CHAPTER 12
Ask Me (Eliza)
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The master-suite door latched behind me with a soft, expensive click.
I still wore Adrian's white shirt, sleeves rolled twice and hem against my thighs; the hard-purple bruise on my left shoulder and the scabbed right palm carried Day seven under the cotton.
I had knocked. I had asked. I had crossed the threshold. No part of the room had decided for me.
Cedar, fresh sheets, and the cool mineral trace of glass after rain filled the master suite. Dark wood held the room low and steady. City light slipped through the shades in thin silver blades. Behind me, the door latched softly enough that my pulse took over the sound.
Adrian stood three feet away, hands at his sides, watching me the way he watched a balance sheet that refused to lie for him.
"Say what you want," he said. Quiet. Exact. "No performance for my sake. No metaphor."
My pulse kicked. Consent as power. Of course. He would not accept a blurry ask and later let it protect him.
I held his gaze. "I want you to touch me. I want sex. With you. Tonight. Not because I'm locked in this tower, not because the Compact made me curious. Because I choose it."
His throat moved. "Again. Specific."
Heat climbed my neck. Humor tried to save me and failed against the honesty he required. "I want your hands on me. I want your mouth. I want you inside me. I want to come with you looking at me like I am not a variable you can write off."
For one measured breath he did nothing. Then he closed the distance, slow enough for refusal, and lifted his scarred right hand to my jaw—a placement, never a grip. His thumb rested under my chin and tipped my face up.
"Look at me," he said.
I already was. He still said it like a lock engaging by my consent.
"If you tell me to stop, I stop," he said. "If anything hurts—your shoulder, your palm, anywhere—you say it. You are not a liability I manage in the dark. You are a person I intend to keep present for every choice she makes with me."
"Show me the entry," I murmured, half joke, half need. "Terms accepted."
His mouth almost curved. Almost. "Terms accepted."
He kissed me.
Nothing tentative in it. Private, never performative.
A controlled descent that turned hungry the second my lips parted.
His free hand settled at my waist, careful of the left side of my body, and guided me backward until my calves met the mattress.
A sound broke against his mouth that I would have redacted from any professional record.
He answered by deepening the kiss, tongue and heat and the clean taste of mint, until my fingers caught the open edges of his shirt and fisted the white cotton.
"Shoulder," he said against my mouth, already lifting the hem of the white shirt I wore. "Tell me."
"Tender. Don't pin it. Bruised, not broken."
"I won't."
He drew the shirt up and off with patience that felt like worship disguised as procedure.
Under it I wore only plain black underwear—my choice had not needed a costume.
Adrian studied the hard-purple bloom high on my left shoulder as if it violated a standard he meant to enforce.
His fingers followed the bruise's outer edge without pressing, then his mouth touched the freckled edge of my collarbone only after my nod, leaving one faint mark away from the injury.
"I want the name of every person who ordered that car," he said, low.
"Later," I said. "Right now I want you less homicidal and more naked."
Dark amusement flashed and vanished. Cool air touched my breasts. My nipples tightened under his attention. He looked instead of rushing, claiming nothing but focus.
"Brilliant," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "Even like this. Especially like this."
The word landed harder than filth would have.
Rare. Devastating. I pushed his shirt from his shoulders.
He let me. Hard lines of chest and abdomen, discipline made flesh—no waste, no softness he had not authorized.
My scraped palm settled carefully against his sternum; beneath it, his heart hammered under the ice.
He caught my wrist gently, turned my hand, and pressed a kiss to the scabbed heel of my palm. The tenderness almost undid me more than his mouth had.
Then he guided me to the bed and knelt to draw my underwear down my legs in one smooth motion. The carpet hushed under his knees. Adrian Vale on his knees in front of me should have been illegal in at least three jurisdictions.
"Lie back," he said. "Left shoulder free. Look at me."
I lay back on cool sheets, careful of the bruise, and propped myself so I could keep his gaze. He rose only long enough to shed his pants and the rest. Bare, hard, unashamed, he stood in the city-silver light, and the sight punched the last of my professional distance out of my lungs.
He returned between my thighs, hands stroking up the outside of my legs, and paused with his mouth a breath from where I was already wet.
"Ask," he said again.
"Please," I said, ragged and unashamed. "Adrian—mouth. Hands. I want it."
