Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Bennett’s House
Aubrey
The drive back up the ridge road was dead silent.
By the time Aubrey let herself into the house, the sun had already dropped behind the sharp peaks of the Blue Ridge, leaving the massive, sprawling living room swallowed in shadows.
Bennett’s house was a modern California-style build—clean lines, soaring timber, and vast walls of glass looking out over the Blackwood vineyards and the dark valleys of Sylva.
Right now, those windows only reflected the heavy dark of the interior.
She stripped off her flats by the door, her bare feet instantly registering the smooth surface of the polished concrete. Her shoulders ached. The house was quiet, but she could smell him immediately—clean soap and a warm spicy cologne.
Bennett was standing by the kitchen island, a glass of bourbon in his hand.
He had clearly just stepped out of the shower.
His dark hair was still wet, clumping at the nape of his neck, and he’d changed into a plain white T-shirt and low-slung gray sweatpants.
Without his heavy work boots and denim, he looked massive in a completely different way—all hard muscle and raw masculinity.
He didn’t say a word as she walked in. He watched her with those gold-flecked eyes. The fury from the morning hadn’t dissipated; it had cooked down into something darker.
Aubrey didn’t look away. She set her bag on the counter, the contract paperwork slumping out of the folder.
“You’re still looking at it,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet kitchen.
“Because it doesn’t lie, Bennett,” Aubrey said, her voice tight, the exhaustion making her reckless.
“I spent the last four hours re-running Mercer’s numbers.
The margins are predatory. If we miss our casing volume, they take everything.
It is a textbook hostile chokehold, and Mabel was about to blow it up. ”
Bennett took a slow sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving her face. “I told you this morning. Vanessa didn’t do this.”
“You keep saying her name like that shields her from the math,” Aubrey snapped, taking a step closer, her feet flat on the concrete. “She had the keys, Bennett. She had the access. She knew the estate timeline because she knows you. Why are you protecting her?”
“I’m not protecting her, Aubrey. I’m stopping you from turning a business contract into a witch hunt.”
“I know exactly how things work when a man refuses to see the obvious,” she hurled back, the frustration boiling over, shredding her usual restraint. “You don’t see it because you’re sleeping with her!”
The words were out before she could stop them—hot, reckless, and explosive in the room.
Bennett didn’t flinch, but the air in the kitchen instantly turned lethal. He set his glass down on the marble with a heavy, dangerous clink. He took one slow, deliberate step toward her, crowding her space until she had to tilt her chin up to keep his eyes.
A dark, arrogant tilt touched the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were entirely black.
“Princess,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous, ragged register that vibrated right through her chest. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous. I’d think you were desperate to turn Vanessa into a killer so you don’t have to face what’s happening in this room.”
The worst part was, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Bennett stood entirely too close, crowding out the open space of the room. Heat radiated from him, shrinking the distance between them until it felt impossible to think.
“You drive me crazy,” he said quietly.
A laugh escaped her. Unsteady. Breathless. Furious. “Likewise.”
His hand lifted, his rough, calloused fingers brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The texture of his skin against her cheek sent a sharp, violent jolt straight down her spine. Aubrey’s breath caught, her green eyes locking onto his.
Since the night they met, they'd hidden behind contracts, grief, and arguments.
There was nowhere left to hide.
But looking at the fierce, possessive line of his face in the dim kitchen light, Aubrey knew the talking was done.
“You’re doing it again,” she whispered, her voice trembling as her fingers instinctively curled into the hem of her white sleeveless blouse.
Bennett’s head dipped a fraction of an inch, his breathing turning ragged, the solid warmth of his chest radiating through the thin fabric of her shirt. “Doing what, Princess?”
“Commanding the room,” she breathed, her lips so close to his they brushed with the syllable. “Provoking the management.”
“The management is wound too tight,” he growled low in his throat, his gaze burning into her mouth. “Somebody needs to remind you that you’re not in Philly anymore.”
“And you think you’re the man for the job?”
“I know I am.”
The arrogant tilt of his mouth was the absolute final straw.
Aubrey didn’t back down. She lunged forward, her hands slamming against the solid plane of his chest, meaning to shove him away.
His eyes held hers for one charged heartbeat.
Then he moved with startling, lethal speed, his hands locking onto her waist, his fingers digging into her skin through her trousers.
He yanked her forward until her pelvis compressed flush against his—the hard, unyielding weight of his frame, even softened by the fleece of his sweatpants, sending a dizzying spike of heat straight down her thighs.
“Bennett—“
She tried to twist away, her bare feet skidding on the polished concrete, but he didn’t let her go.
He drove her backward, his body crowding her out of the kitchen, tracking her step for step through the dark, open living room toward the glass wall.
Aubrey fought him the whole way, her hands holding onto his white T-shirt, half-shoving, half-pulling him closer as her defenses fractured into absolute dust. She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted the collision.
Her calves hit the edge of the deep leather sofa.
They fell together, slamming into the heavy leather cushions in a tangle of limbs and breathless fury. Bennett followed her down, his six-foot-two frame instantly enveloping her, pinning her beneath the solid weight of his body.
His mouth crashed over hers—hard, demanding, a total throw-down of a kiss that tasted of pure survival.
