Chapter 19 #2
“You were shaking,” I breathed, my voice rough stone.
“I was furious! At him. At you. This whole situation. I hate you, Alois.” Her dark eyes flashed, wet and vivid.
My jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in my cheek. My shoulders strained the jacket as I put a hand on the rack by her head, closing the last gap. The wood creaked.
“It doesn’t feel like hatred.”
She went still. The fight bled out, leaving something raw and open. Her throat fluttered. “No.”
It was all the invitation I needed. I took it.
“I think you like it. Pulling the strings of the puppet. Seeing how hard you can pull.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. This is a transaction. You need a pretty lie to clean up your mess. I need this job. We smile. We go home. That’s the deal.”
“The deal.” The word hung in the dark.
Outside, laughter and glass clinked and faded. In here, the silence breathed. I saw the flutter in her throat. The neckline of her gown plunged there, a shadow of warm skin. I’d noticed all night. Noticed the silk on her hips. Noticed her hair, dark and shifting.
Noticing was the problem. It led here—to following her, to pushing into this closet, to the hot, stupid anger in my gut.
“You’re in my way,” she said, but she didn’t move.
“Am I?”
“People will talk.”
“Let them.”
“Brute force. That’s your only move, Müller.” She lifted her chin. “It’s obvious.”
I leaned in. Just an inch. Her heat reached for me. Her perfume—jasmine, expensive—mixed with her skin. “You’re not scared.”
“No.”
“Then why is your breath shaking?”
She went still. I watched her eyes, the fight in them, and under it, a spark. Something that matched the current under my own skin.
“Adrenaline,” she snickered. “From a hostile kidnapping.”
“Hostile.” I almost smiled. It felt sharp. “You want hostile? I’ll show you hostile. This?” My thigh brushed the silk of her gown. A spark, a whisper. “This isn’t hostile.”
Her lips parted. She breathed through her mouth now.
The small space, her pinned defiance, her smell—it all became a single, pounding need. My cock strained against my trousers, a relentless ache. I didn’t adjust. Let her see.
Her gaze dropped. A flicker down my body, then back up. Color stained her cheeks.
“You’re disgusting,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” My voice dropped. “I am.”
I brought my other hand up, caging her completely. My sleeves were hiked, my forearms corded and inked. The dark patterns stood out. Her eyes tracked them, then found mine.
“Get out of my way,” she tried, but it was wisps of breath.
“Or what? You’ll name-call? Do it. Give me a reason.”
“A reason for what?”
“To stop pretending.”
The air left her in a rush. Her fingers, clenched at her sides, opened. They brushed a coat by her thigh.
I lowered my head. My mouth was inches from hers. I could taste her breath—champagne and mint. “You hate it,” I murmured. “The pretending. The smiling. My hand on your back for the cameras. You hate it so much your skin burns.”
She didn’t deny it. A tremor went through her.
“You think I don’t feel it?” I continued, the words rough. “You think I’m too much of a brute to see how you go stiff when I’m near? How you look at me like a problem?”
“You are a problem.”
“Then solve me.”
I didn’t kiss her. I held the space, let the offer sit there, sharp and quiet.
My whole body was a tight wire. The ache in my groin was a deep, demanding throb.
I wanted to push her into the coats, hike up that dress, and take the fight from her.
I wanted her sharp mouth quiet, then loud with something else.
Her chest rose, the silk pressing to me. The soft weight of her breasts brushed my chest. Heat shot through me.
Her hand came up. Not to push. Her fingers hovered at my lapel, then settled. Not a caress. An anchor. Her knuckles were white.
“I hate you,” she breathed. It sounded like truth flipped on its axis.
“I know.”
I closed the last space.
My mouth crashed down on hers.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim, a release of all the frustration, the simmering rage of the last weeks. Her lips were soft, and she made a sound—a muffled gasp—that went straight to my cock. I swallowed it, slanting my head, taking the kiss deeper.
She didn’t fight.
Her fingers fisted in my lapel, pulling me closer. Her other hand found my jaw, her touch burning. She kissed me back with a fury that matched mine, all teeth and pressure. It was a fight. A silent war where her tongue met mine, where her body arched, where the tension between us caught fire.
I groaned into her mouth, the sound torn from my chest. I cupped the back of her head, my hand in her hair, holding her as I took her. The taste of her was madness. Champagne and mint and her. And tonic I could drink from and never tire.
She whimpered. The vibration sang through my lips. Her hips pressed forward, finding the hard line of me. A jolt. She rocked, a slow grind that blurred my vision.
I broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “Fuck.”
Her eyes were wide, dark. Her lips were swollen. She stared up, panting.
“You want to stop?” I ground out. Every cell screamed no.
She shook her head, sharp. Her hands slid to my shoulders, gripping. “I want you to shut up.”
She pulled me back down.
This kiss was slower, a drowning pull. I let go. One hand slid from her hair down her spine, to the small of her back. I pressed her into me, erasing the space. I felt every curve through the fabric.
My other hand moved. It slid down her side, over the silk, to her thigh. I gathered the material, my fingers digging in. I hitched her leg up around my hip. She gasped, her balance going, and I took her weight, pinning her to the coats.
The new angle was ruin. The heart of her was against my hip. Even through the layers, I felt her heat. I rocked, a slow roll of my hips.
She cried out, muffling it against my shoulder. Her head fell back. I didn’t wait. I buried my face in her throat. I licked the salt, then nipped. She shuddered, her fingers clawing my back.
“You’re soaked,” I muttered against her skin, the words raw. “I can feel it.”
A sob caught in her chest. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you the truth?” I rocked again, harder. The friction was torture. “Tell you how much you want this?”
“I hate you,” she chanted, desperate.
“I don’t care.”
My hand on her thigh slid higher, pushing the delicate fabric. My fingers found bare skin. Hot, trembling. I traced the lace edge. The lace was damp, the heat beneath it an inferno. I pressed the heel of my hand against her, and her body bowed off the coats.
“Alois.” My name. A broken plea.
It broke me. The last control snapped. I fumbled between us. The button, the zipper. I freed myself, the air cool on my tender skin.
I shoved the lace aside. One finger slid into her. Her muscles clenched. I groaned, my forehead on her shoulder. A second finger, stretching her.
“Look at me,” I demanded.
Her eyes opened. Her gaze locked on mine, drowning. She bit her lip, trying to stay quiet as she moved against my hand.
I withdrew. She made a sound of loss.
I positioned myself at her entrance. The broad head of my cock pressed against her, nudging into the slick, tender flesh. I held there, trembling with the effort of not driving in. Every instinct screamed to bury myself, to lose myself in her, to fuck the fight away.
This was the edge. The door.
Her nails dug into my arms. Her breath came in sharp pants, fogging the air. Her body was open, waiting, her eyes on mine. The hatred was still there, but fused now with a wild, hungry want. For me. For this.
Outside, the muffled music swelled.
The pressure was a blade’s edge. My cock throbbed, a brutal, insistent pulse against her.
The slick heat of her was a promise, a torment.
Every muscle in my back and thighs was corded iron, shaking with the effort of stillness.
I needed to hear it. I needed the words.
“Tell me,” I ground out, my voice shredded. “Tell me you want this.”
Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving against mine.
The tension was still there, a live wire in the dark.
But beneath it, under the fury and the fight, was the raw, naked truth she’d been hiding for days.
I’d seen flashes of it in boardrooms, across dinner tables, in the way her gaze would snag on my hands and then dart away.
I didn’t move. I let the pressure speak. The broad head of me, notching into her, stretching her just that fraction. A whimper tore from her throat. Her nails were anchors in my biceps, drawing blood, I was sure of it. The pain was clean, sharp, a grounding wire. “The truth, Bea. Just once.”
She shook her head, her dark hair a riot against the velvet coats. The emerald silk of her gown was crushed between us, a ruined flag. I could smell her perfume, something expensive and floral, and under it, the musk of her arousal. It was the most honest thing in the room.
“You want me to beg?” Her voice was a ragged scrape. “Is that it? You need to hear me beg?”
“Yes.” The word was absolute.
I lowered, my lips a breath from hers. “I’ve watched you,” I whispered, the confession torn from a place I never visited.
“I’ve watched you spin your lies and build your walls.
I’ve watched you look at me like I’m a problem to be managed.
But your body doesn’t lie. It never has.
” I rocked my hips, the smallest, most torturous increment.
Not entering, just reminding. Her inner muscles fluttered, a desperate pulse around the tip of me. “Tell me.”
Her defiance was a beautiful, crumbling thing. I saw the war in her brown eyes—the strategist, the controller, being overrun by the woman. Her jaw was clenched, her lower lip trapped between her teeth. A tear escaped, tracing a path through the perfect makeup on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
The music outside swelled again, a stupid, graceful waltz. In here, it was all grunts and heat and the rustle of fabric. Two animals in a dark hole.