His mouth found me without delay, open and sure, tongue stroking through slick heat with ruthless focus.
My hips jerked. He held them lightly with a forearm across my lower belly—not my shoulder, never the bruise—and kept going.
Precise. Relentless. He learned what made my breath catch and returned to it like a man reconciling an account until the variance hit zero.
"Look at me," he ordered when my eyes started to close.
I forced them open. His gaze went dark while he licked and sucked, while two careful fingers slid into me and curled. Pleasure stacked fast, numbers losing their edges. My uninjured hand fisted the sheet, cotton cool and twisted under my fingers. A broken sound left me.
"That's it," he murmured against me. "Let me feel you take it."
I came hard, thighs trembling around his head, vision sparking white at the edges. He worked me through it until the aftershocks softened, then kissed the inside of my knee like a signature on completed work.
He rose over me, braced on his forearms, weight carefully placed. The head of his cock nudged where I was still sensitive and open.
"Condom," he said. Logistics first—no debate about whether. He reached for the nightstand, tore foil, and rolled latex on with efficient hands. Even that was controlled. Even that made me ache.
He settled back between my thighs, lined up, and held still.
"Last check," he said. "Yes or no."
"Yes. " I hooked my good leg around his hip. "Adrian. Yes."
He pushed in slow.
The stretch burned sweet. Full. I exhaled a curse that would have scandalized every audit committee I had ever faced. He watched my face the entire time, inch by inch, until he was seated deep and both of us shook with the effort of holding still.
"Look at me," he said again, and this time it was almost soft.
I did. There was nowhere else worth looking.
He began to move—measured strokes that grew deeper and surer when my body opened for him. Each thrust dragged pleasure through places that had been professional for too many years. My nails dug into his back. He groaned, low, and the sound wrecked me. Adrian Vale did not waste noise.
"Harder," I said. "I won't break."
"Your shoulder might if I lose control the wrong way. " His voice was strained iron. "So you get control another way. Tell me what you need."
"Deeper. Don't look away. Don't make this polite."
Something in him unlocked. His next thrust punched a cry from my throat. He set a rhythm still precise and no longer protective of my dignity—only of my injury. One hand slid under my good side to angle my hips. The other braced beside my head. His gaze never left mine.
"Mine," he said, quiet as a sealed vault. "In this bed. In this hour. That's mine."
The claim should have made the auditor in me revolt. Instead it poured heat straight to where we joined. The frost in Adrian's eyes cracked into pure possession as I arched into him and met every stroke.
"Say it," he demanded. "What you are while I fuck you."
"Yours," I gasped. "Tonight—yours. Don't stop."
"Brilliant," he breathed, and drove into me again. "Fuck—Eliza—"
Praise like a rare coin. I clenched around him and he cursed, forehead nearly touching mine, still not looking away.
Sweat slicked the place where his chest brushed mine.
My scraped palm burned faintly where it gripped his shoulder blade; I moved it to his hair instead, silver-threaded black silk between my fingers.
He shifted angle. Pleasure spiked so sharp I almost sobbed. "There—right there—"
"I know. " He held the angle like a man who never missed a covenant deadline. "Come for me. I want to feel it. Look at me while you do."
I shattered with my eyes on his, mouth open on his name, body locking tight around his cock.
He followed with a broken sound, hips stuttering, burying himself deep as he came.
For one suspended second the tower, the Compact, Selene, the bruised shoulder—none of it could enter the room.
Only the shake of his arms and the way he said my name like it belonged in a ledger of things he refused to lose.
He rolled us carefully away from my bad shoulder, still joined for one breath, then withdrew with a wince of care and disposed of the condom with the same quiet efficiency he used for everything that mattered.
I lay boneless and breathing hard, staring at the ceiling as if it might produce a footnote explaining how I had just done that.
? ? ?
Aftercare arrived like a protocol written by a man who had never trusted the universe to be gentle.
Adrian returned from the ensuite with a glass of water and a warm damp cloth, steam faint against his fingers.
He sat beside me, guided me up enough to drink, and waited until I had swallowed half the glass before touching me again.
The cloth cleaned the insides of my thighs with impersonal tenderness that somehow felt more intimate than the sex.
"Any sharp pain?" he asked.