25. Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Dax
Emile cleared his plate from the table and gave me a curt farewell for the evening.
I should have fucking known it would be like this with him.
It didn’t matter if I was the one who technically started CIPHER.
The teams Emile and Clay had curated over time were perfectly capable of handling business on their own.
At least that’s what I thought. If it were still my team, Lucy and I never would have been in this fucking mess in the first place.
I couldn’t fault Emile’s team for their work–technology only went so far, but how the hell did any of this get so distorted?
It never would have happened had I still been in charge of CIPHER.
But that was the risk I took when I gave it all up.
CIPHER helped people, but it also hurt people.
It wasn’t an organization built on love or peace.
It was one built on vengeance and destruction.
What good things did come out of it were at a cost. Not only the sabotage of corporate bankrolls, but also bloodshed.
There were reasons it operated underground.
Clay and Emile justified it by pretending it was all some act of heroism—the same way I used to.
It was all a facade, keeping the monster living inside me hidden.
I had buried that part of me somewhere far away, and now it was like it had been dug up and thrust back into my life.
Maybe CIPHER did need my help, but at this point I needed theirs.
If it weren’t for Lucy, I wouldn’t have even considered it.
But now, I was reminded exactly of why I started it in the first place.
There were other monsters out there—some far more dangerous than my own.
While mine fed on wrath and retribution, others were sustained by something inherently evil.
It was evil that I would do everything in my power to protect Lucy from.
Even with all of Emile’s prodding, I still had to force myself not to stare at her the entire time throughout dinner. Even though I knew he would never try to do anything with her, a peculiar sense of jealousy crept over me when I watched them chat together earlier near the fireplace.
By the time I finished the dishes, Lucy was sitting on my bed, staring at the starlit lake out the massive windows in my bedroom. I took a moment by the door to burn that image into my memory.
That girl. In my bed.
She didn’t notice as I made my way behind her, and she jumped a little at my touch when I wrapped my hand softly around her chin, tilting her head back to mine.
She inhaled a soft gasp when I pressed my lips against hers, pliant and warm.
She tasted like summertime. A bright, burning sunrise, swallowed by the cold fog over the bay.
Consuming. Ravenous. I pulled back, sucking in a breath.
“Do you have any…fucking…idea how intoxicating you are?” I rasped against her ear.
Her lashes fluttered. “Me? Try looking in the mirror, Dax.”
Not a bad idea, Luce.
Within seconds, I lifted her by the waist and spun her around, crushing her to me as I picked her up. Her legs wrapped tight around me, and I tried my best to hold back the moan in my throat when her center brushed against my hardening length.
“What are you—”
I stopped her mouth with my own, sucking and biting against that deliriously perfect bottom lip, just like she did to herself. She held onto me with a death grip as I walked her over to the other side of the room, in front of the large floor-length mirror there.
It was a portrait of lascivious, irresistible temptation.
My hands splayed across the black lace underwear covering her ass.
The swell of her cleavage below my lips.
Her long, glossy hair swung wildly down the curve of her back, and I couldn’t decide whether to look in the mirror or at the pink blush of her cheeks in front of me.
She looked like a goddess glowing in my arms. Fire against ice. Burning heat and cool winds bound together in a hurricane of disaster and desire.
I slowly started to unwrap her from me, setting her down on wobbly legs. I almost immediately regretted it when the hem of her dress dropped to impede my view, but I grasped her hips instead and swiveled her around to face the mirror, pulling her back against me.
She was almost a foot shorter than me, her head reaching just above my collarbone. She looked small and delicate. Flawless like a porcelain doll—even though I knew better than to think she was one.
My right hand traced her shoulders, arms, then lingered on her hip as she leaned back against me.
“I don’t think you understand, Luce. Do you know what you do to me?”
Her caramel eyes darkened into the most seductive shade of topaz, trailing my fingers as they slid slowly up the column of her throat. Her pulse pounded against my palm, in perfect synchronization with the violent current of lust beating through my veins.
“Show me.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and I swallowed down a primal noise.
