Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Ayanna
The dress moves with me as I make my way down the corridor toward Aric’s office. My heels click a steady rhythm. My heart beats a less steady one.
The office door is ajar, and I hear voices inside. Aric’s low murmur, Tassilo’s clipped responses, and someone else I don’t recognize discussing something about perimeter security and access points.
Business as usual, even on a night like this.
I push the door open without knocking. Three heads turn toward me. Tassilo goes still. The other man—one of Aric’s security team, I think, though I haven’t learned all their names yet—actually takes a step back, like the sight of me has physically moved him.
And Aric stops mid-sentence.
His eyes sweep over me, traveling down, down, down, taking in every inch of the dress that took three fittings to perfect. The silk hugging my curves. The neckline that reveals just enough. When his gaze finally returns to my face, there’s something in it I’ve come to recognize. Something hungry.
“Leave.”
The word is directed at his men, but his eyes don’t move from mine.
Tassilo doesn’t hesitate. Neither does the other man. They’re out the door in seconds, pulling it closed behind them with a soft click. And then it’s just us.
“You look—” Aric starts.
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand, fighting back a smile. “If you say something nice, I’ll know you want something.”
“I always want something when it comes to you.”
“Charming.”
He rises from behind his desk. He’s already dressed for the evening—black suit, black shirt, open at the collar in a way that reveals the edge of the skull tattoo I’ve traced with my fingers more times than I can count.
His hair is swept back, as always. He looks like sin wrapped in expensive fabric.
Unfair.
Deeply, profoundly unfair.
“You look,” he says again, walking toward me with that predatory grace he does so well, “like a woman who’s about to make every man in that ballroom forget his own name.”
“Including you?”
“Especially me.”
He stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell him—his scent intoxicating. His fingers reach out, brushing my bare collarbone, sending goose bumps in their wake.
I should be focusing on the gala. The guests arriving downstairs. The thousand small details that could still go wrong if I’m not paying attention.
But Aric is looking at me like I’m a sin he’s already decided to commit, consequences be damned, and it’s very hard to think about anything else when your husband is looking at you like that.
“We should talk about the guest list,” I say, because one of us has to maintain some semblance of focus, and it’s clearly not going to be him.
“Should we?”
“Bobby and Marcelina are coming after all.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “I thought they declined.”
“She called this morning, asking if it was too late. I’d kept their table set, so I told her it was fine.”
The change in his expression is immediate. The warmth vanishes, and the hunger sharpens into something colder. He exhales through his nose.
“She’s my friend, Aric. Or she’s becoming one. I wasn’t going to exclude her because her husband is a walking red flag.”
His head cocks to the side, his voice a low rumble that carries through the room. “So I’m supposed to host a man who tried to make a move on my wife?”
“Yes.” I meet his gaze without flinching. “And you’re supposed to be civil about it, because we’re surrounded by people who are watching to see how we handle ourselves.”
“I handled him just fine last time.”
“You punched him in the face.”
“Exactly.”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
His expression flickers—surprise, maybe, that I’m not taking this more seriously. Or maybe just the perpetual confusion of a man who’s spent his whole life being feared and is still adjusting to a wife who laughs at him.
“I think it’s just fair,” I say, reaching up to smooth the furrow between his brows.
“Fair how?”
“Considering Hyun-seok and Chiara are coming too. So we’re even,” I continue, keeping my voice light. “You have to tolerate Bobby. I have to tolerate your ex-girlfriend. Fair’s fair.”
“That’s not—” He stops. Recalibrates. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Chiara and I ended things before the wedding. Amicably.”
“And Bobby got punched in the face. Also technically an ending.” I arch a brow. “See? Even.”
He stares at me for a long moment before his lips lift in the corner.
“I’m not an insecure man, Ayanna.” His husky voice sends shivers down my spine, no matter how many times I’ve heard it.
“I can host a man who’d devour you with his eyes, even a hundred of them, and I’d enjoy the look of having you on my arm. Letting them see that you’re mine.”
One of my brows lifts, and the corner of my mouth curves. “Mm. That sounds wildly possessive, Mr. Vold.”
Aric drags his teeth over his bottom lip, almost involuntarily.
“I am possessive. Fatally so.” He leans in to my ear, and I swallow as his breath fans across my neck.
“But I know the world doesn’t stop finding you beautiful because you married me.
