Chapter Thirty-Six #5
His gaze dropped toward her mouth.
Isolde opened his bedroom door and stepped inside.
The room looked almost unchanged. His books remained in their usual places, the bed had been made with Elettra’s irritating perfection, and a single hair tie of Isolde’s still sat on the bedside table where someone had apparently decided not to move it.
Her own phone rested in her coat pocket, her car sat outside, her apartment waited in Crownport, and beyond the windows stood a gate that would open whenever she decided to drive away.
Taddeo remained in the hallway.
Isolde turned. “Are you planning to stand there all evening?”
“I am making sure you understand you can change your mind.”
“I do.”
“You can sleep in your room.”
“I know.”
“You can leave tonight.”
“I know.”
His jaw tightened. “You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
The look in his eyes darkened.
The old thrill moved through Isolde immediately.
There he was.
Not harmless, not softened into an entirely different man, and certainly not cured of his desire for control simply because he had learned that wanting authority did not create a right to take it. Taddeo still wanted possession.
Isolde still wanted to give it to him sometimes.
That desire was no longer frightening because she finally knew where it ended.
She reached behind herself and closed the bedroom door.
Then she turned the lock with her own hand.
Taddeo watched.
Something hungry entered his face.
“Do you remember what I told you before?” Isolde leaned lightly against the door while he remained several feet away.
“You have told me many things, usually while arguing.”
“The night I asked whether you wanted to own me.”
His eyes stayed on hers. “Yes.”
“You said you did.”
“I still do.”
Heat moved through her body despite having expected the answer.
“Wanting and having are still different.”
“Yes.”
“Outside this room, you do not own my choices, my career, my phone, my money, my body, or whether I walk through your gate.”
“Yes.”
“But in here, when I decide to give you control, I want you to take it.” Isolde let the words settle before continuing, because she wanted none of this built upon implication. “The same rules apply. If I say stop, you stop. If I change my mind, the whole thing changes immediately.”
“Always.” Taddeo’s voice had lowered, but he still did not come closer.
“And tonight, I want the word mine to mean only what I choose to give you.”
Taddeo finally moved.
He crossed most of the distance and stopped before their bodies touched.
“Who drove through the gate tonight?”
“I did.”
“Who decided to come upstairs?”
“I did.”
“Who locked the door?”
“I did.”
His hand lifted toward her jaw but stopped before contact. “Who can unlock it?”
“I can.”
Taddeo’s gaze held hers.
“Then tell me what you want.”
Isolde smiled.
“I want to be yours tonight.”
His fingers finally closed carefully around her jaw, possession in the touch existing only because she had invited it.
“Only tonight?”
The deliberate provocation made her laugh softly. “Don’t push your luck.”
“I have been deprived for twelve days.”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
Isolde put both hands against his chest, careful of the healing wounds. “You seem functional.”
His gaze dropped toward her mouth. “Take off your coat.”
The command changed the air between them.
Isolde obeyed because she wanted to.
Taddeo watched the coat fall across the chair before looking back at her. “Come here.”
She crossed the remaining distance.
His hands settled around her waist, and when he kissed her, Isolde pulled him closer until there could be no uncertainty about whether she wanted more. Taddeo broke the kiss only after her breathing had changed, one hand still warm against her side while his forehead rested briefly against hers.
“Tell me again.”
“I chose to come back.”
“Again.”
“I can leave whenever I want.”
His thumb moved slowly beneath her jaw. “Again.”
Isolde understood exactly what he needed before either of them crossed the next line.
“And right now, Taddeo, I don’t want to leave.”
Something in his expression finally gave way.
“Good.” His voice dropped into the controlled, possessive tone that had once frightened and aroused her in equal measure because she could not separate desire from captivity.
Now the boundary between them was clear enough to make the same words mean something entirely different. “Then for tonight, you’re mine.”
Isolde smiled against his mouth. “Prove you remember what that means.”
Taddeo’s answering expression promised an extremely long night.
He kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, the kind of kiss that had nowhere to rush because they finally had the entire night and no one waiting outside the door with orders or blood or another crisis.
