Chapter 13
MILO
The loft felt wrong with her in it.
I'd known it would. The designer furniture, the impersonal art, the surfaces that looked like home but felt like a stage set. It was all hollow at the center.
Now, watching Raven navigate the unfamiliar space with her cane, I saw it through her assessment. She counted steps. Touched surfaces. Cataloged the echoes.
"It doesn't smell like you," she said.
I double checked the locks on the door. "What?"
"Your apartment. It smells like a furniture showroom. New leather and carpet cleaner and nothing else." She turned toward me. "You don't live here. You just exist here."
Three minutes in my space and she'd gutted me.
"I don't need much."
"Or you don't let yourself want much." She set her cane against the wall. Stepped slowly toward me with her hands out in front of her. "There's a difference."
I caught her hips. Pulled her close.
"I want you."
"I know." Her hands slid up my chest. Started unbuttoning my shirt. "What else?"
"That's it."
"Liar."
The word hit the empty air of the loft. Soft and damning.
She pushed my shirt from my shoulders, her movements deliberate. I let it slide down my arms, shrugging it off until it hit the floor. Usually, this was the part where the mask stayed firmly in place, keeping the ugly truths in the shadows. But Raven didn’t need light. She needed tactile proof.
"Let me see you," she whispered.
Her hands flattened against my chest. Cool palms against the fever-heat of my skin.
I stood paralyzed. Muscles locked tight. I wasn't used to being the one inspected. This was new to me. And I fucking hated the vulnerability of it.
She didn't stick to the smooth skin, either. She went hunting for the damage.
Her fingertips traced the hard line of my collarbone, mapping the bone and muscle, before dropping lower. She found the raised, ropey ridge of scar tissue across my left pec first. A knife wound from a job in Chicago that went sideways three years ago.
Most women flinched when they saw it. Raven just pressed harder.
"What color is your hair?" she murmured, her thumb following the jagged path.
"Blond," I told her. "Kind of a darker blond."
"And your eyes?"
"Green."
She smiled and moved down. Found the chemical burn on my ribs—a splash of industrial cleaner that had eaten through my suit when I was twenty. Then the circular, smooth brand on my bicep. A cigarette burn. My father’s idea of teaching me focus when I was twelve.
I watched her face, waiting for the disgust. Waiting for her to realize she was standing next to a monster who collected violence like other men collected stamps.
But she didn't pull away. She looked... focused. Like she was reading a map in the dark.
"So many," she breathed, her hand sliding over my stomach, finding the faint line of a bullet graze near my hip. She was memorizing the topography of my history. Every error. Every close call.
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. The sensation of her small, soft hands exploring the wreckage of my body was doing things to my head. Making me want to lean into her touch. Making me want to run.
"You cover it up," she said, her hands moving back up to cup my face. Her thumbs brushed my cheekbones, reading the tension there. "You act like none of it matters. Like you're impenetrable."
"It's just skin, Raven. It heals."
"Does it?" She tilted her head, those unseeing eyes staring right through my bullshit. "You want more than this. You want to feel something other than the cold."
"You don't know what I want."
"You're terrified." Her fingers lingered on the pulse jumping in my neck. "You're just afraid—"
I spun her. Pressed her front against the wall, my body caging hers, my hand wrapping around her throat.
Her pulse hammered against my palm.
"Don't," I said, my voice coming out rough. Raw. "Don't try to fix me. Don't try to dig into whatever fucked-up childhood made me this way. We don't have time for that."
"Milo—"
"We have a week, Raven. One week. Maybe less." My thumb traced the hollow of her throat. "So I don't want to talk about what I want or what I'm afraid of. I want to fuck you until we both forget that Viktor's going to kill you if I can't find the real leak."
Her breath caught. "Then do it."
I released her throat. Turned her around to face me, and fisted her hair instead. Pulling her head back, I brushed my lips against hers.
"Get on your knees."
She dropped. No hesitation. Her hands already reaching for my belt.
I caught her wrists. "No."
Confusion flickered across her face.
"Hands behind your back," I said. "You don't touch. You just take what I give you."
After a moment, she complied, lacing her fingers at the small of her back. The position arched her spine and pushed her breasts forward.
It made her look like an offering.
I unbuckled my belt, unzipped my pants, and freed my cock. It was thick and straining, leaking at the tip, desperate for her.
"Open," I said.
Her lips parted.
I guided myself into her mouth. Slow. Watching her face as I pushed past her lips, across her tongue, deeper and deeper until I felt the back of her throat.
