CHAPTER 14 #2
I walked her to the bed and laid her down on her right side first, then eased her to her back with a pillow under the left so nothing pulled. She watched me do it with an expression I wanted to frame: half amused, half undone by being handled like she mattered.
"You always this careful with your projects?" she asked.
"You are not a project. " Braced over her, weight in my forearms, space stayed open for her to change her mind. "You get the steering wheel here too, Quinn. I can flirt, I can beg, I can make terrible jokes, but I do not get to coast on momentum."
She laughed, and her laugh ended under my kiss until it turned into a moan.
Clothes left in stages. Her soft pants. My shorts.
Underwear last, because drawing it out made her breath hitch in a way that rewired my spine.
Skin to skin, I kept my hips angled so she felt how hard I was without me pushing for more than she offered.
My hand skimmed her ribs, the soft undercurve of her breast, thumb brushing a nipple until she arched and hissed yes.
"Sensitive," I said, pleased. "Good data."
"Do not turn me into a report."
"Never. Reports do not sound like that when I do this.
" I closed my mouth over her breast and sucked, gentle then firmer when her good hand fisted my hair.
Her legs opened around my hips. Heat and slick met the muscle of my thigh when I gave her something to rock against, and she used it without shame.
That undid me more than any staged seduction. Eliza Quinn taking pleasure like she had a right to it.
My mouth traced lower over her stomach; I looked up once for the nod. The answer came in the tight set of her mouth that meant do not you dare stop now. I settled between her thighs and put my mouth on her like the answer to every stupid fear I had carried since morning.
She was wet, hot, perfect. I licked slow at first, learning, then firmer when her hips stuttered.
One hand held her good hip. The other stayed far from the bruise, splayed on the sheet by her waist as a promise.
When I slid a finger into her, she clenched and said my name like she trusted it to hold.
"That's it," I murmured against her. "Take it. Let me feel you."
I did not say good girl. That phrase belonged to a future she would have to ask for with her whole yes, and tonight was proof of lane, not a claim carved into the foundation.
Praise came other ways—you're perfect like this, fuck, Eliza, look at you—soft-filthy and sincere enough that her thighs trembled around my ears.
Her orgasm hit sharp. She tried to muffle the sound and failed. I worked her through it until the shakes eased, then kissed the inside of her knee and rested my forehead against her thigh, breathing hard, cock aching against the sheet.
She tugged at my shoulder. "Up. Want you up here."
I climbed, careful, and kissed her so she tasted herself. Her hand wrapped around me and stroked once, twice, confident, and my vision went white at the edges.
"Condom in the drawer if we go there," I managed. "We do not have to. I can come on your stomach like a teenager and still call it a win. Or I can keep my hands on you until you sleep. You call the floor plan."
Her eyes shone. She stroked me again, slower. "I want more—not all the way, not tonight. Shoulder is getting loud and my brain is soup. But I want you against me. Hands. Friction. I want to watch you lose a little control because it's me."
"Can do," I said, voice wrecked. "Can absolutely do."
I settled beside her on her uninjured side, hooked her good leg over my hip, and slid my cock against the slick heat between her thighs without pushing in.
The contact punched a groan out of me. She rolled her hips and we found a rhythm that was filthy and perfect—skin slick, mouths open, my hand between us to rub where she was still sensitive until she jerked and cursed and came again softer, clinging.
I was close enough to hurt. "Eliza—where—"
"Here. " She pushed me onto my back with surprising strength and straddled my thighs, bruise-conscious, and wrapped her hand around me again. "Watch me."
I watched. She stroked me with focused intent, the same look she gave hostile numbers, and when she leaned down to kiss me, release broke out of me against her mouth, pulsing over her fingers and my stomach, pleasure ripping through me hard enough that my laugh afterward was half sob.
"Holy hell," I said when I could speak. "You are going to kill me and I will thank you in the will."
She looked smug and soft at once. "Stress test passed?"
"Building code exceeded. " I cleaned her wrist first with a corner of the sheet, then got a warm cloth from the bath because aftercare was not optional in this house if I had anything to say about it.
Her fingers came clean under the cloth, then my stomach, then the mess, and I came back with water she actually drank.
Then there it was—the tightness at the corner of her mouth, the way her left shoulder had hiked a fraction higher.
