25. Killian
KILLIAN
The midsummer prep meeting wraps at half past four and I wait for the room to clear.
Mallory is the last one out. She pulls the conference room door behind her and I fall into step beside Harper in the corridor without saying anything, and she glances at me once but doesn't ask. She's learned to read when I have something to say and am choosing the right place for it.
We pass three members of the event staff on the way to my office.
Two of them clock us together and look away with the professional incuriosity of people who know better than to make anything of what their employer does.
The third, Marco, gives me a very deliberate non-expression that tells me he's noticed and catalogued it and will be discussing it with no one.
I don't adjust my pace. I don't create distance between us.
She's mine and I'm not performing otherwise for the benefit of anyone in this building.
I open my office door and she goes in ahead of me and I close it behind us.
She takes the couch the way she always takes it when she's in here, settling into the far end with her tablet against her knee, the unconscious posture of someone who's been in this room enough times to have a usual spot.
I look at her for a moment and then I sit down at the other end and extend one leg along the cushion, my back against the armrest, and I look at her.
“Come here,” I say.
She looks at me. At the length of my leg along the couch. At the space I've made.
Then she moves. She turns and settles back against my chest, her back to my front, and I wrap one arm across her and pull her in and feel the small involuntary exhale she makes when she lets herself relax into me. Like she's been waiting to put something down and needed permission.
I press my lips to the curve below her ear. Her skin is warm and she tilts her head slightly without thinking about it, the way she does.
I move both hands to her shoulders and start working them slowly, my thumbs pressing into the muscle at the base of her neck, and she makes a low sound and drops her head forward.
“You've been carrying this in your shoulders all day,” I say.
“I carry everything in my shoulders,” she says into her chest. “It's where things go.”
I keep working. She lets me. The office is quiet around us, the late afternoon light coming in low through the south-facing window, the vineyard going gold at the edges.
I wait until her breathing has slowed and the tension under my hands has dropped by half before I speak again.
“New York,” I say. “The real version.”
Her shoulders tighten slightly under my hands. I don't stop.
“You've heard two versions,” she says.
“I have. The first one you gave me after Sophia's presentation, when you needed me to believe you were fine.
Downsizing. Clean exit. The version you give someone who's just offered you a job.” My thumbs press into the knot at her left shoulder and she breathes out.
“The second one came out two nights ago when you were angry enough to stop choosing your words. That one was closer. But it was still sideways.”
She's quiet.
My hands keep moving.
“Just us,” I say. “Nothing you say leaves this room.”
Another long pause. Then she tells me.
She talks to the middle distance, her head tipped slightly forward, my hands moving slowly across her shoulders while the words come out of her in the order they actually happened rather than the order she's learned to package them in.
The years of managed distance she'd built between herself and Jason and Rebecca Miller.
The calls she stopped returning. The money requests she'd stopped answering and the guilt that came with stopping, which she'd eventually learned to put down because guilt was the currency they'd always traded in and she couldn't afford to keep spending it.
The way they found her anyway. Her apartment address first, then her office.
Her father in the lobby of her employer's building telling security he needed to speak to someone about financial irregularities involving his daughter.
Her mother in the reception area, crying, doing the thing she'd always done with tears, which was use them as a tool precisely and without shame.
“Seven days,” she says. “From the first incident to my last day. I had four years of performance reviews that said I was exceptional. Seven days.”
I press my lips to her hair. I don't speak.
“And they'd done it before,” she continues.
Her voice is level in the way that things are level when someone has worked very hard to make them that way.
“To a friend of mine. Three years ago. I didn't know until after I'd left New York.
Which means they've been doing this and I was walking around thinking I'd gotten far enough away.” She exhales.
“I hadn't gotten anywhere. They were just waiting until I had something worth the effort.”
The office is very quiet.
I hold her and let the quiet sit because she's earned it and because what I want to say needs a moment before I say it or it's going to come out harder than it should.
“There's something you need to know,” I say.
I feel the shift in her body before I finish telling her. The way her shoulders draw in slightly, the change in her breathing from slow to careful.
I tell her about Maddox's real itinerary. New York before Milan. The security firm, my stake in it, the call I made the morning after her office while she was still asleep down the hall. The preliminary file Marcus had sent through. The pattern, confirmed. The options they were looking at.
She's quiet for a long beat after I finish.
Then she straightens away from my chest.
“You three are looking into my parents,” she says. “Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
She moves to stand and I let her. She walks to the window and stands with her arms crossed, her back to me, looking out at the vineyard.
“That's my situation,” she says. “My family. You don't make decisions about it without asking me first.”
“I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because you described a pattern and patterns don't stop on their own,” I say.
“Because I wasn't going to wait for them to locate you here before I understood who we were dealing with. Because the morning after you told us, none of us were capable of sitting on that information and doing nothing.” I pause.
She turns from the window. The expression on her face is the one she gets when she wants to be angrier than the argument is allowing her to be.
“You should have told me.”
“You're right, but I’d—”
“Don't agree with me and then say you'd do it again in the same breath.”
“Both things are true. We should have told you and I'd do it again. I'm not going to pretend one cancels the other.”
She makes a sound and turns back toward the door.
I'm off the couch before she reaches it.
I step into her path and she walks into my chest, both hands coming up against it, and I put my arms around her before she can step back. Not to hold her in place. Just to be there.
