20. Fault Lines #2
My daughter's name cut through the anger, but it didn't cool it. It made everything sharper.
"You think I'd bring danger to her?"
"I think you keep deciding danger is the only language you trust."
I stepped into her space. "And you keep talking like you know every part of me."
"I know enough."
"Do you?"
Her breath caught when I braced one hand against the wall beside her, not touching, leaving her room to move. She didn't.
The hallway beyond the patio lay empty, washed in gold from sunset. Down the hall, Ava slept behind her closed bedroom door, and the house had settled into the careful quiet we all kept around her. The ocean moved beyond the glass while my breathing turned ragged.
Riley's gaze dropped to my mouth. That surrender shattered the last of my restraint.
I kissed her.
She met me with equal force, fingers gripping my shirt as I backed her through the doorway. Nothing about it was soft. It was fury and fear and every word we couldn't take back, poured into mouths and hands and breath.
I broke away long enough to search her face. "Tell me to stop."
Instead, she pulled me down again.
My shoulder struck the wall hard enough to rattle the artwork. Neither of us cared.
"I hate this," she whispered against my mouth.
"No, you hate what it means."
"That too."
I caught her face between my hands. Anger still burned in her eyes, but beneath it was the same need tearing through me.
"This won't fix anything," she said.
"I know."
Her fingers tightened at my collar.
"Then don't pretend it will."
"I won't."
The next kiss was slower, almost tender, and somehow that was worse. It cracked open everything we were trying not to feel.
I lifted her, and she wrapped herself around me as I carried her into the office, leaving the argument behind us without resolving a single word of it.
I kicked the door shut.
The desk waited, cluttered with papers and a laptop I didn't care about. I set her down on the edge hard enough to make her gasp, her thighs bracketing my hips, and immediately went for the button of her jeans.
"Wait—" she started.
I stopped. My hand froze. "Tell me."
She didn't tell me to stop. She reached down and finished what I'd started, shoving the denim down her hips with angry, efficient movements. I watched her face, the flush spreading from her throat, the way her jaw tightened like she was fighting herself.
I pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it. Her eyes tracked down my chest, then back up, and something in her expression cracked further. She leaned forward and bit my shoulder, hard enough to mark. I hissed and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back.
"Do that again."
She did. Lower, near my collarbone, her teeth sinking in while her hands worked at my belt. I helped her, shoving my pants down just enough, and then her hand was on me, hot and rough and exactly what I needed.
"Riley." It came out guttural, broken.
"Don't say my name like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you still—" She cut herself off, squeezing harder, and I groaned against her neck. "Like you still have the right."
My hand closed around hers, but I didn't pin it. "I don't?"
She stared at me, chest heaving, her pulse hammering in her throat. "You tell me."
I loosened my fingers, giving her the choice.
She twisted her hand free only to fist it in my belt and drag me closer.
"Don't," she said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't make me feel seen when you're about to?—"
I slid two fingers through her, testing. She was wet, ready, and she made a sound that wasn't quite a word. I pressed inside, curling, and her hips jerked.
"Fuck, Luca?—"
"Tell me what you want."
"I want you to stop talking."
I laughed, but it came out wrong, desperate. I withdrew my fingers and gripped her hips, pulling her to the edge of the desk. She watched me, propped on her elbows, hair wild around her shoulders, and I couldn't read her expression. It looked like pain.
I positioned myself and pushed in.
She cried out, head falling back, and I stopped, buried to the hilt, my vision swimming. "Okay?"
"Move," she demanded.
I moved. I set a brutal pace, the desk creaking beneath us, her body taking everything I gave.
She wrapped her legs around my waist, heels digging into my lower back, and met me thrust for thrust. The sound of flesh meeting flesh filled the room, punctuated by our ragged breathing.
I gripped the edge of the desk for leverage, my knuckles white, and drove deeper.
She arched, her spine leaving the surface, her breasts straining against the lace that still contained them.
I reached between us and found her clit with my thumb, pressing hard in tight circles. She gasped, nails raking down my chest, leaving burning trails. The pain focused me, grounded me in this moment when everything else was spinning apart.
"Harder," she said, and I didn't know if she meant my hand or my hips, so I gave her both. The desk scraped against the floor, inching backward with each thrust. Papers slid to the carpet, forgotten.
Her inner muscles fluttered around me, warning, and I felt the shift in her—muscles tensing, breath catching, the desperate edge creeping into her voice as she chanted my name like a curse. "Luca, Luca?—"
I watched her face as she came, the way her features twisted with something too sharp for simple pleasure, her eyes squeezing shut, her body clamping down on me so hard I saw stars.
I kept moving through it, chasing my own release, the friction building to unbearable.
I gripped the back of her neck, my thumb pressing into the sensitive spot beneath her ear, and drove into her with everything I had.
The desk legs scraped against hardwood, a high-pitched shriek that matched the sound she made in her throat. She was still coming down, her body trembling around me, and I used that, angled my hips to hit the spot that made her cry out again, made her hands fly to my shoulders and dig in.
"Don't—" she gasped.
I stopped so fast my whole body shook. "Don't what?"
Her nails dug into my shoulders. "Don't you dare stop now."
The words snapped the last thread of my control. I drove into her again, and her cry broke against my mouth.
I didn't stop. I couldn't. The pressure built at the base of my spine, hot and urgent, spreading through my gut and thighs until I was grinding into her with short, desperate strokes.
Her name tore out of me, raw and uncontrolled, and I came with my forehead pressed to her collarbone, my body shuddering through the aftershocks while she held me there, her fingers tangled in my hair.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by our slowing breath. I stayed inside her longer than I should have, not wanting to break the connection, not wanting to face what came next. When I finally withdrew, she winced, and something twisted in my chest.
The office felt too quiet after the violence of wanting her. Beyond the glass, the last light had drained from the patio, leaving our reflections suspended over the dark water.
I brushed my thumb over her shoulder.
She flinched.
The movement was small, but it split something open in me.
"Riley."
"I'm okay."
She said it too quickly.
I reached for her clothes from the office floor. Her blouse had landed beside the desk, one sleeve twisted beneath it. I shook it out carefully before handing it to her.
She took it without looking at me.
The distance arrived piece by piece. Her arms through the sleeves. Buttons fastened with trembling fingers. Her pants dragged back into place. Each motion erased what had happened without undoing it.
I pulled on my pants and turned toward the desk.
A photograph of Ava sat beside the closed laptop, her smile bright beneath a pair of crooked shark headphones.
My stomach turned.
"Don't," Riley said.
I looked up.
She stood beside the desk, barefoot, holding her shoes against her chest. Her expression wasn't angry anymore. That would have been easier.
"I didn't mean for this to happen," I said.
"Yes, you did."
The truth in it left nowhere to hide.
She crossed the room, stopping beyond my reach. "You wanted something you could control for five minutes."
"That isn't what you are."
"No. But that's what this became."
I stood, but she stepped back.
"Fix this or lose us," she whispered.
Us. Not just her.
The word landed with more force than Victor's threats, the missing money, or every crowd that had screamed my name.
Riley slipped on her shoes and walked out. The door closed behind her.
I stayed where she left me, Ava's smiling face beside Riley's abandoned payroll plan—everything I claimed to be protecting laid out on the desk in front of me.
For years, I had believed winning meant refusing to go down. Now I understood there were fights a man lost by throwing the first punch.
And I had no idea whether I had already lost mine.