusted with something as precious as your heart.
I love you like you’re mine, trouble. Like you’ve always been mine. ”
Before she can speak, before she can process the words I’ve been denying myself to admit for weeks, I close the distance between us and crash my lips onto hers.
It’s not gentle or tentative. It’s claiming and desperate, filled with every ounce of love that has been building inside me since I started to fall for her. She makes a sound against my mouth, something between a whimper and a sob, her hands fisting in my shirt and pulling me closer.
I taste the salt of her tears and deepen the kiss, my tongue sweeping into her mouth, tangling with hers, mapping every inch of her like I need to memorize her before she disappears.
My hands slide from her face into her hair, my fingers threading through the dark silk strands, tilting her head back to give me better access to drink her in more deeply.
I pull back just enough to speak, my lips brushing against hers, as I breathe the words into the small space between us. “These lips are mine,” I murmur, my thumb tracing her swollen lower lip. “The only ones I want to kiss. The last ones I ever will.”
She stares up at me, her breath coming in short pants that blow warm and sweet across my mouth. Her lips quiver, and her throat works on a swallow, as she gathers the courage to speak. “I love you, too,” she whispers.
I kiss her again, softer this time, reverent, my hands tracing her neck, her shoulders, and to the curve of her waist. She arches into my touch, her body speaking a language that needs no translation, and my restraint crumbles like ash.
After pulling her tank top over her head, it falls haphazardly to the floor.
My lips kiss over the constellation of freckles on her shoulder as my fingertips dust lightly along the scar on her ribs from a childhood fall.
Her breath hitches when my knuckles brush over her nipples through the lace of her bra,
“So beautiful,” I croon on exhale. I mean it in my bones, in my blood, and at the very center of who I am. She’s beautiful, like art, sin, and salvation all wrapped in skin that comes to life under my touch.
Her fingers fumble with my shirt, and she stretches to pull it over my head. It catches on my loosely tied hair, pulling it free, the long locks falling over my face as she discards my shirt.
I unhook her bra, and she shrugs out of it.
Her breasts fall heavy and perfect into my waiting palms. I lay her across the mattress, closing my mouth around one dusky peak, and she cries out, her fingers tangling in my hair to hold me there.
I suck and lave and tease, switching between them until she’s writhing beneath me, her hips rolling in a rhythm that’s older than any language.
My fingertips trace the waistband of her shorts, slipping beneath to find her already wet and wanting.
She gasps when I stroke my finger through her pussy, circling her clit with a pressure that makes her legs fall open wider.
“Please,” she whimpers. The lone word is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
I strip her shorts and underwear off in one motion before tossing them aside.
Kneeling between her thighs, I look down at her spread out before me like a feast. She’s glistening in the lamplight, pink, swollen, and perfect.
I shed the rest of my clothes quickly, her eyes tracking my every movement, her pupils blown wide with desire.
When I lower myself over her, settling my hips between her legs, the weight of my cock presses against her thigh. She’s so warm, so soft, so perfect beneath me that it feels like we were destined to fit together.
I kiss her again, long and deep, my hands roaming over her body, learning every curve, every secret place that makes her gasp like it’s the first time.
I slide down, trailing kisses along her jaw, her throat, between her breasts.
I pause at her stomach, dipping my tongue into her navel, and her muscles jump beneath my mouth.
Settled between her thighs, I push her legs wider with my shoulders and look up at her over the plane of her stomach.
The first taste of her pussy is heaven. She tastes like everything I’ve ever wanted and everything I never knew I needed.
I lick through her folds, circling her clit with the flat of my tongue and teasing her entrance with the tip.
I slide two fingers inside her, curling them to find that spot that makes her see stars as I suck her clit between my lips. She comes apart almost immediately, her body tensing, her back arching, a gush of wetness coating my chin as she cries out my name.
“Again,” I growl, not giving her time to come down, working her through the aftershocks with my tongue and fingers until she’s at the precipice again. Her hands fist the sheets, and cries of pleasure spill over her lips. “Too much,” she pants. “Daddy, I can’t?—”
“You can,” I insist, adding a third finger, stretching her, preparing to fill her. “Give me another one, trouble. Let me taste you. Let me feel you completely come apart for me.”
She shatters again, harder this time, her body convulsing with the liquid of her release dripping over my hand. I lap it up greedily, not wasting a drop, worshipping her with my mouth until she’s trembling in my hands and against my tongue.