She goes still.
I reach down and hook both hands under her thighs and lift her, turning, and settle her onto the edge of my desk. She grabs my shoulders. Steadies. Looks up at me.
I take her face in both hands.
“There is nothing,” I say, “any of us wouldn't do to keep you safe. Nothing. And I'm not apologizing for that.”
She opens her mouth.
“We know you're capable,” I say, before she can. “We know you've been handling everything alone since you were sixteen and you're extraordinary at it. That's not what this is.” I hold her gaze. “You don't have to do it alone anymore. That is what this is.”
Something gives in her expression. Not dramatically. Just quietly, the way a knot loosens when it finally finds the right angle. She drops her head forward and her forehead comes to rest against my chest and I feel her breathe out, long and slow, something carried too long finally put down.
I press my lips to her hair. Stay there.
Then I put two fingers under her chin and tilt her face up to mine.
She looks at me. Eyes dark. Something open in them she's stopped closing off.
I kiss her.
Her mouth is warm and yielding under mine, a soft gasp swallowed between us as I slant my lips over hers, deepening the kiss before she can catch her breath.
She tastes like coffee and the lingering sweetness of the wine we sampled earlier, and I drag my tongue against hers, slow and deliberate, savoring the way her fingers fist in my shirt.
She pushes my suit jacket off my shoulders, her nails scraping down my arms before she grips my biceps, pulling me closer.
I don’t let her rush me. I kiss her like I have all the time in the world, like this office and the vineyard beyond it don’t exist, like the only thing that matters is the way her body arches into mine.
My hands slide down her sides, over the curve of her waist, and I grip the hem of her skirt, pushing it up her thighs. She’s warm under my palms, her skin smooth, and when my fingers brush higher, I find nothing but bare skin.
I break the kiss just enough to smirk against her lips. “No panties.”
She exhales a laugh, breathless, her hips shifting under my touch. “You noticed.”
“I notice everything about you.”
My fingers slide through her slick heat, and she gasps, her nails biting into my shoulders through the fabric of my shirt. She’s already wet, already wanting, and I press two fingers into her without warning, curling them just right to make her back bow off the desk.
“Fuck—” Her head drops back, throat exposed, and I kiss the pulse there, feeling it jump under my lips as I fuck her with my fingers, slow then fast, dragging out every sound she makes.
Her hips rock against my hand, chasing her pleasure, and I watch her—the way her lips part, the way her lashes flutter, the way her breath hitches when I add a third finger, stretching her.
“Come for me,” I murmur against her ear, my voice rough.
She does. With a sharp cry, her body tightens around my fingers, her thighs trembling as she shudders through it. I don’t stop until she’s gasping, her hands pushing weakly at my wrist.
I pull my fingers free, bringing them to my mouth, never breaking eye contact as I lick them clean. Her pupils dilate, her lips parting on a shaky exhale.
“You’re fucking filthy,” she breathes.
I unbuckle my slacks with one hand, shoving them down just enough to free my cock. I’m already hard, aching, and when I grip her hips and drag her to the edge of the desk, she wraps her legs around me without hesitation.
I push into her in one smooth thrust, filling her completely, and her moan is loud, unfiltered, her nails digging into my arms.
“Look at you,” I growl, my hands sliding up her thighs, pushing her skirt higher. “Taking me so fucking well.”
She arches, her hips lifting to meet mine, and I set a brutal pace, fucking into her with deep, measured strokes that have her gasping my name. The desk creaks beneath us, papers scattering, but I don’t care. Let the whole goddamn vineyard hear her.
I lean over her, bracing one hand beside her head, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. “You feel that?” I grind deep, making her whimper. “That’s how much I want you. How much I’ll always want you.”
Her answer is a broken moan, her legs tightening around me as I drive into her harder, faster.
I pull back just enough to lift her legs over my shoulders, bending her nearly in half, and she gasps, her hands scrambling for purchase on the desk.
I press a kiss to the delicate strap of her stiletto where it wraps around her ankle, then the other, before I push back into her, deeper this time, fucking her so hard the desk groans in protest.
“Killian—” Her voice is wrecked, her body trembling.
“I know,” I grit out, my control fraying. “Come for me again. Let me feel it.”
She shatters with a cry, her nails raking down my chest, her body clamping around me like a vise. The sensation drags me under, and I bury myself deep, spilling inside her with a groan, my hips jerking through the last waves of my release.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room is our ragged breathing. I press my forehead to hers, my hands still gripping her thighs, unwilling to let go just yet.
She exhales a laugh, breathless, her fingers tracing the ink on my shoulder. “You’re going to have to carry me out of here.”
I kiss her, slow and lingering. “I’ll carry you anywhere you want.”
She hums, her legs sliding off my shoulders as I pull out, her body languid and sated. I tuck myself back into my slacks, watching as she sits up, her skirt still rucked up around her waist, her hair a mess.
I reach out, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. “You’re beautiful like this.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s a flush high on her cheeks. “You’re insatiable.”
“Only for you.”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling as she straightens her clothes, her movements slow, lazy. I watch her, memorizing the way she looks in this moment—flushed, fucked-out, mine.
Then I hold out my hand.
“Come on,” I say. “Asher will be pissed if we’re late for dinner.”