I kissed my way down her body, taking my time, learning her the way I always did — with the focused attention of someone who had decided this was worth getting exactly right. When I reached the juncture of her thighs she grabbed my hair, and when my mouth found her she arched off the couch with a sound that made my blood run hotter.
I worked her slowly, reading every response, until her thighs trembled against my shoulders and her nails scraped my scalp and she came apart with my name on her lips in the specific fractured way that meant she hadn’t been able to manage it into something quieter.
“Fuck.” She was still shaking when I moved back up her body. “That was?—”
“We’re not done.”
Her eyes went wide and dark as I freed myself, and she reached for me immediately — her hand warm and certain, stroking once, twice, a sound escaping me that had nothing controlled about it.
“Condom,” she managed.
I retrieved one and she watched me with an intensity that made my blood burn considerably hotter than was useful for maintaining any remaining patience.
“Ready?” I said.
“For you?” Her legs wrapped around my waist. “Always.”
I pressed into her slowly — feeling her stretch and adjust, watching her face for the shift from tension to pleasure, findingit and holding it in my memory alongside every other thing I’d been cataloging about her since November.
“God.” Her voice was wrecked, her hands gripping my back. “Sebastian?—”
“I know.” I pressed my lips to her throat. “Stay with me.”
I began to move.
The pace built gradually — deep, rolling strokes that had her meeting each one, her nails scoring my back, her breath coming in the broken rhythm I’d learned to chase. Outside my office, the empire was doing what empires did in moments of crisis — crumbling, regrouping, finding its new shape. Stock prices falling. Board members debating. Victor Corsetti somewhere in the city preparing his next move.
None of it reached this room.
“Look at me,” I said.
Her eyes snapped to mine, and what I found there unraveled the last of whatever I’d been holding back — not just desire but something deeper, the trust I’d been watching build piece by careful piece for weeks, finally given permission to be what it actually was.
“I’m close,” she whispered.
“Then let go.”
She shattered around me — her whole body tightening, my name torn from her throat in the way that meant she hadn’t managed to keep it quiet — and I followed her over the edge with my face buried in her hair and the feeling of her arms pulling me closer and the specific, devastating certainty that I would burn every remaining piece of this empire to ash before I let Victor Corsetti take this from me.
Afterward, we lay tangled together on the too-narrow couch, breathing hard, the city humming indifferently beyond the glass.
“That was probably a terrible idea,” she murmured against my chest.
“Probably.”
“Your board is definitely going to fire you now.”
“Let them try.”
She pressed a kiss to my shoulder, warm and deliberate. “What happens next?”
“We face the press. Answer the hard questions. Let Victor make his move and then destroy him.”
“Together?”
I tightened my arms around her. “Together.”
Outside, Chicago hummed with the particular energy of a city in the middle of a story. Phones ringing. Enemies scheming. The world waiting for the next chapter.
