Chapter 17
Grace
The kiss with Dane had been a gentle, questioning spark. I had felt the physical heat of it, the undeniable, masculine presence of a man who genuinely wanted to comfort me, but the spark hadn’t caught fire. It had simply flickered out against the cold, immovable, terrifying reality of my husband.
Adrian’s kiss didn’t spark. It ignited.
It was a violent, chemical reaction that instantly leveled everything in its blast radius. Every single nerve ending in my body, deliberately numbed by the shock and grief of the weeks, suddenly woke up screaming his name.
I didn’t stop him.
God help me, I pulled him harder against me, my own sudden, blinding desperation matching his. We stumbled awkwardly backward, our mouths still locked together.
“Grace,” he groaned against my mouth. The word tore out of his throat, jagged and raw, sounding less like a name and more like a desperate confession of faith.
His hands slid frantically from my hair, gripping my waist tightly, lifting me effortlessly off the scuffed hardwood floor.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, holding on as he backed me violently against one wall.
The framed, second-hand print of a Parisian street scene I had hung yesterday crashed to the floor, the cheap glass shattering loudly across the wood, but neither of us stopped. We didn’t even flinch.
I was furious with him. I hated him with a bright, burning intensity for the lie he told in the clinic, for Celine’s cloying perfume in my penthouse, for the absolute, ruthless destruction of my life.
But my traitorous body didn’t care about the lie. My body only recognized the man it had belonged to for the better part of a decade.
He kissed me until my lungs burned for oxygen, moving his mouth to my jaw, down the sensitive column of my throat, trailing heat and absolute possession everywhere he touched. I tangled my fingers in his dark hair, pulling his head back up to capture his mouth again.
It was a chaotic, destructive hunger. We weren’t making love to gently fix a broken marriage; we were tearing each other apart to prove we were still alive.
He carried me the short distance into the bedroom and dropped me onto the unmade bed, following me down in a frantic tangle of limbs and desperate, tearing hands.
His suit jacket hit the floor with a soft whisper, and the tie followed.
His cufflinks scattered, skittering somewhere under the cheap dresser.
He yanked my oversized cotton t-shirt up over my head and then froze—just looked at me, his chest heaving, his eyes dragging over every inch of bare skin like a man taking inventory of everything he had lost.
“Seven years,” he said hoarsely. “And I still forget how to breathe when I look at you.”
“Shut up,” I said, and pulled him down on top of me.
Skin met skin, the friction hot, familiar, and electric.
Every touch was a furious accusation of abandonment; every kiss a desperate, silent demand for absolute surrender.
His mouth left mine and burned a path down my throat to my breast, closing hot and wet over my nipple.
I arched off the mattress with a cry, my fingers fisting in his dark hair.
He was merciless about it—sucking, grazing with his teeth, moving to the other breast with the same single-minded devastation—until I was squirming beneath him, until the anger and the wanting had become the same bright, unbearable thing.
His hand slid down my stomach and between my thighs. His fingers found me—wet, achingly wet, had been since the hallway—and he groaned like the proof of it physically hurt him.
“You still want me,” he said, his voice wrecked. “Your body doesn’t lie, Grace. Not the way I did.”
“Mine,” he whispered fiercely against the bare skin of my collarbone, his teeth grazing the sensitive flesh, leaving a mark. “You are still mine.”
“I hate you,” I sobbed, the tears flowing freely now, arching my back, pulling his weight closer, needing the crushing, grounding pressure of him.
“I know,” Adrian said, his voice ragged, thick with agony and need. “I know, God, I know.”
His fingers kept working me—sliding through my wetness, circling my clit with the slow, knowing rhythm he had spent years learning, then pushing two inside me until my hips bucked up off the cheap mattress.
He built me up with a patience that felt like punishment, brought me right to the shaking edge of it—and stopped. Withdrew his hand.
I nearly sobbed with frustration. “Adrian—”
“Not yet.” He pushed off his pants and underwear, then settled between my thighs, braced over me, his cock hard and heavy against my hip.
His dark eyes held mine, and for one suspended second we just looked at each other.
“When you come, you’re going to be looking at me.
You’re going to remember exactly who you belong to. ”
When he finally pushed inside me, the physical connection was so intense, so ingrained in my muscle memory, it bordered on actual, physical pain. A sharp, ragged gasp tore out of my throat, instantly answered by a low, guttural groan from Adrian that vibrated against my chest.
He stayed there for a heartbeat, buried to the hilt, trembling with restraint. Then he began to move.
We moved together with a frantic, punishing rhythm, driven by the furious, unspoken need to erase the timeline. To find the specific, safe version of us that used to exist before the foundation cracked and the walls came tumbling down.
