Chapter Thirty-Six #6
“I know.” His voice was rough against her. “I’ve got you.”
He built her slowly, never rushing, reading every shift of her body.
When her breathing turned high and thin he didn’t pull away.
He stayed with her, fingers stroking steadily, mouth sealed over her clit, until the orgasm rolled through her in long, rolling waves.
Isolde came with a soft, broken cry, core pulsing around his fingers, thighs tightening around his head.
He gentled only when the last tremors faded, pressing soft kisses to the insides of her thighs before rising over her again.
His shaft rested heavy against her stomach. Isolde reached between them and wrapped her fingers around the thick length, stroking once from base to tip. Taddeo’s eyes closed for a second. When they opened again the possessiveness was still there, but softened by something almost tender.
“I want to be inside you,” he said. “Slow. I want to feel every part of coming back to this.”
She nodded, guiding him lower. The blunt head of his shaft pressed against her entrance.
He pushed in with careful control, inch by inch, watching her face the entire time.
The stretch was familiar and new at once—twelve days of absence made every sensation sharper.
When he was fully seated he held still, forehead resting against hers, breathing with her while her body adjusted around the thick intrusion.
“All right?”
“Yes.” Isolde’s hands slid carefully over his back, avoiding the worst of the healing wounds. “Move.”
He did. The first strokes were deep and unhurried, the kind of rhythm that had nowhere to be except exactly where they were.
Each withdrawal left her empty and aching; each return filled her completely.
Taddeo kept most of his weight on his forearms, careful of both their bodies, but the intensity of the connection was undiminished.
He kissed her through it—soft, open-mouthed kisses that matched the pace of his hips.
“Missed this,” he murmured against her mouth. “Missed the way you take me. Missed how quiet you get when it starts feeling too good.”
Isolde’s answer was a soft sound and the tightening of her legs around his waist. He shifted the angle slightly, grinding deeper on every inward stroke, and the new pressure against the sensitive place inside her made her breath hitch.
Taddeo noticed immediately. He kept the adjusted angle and continued the slow, deep rhythm, building her second climax with the same patient focus he had given the first.
When it came it was quieter than the last but no less intense—a long, rolling wave that pulled a broken moan from her throat and made her core clench rhythmically around him.
Taddeo groaned low in response, hips stuttering for a moment before he regained control and fucked her through every pulse of it.
He didn’t stop afterward. He simply slowed again, giving her time to come down while still moving inside her in shallow, intimate strokes.
Isolde’s hands wandered carefully over his chest and sides, relearning the shape of him after the injuries.
When her fingers brushed a particularly tender area he only exhaled and leaned into the touch.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said when she started to pull away. “I’d rather feel you than protect the bruises.”
She left her hands where they were. Taddeo kissed her again, deeper this time, and gradually increased the pace of his thrusts.
The sweetness remained, but the hunger underneath it rose to meet it.
He drove into her with longer, fuller strokes, still controlled, still mindful, but with an edge of need that had been held back for twelve days.
The wet sound of their bodies meeting filled the quiet room.
Isolde met every movement, hips lifting to take him deeper, soft sounds escaping her with every perfect grind against that sensitive place inside.
“Third one,” he said against her ear, voice rough. “I want to feel you come around me again before I finish.”
His hand slipped between them, finding her clit with practiced ease.
He rubbed firm, steady circles in time with his thrusts.
Isolde’s third orgasm built fast under the dual stimulation.
When it broke it was sharper than the previous two—her back arched, a cry leaving her throat, core clamping down hard around the thick length of him.
Taddeo cursed softly and followed her over the edge a few strokes later, burying himself deep and coming in long, hot pulses that filled her until she felt the excess begin to slip out around him.
He stayed inside her afterward, breathing hard against her neck, one hand stroking slowly along her side.
When he finally withdrew it was with careful reluctance.
Come leaked from her in a warm trickle onto the sheets.
Taddeo looked down at the evidence of what they had just done with quiet, open satisfaction, then rolled carefully onto his uninjured side and drew her against him.
