Chapter 17 #2
"Come for me, little rose." His voice is gravel and sin against my ear. "Let me feel you. So fucking perfect. So good and sweet."
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me in waves, my body clamping around him like a vice. I scream his name, my legs locked around his hips, my nails drawing blood from his shoulders. The pleasure is blinding, overwhelming, more intense than anything I've ever experienced.
He follows me over the edge.
I feel him swell inside me, feel the hot pulse of his release filling me, and the sensation triggers another wave of pleasure that has me sobbing against his shoulder. He groans my name like it's torn from somewhere deep in his soul, his hips jerking as he empties himself completely.
We collapse together, breathing hard, slick with sweat, hearts pounding in tandem.
"Drake." My voice comes out soft, wondering. I've never felt anything like this. Never knew my body could feel this way. "That was..."
"I know." He presses a kiss to my forehead, tender and reverent. "I know, little rose."
He eases out of me carefully, and I wince at the sudden emptiness. Then he pulls me into his arms, and the emptiness fades. His chest is warm against my cheek. His heartbeat drums steady beneath my ear. His arms wrap around me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets go.
"Are you okay, baby girl?" The concern in his voice makes my chest tight.
"You made me feel things I didn't know I could feel." I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "That's not hurt. That's the opposite of hurt."
His arms tighten around me and he pulls me into him until all my softness molds to the hard muscles of his body.
We lie in silence for a long time, our breathing slowly returning to normal. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Chicago glitters like a field of earthbound stars. The only sound is the soft rhythm of our breathing.
I gave him everything tonight. My body. My trust. The last piece of myself I'd been protecting.
And for the first time in years, I don't feel emptied. I feel full. Complete. Like I've finally found the place I was always meant to be.
In his arms. In his bed. In his life.
I'm falling in love with Drake Moses. Maybe I've already fallen. Maybe I fell the moment he showed up at my apartment like some angry, avenging dark angel.
Whatever this is, wherever it leads, I'm not running from it anymore.
I chose him. And I'd choose him again.
We lie there in comfortable silence for a long while, absorbing each other’s warmth.
"Drake?"
"Hmm?" His voice is a sleepy rumble against my hair, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my hip.
I've been lying here listening to his heartbeat slow from frantic to steady. My body aches in all the right places, a delicious soreness that reminds me with every shift and stretch of what we just did. Of what I gave him. Of what he gave me in return.
But there's a question that's been circling through my mind since the moment he slid inside me. A question I've been too scared to ask until now.
"The heir clause." I keep my voice soft, my cheek pressed to his chest so I don't have to meet his eyes. "The baby the contract says I'm supposed to give you. Do you actually want that? A family? Or is it just about the promise to your mother?"
His hand stills on my hip. For a long moment, he doesn't answer, and my heart climbs into my throat. Maybe I shouldn't have asked. Maybe it's too soon. Maybe I've just ruined the most perfect night of my life by dragging contracts and obligations back into the space between us.
Then he exhales, and his arm tightens around me.
"I used to think it was just the promise.
" His voice is rough, honest in a way that makes my chest ache.
"Something I owed her. For everything she sacrificed for me and Jonah.
A box to check before I die. When I claimed your wish, that's all I was thinking about.
The promise I made to a dying woman who wanted her son to have something more than money and enemies. "
"And now?"
He's quiet again. I can feel him choosing his words, weighing them carefully before he speaks. The man who commands boardrooms and terrifies rivals is searching for the right thing to say to me, and the vulnerability in that silence makes my eyes sting.
"Now I think about what it would look like.
" His thumb resumes its circles on my hip, the touch grounding and tender.
"A child with your eyes. Brown and warm and full of the same fierce intelligence that made me want you the moment I saw you.
Teaching them to love books the way you do, watching them get lost in stories the way you get lost."
I lift my head to look at him. His gray eyes are soft in the darkness, reflecting the distant lights of the city beyond the windows.
"I think about watching them grow," he continues, his voice roughening with emotion he's not trying to hide.
"First steps. First words. First day of school.
All the things I never had because my father was gone and my mother was working herself to death just to keep us fed.
I want to give a child what I never got.
Stability. Safety. A father who shows up. "
My heart clenches at the image he's painting. This powerful, dangerous man, softened by the idea of bedtime stories and tiny hands and a family built on love instead of obligation.
"I want that." He cups my face in his palm, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone.
"With you. But only when you're ready. Only when you want it too.
The contract says a year. But I meant what I told you in the beginning.
I won't force this. If you decide you don't want children, then that’s it. "
"And if I do want them?"
"Then we'll make them." A ghost of a smile tugs at his lips. "As many as you want. Whenever you're ready."
I settle back against his chest, my mind spinning with possibilities I've never let myself consider. A family. Children. A future that extends beyond survival and debt and the constant fear of Victor's shadow.
For so long, I've been focused on just getting through each day. Paying the next installment. Protecting Gemma and my mother. Surviving. The idea of wanting something more, of hoping for something more, felt like a luxury I couldn't afford.
But Drake has changed that. He's paid my debt. Protected my family. Given me space to breathe for the first time in years. And now he's offering me a future I never dared to imagine.
A future with him.
"I think..." I take a breath, testing the words before I speak them.
"I think I might want that. Someday." I settle a hand over my midriff. I’m on birth control.
I have been for a few years now to help regulate my body.
The idea of leaving that behind so I can conceive makes my insides flutter with hope.
His arms tighten around me, and I feel the shudder that runs through his body. When he speaks, his voice is thick with emotion.
"Someday is enough. Someday is more than I ever expected."
I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. The steady thump beneath my lips is the most comforting sound I've ever heard.
"Thank you," I whisper.
"For what?"
"For waiting. For letting me choose. For not making me feel like I owed you this."
"You don't owe me anything, Katriana." He tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Not your body. Not a child. Not a single damn thing. Whatever you give me, you give because you want to. That's the only way I want it."
The sincerity in his voice makes my throat tight. I've spent so long feeling like currency, yet with him I feel valued and wanted. Jonah made me feel like I owed him my virginity simply because we were dating. Victor made me feel like I owed him my life because my father borrowed money.
But Drake looks at me like I'm a gift he doesn't deserve. Like everything I offer is precious precisely because I'm choosing to offer it.
"I want to give you things," I admit softly. "That's what scares me. I've never wanted to give anyone anything before. I've only ever wanted to protect what was mine."
"And now?"
"Now I want to share it. With you."
He kisses me. Soft and slow and achingly tender. When he pulls back, his gray eyes hold a vulnerability I've never seen before.
He slides from the bed and retreats to the bathroom. He comes back with a warm cloth to clean me and himself. He folds and places it on the end table before coming back to me and wrapping me in his warmth.
"Get some sleep, little rose. We have time. All the time in the world."
I settle against him, my body heavy with satisfaction and exhaustion. The silk sheets are cool against my skin. His warmth wraps around me like a blanket. The city glitters beyond the windows, and for the first time in years, the world doesn't feel like it wants me six feet under and cold.
My eyes drift closed. Sleep pulls at me, soft and irresistible. But before I surrender to it, one thought crystallizes in my mind with perfect clarity.
I'm falling in love with Drake Moses.
No. That's not right. I've already fallen. I fell somewhere between the library kiss and the bathtub and tonight, somewhere in the thousand small moments Persia told me to look for. I fell, and I didn't even notice until I was already at the bottom.
But for the first time, falling doesn't feel like losing control.
It feels like coming home.