Margot stands, stretching. "I need to get to Beaumont's. Prep doesn't handle itself. Try not to burn the house down while I'm gone."
"We'll try to restrain ourselves," Luc says dryly.
After Margot leaves, the three of us continue refining details. Surveillance placement, personnel background checks, coordination with the supplier's security team. Every variable accounted for, every contingency planned.
Twilight deepens outside when Luc finally closes his laptop. "I'll start the preliminary work tonight. Background checks, equipment acquisition, setting up surveillance protocols. We can begin active operations tomorrow."
Remy nods, and Luc disappears to the guest house, leaving us alone in the study.
Humid air drifts through the open French doors, carrying the day's heat and the particular rhythm of New Orleans settling into evening. Distant jazz from the Quarter. Streetcars on St. Charles Avenue. The city sounds different at twilight, softer somehow, like it's exhaling after holding its breath all day.
Remy pulls me against him. The tension I've carried since Rotterdam finally begins to ease.
"We made it," I murmur against his chest. "Actually made it home. Started building something permanent."
"We did." His hand slides up my spine, fingers splaying possessively across my back. "And we're not done yet."
I lean into him, breathing in his scent: leather and smoke and something uniquely Remy. The combination grounds me, reminds me this is real.
"Speaking of building something," he says after a moment. "There's somewhere I want to take you tonight."
I pull back to look at him. "Where?"
"A place called Dominion." His eyes hold mine with predatory focus. "Private club in the Warehouse District. Very exclusive, very discreet. The kind of place where people explore the dynamics we've been building between us."
Heat flares low in my belly at the implication. "A BDSM club."
"Yes." No hesitation. No apology. Just absolute certainty. "I want to show you that world properly. Not rushed in safe houses between operations, but deliberately. Where we can explore what control and surrender mean when our lives aren't constantly under threat."
The weight of what he's offering settles over me: permanence, commitment, a future built on trust forged in fire and blood and choices that don't have clean answers.
"Then take me," I say. "Show me."
His smile is dark, dangerous, exactly what I've come to crave. "Tonight. After dinner. I've already arranged for appropriate clothing to be waiting at the club."
"You were confident I'd say yes."
"I was confident you'd be honest about what you want." His thumb brushes across my lower lip, command wrapped in silk. "And you want this."
Command, not question. And the way my body responds to that tone tells me everything about how right this is, how perfectly we fit together in ways that have nothing to do with operations and everything to do with understanding each other's needs.
"Yes," I breathe.
"Good girl." The praise sends heat through my veins like whiskey. "Now go get ready. We have plans for tonight, and I intend to show you exactly what you've signed up for."
I climb the stairs to our suite, my pulse already quickening. Dominion waits in the Warehouse District. Remy waits to show me his world without safe houses or operations between us.
No more running. No more surviving. Just this: him and me and whatever we're building in the space where danger used to live.
18
REMY
Dominion sits in the Warehouse District like a secret waiting to be discovered. Brick facade, unmarked door, the kind of place you'd walk past without noticing unless you knew what to look for. I park the SUV half a block down, cut the engine, and glance at Isabella.
Anticipation plays across her features. Curiosity mixed with arousal, scientific mind already working through variables she can't predict. Control and surrender, everything we've been building since Prague condensed into whatever happens tonight.
"Ready?" I ask.
