I don’t wait for softer. Softer is for people who get to pretend the world isn’t watching. I drag her dress up, palms hard on her thighs, and she makes a sound that isn’t polite. Not for the Commission. Not for her father. Not for anyone.
For me.
I lift her and set her on the edge of the bed like I’m placing a crown where it belongs. Her hands clutch my shoulders, nails biting through fabric. She’s not gentle. She’s not pretending. She’s starved.
“So brave,” I murmur against her mouth, and the praise is dirty because it’s true. “Sitting the chair. Signingthe law. Smiling in a room full of men who wanted you dead.”
Her breath breaks.
“Luigi.”
I cut her off with my mouth and my hands, because I don’t want her speaking my name like it’s a plea. I want it like a claim.
I strip myself fast, not clumsy, urgent. The kind of urgency that comes after you survive. After you win. After you realize winning doesn’t stop the hunt, it only changes the weapons.
Her gaze drops. Tracks me. Measures me the way she measures contracts, like she’s deciding what parts of me are safe to keep.
“Look at me,” I order, and she does. Because she wants to. Because she likes it when I’m ruthless with my voice and careful with my hands.
I kiss her again, and then I pull her over me.
Then she climbs over me and sinks down slow, taking control with the kind of grace that makes a man forget he ever thought power lived in fists.
My hands lock on her hips like restraints. Not to stop her. To feel every inch of her choice. To keep her exactly where I want her when the world tries to take. On my dick.
Her head tips back. Her throat goes open. My mouth finds it. I bite just enough to mark the moment without bruising it, and she shudders like she likes the reminder that I could hurt her and won’t unless she asks.
Nothing frantic. Nothing desperate.
Certain.
The bed shifts with her rhythm. The radiator hisses like it’s jealous. She rides me like she’s rewriting the old story with her body, like she’s proving to herself that pleasure can be a weapon and a prayer at the same time.
I keep my eyes on hers because she asked for truth and she gets it.
She’s not making love.
She’s taking back every second she ever spent being watched.
My palm slides up her throat, and I feel her swallow around it. She leans into the pressure like she’s saying yes with her whole body.
“Tell me,” I murmur, rough. “Tell me you chose this.”
“I chose,” she breathes, voice breaking into heat. “I chose you.”
The words hit like a bullet. I thrust up harder. She gasps. Her nails dig in. The sound she makes isn’t a lady’s sound. It’s a woman coming undone.
She moves faster. Not frantic. Not desperate. Hungry, yes. Furious, yes. Like she’s trying to break something open inside herself and finally let it spill.
“You’re perfect,” I say, and the praise is cruel because I mean it. “So beautiful when you take what you want.”
Her mouth opens. Her eyes go glassy.
I slide a hand down, find what makes her fall, and circle her clit slow at first because I want to feel her fight it. Then faster, because I want to win.
She tries to stay composed. She tries to keep her face like a weapon.
I ruin it.
