Chapter 14 #3
I set the pace. Slow. Deliberate. Long strokes that draw nearly out and push back in.
Each withdrawal makes her grip tighten around me, and each return makes her exhale a sound that's closer to breaking than breathing.
Her wrists flex under my hand with every stroke, testing the hold without trying to break it.
"Look at me."
Her eyes open. Dark, wet, nearly all pupil. She looks at me while I move inside her, and the openness in her face is the most dangerous thing in this room.
"You're mine tonight." The words come out rougher than I planned. "Say it."
"I'm yours." No delay. No performance. The words fall out of her with the weight of something she means.
"Again."
"I'm yours, Sebastien."
The sound of my name with those words behind it does something violent to the thing I've been holding in place all evening.
My hips snap forward harder than I intended, and she gasps. I check myself. Read her face for pain.
She wraps her legs around my hips. Pulls me in. "Don't stop. Please."
I release her wrists. The control I've held all evening gives way to something rawer.
Her hands come down immediately. Her nails find my back and dig in. The sharp points anchor me to the physical reality of her body under mine.
The pace increases. No structure to it now. Her breathing fragments into something between moans and words. The place where thought stops.
I shift my weight to one arm. Slide my free hand between us. Find her clit and press with a tempo that matches my thrusts. She cries out, and it fills the small room.
Her hips are moving against me now, chasing both sensations. The desperation in it drags my own control further out of reach.
Her eyes close. Her head turns into the pillow.
"Eyes on me."
They open. Wet and wrecked and fixed on mine. She holds the look while I wreck her further, and the obedience in the middle of her unraveling is the most Natalie thing she's done all night.
"Sebastien." My name again. But this time it's recognition. She's underneath me, bare against bare, and she isn't performing or analyzing or managing. She's here.
Claire's sister. My submissive. The woman I'm inside of who walked into my club with a cover story and a dead sister's name she hasn't told me yet.
I push the thought down and let my body have what it needs.
Her second orgasm builds differently from the first. No denial this time. No deliberate control. The fire primed her. The first orgasm stripped her defenses. Nothing stands between her body and what it wants except what I'm giving her.
She tightens around me. I feel every contraction, each one stronger than the last, the grip of her body pulling me toward my own edge. Her spine bows off the bed. Her hands pull me closer, nails cutting crescents into my shoulders.
"Let go," I tell her.
She comes with a cry that fills the small room. Her body locks around mine, the contractions fierce and rhythmic. The grip of her around my cock is what finally breaks me.
I thrust into her twice more, hard, and the release tears through me from the base of my spine outward. I bury my face against her throat, against the collar. The ruby presses into my cheek, and the noise I make belongs to someone I haven't met before.
She holds me through it. Her hands gentle on my back now, the nails gone, just her palms pressing flat against my shoulder blades while the last shudder passes.
We breathe. The room settles.
I ease out of her carefully. Roll to my side and pull her against me. She fits into the space along my body as if the shape was always there, waiting.
The water bottle from downstairs is in the blanket where I wrapped it. I press it into her hand.
"Drink."
"I'm fine."
"Drink anyway."
She takes a sip without opening her eyes. Then another. I hold the bottle steady against her fingers until she's taken enough, then set it on the nightstand. I don't build fire-safety protocols and then skip the aftercare because she's drowsy.
I pull the sheet over us. Her breathing lengthens into a rhythm and slows. Deepens.
She's falling asleep against the man who knows the worst secret of her life.
I don't move.
The fire equipment downstairs needs to be cleaned and stored. I'll do it later.
She trusts me. She also lied to me for weeks before I caught it. Neither of us has been fully honest, but the shibari cracked her performance. The flogging made the surrender public. The fire made the trust absolute. Whatever she walked in here to do, what's between us has outgrown her cover story.
Which means the cover has to come down. Hers and mine.
She breathes against me. Slow. Steady. The breathing of someone who is safe.
She's not safe. Not from what I know, and not from what Gaudet might be. The investigation Luc is running through Rapier won't stay invisible forever, and whatever she's been tracking on her own is converging on the same territory.
Tomorrow. I'll find the right moment. When she's standing, fully dressed, on equal footing.
She sleeps against me with the trust of a woman who has decided I'll protect her from whatever comes next.
She's right. I will.
Tomorrow I tell her what I know. And she'll tell me all of what she's been carrying since she walked through Dominion's doors.