I shake my head, not trusting my voice.
"I see you—the careful structure you present to the world, and the wildness you keep contained beneath." His free hand rises to my face, fingertips tracing my cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "I see everything you try to hide, everything you're afraid to release."
His touch trails down to my jaw, tilting my face up to his. Our eyes lock, and something shifts in his—the careful control that has characterized our interactions fracturing to reveal something darker, hungrier.
"I'm tired of waiting, Wren."
Before I can process his words, his mouth claims mine with none of the careful restraint of our first kiss. This is demand, pure and uncompromising. His fingers thread through my hair, gripping firmly enough to hold me exactly where he wants me. His other arm bands around my waist, eliminating any space between us, pressing me against the hard planes of his body.
My first instinct is to pull back, to establish boundaries, to remind both of us of the professional relationship that should define our interaction. My hands rise to his chest, pressing against the fine fabric of his suit in what I intend as resistance.
But my body betrays me utterly. Instead of pushing him away, my fingers curl into the material, drawing him closer. My lips part under the insistent pressure of his, inviting deeper invasion. A sound escapes me—half protest, half surrender—and he swallows it without mercy, deepening the kiss into something that feels like claiming.
His tongue explores my mouth with the same methodical thoroughness he applies to everything, learning what makes me tremble, what draws the small, helpless sounds from my throat that seem to fuel his intensity. When he nips lightly at my lower lip, my knees actually buckle, and his arm tightens around my waist, supporting me effortlessly.
"Fight it if you need to," he murmurs against my lips, "but we both know where this ends."
The arrogance of his certainty should infuriate me. Instead, it sends a treacherous heat pooling low in my belly. His hand slides from my waist to my hip, fingers splaying possessively over the curve. My dress suddenly feels too thin, too flimsy a barrier between his touch and my skin.
"Dominic," I manage, trying to inject some sanity into the situation, "we should talk about?—"
"No more talking." His mouth recaptures mine, more demanding than before, silencing my feeble attempt atrationality. His hand leaves my hip to slide lower, cupping my backside and pressing me more firmly against him, letting me feel the unmistakable evidence of his desire.
The contact sends liquid fire racing through my veins. My resistance crumbles like sand under a wave, leaving nothing but raw need in its place. My arms wind around his neck, pulling him closer, surrendering to the kiss with an abandon that shocks me even through the haze of desire.
He makes a sound deep in his throat—approval, triumph, hunger—and lifts me suddenly, setting me on the edge of a nearby display pedestal that places me at perfect height for his continued assault on my senses. His hands slide up my thighs, bunching the silk of my dress, exposing my legs to the cool air and his burning touch. My own hands are no less greedy, tugging at his tie, slipping beneath his jacket to feel the heat of him through his shirt.
"Look at you," he says, pulling back just enough to observe my dishevelment—hair tumbled from his fingers, lips swollen from his kisses, dress rucked up indecently over my thighs. "So proper on the surface, so wild underneath. Exactly as I knew you would be."
The words penetrate my fog of desire just enough to trigger a moment of clarity. The gleam in his eyes isn't just passion—it's victory, as if he's proven a hypothesis. Unease flickers briefly, a warning light quickly extinguished when his mouth descends to my neck, finding a spot beneath my ear that makes coherent thought impossible.
"Stop thinking," he commands against my skin, as if reading my mind. "Feel, Wren. Just feel."
His hand slides higher along my thigh, fingers tracing the lace edge of my underwear with maddening restraint. I arch into his touch without conscious decision, my body pleading for what my mind still questions. When his fingers finally brush againstme through the thin fabric, I cry out, the sensation too intense after weeks of tension and denial.
"That's it," he murmurs, approval rumbling in his chest. "Show me what you need."
But as his fingers press more firmly, promising relief from the ache building inside me, a door opens somewhere in the gallery—the distinct sound of a staff member discreetly announcing their presence before entering.
Dominic pulls back immediately, his control reasserting itself with impressive speed. He helps me down from the pedestal, smoothing my dress with possessive hands, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. Only the darkness in his eyes and the tension in his jaw betray what our interruption has cost him.
"We'll continue this," he says, voice pitched low for my ears alone. "Soon."
The promise—or warning—sends another shiver through me as I struggle to compose myself. My lips feel bruised, my skin hypersensitized, my thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm. How had I surrendered so completely, so quickly? Where was the resistance I'd been so determined to maintain?
As a staff member appears with a message that pulls Dominic temporarily away, I stare at my paintings on the wall—the careful interplay of control and wildness that he'd recognized as a reflection of my own nature. Perhaps he's been seeing me more clearly than I've been seeing myself all along.
The thought offers no comfort, only a deepening sense that I'm being drawn into depths I can neither measure nor resist, pulled by currents stronger than my feeble attempts at self-preservation.
And what terrifies me most is not Dominic's determination, but my own body's eagerness to surrender to it.
nine
. . .
Consciousness returns in fragments—silksheets against bare skin, unfamiliar weight across my waist, the scent of sandalwood and sex hanging in the air. My eyes open to a room I've never seen before—vast and masculine, all charcoal and steel with towering windows shrouded in heavy drapes that admit only slivers of morning light. The arm draped possessively across my middle belongs to Dominic, his breathing deep and even against my back. Memory floods in with brutal clarity—his mouth devouring mine in the gallery, strong hands lifting me effortlessly, carrying me through shadowed hallways to this room, this bed. What followed was a symphony of sensation that still echoes in my tender muscles and marked skin—pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, surrender so complete it terrifies me in the cold light of dawn.
I lie perfectly still, afraid that movement will wake him, will force me to face the reality of what transpired between us. The professional boundaries I clung to for months have been obliterated, leaving me adrift in uncharted waters. I close my eyes, trying to reconstruct the progression that led me here.