I pressed my mouth to the spot behind her ear. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
She shuddered as my grip around her throat tightened—not painfully, but enough to serve as a warning. Her eyes locked on mine deliberately.
Good fucking god.
I released her neck only so I could seize the hem of her dress, lifting its skirt. “Hands up, baby,” I whispered.
The restaurant didn’t matter. Neither did CIPHER, or Wrangler, Marty, or anything else we’d been dealing with. Not in that moment. Clay was wrong when he said I’d been living in a fantasy.
This was my fantasy.
And now I’d experienced it for real, I never wanted it to end.
Lucy’s arms lifted, and that was all the confirmation I needed.
I slid the dress up her sides and over her head, revealing every delectable curve of her body.
She hadn’t been wearing a bra under that little tennis dress.
The only fabric left on her was the thin lace of her underwear.
I wasn’t a religious man, but I was pretty damned sure this was a little glimpse into heaven. A place I certainly didn’t belong, and maybe God was taunting me, but I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from taking full advantage of it.
I ripped my own shirt over my head and threw it on the floor—needing to touch her. Grasping her hips, I pulled her flush against me, eliciting a tiny gasp of air from her mouth that threatened to turn me positively feral. I was hard as steel against her soft flesh.
“This,” I whispered roughly, leaning down to give her the tiniest nibble on her neck, “is what you do to me.” She shuddered in my hold, and the last bit of my restraint fled from my soul, leaving nothing but familiar, untamed darkness.
I brushed a long sweep of her hair to one side of her neck, my lips tracing a line behind her ear as my palms reached up to cup her breasts. Her pale skin glowed against the ink of my tattoos, every soft contour of her body contrasted by the rigidness of my own. Like an angel and the fucking devil.
Savage heat plummeted to my groin as I guided her to the floor, sinking to my knees and bending her slightly so her elbows touched the soft rug beneath us. Her eyes rolled back slightly, and I landed a swift yet gentle slap to her ass.
“Eyes on the mirror, Luce.” I kissed the back of her neck, down the line of her arched spine.
She reacted instantaneously, her eyes hardening on mine in the mirror.
Good thing I was already on my knees because that alone would have brought me to them.
I could hardly decide where to look, at her dark gaze in the mirror, or the delectable view of her in front of me—all soft skin and alluring, irresistible temptation.
I trailed a path of kisses against the back of her neck, down the arched curve of her spine, relishing the shiver I felt glide through her bones as I toyed with the delicate seam of her underwear. The sharp gasp of air she sucked in was enough to snap the fragile fringe of restraint I had left.
“I want you to watch, baby. Watch how I can make you feel.” My voice was unintentionally deep.
Taking one last longing glance at her flushed face in the mirror, I knocked her legs further apart with my knee before lowering myself to the floor between them and flipping over so the only thing separating her pussy from my face was that thin, dark lace. “Are you watching, Luce?” I rasped.
I felt her body shiver above me. “Yes.”
“Good.” I ran my fingers over the fabric, holding back a moan when I felt the dampness already gathered there. Ripping them to the side with one hand, I guided her down as I ran my tongue down her center.
Fuck, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to how she tasted.
Like vanilla and sunshine and sin. My new favorite flavor.
She mewed softly as I tasted her, savoring the way her thighs felt against the sides of my head, ignoring the way my cock was painfully stiff against my pants.
My tongue circled her clit, and for a second, I thought I was going to explode from the way her legs started to shake, stifling my own moan by pressing harder into her flesh.
“Oh, God. Dax…”
I took that moment to urge a finger against her entrance—tight and wet and so fucking hot.
I slid it in slowly, feeling her stretch around my knuckle before carefully pulling it back out again.
She let out a frustrated whimper, and I chuckled against her slick skin.
I added another finger, entering her again leisurely as my teeth grazed lightly over her slippery bud.
Her hips bucked against my face, and I groaned, picking up the pace.
Her breath quickened into pants, her body starting to shiver above me.
“That’s it, baby, come for me. Watch yourself come for me.”
I felt her pussy shudder around my fingers and I kept going, delighting in the noise she made like it was a sweet melody.
