I needed gravity. I needed the ground. And Mateo was about to provide the kind of geophysics you couldn't find in a textbook.
The room was pitch black, save for a singular, intrusive sliver of hallway light cutting across the floorboards. It illuminated the toes of Mateo’s boots, heavy, scuffed, giant steel-toes that looked jarring against the plush cream carpet of the hotel suite.
He kicked the door shut.
The darkness became absolute, instantly pressurizing the room. The air shifted, heavy and thick, smelling of lavender detergent and the sudden, looming storm-cloud scent of an Alpha who had decided to take the reins.
He smelled of cedar and worn leather. It was the olfactory signal that the time for negotiation had ended.
"Mateo," I started, my voice sounding paper-thin in the quiet, a pathetic rustle against the silence he projected. Myhands scrambled backward, crab-walking across the sheets until they found the velvet texture of the duvet cover. "The laptop. It’s still on the desk. I didn't save the spreadsheet. If the battery dies, the auto-recover is patchy at best, and I?—"
"Forget the spreadsheet," he growled.
The command wasn't a suggestion; it was an eviction notice for my thoughts.
He was on me before I could scramble away, moving with a terrifying speed for a man who occupied that much cubic space. He didn't climb onto the bed; that would have been too intimate, too soft. Instead, he stood at the edge, his shins pressing against the mattress frame. He loomed over me like a thunderhead, a silhouette darker than the room around him.
He reached down, his heavy hands finding the hem of my pencil skirt in the dark.
There was no romance in the motion. No candlelight, no rose petals, no hesitation. It was efficient. Surgical. He wasn't undressing a lover; he was stripping a high-value asset down to its raw components to check for structural damage. The sound of the zipper rasped in the silence like a tearing page in a library a moment before he tried to pull the skirt down, only it was pinned between my body and the bed.
"Lift," he ordered.
My hips obeyed before my brain could process the command. It was a reflex, a biological yielding to the sheer mass of his authority. The logical part of my brain, the part that argued with venue owners and drafted cease-and-desist letters, short-circuited. He shucked the skirt and my panties in one fluid, continuous motion, tossing them into the darkness. I heard them land with a soft swhishsomewhere near the dresser.
Cool air hit my skin, raising gooseflesh along my thighs and belly. I shivered, a violent tremor that started in my spine and rattled my teeth. Instinctively, I tried to close my legs, bringingmy knees together to shield the core of me that was already damp, aching, and humiliatingly ready.
"Open," Mateo said from the dark.
"I feel exposed," I whispered, my fingers clutching the sheets so hard my knuckles popped. "It’s... cold."
"You're not cold," he corrected, his voice dropping into that subterranean rumble that vibrated through the bed frame and straight into my bones. "You're burning. I can smell it on you. You scent of panic and arousal."
He moved, closing the distance and settling between my splayed legs, with his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the world, effectively eclipsing the room. He didn't take off his clothes. The rough, utility-grade denim of his jeans brushed against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, a friction so contrary in that moment that it made my breath hitch in my throat.
He placed his hands on my knees, massive, warm weights that brooked no argument. He gently moved them apart, pinning them flat to the mattress. He leaned down, his face hovering inches from my stomach. I could feel the heat radiating off him, a blast furnace contained within a t-shirt.
"You want to think?" he murmured, his breath ghosting over the skin of my navel in hot waves. "You want to analyze the risk assessment? You want to red-line the contract?"
"I always analyze the risk," I gasped, staring up at the ceiling I couldn't see. "It’s my job. If I don't... everything falls apart."
"Not right now," he said. "Right now you're obeying your body. That's it."
He trailed his hand up the inside of my thigh. His palm was rough, calloused from years of violence, weapons handling, and steering wheels. It scratched against my soft skin, a stark, grounding sensation that snagged my scattered attention and held it in a vice grip.
"Mateo..."
He didn't wait. He didn't prep me. The first orgasm had done that enough, instead he pushed two thick fingers inside me, deep and hard.
I cried out, a sharp, shocked sound, my head thrashing back against the pillow. It was a shock to the system, a sudden, blinding intrusion that shattered the delicate, frantic architecture of my anxiety. He stretched me, filling the void where the panic had been circling like water down a drain.
"Tight," he grunted, twisting his wrist with clinical precision to grind against the anterior wall. "You're holding all the tension here. In the center. You're so fucking tight, Rowan."
"It’s... too much," I choked out. My hands flailed, seeking an anchor, finding purchase on his forearms. I dug my manicured nails into the cotton of his t-shirt, trying to tether myself to the earth. "Mateo, please."
"Too much is what you need," he countered, his tone flat and unyielding. "You need to be overwhelmed. You need to be unable to process anything else."
He began to move.
