Chapter 13 The Worship
I found her at the window.
Past midnight. The penthouse dark except for Manhattan, which never learns to shut up.
The city pressing its face against the glass, all gold, all noise, all indifferent beauty.
She stood in my shirt. The white Oxford.
Sleeves rolled to her elbows. Hem at her thighs.
Her hair loose. Her feet bare on the marble.
She didn't know I was home.
I'd come from a meeting in Red Hook. A man who owed money he couldn't pay. A face Pavel rearranged with the clinical precision of a man punching a clock. The smell of it was still on me. Sweat. Fear. The sour, metallic stink of a human body pushed past what its nervous system can process.
I should have showered. Should have poured vodka. Instead I stood in the hallway. Watching her.
The shirt was backlit by the city. Thin enough that I could see the silhouette of her body through it.
The hips that curved out from her waist like a statement she couldn't retract.
The stomach pressing softly against the cotton.
The thighs, full, touching at the top, the place where her body refused to apologize for the space it required.
Something shifted in my chest. The feeling that had no language. Only a direction. Toward her. Always toward her.
I crossed the room.
She heard me at three feet. Turned her head. Those green eyes. Tired tonight. The look of a woman who has been fighting so long that the muscles she uses to fight have started to ache.
"You're home," she said.
"I'm home."
She studied my face. Whatever residue Red Hook had left there, she didn't ask. She was learning. Learning that some questions have answers that make the room darker.
"You smell like violence," she said. Quiet. Matter-of-fact.
"Yes."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"What do you want?"
The question. Simple. Devastating. An invitation I hadn't earned. A door she was opening. A crack. Enough to see through.
I went to my knees.
The way a body drops when the structure holding it upright decides to quit. My knees hit the marble. Hard. The cold seeped through my trousers, into my bones. Good. The cold was honest. The only clean thing in this room.
She looked down at me. Confusion first. Then something that flickered across her mouth before she killed it.
"Viktor. What are you doing?"
"Quiet."
"Viktor."
"I said quiet."
My hands found her hips. Through the shirt. The cotton warm from her body. I pressed my thumbs into the curve of bone beneath the fabric. Felt her flinch. The involuntary tightening. The reflex that lived in her muscles like a tenant who refused to leave.
I didn't wait for it to fade. I gripped harder. Pulled her forward. My mouth on her stomach through the cotton. The heat of her skin bleeding through the fabric onto my lips.
"Дмитрий называл тебя толстой," I said into her. Dmitri called you fat. The words vibrating through the shirt into her flesh.
She stiffened.
"Don't."
"Дмитрий был дураком." Dmitri was a fool.
"I said don't."
I yanked the shirt up. Over her stomach. Over her ribs. Pulled it over her head. She gasped, her arms going up, the fabric leaving her body like a flag being torn down. I threw it behind me. Didn't watch it land.
She was bare. Every curve. Every line. The breasts. The stomach. The hips. The freckles on her shoulders. All of it lit by Manhattan, by sixty-one floors of distance between her body and the street.
"Эти изгибы," I said against her skin. These curves.
My mouth on her stomach now. Bare skin. Her body jerking at the contact.
"Эти изгибы — архитектура собора." These curves are the architecture of a cathedral.
I bit the flesh below her navel. She hissed.
Her hand flying to my hair. Gripping. Hard.
"А я умирал, чтобы помолиться." And I have been dying to pray.
I moved fast.
My hands sliding down her thighs. Gripping. Spreading them. My mouth on her left hip, biting the bone, marking it with my teeth. She yelped. I moved to the right hip. Bit harder. She moaned. The sound raw. Startled out of her before she could stop it.
I kissed the inside of her thigh. Felt her shake. Didn't linger. Moved higher. My breath on her cunt. Hot. Close. She was already wet. I could see it. Could smell it. The scent of a woman whose body had made its decision before her brain issued the order.
I put my mouth on her.
Hard. My tongue flat against her clit, pressing with a pressure that made her hips buck forward into my face.
I gripped her ass with both hands. Held her against my mouth.
Devoured her. The word is right. Devoured.
My tongue working her clit with the relentless rhythm of a man who has stopped asking and started taking, except the taking felt like worship, the worship felt like violence, and the violence was exactly what she needed.
She screamed. Her hand in my hair pulling now.
Pulling me closer. Her hips grinding against my face.
She was done pretending she didn't want this.
Done with the flinching and the hiding and the sucking in of the stomach.
Her body had taken over. Her body was riding my tongue with the desperate, furious rhythm of a woman who had been told she was too much for too long and was finally being told she wasn't enough.
That he wanted more. That his mouth was greedy for her. That the greed was the prayer.
"Каждый изгиб," I groaned against her cunt. Every curve. My tongue flicking her clit. "Каждый сантиметр." Every inch. Sucking hard. Her legs shaking. "Каждая часть, которую он заставил тебя ненавидеть." Every part he made you hate.
I shoved two fingers inside her.
She arched off the glass. Her back hitting the window, her hips thrusting forward, impaling herself on my hand. Tight. Soaked. The muscles of her cunt gripping my fingers like she was trying to keep me there. I curled them. Found the spot. Pressed. Her whole body locked.
"Fuck. Oh, fuck. Viktor."
I sucked her clit into my mouth. Flicked my tongue over it while my fingers worked inside her.
Fast. Relentless. The pace of a man who wasn't building to anything.
