Chapter 17 - Andrea #2
His hand covered my mouth again, fingers pressing firm, while the other gripped my neck, tilting my head to expose more skin.
He bit down on my shoulder through my shirt, teeth marking fabric and flesh, sucking a bruise that’d bloom purple by morning.
I met every thrust, hips rolling up, our rhythm frantic and sloppy.
His belt buckle dug into my thigh, a sharp reminder of how rushed we were.
“Mine,” he snarled softly into my neck, breath hot. “Say it.”
I gasped against his palm, words muffled but clear enough. “Yours, you jealous prick.” It came out breathy and he chuckled darkly, thrusting harder, hitting the spot that made me see white.
The distant hum of the elevator dinged. Cleaning crew?
Fuck. Time was up but we didn’t stop. He pulled out just enough to flip me over, bending me across the desk, ass up.
One hand tangled in my hair, yanking my head back as he slammed back in from behind.
I buried my face in my arm, biting down to silence the cry, papers crinkling under my cheek.
His free hand smacked my ass once, sharp and claiming, then soothed with a grip that’d leave fingerprints.
His cock drove deep, balls slapping against me. He leaned over, teeth grazing my earlobe. “Going to cum inside you, mark you from the inside out. No more flirting bullshit.” Crude, possessive, and I was too far gone to do anything but take it.
I shattered again, pussy clenching around him, and he followed with a muffled groan against my shoulder, spilling hot and deep.
We collapsed there, panting, his weight pinning me as the elevator doors whooshed somewhere down the hall.
He pulled out, tucking himself away while I straightened my skirt, papers everywhere like evidence.
“Get back to your desk,” he said, low, eyes still dark with satisfaction. “And tell that courier to fuck off next time.”
I shot him a look, dimple showing despite the mess in my hair. Yeah, because territorial desk sex definitely solved the jealousy problem. But as I slipped out on shaky legs, I couldn’t deny the thrill. Reckless as hell. Worth every damn second.
Afterward I was at my desk, blouse re-tucked, hair smoothed as best I could manage, trying to look like a person who had not just been bent over a desk twenty feet away.
My cheeks were still flushed, my hands shaking, and I was pretending to read an email I’d already read four times.
I could still feel him everywhere, the press of the desk against my hips, his grip on my hair, the bruise already forming on my shoulder.
My body was humming and my brain was somewhere between satisfied and mortified.
He stepped out after, said he needed to grab files from the floor below.
He looked flushed too, his tie off-center, his hair not quite right, and I felt a vicious satisfaction because at least I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t hold it together.
He caught me looking, jaw twitching, and I turned back to my screen before the look on his face made me do something stupid like follow him into the damn elevator.
The elevator dinged. I looked up expecting him back.
Lorraine stepped out.
Sharp black dress, heels, hair perfectly straight. She walked onto the floor and the second the doors closed behind her, her nostrils flared. Her chin lifted, eyes sweeping the space slow, and then she took another breath and I watched her face change.
I didn’t understand what was happening. She was just standing there in the middle of the floor, breathing, but her expression went through something fast and ugly before the polished mask slid back into place. Her jaw locked, her hand curled into a fist at her side, released.
“Is Finneas here?” Her voice was controlled. Too controlled, like she was holding each word in place with effort.
“He stepped out. Should be back in a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
She didn’t sit. Just stood near my desk, not looking at me, looking at the floor, the walls, the glass door of Finneas’s office. Her nostrils flared again, fist curling and releasing a second time.
“Are you okay?” I asked, because whatever was going on with her was obvious even if I couldn’t figure out the cause.
“Fine.” Clipped. One syllable with a razor edge.
Then she looked at me. Really looked at me, her eyes tracking from my face to my collar, which I suddenly realized might be off-center, to my hair, which I’d smoothed but maybe not well enough, to my hands flat on the desk.
My stomach tightened under her stare. I felt like I was being examined under a microscope by a woman who already knew what she was going to find.
Her expression didn’t shift but her eyes went flat, dead flat, like a switch flipped behind them and everything warm drained out at once.
Whatever she’d just pieced together, she did it fast.
“Actually,” she said, and her voice had changed, all the edges filed smooth, polished to a shine, “I just realized I have somewhere to be. Tell Finneas I stopped by.”
She turned and walked to the elevator. Didn’t look back, didn’t throw a parting comment, didn’t say a word about my outfit or my desk or anything. Just pressed the button and waited. Her reflection in the elevator doors was perfectly still, perfectly composed.
My stomach dropped.
Lorraine didn’t leave without a last word, didn’t leave fast, sure as hell didn’t leave when she’d been told Finneas would be back in minutes. In two years of dealing with this woman I had never once seen her walk away from a chance to wait for him.
The doors opened, she stepped in, gone.
