"You've been watching Shaw for eight years," I murmured near his ear. "That's a long time to study someone so intensively."
He swallowed loudly.
"Show me the 2016 file."
His hands trembled as he found it. I pressed my chest against his back, reaching around him to flip through pages. Investment records. Personnel files. Surveillance photographs.
"Ah." I let satisfaction color my voice. "Here we are."
Maxime and Shaw were at an intimate corner table at Le Bernardin. Maxime's head was thrown back laughing, an expression I hadn't seen in over a year. Shaw leaned forward, clearly enchanted.
"He wanted you," I observed against his neck. "Look at how he's watching you."
"Many people have wanted me." His voice remained neutral. "I've never let it interfere—"
"With my grand destiny? With the empire we were building?" The words tasted bitter. "Always protecting me from distractions. Even from yourself."
He stiffened but didn't deny it.
The next photos showed him outside the Baur au Lac with another man, a young, devastatingly beautiful man. Anexpensiveman.
Red hazed my vision.
"You let him buy you a whore?"
I spun him around and slammed him against the cabin wall. My cane clattered to the floor as both hands pinned him. Photos scattered everywhere, and his tablet finally fell from his grip.
"Algerone—"
"Shut up." My hand found his throat. "You let Shaw pay for another man to touch you?"
His pulse hammered against my palm. But his eyes showed heat rather than fear. His lips parted, and that pink tongue darted out. The bastard was getting off on this.
"It was just business." His voice came out wrecked. "Intelligence gathering—"
I tightened my grip until he gasped. "Did you let him fuck you? This intelligence asset Shaw bought?"
His hips jerked forward. His erection pressed against my thigh, and my cock throbbed in response. We were both fully hard now, the pretense of professionalism shattered.
"Answer me." I leaned in until our faces nearly touched. "Did you let him have what—"
I caught myself before finishing.What I've never had. What I've never allowed myself to want.
"No." The word strangled out. "I sent him away after documenting everything. I swear. I never let him—"
I kissed him.
No, I attacked his mouth with thirty-two years of suppressed hunger unleashed in one brutal moment. My hand tightened on his throat as I crushed my lips against his, all teeth and tongueand desperate need. He made a sound halfway between a sob and a moan that I swallowed whole.
His mouth opened immediately without hesitation or resistance, like he'd been waiting decades for permission to surrender. I plunged my tongue past his lips and tasted him for the first time. He was all whiskey and copper where I'd drawn blood, with something darker and almost floral underneath.
This was nothing like the careful touches of recovery, nothing like his steady hands checking my temperature, adjusting medication, helping me through exercises. This was conquest and claiming and everything I'd denied myself while lying helpless beneath his competent, indifferent hands for eighteen months.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and yanked his head back, deepening the angle. I bit his lower lip hard enough to make him whimper, then soothed it with my tongue before biting again. The Ace pressed against my chest through my jacket. The bullet had marked that card forever, changed it, made it something other than what it was.
Now, I'd do the same to him.
He shook against me, trembling as I devoured his mouth. His hands clutched my shoulders, fingers digging in, holding on like I might disappear. His tongue met mine with equal desperation, and the sound he made when I sucked on it nearly undid me.
