12. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
We stay on the floor long after the worst of it has passed.
The city throws a low gold light through the windows, and somewhere below us the world is busy turning my name into a punchline, and none of it can reach me here, on the rug, with Reid’s arm a steady weight across my back and his heartbeat under my ear.
I should be making calls. There’s damage control to do, statements to draft, a wreck to salvage.
Instead I lie here and breathe, and for once I let myself.
“We used to do this,” I say. The words come out before I’ve decided to say them.
“Lie on floors?”
“Lie on our backs and count stars.” I tip my head against his chest so I can see the window, the city glow washing the sky out to a flat dark nothing.
“On the boats. That summer. You’d take one of your father’s yachts out past the marina lights where the sky opened all the way up, and we’d lie on the deck and you’d make up names for constellations because you couldn’t remember the real ones. ”
“They were better than the real ones.” I feel him smile against my hair. “The Drowning Cat. The Very Tired Fish.”
“You were young and impossible.”
“I was young and trying to impress a girl who was smarter than me and knew it.” His hand moves slow up my spine. “I remember every minute of those nights. I used to think they were the best I’d ever get. Then I spent the next decade finding out I was right.”
I go quiet, because there it is again, the size of what he’s been carrying, laid down between us so gently I almost miss the weight of it.
“I don’t know how to give you what you give me,” I say finally. “You should know that. You keep handing me these, these enormous things, and I don’t, I’m not sure I have the same to hand back. Not yet. Maybe not for a while. I’ve been empty so long I don’t know what’s left in there.”
“I’m not asking for an invoice, Scarlett.” He shifts so he can look at me. “I told you. No clock. No bill. I’ve waited this long. I can wait longer. You don’t owe me a feeling on a schedule.”
And that, more than anything else he could have said, is the thing that undoes me.
I push up onto one elbow and look at him properly, this man with his dark hair a mess against my rug and his gray eyes steady on mine and ten years of patience sitting quiet in his face, and I let myself think the thought I’ve been refusing for weeks.
For longer than weeks. For half my life, if I’m honest, which I’ve never once allowed myself to be about this.
I wanted him at seventeen. Even then I knew it, in the part of me I kept locked because there was no room in my life for wanting anything that wasn’t useful.
On that dock I chose my family and told myself it was duty, and it was, but underneath the duty was a girl who would have given anything to be allowed to choose him instead. There was just never time to know my own heart before someone else spent it for me.
I reach up and put my hand against his jaw, and he goes still under my touch.
“What it could have been,” I say quietly. “If they’d let us. If I’d been allowed to follow this instead of the path they laid out for me. We could have had all of it, Reid. The whole life. And they took it before I even understood it was mine to lose.”
“We can still have it.” His voice is low. “It’s not gone. It’s just late.”
So I close the space and kiss him.
There is nothing careful in it, not from me, and I feel the small jolt of surprise go through him before he answers it. I crash my lips against his, my tongue forcing its way into his mouth to claim him.
I taste the hunger he has been hiding, the desperation he has kept locked away, and I drink it in. I push him back against the rug and follow him down, my hands flat on his chest, and when he reaches for me I catch his wrists and hold them where they are.
“No,” I say against his mouth. “Let me.”
He stills, understanding, and lets his hands fall open. Lets me have it. For a man built to take charge of every room he enters, the way Reid Vanderbilt surrenders the lead is the single most generous thing I’ve ever watched a person do, and it lights me up in a way nothing has in years.
I take my time. Sitting up, I pull my shirt over my head and toss it aside.
I watch his eyes go dark, watch his pupils blow wide as he stares at my breasts, his hands fisting in the rug with the effort of not reaching.
The power of it floods through me, clean and bright and entirely mine.
For years I was moved through other people’s plans like a piece on a board.
Tonight I am the one who decides.
My hands trace the line of him, slow, learning what makes his breath stutter. I slide my palms down his chest, over the hard ridges of his stomach, until I reach the waistband of his trousers. I undo them with a slow, deliberate precision, freeing his cock.
It springs out, thick and pulsing, already leaking a bead of pre-cum at the tip.
I wrap my fingers around the shaft, squeezing tight, and he lets out a sharp hiss of air.