She gagged and I pulled back.
"Breathe," I said. "Through your nose."
Then I pushed in again. Deeper. Holding her head in place with the hand fisted in her hair while I fucked her mouth with slow, deliberate strokes.
She couldn't see me. Couldn't read my face. All she had was the taste of me, the stretch of her jaw, the salt-skin-musk of my cock sliding across her tongue.
"Good girl," I breathed. "Taking me so well."
She moaned around me. The vibration shot straight up my spine, and I had to pull out before I came down her throat.
"Up," I said.
She rose. Her lips were swollen and wet with spit. I grabbed her dress and pulled it over her head. Her bra followed. Then her panties. Until she was naked and shivering and completely at my mercy.
I picked her up, carried her to the bedroom, and laid her on the bed.
But I didn't follow her down.
Instead, I stood at the edge of the mattress and looked at her.
She couldn't see me looking. Couldn't see the way my eyes traced every curve, every mark I'd left on her skin.
The bruise on her throat. The bite on her breast. The darkening fingerprints on her hips.
She was even more beautiful in the soft glow of the lights.
Mine. All mine. For one more week.
Maybe.
"Spread your legs," I said.
She did.
"Wider."
She opened for me. Completely. Exposing the wet, swollen center of her. The evidence of what I did to her.
I stripped out of my clothes, climbed onto the bed, and settled between her thighs.
And then I made her suffer.
I ate her pussy like I was starving. Gentle at first, with soft licks and teasing circles around her clit. Making her chase it. She whimpered, hips lifting, seeking more pressure, and the sound was music to my ears.
I gave her nothing but softness. Tenderness she didn't expect from me. The kind of worship I couldn't afford to show anywhere but here, in the dark, where she couldn't see my face.
And when she finally came, it was a slow roll. A shudder that started in her core and spread outward as she gasped my name.
I kissed the inside of her thigh.
One down.
This time I wasn't gentle.
I sucked her clit between my lips and worked it with my tongue while two fingers curved inside her. Fast. Relentless. Pushing her higher and higher until she was sobbing, hands fisted in my hair, back arched off the bed.
"Milo—I can't—"
"You can."
She came screaming.
Two.
I didn't give her any time to recover. Instead, I edged her. Brought her right to the cliff three times in a row—right to that moment where her whole body tensed and her breathing stopped—and then I pulled back.
By the fourth time, she was crying. Actual tears streaming down her face.
"Please," she begged. "Please, I need—"
"What do you need, little bird?"
"To come—please—"
I slid three fingers inside her. Curled them hard against that spot. Put my mouth back on her clit.
"Then take it."
She shattered. This orgasm ripped through her violently—her whole body seizing, a broken scream tearing from her throat. Not my name. Just sound. Pure and desperate.
I worked her through it until she went limp.
Three.
By then, I was so hard it hurt. My cock leaked against my stomach, desperate to be inside of her.
But I wasn't done.
I crawled up her body. Positioned myself at her entrance. The head of my cock nudging against her, slick and hot and so fucking ready.
"Who do you belong to?" I asked.
"You."
"Say it again."
"I belong to you, Milo."
I pushed inside. Slowly. Inch by inch. Letting her feel every bit of me stretching her, filling her.
When I was buried to the hilt, I stopped. Held completely still.
"Milo—"
"Tell me you'll run if Viktor comes for you."
She went still beneath me.
"Promise me," I said. "Promise me that if I can't protect you—if this goes wrong—you'll disappear. Even if it means leaving me behind."
"I'm not—"
I pulled out. Slammed back in. She gasped.
"Promise. Me."
Silence. Then…
"I promise."
I fucked her slowly. Deep, deliberate strokes that made her feel everything. Made her feel us. This thing we'd built in the dark that Viktor wanted to destroy.
When she came this time, it was quiet. A soft exhale. Her body clenching around mine in waves. Her hands cupping my face even though she couldn't see it.
I kissed her through it. Swallowed her gasps.
Four.
I flipped her onto her stomach. Pulled her hips up. Drove back into her from behind, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip.
This was the one that broke me.
I fucked her hard. Brutal. All the fear and rage and desperation I'd been holding back since Viktor's ultimatum pouring into every thrust. The bed frame slammed against the wall as she cried out into the pillow.
"Again," I growled. "Come again for me."
"I can't—"
"You will."
I reached around. Found her clit. Circled it roughly while I drove into her over and over.