Isolde’s back remained against the wood she had locked herself.
His hands framed her face, thumbs stroking along her cheekbones as if he needed to keep confirming she was real and present and choosing this.
When he finally drew back, his eyes were dark with something softer than the usual steel.
“Coat’s already off,” he murmured. “Everything else, Isolde.”
She reached for the hem of her sweater. He stopped her with a quiet sound and did it himself, lifting the fabric carefully over her head, mindful of every movement so nothing jostled the still-healing injuries beneath his own clothes.
The sweater joined her coat on the chair.
He unhooked her bra next, fingers steady, and let the straps slide down her arms before setting it aside.
His gaze moved over her bare breasts with open hunger tempered by the same restraint that had kept him alive through the last twelve days.
“You’re thinner,” he said quietly.
“You’re still recovering.”
“Not so recovered I can’t do this properly.”
He bent and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the upper curve of her left breast, then the right, lingering without yet taking a nipple into his mouth.
Isolde’s hands settled carefully on his shoulders, avoiding the worst of the bandaged areas she could feel beneath the sweater.
He let her touch him for a moment before straightening and guiding her hands to the hem of his own sweater.
“Help me.”
She lifted it with the same care he had shown her, revealing the map of new scars and fading bruises across his torso.
The sight made something tight move in her chest. Taddeo watched her face as she took it in, then caught her wrists gently when her fingers hovered near a particularly raw line along his ribs.
“They don’t hurt the way you’re imagining,” he said. “And I want your hands on me more than I want carefulness.”
Isolde nodded. She placed both palms flat against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart and the warmth of his skin.
He leaned into the touch, eyes half-closing for a second, before he reached for the fastening of her trousers.
He opened them slowly, pushed the fabric down over her hips, and helped her step free.
Her underwear followed. When she stood completely bare in front of him he simply looked for a long moment, as if memorizing the shape of her after twelve days of absence.
“Bed,” he said, voice low. “I want you horizontal for this.”
She walked ahead of him into the bedroom.
Taddeo followed, shedding the rest of his clothes with efficient movements that still favored the injured side.
When he was naked she turned to face him again.
The evidence of how much he wanted her was unmistakable—thick, hard, already flushed at the head—but he didn’t press against her immediately.
Instead he closed the distance, cupped her face once more, and kissed her with deliberate sweetness while walking her backward until the backs of her knees met the mattress.
He laid her down carefully, then followed, bracing his weight on his forearms so that nothing heavy rested on either of them.
The first full press of skin to skin drew a soft sound from Isolde.
Taddeo’s mouth found the underside of her jaw, the hinge of it, the sensitive place just below her ear.
He kissed a slow path downward, lingering at the hollow of her throat, the slope of one shoulder, the upper swell of each breast. When he finally closed his lips around a nipple he did it gently at first—warm suction, soft flicks of his tongue—then with gradually increasing intensity until Isolde’s back arched and her fingers threaded into his hair.
He spent long minutes there, alternating between breasts, learning again exactly what pressure made her breath catch and what made her hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Only when both nipples were wet and tight and she was making soft, continuous sounds did he move lower.
Open-mouthed kisses trailed down the center of her stomach.
He nuzzled the soft skin just above the dark thatch of hair between her thighs, then looked up the length of her body.
“Open for me.”
Isolde parted her legs without hesitation.
Taddeo settled between them, broad shoulders spreading her wider, and simply looked for a moment at the already slick folds of her core.
The sight pulled a low, approving sound from his throat.
He leaned in and dragged the flat of his tongue in one long, deliberate stroke from her entrance all the way up to her clit.
Isolde’s hands fisted in the sheets.
He licked her open with patient, thorough attention—slow circles around her clit, gentle suction, the soft push of his tongue inside her, then back up again.
There was no teasing edge of denial this time, only focused care.
He learned the exact rhythm that made her thighs tremble and the precise pressure that drew her hips upward to meet his mouth.
When he added two fingers, sliding them into her with easy wetness, he curled them against the sensitive front wall while his tongue continued its steady work on her clit.
“Taddeo—”