Later, Isolde lay against Taddeo with one leg tangled between his and her cheek resting carefully against the part of his chest that had not recently been bruised, cut, shot at, or otherwise damaged by organized crime.
His breathing had begun returning to normal beneath her ear, and the arm around her waist rested heavily enough to feel possessive without preventing her from moving whenever she chose.
Her phone lit on the bedside table.
A museum email.
Nothing important.
The screen went dark again.
Isolde smiled.
Taddeo noticed. “What?”
“My phone.”
“That is generally what those are called.”
“Nobody received a copy of that message.”
“No.”
“Nobody is checking metadata.”
“No.”
“My car is outside.”
“Yes.”
“My apartment still exists.”
“Yes.”
“The gate opens.”
His arm tightened faintly around her. “Yes.”
Isolde lifted her head enough to see his face. “You are going to hate hearing me mention that gate for the rest of our relationship.”
“I expect you to abuse the privilege.”
“It isn’t a privilege.”
Taddeo closed his eyes briefly. “I walked into that.”
“You did.”
He opened them again. “I expect you to mention the gate constantly because you enjoy irritating me.”
“That version is accurate.”
His mouth curved.
Isolde settled against him again before speaking. “I meant what I told you outside. I’m staying.”
Taddeo became more alert beneath her. “You don’t have to promise that tonight.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been back for three hours.”
“I am aware of time.”
“You may discover by tomorrow that living with me remains intolerable.”
“That remains a significant possibility.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Isolde smiled and traced one finger lightly along his chest. “I’m not promising that I will never leave this house.
I am not promising every night happens here, that I never spend time at my apartment, that I never travel without you, or that I never get angry enough to spend three days somewhere I cannot see your face. ”
“This is becoming less reassuring.”
“I am promising something different.” Isolde raised her head again, wanting him to hear it correctly. “I am choosing a relationship with you.”
Taddeo became completely still.
“Not captivity. Not protection I can’t refuse, and not some debt because you saved my life after being one of the people who complicated it in the first place.” Her voice softened. “You.”
His fingers moved through a loose strand of her hair. “I don’t know that I deserve the distinction.”
“This is not a prize for good behavior.”
“No?”
“No.” Isolde settled back against his chest. “It’s my choice. The entire point is that I don’t have to justify it to you either.”
For several seconds he was silent.
Then a restrained laugh moved beneath her cheek. “That may be the most irritating possible interpretation of everything I have learned.”
“I worked very hard on it.”
“I can tell.”
The bedroom settled around them.
Northglass sounded different at night now that Isolde understood every exit and knew each one belonged to her.
The house had once been defined by locked gates, inaccessible phones, guards who followed instructions written by men who did not ask what she wanted, and Taddeo’s absolute belief that responsibility for her safety entitled him to control her choices.
None of that history disappeared because she had driven back twelve days later, and Isolde did not want it erased merely because the ending was happier than the beginning had any right to promise.
She was a conservator.
She understood better than most people that repair was not erasure.
Damage became part of an object’s history.
The goal was not to scrape away every mark until nothing difficult remained, because excessive intervention could destroy the very thing someone claimed to be saving.
You stabilized what was vulnerable. You stopped adding new damage.
You respected what remained original and let the repaired thing carry visible evidence of what it had survived.
Northglass had not become innocent.
Neither had Taddeo.
Neither had Corwin.
What mattered was what they did with the damage now.
Isolde had first entered the Northglass gates as collateral for a debt she did not owe. Twelve days ago, Taddeo had opened those gates without knowing whether she would ever return through them, and then he had done the most difficult thing a man like him could do.
He had left them open.
Tonight Isolde had driven back alone, carrying her own phone, her own keys, her own money, her own career, her own car, and every practical means necessary to leave again tomorrow.
For the first time since Taddeo Malfatti dragged her out of a car on Mercer Street, there was only one reason she remained in his bed.
She had chosen to be there, and tomorrow she would still be free enough to choose again.