Every sound she made felt like a part of an epic symphony as she rode my face, and I was the conductor.
Music only for my own ears, a song I never wanted to share with another soul.
All. Fucking. Mine.
With that final thought, as I felt the pulses of pleasure start to slow, I removed my fingers and slid out from beneath her. She started to wobble without my weight beneath her, and I stilled her with my hand as I stood up to quickly slip off my pants.
“Stay right there, Luce.” My voice was hoarse as I tossed my pants and underwear to the side, crouching next to her so I could look directly into her eyes. Face flushed, eyes sparkling, skin glowing. I reached for her jaw, turning her face up to meet mine. “Do you want this?”
Gone was any sense of coyness or nervous energy in her. Only that fiery, passionate, headstrong girl I knew her to be. She licked her lips. “I want you, Dax.”
My heart fucking melted.
I leaned in to give her a long, heated kiss, my own lips still glistening with her arousal. It sent power drumming through my veins, heady and enthralling. I broke our kiss to move behind her once more. This time, I would be the one who wouldn’t look away.
Positioning myself behind her once more, I slid the head of my cock down the lace covering her backside.
I wanted to take more time to tease her, to play with her, but I was so goddamned hard I couldn’t take another second without being inside her.
I pulled the thong to the side again, running myself along her slick entrance.
With one hand on her hip, the other reaching to pull back her hair into my hand, I glided into her.
So hot. So tight. So fucking wet after she already came around my fingers.
In the mirror, I watched the way her eyelids dropped with heavy pleasure as I pumped into her slowly. She cried out softly as I angled her body against mine, taking her deeper. I tugged back her hair, sinking into her.
Eyes on the mirror, Luce.
I didn’t need to say it out loud. She knew exactly what I was telling her. I watched her lashes flutter, struggling to keep them open and crying out again as I hit a spot that made her clench around me.
“Is that it, baby? That’s where you want it?” I asked gravelly, heightening the tempo of my hips.
“Fuck…yesss,” she moaned.
This was it. The highest of highs. Seeing the way her body writhed against mine, designed to fit together by chaos and desire. I never wanted it to end.
She was like finding a piece of a puzzle that had been missing forever, incomplete for years.
Then out of nowhere, there it was. The perfect piece, the smooth curves and rigid rightness I never knew existed.
It was there, unfinished at the back of my mind, then suddenly it clicked into place like it had fallen from the sky.
Completeness, binding the very structure of my being into solidity.
Her breaths became shallow and rapid. “Oh, Dax, holy fuck…”
I railed into her, lost in the way she gripped my cock as I moved my hand beneath us. Brushing my thumb over the swollen bud of her clit, I tightened my fist around her hair.
“Look how perfect you are. How good you take me. Like we were fucking made for each other,” I whispered against her ear.
She started to shake, her pussy squeezing me impossibly tight.
She cried out my name as she came, quaking around me.
It was enough to push me over the edge, my cock thickening as she clamped me tight.
I thrust my hips into her with abandon until I felt a forceful throb of release course through my length.
I slammed into her as deep as I could and came with a rumble, deep to the hilt, my entire body thrumming as I filled her.
She panted in front of me, legs quivering as I released her hair and held her up by her hips. I finally allowed my gaze to drop from the mirror to the display in front of me. Her back was still arched, her ass high with her panties stretched around my cock and exposing how embedded we were.
As I felt her quivering begin to ease around me, I pulled out of her slowly. My cum dripped out of her—satisfying the most primal, possessive, twisted parts of me.
I dragged the thong back over her ass, then wrapped my arms around her waist to pull her into me.
I sat with my legs wrapped around her, showering her neck and shoulders with kisses before resting her chin against my chest. We stayed like that for a long time, until our breathing slowed to a calm, matched rhythm.
I glanced one last time at us together in the mirror as I ran my fingers softly through her hair, gently untangling the mess I’d made of it. The mess I made of her.
I didn’t care what it would take. It didn’t matter what I had to do, where I had to go, or who I had to kill. Nothing in this world could take Lucy away from me now that I had her. I wanted this, over and over again. I would burn down cities for it. I would go to war for it. For her.