Nor would I want it to.” His low growl reverberates through my body.
“I trust you. I know you belong to me, and wanting you is the closest any of them will ever come to having you because at the end of the day, it’s my name in your mouth. ”
He catches my earlobe lightly between his teeth, and my heart stumbles. Heat rushes through me.
“And I assure you, you have no reason to be insecure either. I belong to you, Ayanna.” His voice has dropped so low I can barely hear it. Or perhaps it’s the pounding of my own heartbeat drowning out everything else. “I’m yours, just as much as you’re mine.”
He leans back, just slightly, his thumb brushing my lower lip and setting every nerve ending in my body alight.
I struggle to breathe because this man—this impossibly dangerous, maddeningly self-assured man—and the things that come out of his mouth are, quite possibly, the most devastatingly attractive combination on earth.
“We should go.” I clear my throat, though my voice comes out breathier than I intend. “Guests are arriving. I need to—”
His thumb presses against my lower lip, his eyes flicking between mine, and the playfulness has gone out of them. He’s not looking at me like my husband anymore. He’s looking at me like a man burning with desire. All-consuming, feral desire.
“They can wait,” he rasps against my lips
“Aric—”
“Five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes.”
“Then we’ll be late.”
His hand slides to the back of my neck and grips, tilting my head back until our lips are almost touching. My pulse hammers, all thoughts of timelines and guest lists evaporating like mist.
“You can’t be serious,” I breathe.
“I’m always serious.”
“I spent two hours getting ready. My hair alone—”
“I’ll fix it after.”
“My dress—”
“Will come off.”
“My—”
“You can stop telling me what I am about to ruin, Ayanna. We both know I am going to ruin it.”
My breath hitches, and another wave of heat—desire—rushes through my system. My thighs press together involuntarily. I realize I am soaked through, and he has not even pulled the zipper down yet.
“The gala doesn’t start for twenty minutes.” His other hand finds my hip and pulls me closer. “And you walked into my office looking like you wanted me to bend you over my desk before the first guest arrived. So that is what is going to happen.”
We don’t have time for this.
That’s the rational thought. The sensible one. The one that knows there’s a ballroom full of staff waiting for my final approval and a timeline that’s already tight and a hundred things that could go wrong if I’m not there to oversee them.
But Aric’s mouth is on my neck now, and his hands are sliding down my body, and rational thoughts are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
“We’ll be late,” I manage.
“So we’ll be late.”
“It’s my event.”
“It’s our event.” He walks me backward until my hips hit the edge of his desk and mutters against my ear while his fingertips roam down my arm, sending pleasant chills through my body. “And I say we have time.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You love it.”
I do.
He pulls away, just enough to lock his gaze with mine, and dear God… his eyes are already black. The way he looks at me alone destroys any restraint I might’ve had.
He reaches behind me, slow, deliberate, and finds the zip at the small of my back. He does not pull it down immediately. He just holds it there, his eyes on mine, his other hand at the side of my neck, his thumb against my pulse.
“You wore this knowing what I would do.”
“Yes.”
He pulls the zipper down. Slowly. Inch by inch.
The fabric parts under his fingers, sliding from my shoulders, from my breasts, from my waist. His eyes follow it down the entire length of my body until the dress pools at my feet, and I am standing in his office in nothing but a thong and my heels, and the heat of his gaze is hotter than his hands.
“You should not be allowed to exist.”
Aric’s chest rises slower and heavier as his eyes sweep down my body, and the way he runs his tongue over his bottom lip makes my knees buckle.
He lifts me onto the desk like I weigh nothing.
Papers scatter. A pen rolls off the edge and clatters to the floor.
He steps between my legs and his hands are moving up my thighs, and I can’t think about anything except his mouth on mine.
He kisses me like he’s starving for it. Like he didn’t have me last night, and the night before, and every night since we stopped pretending this was just an arrangement. Like every kiss is the first one. Like he’ll never get enough.
My fingers find his hair. Grip. Pull. He groans against my lips—a low, rough sound that sends heat pooling between my thighs—and his hands slide higher, tearing the fabric of my thong apart, which makes a gasp escape me.
“Aric—”
“I know.” His voice is rough. Wrecked. “I know we don’t have time. I know you have a gala to host. I know—” He drops to his knees. “I don’t care.”
Oh.
Oh that’s—