"Hey. " I cupped her face. "Bruise?"
"Loud," she admitted. "And I am crashing. Adrenaline spent. If we keep going I will be a liability tomorrow in the war room."
My mouth brushed her forehead, then the tip of her nose, then her mouth—soft enough to be a promise instead of a demand. "Then we stop. Instantly. No pouting. No negotiation. You did not fail a test. You set a limit, and I respect it."
Relief loosened her shoulders. "Some men would sulk."
"Some men are not me. " I found one of my softer tees—not the black one I was already half-planning for a different night—and eased it over her head with ridiculous care.
It drowned her. I loved it. "You want guest suite geography for autonomy, or you want to sleep here with a human security system who snores only a little? "
She hesitated. Honest. "Guest suite. I need to know I still own the map—nothing to do with you."
"Understood. " I meant it. Even if a stupid part of me wanted to bolt the door and keep the warm. "I will walk you. No gentleman act. Just a man making sure the hall is clear and your water glass is full."
We cleaned up the rest of the way without awkwardness. That was a skill too—leaving heat on the floor without leaving shame. At her guest suite door I kissed her once more, slow, and rested my forehead carefully against hers on the good side.
"Lane is still open," I said. "Morning eggs still happen. Nothing about stopping tonight makes you less wanted."
"I know. " Her fingers squeezed mine. "Marcus? Thank you for stopping when I said loud."
"Always. " I stepped back. "Sleep, sweetheart. Tomorrow we keep the tower standing."
The door closed. I stood in the hall until I heard the lock engage—her choice—and then I went back to my room, changed the sheet like a man who understood logistics, and failed completely at sleep.
? ? ?
Near midnight the penthouse changed temperature.
Figuratively—mostly. The HVAC was too expensive for mood swings.
But sound carried differently when anger found a corridor.
I was in the kitchen in sweatpants, OPS mug refilled with something pretending to be decaf, when Adrian's voice reached me from the glass war room—low, cold, the tone he used after deciding someone was a risk.
Luca's answer came warmer and sharper, theater with a blade under it.
I set the mug down and moved.
The war room lights were on half. Screens still showed bid architecture and vote maps like ghosts.
Adrian stood at the table's command end in sleep pants and an unbuttoned shirt, gray at his temples caught blue by monitor glow, his scarred hand flat on glass.
Luca faced him from the window side, dark curls damp like he had showered and then chosen a fight instead of sleep, forearms bare, compass ink dark under the monitor glow.
"—five years," Luca was saying, "and you still speak to me like I am a volatility event you failed to hedge."
"You left," Adrian said. "You took Futures and you left. Do not rewrite exile as strategy because an auditor made the books feel romantic."
Luca's smile was all teeth. "There it is. The real covenant. You think she is a story I am telling myself to get back into your good graces."
"I think you want her and you want the triad and you have not decided which desire gets to drive. " Adrian's voice dropped further. "I will not let this company become wreckage from your need to be forgiven."
"You want forgiveness?" Luca stepped in. "Ask for it. Or admit you voted the way you voted because control tastes better than brotherhood."
Adrian's hand flexed. For a second I saw the younger man who had broken a glass in this same room the night the succession vote landed. "Say that again."
"Boys," I said from the doorway, easy volume, steel under it. "If you plan to redecorate with blood, give me a work order. I have towels and a schedule."
Both heads turned. Luca's shoulders stayed high. Adrian's jaw ticked.
"This is not your mediation hour," Adrian said.
"Everything that threatens the load path is my hour.
" I walked in, planted myself between them close enough that either man would have to go through my body to reach the other, and leaned my hip against the table as if I had all night.
"You want to do five years right now? Fine.
Do it with words that do not make Eliza wake up thinking the men who signed her terms are about to throw each other through tempered glass. "
Luca exhaled hard through his nose. "He implied I am using her."
"I implied," Adrian said precisely, "that your timing is convenient."
"My timing is late," Luca snapped. "I should have come home years ago.
I stayed in Asia markets because pride is a stupid god and I worshipped it.
That is on me. Wanting Eliza is not a tactic.
Wanting the triad whole is not a tactic.
You are so afraid of being wrong that you call every human motive a derivative. "