Chapter Thirteen #3
Taddeo’s hands gripped her thighs tighter, holding her open, but he didn’t move.
Isolde could feel the heat of his breath, the infuriating patience in the way he hovered just above her, waiting.
Her whole body vibrated with want. She squirmed against his hold, tried to shift herself closer, anything to close the distance. He refused to yield.
“Please,” she repeated, voice hoarse.
He tilted his head, lips curving up just a fraction. “Please what?” The words were a dare, a game with only one possible ending.
Isolde wanted to curse him. Instead, she bit down on her tongue and forced herself to say it: “Please, Taddeo. I want you to—” The words stuck, mortifying in their neediness. She shut her eyes, took a breath. “I want your mouth. On me.”
He hummed, low and approving, and finally gave her what she’d asked for.
His tongue flicked slow, deliberate circles over her clit, then pressed harder, flattening in a broad stroke.
She gasped, knees clamping around his head, and he responded by digging his fingers harder into her hips, pinning her to the sofa.
He worked her with a ruthless, unhurried precision, never giving her quite enough, always pulling back just as her body started to crest.
She was shaking, sweat beading along her hairline, the rational part of her brain long since drowned out by the relentless, building pleasure.
When she tried to grind against his mouth, he backed off again, holding her in place until she stilled, then resuming at a gentler pace.
The frustration built alongside the heat.
She tried to glare down at him, but her vision was blurred, her head tipped back against the sofa. “You asshole,” she whispered, and he laughed, the sound muffled against her skin.
“Beg me,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
Her pride was a useless, broken thing by now. She’d never begged for anything in her life, not even as a child, but she would have torn out her own heart if he’d asked for it in that moment.
“Please,” she said again. “Please, please let me come. Please, Taddeo—”
He never tore his eyes from hers, even as he circled her clit with practiced precision, flicking it with the tip of his tongue until her back arched off the cushion.
When she couldn’t hold back and came, she cried his name.
He steadied her, mouth and hands anchoring her in that dizzying peak as the world narrowed to nothing but her trembling pleasure.
But he didn’t stop. He kept teasing and lapping, coaxing her through wave after wave—two, maybe three times—until she lost count, every pulse of her release met with his greedy devotion.
Through it all he whispered filthy praises: “That’s it, baby, you taste incredible…
You taste exactly like my new favorite snack, made just for me. ”
Finally, when she was spent and shaking, she curled her fingers into his hair and tugged him up for a kiss.
His lips were slick with her essence, and she tasted herself on him.
He held the kiss, slow and soft, letting her savor the moment on her tongue before he eased back with a lazy smile and brushed her hair from her face.
“Your turn,” she said, and her voice was steadier than she expected. But Taddeo surprised her.
“Not tonight, tonight was just for you.”
Afterward, Isolde sat beside Taddeo on the edge of the sofa with the old throw pulled around her shoulders while the fire dwindled behind the grate.
Her pulse had gradually returned to something ordinary, and the house beyond the room remained silent enough that the entire night could almost have narrowed to the two of them if she allowed herself to forget everything waiting outside the door.
She didn't.
That mattered too.
Taddeo sat near her without crowding the space she'd chosen between them.
His shirt was not entirely back in order, which gave Isolde a small and deeply satisfying feeling she had no intention of examining too carefully.
More surprising was his quiet. A man who controlled gates, security teams, vehicles, communications, and most rooms simply by entering them looked almost uncertain about what he was permitted to do now that she had been the one to cross the distance.
“You look concerned,” she said.
Taddeo gave her a tired look. “That's an interesting interpretation.”
“You're quieter than usual.”
“I don't talk that much.”
“You do when you're telling people what to do.”
His mouth shifted faintly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
He watched her for another second but did not ask again.
Isolde leaned back against the sofa. “That hurt you.”
“What did?”
“Only asking once.”
“I considered twice.”
“I know.”
This time both of them smiled.
The silence afterward felt different. Not comfortable exactly, because there were still too many things between them for comfort to become simple, but quieter than what had existed before.
Eventually Taddeo asked, “Why tonight?”
Isolde understood what he meant. He wasn't asking why she found him attractive.
That question had already been answered.
He wanted to know why she had come to him after watching him kill someone, after another attack proved how dangerous his world was, and after he responded to that danger by tightening the security around her again.
“Because I was afraid,” she said.
His expression tightened.
“That isn't the whole answer.” Isolde pulled the throw more securely around herself before continuing.
“I've spent days having things taken from me.
My phone. My apartment. My job. Where I go.
Who I speak to. Whether I can walk through a gate without someone stopping me.
Tonight somebody tried to take me again, and afterward you responded by making everything around me harder to get through because that's how you know how to keep people alive.”
Taddeo's jaw set, but he let her finish.
“I needed something tonight to belong completely to me.” She looked directly at him. “I wanted something you couldn't take unless I gave it to you.”
He became very still.
The meaning moved between them without needing more explanation.
He had taken her from Mercer Street. He controlled the gates and the cars and the distance she was permitted to put between herself and Northglass. Tonight she had given him something voluntarily, and the difference mattered precisely because so much else between them was not voluntary.
Isolde stood before either of them could make the moment sentimental.
Taddeo rose automatically. “You don't have to leave.”
The words escaped before he could make them sound neutral.
Something inside her softened.
“I know.”
He heard the distinction.
Isolde stepped close enough to touch his jaw, letting her fingers rest there briefly because the gesture was hers to make. “But I want my own bed tonight.”
Taddeo nodded. “All right.”
There was no argument, no request for her to stay a little longer, and no suggestion that leaving somehow diminished what she had chosen to give him.
Isolde crossed toward the door and looked back before opening it. “Good night, Taddeo.”
“Good night.”
She stepped into the corridor and closed the door quietly behind her.
Northglass remained what it had been before she entered his room.
The gates were still controlled. Guards still occupied the grounds.
Her phone was still restricted, and if she tried to leave tomorrow, Taddeo would stop her.
Isolde refused to turn intimacy into evidence of freedom she did not possess.
But she also refused to pretend nothing had changed.
For the first time since Taddeo Malfatti put her into his car, she had chosen something important entirely for herself.
And he had understood that being given something was not the same as taking it.