Who was already there. Who had been there since he walked through the door and saw her silhouette in his shirt and felt the building drop out from under him.
"Ты моя," I said against her. You are mine.
My fingers driving deeper. "Каждый сантиметр.
" Every inch. My tongue on her clit. "Каждый стон.
" Every moan. The Russian pouring out of me the way Gaeilge poured out of her when she broke.
My language. My prayer. Spoken into her cunt like a confession she couldn't understand but could feel in every nerve ending I was lighting on fire.
She came.
Violent. Her whole body convulsing. Her thighs clamping around my head.
Her fingers ripping at my hair. She screamed something in Gaeilge.
Words I couldn't understand. The language she ran to when the world broke open.
I kept going. My mouth on her clit. My fingers inside her.
Drawing it out. Extending the orgasm until she was shaking so hard I had to hold her upright with my free arm around her waist.
I pulled my fingers out. Stood. Fast. Grabbed her by the hips. Spun her. Her chest hit the glass. Her nipples pressed against the cold window. She gasped. The shock of cold on heated skin. Her reflection staring back at her. Naked. Flushed. Wrecked.
"Regarde," I said. Look. My hands on her hips from behind. My cock hard against her ass, still trapped in my trousers. "Look at yourself."
She looked. At her own reflection. The body she hid. The curves. The stomach. The breasts pressed against the glass. The woman Dmitri had called fat staring back at her through sixty-one floors of night, looking like something out of a painting that would make men start wars.
I freed my cock. Unbuckled the belt with one hand.
The metallic sound cutting through the dark.
I pressed the head against her entrance.
She was dripping. Soaked from my mouth. From my fingers.
From the worship that wasn't gentle because worship doesn't have to be gentle.
The fiercest prayers are the ones screamed, not whispered.
I thrust inside her.
One stroke. Buried to the hilt. She cried out. Her palms flat on the glass. Her forehead pressed to the window. The city below them. The city that didn't know what was happening sixty-one floors above its indifferent head.
I fucked her against the glass.
Hard. Fast. My hands on her hips, pulling her back onto my cock with every thrust. The slap of skin on skin filling the dark penthouse. My mouth on her shoulder. Biting. Marking. Kissing the freckles I hadn't reached yet. Each one a target. Each one claimed.
"Ты — самое красивое, что я когда-либо видел," I growled against her spine. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Thrusting deeper. Harder. Her cunt gripping me so tight I had to force every stroke. "Красивое." Beautiful. Another thrust. "Идеальное." Perfect. Another. "Моё." Mine.
She pushed back against me. Meeting every thrust. Her hips slamming into mine.
The glass fogging under her breath. Her hands squeaking against the window as they slid with sweat.
She was moaning now. Constant. A stream of sound that was English and French and Gaeilge all tangled together, every language she spoke collapsing into one noise, the noise of a woman being fucked like a cathedral being consecrated.
With force. With reverence. With the absolute conviction that the structure is holy.
I reached around. Found her clit. Rubbed it in fast, tight circles while I drove into her from behind. She screamed. Her back arching. Her ass pressing harder against me. Taking me deeper.
"Come," I ordered. My voice wrecked. The accent fully loose now. The English barely holding together. "Come on my cock, Maeve. I want to feel this cunt squeeze me while you watch yourself in the glass."
She came.
The orgasm ripped through her. Her cunt clenching around me in waves so hard I had to stop moving, had to stand there buried inside her and feel every spasm, every contraction, every pulse of her body worshipping mine the way mine had just worshipped hers.
I followed. Couldn't hold it. Didn't want to.
I came inside her with my mouth on her shoulder and my hands on her hips and the city below us and the glass in front of us and her reflection and mine overlapping in the dark, two bodies pressed together sixty-one floors above a world that would never understand this.
What we were. What we did to each other.
The violence that looked like prayer. The prayer that felt like ruin.
She was breathing like she'd been underwater. Her forehead on the glass. Her palms still pressed flat. Her legs held upright only by my arms around her waist.
I pulled out. Turned her around. Touched her face. Thumb along her jaw. Tilting her chin up. The same gesture from the office. From the contract. From the first time I'd put my fingers under her chin and watched her flinch.
She didn't flinch.
The thing that had been happening every time I touched her. Every time I looked at her. The reflex. The involuntary contraction. The body bracing for the naming. The word that starts with a man's eyes and ends with a woman's shame.
Gone.
The flinch would come back. Tomorrow, maybe. In a meeting. In the office. The first time someone's eyes traveled her body and she felt the old measurement being taken. Muscle memory doesn't die in a single night.
But tonight, standing naked in my penthouse with my thumb on her jaw and my cum still inside her, she didn't flinch.
The first crack in the armor.
She looked at me. Steady. Wrecked. Stripped. The look of a woman who has just had something taken apart inside her and hasn't decided yet whether the man who did it was building or demolishing.
She pressed her forehead to my chest. Into the shirt that smelled like violence. The collapse of a woman who has stopped fighting one specific battle and needs somewhere to put her weight.
"I don't believe you yet," she whispered. Into my chest. Into the fabric. Into the space between my ribs where the stone used to live before it melted.
"I know."
"I want to."
"I know that too."
"Will you say it again? The Russian. The thing about the cathedral."
"Эти изгибы — архитектура собора." These curves are the architecture of a cathedral.
She pressed closer. Her bare body against my clothed one. Her arms around my waist.
The crack was there.
For tonight, it was enough.