Aubrey went entirely liquid beneath him.
She let out a soft, ragged moan into his mouth, her lips parting instantly as his tongue tangled with hers in a fierce, reckless exploration.
Her hands flew up, burying themselves deep into his damp hair, pulling him down, crushing his mouth harder against hers until her lips felt swollen and raw.
She wanted the weight. She wanted the dominance. She wanted the force of a man who didn’t care that she was Aubrey Langford, owner of Blackwood Estate.
Bennett growled against her lips. His large hands moved like wildfire, pinning her wrists to the leather for one desperate second before sliding up the line of her arms to catch the hem of her white blouse.
He yanked the fabric up and over her head in one impatient, tearing motion, tossing it into the darkness of the floor.
The cool air hit her bare skin for half a second before Bennett’s chest covered her again, his skin hot and damp against hers.
He broke the kiss, his mouth trailing a wet, burning path down the column of her throat to the sensitive dip of her collarbone.
Aubrey arched off the cushions, a soft gasp escaping her lungs as his hands slid down to catch the hem of her trousers, stripping them down her legs with rough, single-minded urgency.
His hand found the clasp at her back. He stripped away the last thin barrier between them.
As her hands clawed at his shoulders, desperate to strip the white T-shirt from his frame, her fingers twisted into the fabric, pulling it up and over his powerful frame. He tossed it aside, his dark, ink-carved ribs gleaming in the dim amber wash of the kitchen light as he came back down over her.
His bare skin slid against hers, stealing the last of her control.
Before she could even catch her breath, Bennett’s mouth came back down, not to her lips, but to the sensitive curve where her neck met her shoulder.
He bit down—enough to make her gasp before his mouth moved lower.
His touch was heavy, possessive, and entirely untamed as his lips found the swell of her breast. He sucked her skin hard, his tongue swirling against her until Aubrey’s fingers clawed frantically into his back, her hips instinctively bucking upward against him in a desperate plea for more.
She was entirely on fire, every inch of her wound tight and aching for the weight of him.
He groaned against her skin, the vibration dragging a ragged sob from her throat.
He parted her thighs with his knee, his large hands locking onto her hips, lifting her off the heavy cushions to meet him.
There was no hesitation left, no room for thought—only the heavy, demanding rhythm of a reckoning that had been building since the night they met.
And then the thinking stopped entirely.
Afterward, the quiet of the ridge house returned, heavy and still.
The moon outside the massive glass wall was bright, throwing pale silver rectangles across the tangled blankets, the dark shape of the leather sofa, and the endless, quiet silhouette of the valley below.
Aubrey lay on her side, her chest rising and falling in shallow, exhausted swells, the skin of her bare shoulders cooling in the mountain air. Her heart was still thumping a steady, heavy rhythm against her ribs.
For tonight, everything else could wait until morning.
Movement stirred beside her.
Bennett reached down, his large, calloused hand sliding gently over the bare curve of her waist. Without a word, he pulled her backward against him, tucking her spine securely into the solid, radiating warmth of his chest. He pulled a thick throw over both of them, burying her beneath the blanket until she was completely swaddled in his heat.
He dipped his head, his lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss into the damp hair at the nape of her neck. His large hand stayed flat against her stomach, anchoring her to him.
“Aubrey,” he murmured, his voice a low, rough rumble that vibrated right through her back.
“Hmm?” she breathed, her eyes drifting shut as the safety of his arms enveloped her.
Bennett hesitated, his fingers tightening a fraction against her skin. The unyielding control he usually hoarded was gone, replaced by a quiet, raw vulnerability that sounded entirely new.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked softly.
Aubrey opened her eyes in the darkness, a strange, tight warmth pulling behind her ribs at the sheer sweetness in his tone.
This was the man who had dominated her living room, who had driven into her with an urgent, primal desperation—and now he sounded completely wrecked by the possibility that he’d been too rough.
“No, Bennett,” she whispered, turning her head slightly until her cheek brushed the rough stubble of his jaw. “You didn’t hurt me.”
He let out a long, slow breath against her neck, his shoulders finally sagging beneath the blanket.
“I lost control,” he muttered into her skin, his voice pure gravel, carrying the heavy weight of an absolute admission. “The second I touched you, I just... I lost it. I wanted to make sure.”
Aubrey shifted, turning within the tight circle of his arms until she was facing him. She reached up, her fingers tracing the hard line of his jaw, finding the gold-flecked eyes watching her in the dark with an intense, unblinking focus.
“I’m fine, Bennett,” she said, her voice low, “I’m right here.”
Bennett didn’t answer with words. He leaned down and kissed her mouth—not with the demanding urgency from before, but with a slow, deep, aching tenderness that felt infinitely more dangerous to her peace of mind.
He held her flush against his chest, his large frame acting as an unyielding shield against the glass windows and the dark valley below.
Aubrey drifted toward sleep, cocooned in Bennett's arms.
Outside, somewhere below the ridge, a lone security light flickered to life in the darkness.
Moose lifted his head.
He rose without a sound and walked to the wall of glass overlooking the valley. His ears pricked forward, his gaze fixed on something neither Bennett nor Aubrey could see.
He stood there for a long time.
Watching the darkness.