5. Bennett #2
My hand found the zipper at her back. The sound felt too loud in the space between us. I drew it down slowly. One strap slipped free, then the other, and emerald silk slid to the floor in a soft spill at her feet.
She stood there in her undergarments, city light brushing over her skin in uneven gold and shadow.
Beautiful wasn't enough. It didn't come close. She looked like strength and grit softened only at the edges, like someone who had spent too long holding herself together with bare hands.
Her gaze held mine.
"The bedroom," she said. "Now."
I didn't let her finish.
I lifted her into my arms. Her legs locked around my waist, and she let out a startled laugh, breath catching halfway through it. The sound landed harder than anything else had that night.
Something in my chest gave way at it.
The bedroom door didn't make it in one piece. Neither did what was left of my shirt.
She pulled at the fabric like she was trying to get closer faster, seams giving under her hands, and I let her.
Her nails dragged down my back, sharp and real, and it hit me then, clean and undeniable.
Wanting her wasn't the problem.
Losing control around her was.
I lowered her onto the bed. She pulled me down with her before I could think twice.
“If you’re thinking about negotiating—”
“Shut up.” I cut her off with a kiss at her throat, then her collarbone, slow enough to feel her reaction before I even saw it. “For once in your life, stop talking.”
“Make me.”
That challenge cracked something clean through me, sharper than I expected, like she’d found a seam I didn’t know was exposed.
I worked her bra free, and she arched into my touch, breath catching when I kissed lower, pulling that sound out of her before she could stop it. Her fingers locked into my shoulders, gripping hard enough to remind me she wasn’t just letting this happen.
“Bennett.”
Hearing my name like that stopped me for half a second. Not soft. Not teasing. Something edged and urgent that made me want to hear it again, like a loop I couldn’t get enough of.
I kept going before I lost the thread entirely.
My mouth traced lower over her ribs, then her stomach, then the sharp line of her hip.
Her breath broke into uneven gasps, hands twisting into the sheets like she needed something solid to hold onto.
When I slid her underwear down, she lifted her hips to meet me without hesitation, and the sight of her there, unguarded, unraveled the last of my control.
For a moment, everything in my head went quiet.
“Look at me,” I said.
She did. Her eyes locked on mine, dark and unfocused, pupils blown wide. Whatever defiance she’d been holding onto was gone now. Only one need remained.
I lowered my head and tasted her.
The sound she made unraveled something in my chest, the kind of sound that made every sleepless night feel justified.
Her thighs tightened around my shoulders, trembling as I held her there.
Her fingers slid into my hair, not gentle, not hesitant, pulling me closer like she needed control she could no longer pretend to have.
I gave her everything she asked for. Then I kept going until the tension in her body snapped completely.
When she came apart against my mouth, her back arched off the bed, and I didn’t look away.
I watched every second of it, etching it into memory without permission.
The parting of her lips. The heat was flooding her cheeks and spilling down her neck.
The way my name left her was like it meant both surrender and accusation.
I should’ve stopped there. I didn’t.
Before she could fully come back to herself, I was already moving up her body again. She reached for my belt, then my zipper, hands unsteady now, urgency replacing control. When I finally pushed inside her, her eyes found mine and held them like she refused to be the one who broke first.
“Don’t look away,” she breathed.
I didn’t know how to, even if the world split open around us.
I moved, and she met me without hesitation, the rhythm between us slipping into something instinctive. Not negotiation. Not even thought. Just a reaction. Push, answer, pull again, two people trying to make sense of what was happening by letting it happen.
Her nails dragged down my back, sharp enough to register, and I answered by pulling her closer, my grip firm at her hips, holding on like distance wasn’t an option anymore.
I stopped thinking in clean lines. Stopped trying to name any of it. The space between logic and instinct just… disappeared.
She broke first, my name catching on her mouth as it belonged there.
I followed right after, forehead pressed to her shoulder, breathing her in until nothing else made sense. Her arms stayed locked around me, not letting go, not rushing away, just holding the moment where it was.
Afterward, the city lights still pulsed outside the window, indifferent to whatever had changed inside this room.
She didn’t move away. I didn’t let go.
My hand settled at her hip in the dim light, tracing the curve I’d only ever imagined until an hour ago. Her breathing eased against my chest, steadying, settling.
“This wasn’t in the contract,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“I don’t regret it.”
I pressed my lips into her hair, breathing her in, and felt something in me shift in a way I couldn’t categorize, couldn’t assign to the deal or the project or anything I could control and set aside.
"Neither do I."
She lifted her head, meeting my gaze. Something unguarded flickered across her face, raw enough to mirror what I refused to put into words. I’d been holding that part of myself at arm’s length since my mother closed her eyes eleven years ago and never opened them again.
"Stay," I said. Not a question, not a command. Something caught in the space between.
Her head settled back against my chest like she had decided before I spoke.
She stayed.