"I know." His hips roll deeper, harder. "Hold on."
The warning is the only one I get before the restraint breaks.
The change is absolute. He pins my wrists above my head, and every careful measured stroke becomes something else entirely—fast and relentless and consuming, driving the breath from my lungs in short sharp gasps I have to fight to suppress. His free hand slides between us, thumb finding the place that makes my vision fracture at the edges, and he works me with the same merciless precision he applies to everything.
"Look at me," he says again, voice wrecked. "Don't close your eyes."
I force them open. What I see there stops my heart for a full second—the control is gone\], stripped away, and what's underneath is raw and unguarded and entirely focused on me. This is what he keeps locked down. This is what he only lets out here, in this room, with me.
"Come for me," he says. "Right now."
My body doesn't wait for permission. The orgasm breaks like a wave cresting—sudden and total, drawn up from somewhere deep—and I press my face into his shoulder and shake through it while he keeps moving, keeps pushing, working every last tremor out of me.
His rhythm splinters. A low, broken sound against my hair—barely controlled, swallowed almost before it forms—and thenhis whole body goes rigid, release hitting him in waves I feel from the inside. His grip on my wrists tightens to the edge of pain and eases all at once.
For a long moment neither of us moves.
Then the tension drains out of him in one long exhale, and he drops his forehead to mine, and he is just Remy—not the operator, not the protector, not the man who keeps everything locked behind tactical efficiency. Just Remy, utterly spent, skin warm against mine.
After a moment he withdraws, rolls to his side, pulls me against him. We lie there without speaking, letting the aftershocks fade, letting reality seep back in.
Finally, I turn my head to look at him. "So that's what control looks like."
"That's what it looks like when control fails." He's watching the ceiling, jaw tight. "I meant to take more time. Make it better for you."
"It was perfect."
"It was fast and desperate and probably too rough."
"It was exactly what we both needed." I reach up, touch his face until he looks at me. "Stop overthinking it."
His mouth quirks into something that's not quite a smile, but close. "You're giving me orders now?"
"Someone has to." I trace the line of his jaw, feel him relax slightly. "Besides, I liked it rough. Liked you losing control."
"That wasn't losing control." His hand comes up, catches mine. "That was barely hanging on to it. There's a difference."
"Show me the difference next time."
"Next time you might not be able to walk after."
The promise makes heat pool low in my belly again, even though my body is still recovering. "I'll take my chances."
He pulls me against him, careful of his injuries. We lie there in silence, listening to sounds from downstairs that prove his family hasn't noticed anything unusual.
Voices in the kitchen, cabinet doors closing, Luc's phone ringing.
Normal life continuing while we've just crossed a line that changes everything.
"We should get dressed," I say eventually. "Planning session."
"In a minute."
But a minute stretches into several, neither of us quite ready to leave this moment behind.
Finally, he moves, helps me up, finds my clothes scattered across his bedroom floor.
He picks up the emerald dress. "You'll wear this in New York," he says. "Walk into that room looking like this, and anyone will believe anything you tell them."