I lean down and find the place where his jaw meets his throat, biting and sucking at the skin, and I feel the groan move through him before I hear it.
“Scarlett.” My name comes out wrecked. “You’re killing me.”
“Good.” I settle over him, knees on either side of his hips. “You’ve been careful with me for weeks. Let me be reckless with you.”
I reach down and guide his cock to my entrance.
I am soaking wet, my pussy aching for the weight of him.
I lower myself slowly, inch by inch, feeling the broad head of him stretch me open.
I moan as he slides deep inside, filling me completely, hitting my cervix with a blunt force that makes my toes curl.
I stay there for a moment, pinned to him, letting my body adjust to the sheer size of him.
His hands come up to my waist, finally, but they only hold, they don’t steer.
I begin to move, lifting my hips and sliding back up, the friction of his skin against mine creating a searing heat.
I ride him with a slow, grinding rhythm, circling my hips to make sure every ridge of his cock rubs against my g-spot.
I lean forward, my breasts brushing his chest, and I kiss him again, a deep, messy exchange of spit and longing while I fuck him.
I pick up the pace, my movements becoming frantic and hungry. I bounce on him, the sound of our wet skin slapping together filling the quiet room. I can feel him trembling beneath me, his muscles coiled tight, fighting the urge to take over.
I love the way he looks at me, his gaze fixed on my face, watching the pleasure break me. I reach down between us, my thumb rubbing circles over the spot where we are joined, adding more pressure to the friction.
When the careful, patient control of him finally starts to fray, when his hips push up to meet mine and his fingers tighten on my waist, digging into my skin, and his breath goes ragged, I lean down to his ear.
“Now,” I tell him. “Stop holding back. I want all of it.”
And he gives it to me. The leash comes off all at once. He flips the script in a heartbeat, his hands sliding from my waist to my ass, gripping the cheeks and hauling me down hard against him.
“My turn,” he growls, the sound vibrating from his chest into mine. “You have no fucking idea how long I’ve wanted to wreck you like this.”
He doesn’t just shift; he takes over. He hooks his arms under my thighs, hoisting my legs up over his shoulders to open me completely, exposing every inch of my soaking pussy to his gaze. He pauses for a split second, his eyes darkening as he stares at where we join.
“Look at you,” he pants, his voice thick with obsession. “You’re absolutely perfect, Scarlett. Every single inch of you is fucking perfect.”
He drives up into me with a violent, powerful thrust that knocks the wind out of me, his cock slamming into my cervix with a force that makes my vision blur. He isn’t just fucking me now, he is claiming me, his hips slamming into mine with a rhythmic, punishing force that shakes my entire frame.
“Fuck, you feel incredible,” he hisses, the words strained and raw. “You’re so tight, you’re wrapping around me like you were made for this. I can’t get enough of you.”
Reid reaches up, his hand locking around the back of my neck to pull my face down to his.
Reid kisses me with a raw, starving intensity, his tongue invading my mouth as he fucks me senseless.
I can feel the sheer power in his thighs and glutes, the muscle coiled and snapping with every deep, wet plunge.
He begins to hammer into me, the speed increasing until the sound of our bodies colliding is a wet, slapping rhythm that echoes in the room.
I throw my head back and let the sound out, a loud, guttural scream of release, and I don’t care who hears.
This is mine, this body, this want, this choice, the one thing in the whole wreckage of my life that no headline can touch.
He grunts with every thrust, his cock hitting deep and hard, driving me farther into the rug. He shifts his grip, one hand moving to squeeze my breast, his thumb rubbing my nipple raw while he continues to pummel my insides.
“God, I love the way you scream for me,” he pants, his voice a low rumble. “You’re so gorgeous when you’re coming apart.”
I feel the orgasm building, a tidal wave of heat that starts in my clit and radiates through my entire core. Every thrust is a spark, every slam a detonation. I am clinging to him, my nails digging into his shoulders, begging for more even as I feel myself breaking.
I shatter with my hands braced on his chest, my internal muscles clamping tight around him in rhythmic waves. I scream his name, my body shaking with the intensity of the peak. He doesn’t stop, he drives into me through my climax, pushing me further and further over the edge.
“Yes, squeeze me, fuck, just like that,” he roars, his voice breaking. “You’re so good for me, Scarlett.”