19. CHAPTER 17
Orion
I didn’t remember when kissing became a problem. Only that one day it was. It became an invisible line my body refused to cross, as if my mouth had finally learned what my mind had known for years. Intimacy was a liability.
The last time I put my lips on someone else’s, it was nine years ago. Some party. Some woman whose name blurred with a dozen others. I barely recall her face.
The only distinct thing that night was the taste of her lipgloss. It tasted like synthetic strawberries and deep regret. I remembered thinking, as her mouth moved over mine, that this was too much contact for someone I didn’t care about.
That was the night I decided kissing was too intimate.
Hence why it was rule one in our orgy meetings. I was never going to compromise on it. Ever.
I always liked to keep things simple, and that included my mouth staying where it was useful… for words and whiskey alone. Zero sentimental attachment.
Same rule for going down on a woman—if I had to pleasure you with my mouth, it was too intimate. I preferred to get to the fucking. Bodies. Heat. Release. All transactional and well under my control.
Everything was easier that way.
So when the priest cleared his throat this afternoon and told me I could kiss my bride, I hadn’t expected a problem.
Then I pushed back Léonie Fernández’s veil, and the only thing I wanted—viscerally, absurdly—was to put my mouth on hers.
Well fuck me.
Because this had nothing to do with some grand swell of feelings, or the pianist hitting the right note, or the garden smelling like roses and reverence. It was just… pure instinct. An inconvenient urge I couldn’t successfully curb.
My fingers found the corner of the veil and drew it back to find her eyes searching mine. She appeared calm, but the fury beneath it was clear, even without a raised voice.
I leaned in anyway and kissed her cheek.
Urges asides, I made sure the contact was soft and measured.
Nothing that could be misread as hunger, or that would require her to answer me with her mouth, because she hadn’t given me permission, even though I’d waited for it.
For a shift, a little signal, some hint of consent that would let me do the thing I suddenly wanted. It never came.
So I did the safe, most acceptable thing. The only thing that wouldn’t start a fire I didn’t intend to manage.
If I had to justify it, I'd say it was because the priest demanded it. Or because obligation has a way of forcing your hand in front of witnesses.
Still, it didn't explain why there was an intense need to put my mouth on her knuckles in that dressing room, or the need to kiss her there either…to place my lips on her skin and taste her.
Ridiculous thoughts that plagued my mind when I should have been focusing on why I was there in the first place—an excuse to talk to her… to know what she wanted from this marriage. I’d grown tired of watching her drag herself painfully through wedding planning for the past weeks.
Asking for her terms was a way to show her marrying me wasn’t as terrible as she thought.
Again, it's something I shouldn’t care about. But I value my peace, and I have no desire for a wife who makes herself invisible in her own home simply because she feels she doesn’t belong.
Yet nothing—and I mean nothing—prepared me for the sight of her when I walked into that room.
I’d seen Léonie Fernández a hundred times already. On screens. In dossiers. Through the cold lenses of Stratum’s surveillance. That was all data. This was not.
She stood in the center of the room, angelic in her form.
Her rich brown skin had a luminous glow I hadn’t noticed from any surveillance clips.
Her dress hugged her like it had been stitched onto her spine, and her hair was swept up, exposing the line of her neck—a detail no camera had ever captured clearly enough.
Her startled brown eyes lifted to mine the moment I entered the room
My heart did a thing I hated. It kicked so hard, it felt fucking ridiculous. An involuntary, traitorous reaction that irritated me enough to scowl before I spoke.
I tried to mask that irritation when I asked everyone out of the room, till it was just the two of us.
She stared at me like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to run or set me on fire. I found I didn’t mind either option. Even though I was mostly here for the fire.
And when she asked what I wanted in the not so polite tone, unlike the pliant creature her family hoped I believed she was, a smile touched my mouth before I could stop it.
I wasn’t amused per se. I’d just recognised the first true glimpse of the part of her I’ve been waiting to see.
I didn’t plan on saying I wanted many things but after hearing her speak directly to me, I could only think of the millions of things I could want from her… alone.
I saw the shock in her eyes at my reply. Her eyes widened just a little. She might as well have shouted every thought in her head.