I sat at my desk staring at the closed elevator doors with a cold feeling crawling up my spine.
I didn’t know what just happened, what she’d seen or sensed, what had changed between her walking off that elevator and walking back onto it sixty seconds later.
But her face at the end, flat and empty, that I understood.
That was a woman who’d gotten the answer to a question she’d been asking for weeks.
My hands were shaking. Not from the sex, not from the adrenaline of almost getting caught, but from the look in her eyes when she turned away.
I’d seen her angry, petty, dismissive, cold, cruel.
Never quiet like that. Her anger was loud, performative, designed to be witnessed. Whatever that was, it was different.
When he came back I told him she’d stopped by and he’d just missed her.
Kept my voice casual, watched his face for a reaction.
His jaw tightened, briefly, a flicker of tension before he nodded and went back to his office.
I sat at my desk staring at my screen, replaying the whole thing, her nostrils flaring, her eyes going flat, the way she left without a word.
I kept coming back to the same question: what the hell did she see?
Over the next week she didn’t come back.
No calls, no texts, no unannounced visits to critique my wardrobe.
Monday passed, then Tuesday, then the whole week.
The floor stayed quiet, my email stayed free of passive-aggressive CCs.
I waited for the other shoe to drop every morning when the elevator dinged, braced for the click of her heels, and it never came.
It should have felt like relief but it felt like the pause before a storm, the quiet that makes you check the sky.
I told myself to let it go. Told myself she was dramatic and unpredictable, maybe she’d gotten bored of tormenting me, found a new hobby, was on vacation somewhere being horrible to resort staff instead of to me.
I didn’t believe any of that but I repeated it enough times that the knot in my stomach loosened to a manageable level.
Because I was happy. So goddamn happy it scared me, and I wasn’t going to let her silence take that from me. Not when I had the library, the reading, mornings in his kitchen, the way he looked at me when he thought I was asleep. Not when I had this.
That night at the estate, in his bed, my head on his chest, his fingers tracing slow lines down my back.
The room was dark and warm, his heartbeat under my ear, and I lay there for a while just listening to it, letting the rhythm settle me.
His chest rose and fell, slow and even. The warmth of his skin under my cheek was the most grounding thing I’d felt all week.
“Can I tell you something embarrassing?” I said.
“More embarrassing than the shirtless dream?”
“We agreed to never bring that up again.”
“I agreed to nothing.”
I pinched his side. He caught my hand and held it against his chest.
“What is it?” he asked.
I traced a circle on his skin with my free finger, stalling. I didn’t know why this felt harder to say than anything else I’d told him. Maybe because it was honest in a way that didn’t have any sarcasm to hide behind.
“I keep thinking about the porch nights,” I said.
“All of it, you just sitting there while I talked and talked and talked. About work, about you, about my parents, about the stupid highland romance. I told you everything, Finneas. Every insecure thought, every shitty day, every embarrassing crush confession.” I took a brief pause.
“I keep waiting to be angrier about it. Like I should still be pissed that you lied. But honestly? I’m just grateful.
You were there every time I needed someone and I didn’t even know it. ”
His hand tightened on mine, fingers resuming the slow lines on my back.
“Those nights were the only thing keeping me sane,” he said, quiet. “Two years of council meetings, pack politics, running a company, pretending I didn’t want to cross the floor and pull you out of your chair every time you smiled. The porch was the only place I could breathe.”
“Even when I was doing the accent?”
“Especially when you were doing the accent.”
“Liar. My accent is terrible and you know it.”
“Your accent is terrible. I loved it anyway.”
My chest ached. I adjusted my head and looked at him.
His eyes were dark in the low light, face open, unguarded.
I thought about the dog on the porch, the man in the office, how they were the same person.
How I’d somehow ended up here, in a wolf king’s bed, with his heartbeat under my hand, feeling more at home than I’d felt since Whitebrook.
The thought should have scared me. It didn’t. It just felt true.
“I’m still embarrassed about the grunt ranking though,” I said.
“That was my favorite night.”
“Of course it was. You’re a narcissist.”
“I’m a man who was told by the woman he’s obsessed with that his annoyed grunt is, and I quote, ‘weirdly hot.’”
“I’m going to kill Fin. Going to go back in time and kill the dog version of you.”
“You can’t kill something you named after me.”
“I named you after you and I didn’t even know it. That’s the most embarrassing part.”
His chest shook under my cheek with a quiet laugh, real and low. I pressed my face into his shirt, smiled against the fabric. I loved his laugh. Didn’t hear it often enough, and every time I did my chest went tight with wanting to hear it again.
I put my head back down and closed my eyes, his arm tightening around me.
For now, right now, the silence and the phone calls and the tension I kept catching in his face could wait.
I was here, he was here, his heart was beating against my ear, and I was going to hold this without gripping and see what happened.