Every thrust drove the breath from my lungs.
I wrapped my legs around his hips and met him stroke for stroke, the bed frame knocking against the wall, neither of us caring who heard.
The pleasure built sharp and merciless, winding tighter with every deep, driving roll of his hips, his name already splintering in my throat.
But the harder we chased it, the more elusive that version of us became.
The physical pleasure was blinding, a sharp, white-hot distraction from the pain, but the emotional void remained beneath it, gaping, cold, and unbridgeable.
I couldn’t fuck the lie away. He couldn’t fuck the forgiveness into me.
“Look at me,” he ground out, and I did—I looked at him, at the ruin and the want and the seven years of us staring back—and it broke me open.
When the crest finally hit, shattering through my exhausted system in a wave of absolute, physical relief, I cried out his name, my nails digging half-moons into the hard muscle of his shoulders, my body clenching around him again and again.
“Grace.” He groaned it like a confession, drove deep one last time, and came with me—his whole body seizing, his release pulsing hot inside me.
Adrian shuddered above me, burying his face deep in the crook of my neck, his breath tearing in ragged, desperate gasps against my skin.
For a long, heavy moment, the only sound in the apartment was the frantic, synchronized rhythm of our breathing and the distant hum of traffic on Queens Boulevard.
Adrian’s weight was heavy, solid, and terrifyingly familiar, pressing me deep into the cheap mattress.
He didn’t move. He kept his face buried against my neck, his strong arms wrapped tight around my torso, as if he honestly believed that holding on tight enough could stop the morning from coming.
As if his physical strength could hold the reality of his choices at bay.
But reality was already creeping in.
The heat of the adrenaline began to fade, rapidly cooling my skin, replaced by a cold, sickening wave of absolute, horrifying clarity.
I had let him back in. I had literally unlocked the door and let the architect of my ruin back into the house.
I placed my hands flat against his damp chest.
“Get off me,” I said. My voice was dead, stripped of all the fury, the passion, and the grief.
Adrian froze instantly. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head. His dark eyes were wide, stripped of the impenetrable corporate armor he wore like a second skin. He was devastatingly vulnerable. He looked down at me, his eyes searching my face frantically for the deep connection we had just forged.
He didn’t find it.
“Grace,” he whispered, the single word a desperate, bleeding plea for mercy.
“Get off,” I repeated, my voice hardening, physically pushing against his chest.
He rolled off me immediately, the sudden, jarring absence of his intense body heat leaving me shivering.
I sat up quickly, pulling the tangled cotton sheets up to tightly cover my bare chest. I didn’t look at him.
I couldn’t look at him. The shame was a massive, physical weight sitting squarely on my chest, heavier than the grief, heavier than the anger.
My body had betrayed me. I had let my physical memory override my basic survival instinct.
“It was a mistake,” I said, my voice trembling slightly, staring fixedly at a crack in the plaster wall. “It shouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t change anything.”
Adrian sat slowly on the edge of the bed, his broad back to me.
His shoulders slumped forward, the defeat radiating off him absolute and total.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t turn around and try to pull me back down onto the mattress.
He didn’t launch into another brilliant, desperate, negotiated defense of his actions.
The silence between us was profound and devastating.
He slowly stood up, bending down to gather his discarded clothes from the floor. He dressed methodically, mechanically, picking up the ruined bespoke jacket, knotting the silk tie with cold, precise efficiency. He looked broken, a hollowed-out shell of the commanding, terrifying man I knew.
He stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, finally turning his head to look at me one last time.
“I love you, Grace,” Adrian said. His voice was devoid of the previous aggression, the jealousy, or the desperate sales pitch. It was just a quiet, hopeless, bleeding statement of fact. “I will always love you. And I am so sorry.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, refusing to look at his face, refusing to let the words sink into my chest where they could do more damage.
“Get out.”
He didn’t fight me on it. He didn’t say another word. He turned and walked out of the apartment, the heavy front door clicking softly shut behind him.
I waited, holding my breath, until the sound of his expensive leather shoes faded down the hallway stairs.
Then, I scrambled frantically out of bed, dragging the white sheet with me like a shield. I ran into the living room, threw the deadbolt on the front door, and slid the flimsy metal chain lock back into place.
I leaned my back heavily against the solid wood of the door and slid down until I was sitting on the hardwood floor.
I pulled my knees tight to my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and started shaking.
The cold, righteous certainty I had found in the alleyway with Celine was gone. The protective, burning fury I had aimed at him in the living room was gone.
I was just a woman sitting alone in wrinkled sex sheets. And despite the massive lies, despite the ultimate betrayal, and despite the pregnant woman currently living in my beautiful penthouse...
I was still hopelessly in love with the man who broke me.