If there was one thing I understood just by standing this close to her, it was that she wore her emotions on her face.
I’d noticed hints of it in surveillance. A glimpse here and there, not enough to read it with certainty. But in person? Every reaction was accessible, written plainly across her face.
I could tell from her reaction when I mentioned terms of her own that her family hadn’t discussed the terms or the clauses with her. She had no idea the price they had to pay.
Her surprise to my question was unexpectedly gentle, and for reasons that defied logic, watching that realization dawn on her pleased me more than it should have.
If I were a better man, I might have warned her about the terms of the contract. Told her what she was stepping into. Offered her a moment to brace before the consequences hit.
But I’m not a better man. And the less she knew, the cleaner her reactions would be.
So I let her speak her mind, and list out whatever demands she believed she had.
I listened intently, while trying not to watch the shape of her mouth as she formed the words.
The tilt of her chin when she tried for confidence.
The uneasy way her fingers curled in her dress when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
I adjusted my cufflinks to keep my hands occupied, because every second of sitting in that room with her felt like I was fighting a traitorous part of myself that wanted—what, exactly?
Something I didn’t have a name for, and absolutely refused to entertain.
Then I made my second mistake of the day.
I gave her the bracelet.
A wedding present, though present implied a soft spot I didn’t possess. It was nothing but a gesture of dominance disguised as gentleness.
I should have dropped the box on the table and walked away. Infact I’d planned to do that but before I could think better of it, I was asking for her hand.
She extended it slowly, as though unsure whether I meant to bind her or touch her.
I fastened the bracelet around her wrist with more care than I intended, feeling the quick fluttering of her pulse. The contact registered far too clearly, and my body responded before my mind could intervene. The primitive surge that coursed through me was wholly unacceptable. I didn’t pull back.
It should have meant nothing, but it did mean something, especially when I held out her hand and saw how perfectly my grandmother’s ring naturally fit her finger. I nearly swore. The sight of it there, sent an irrational spike of satisfaction through me.
Everything about that moment felt far too dangerous. I should have walked away then, but still, I didn’t.
Asking her to knot my bow tie was another error. I knew it the second the request left my mouth, even as I handed the silk over.
Perhaps I had expected a protest. Instead, she simply walked toward me, my pulse quickening with every inch she closed until her hands were at my neck.
Her proximity was disruptive. I felt the careful focus of her fingers and the way she pointedly avoided my eyes, even while remaining painfully aware of them. Her scent—something warm and sweet—lingered between me like a question I had no intention of answering.
My eyes stayed on her face… nowhere else felt safe to look.
Her concentration. The faint crease between her brows. The calm competence of her movements.
I had negotiated hostile takeovers with less tension.
By the time she finished, heat crawled under my collar and made its way down my spine. My cock strained painfully against my trousers. I was so turned on I could barely breathe.
I forced my restraint back into place.
If I were acting like myself, this would have been a good time to leave the room. But I wasn’t myself, because the next thing I knew I was touching her veil.
I reached for it almost cautiously, pulled it down halfway, and for a breath—one, that’s all—her face was inches from mine. Her lips parted, not in invitation, or in fear, but in something more curious and vulnerable.
My brain stopped functioning.
Fuck.
She was beautiful.
Not in the decorative, predictable way other women were, or in the curated way of heiresses and supermodels. This was something else…totally unscripted and lethal in equal measure.
There was no justification for the surge of want I shoved back into its cage. No reason, strategy, or logic behind it.
I reined myself in, and reminded myself who I was. What this was.
I'd seen beautiful women my entire life. I had collected them the way men like me were discreetly expected to, and without consequence. Desire had always been a transaction. Pleasure, a release valve.
Léonie wasn’t special. That was the truth I clung to.
The only difference between her and the others was that I'd spent weeks watching her.
Every angle. Every habit. Every small, useless detail.
That was the attachment, if anyone wanted to label it.
It wasn’t romance, but familiarity, and very much possession.
As I stood there, breathing the same air, watching her gaze at me from beneath her veil… it felt like the surveillance had been the outline, and this was the first stroke of colour.