Less than thirty minutes later, I’m strapped into my McLaren, engine roaring through the sleeping city. Streetlights smear into gold streaks; bridges flash past in steel and shadow. I barely notice. My world has narrowed to a single point: the old industrial strip turned billionaire loft haven.
His place.
I swing into the private pier road and pull up outside the warehouse: a hulking beast of soot-dark brick and black steel, built for machinery, not a man.
But it’s Axel.
Rough edges. Quiet power. All him.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I bet the inside’s as bare as ever. Stripped to necessity. The man doesn’t do excess in any form. And yet here I am, barrelling into his night, bringing drama to his door.
But nothing about this turmoil feels excessive to me.
Whether he agrees is another matter.
My pulse skitters as I kill the engine and step out.
The night gives me a welcome slap: cold air, river spray, wind whipping through my coat. I tighten the belt and sprint across the cobbles, blind to the tide smacking the pilings as I stare up at his entrance. A massive freight door, twice my height, reinforced and bolted. No fancy doorbell, just an old brass buzzer I swear he welded on himself.
I take a breath and press it.
Then again.
And again.
Heel tapping, nerves rising.
‘Come on, Axel. Come on.’
A lock thuds. The door swings open?—
Holy Mother of God…
‘Taylor?!’
Black boxers slung low, hair mussed, eyes wild and shot to hell. He’s all heat, inked muscle, and total confusion. And never have I wanted him more. My knees go weak. My chest tightens. My pulse explodes. The fear, the ache, the longing – the last few hours, the last few months, everything – crashes into the way I’m looking at him.
‘Ax…’
Axel
I scrub my hair out of my face, still not convinced I’m seeing straight.
Taylor. On my doorstep. Black mac cinched tight at her waist, hair wild around her shoulders, face bare – no armour tonight. Just those eyes, blazing straight through me. Her gunmetal-grey McLaren spits and crackles behind her, the sound as feral and alive as she is.
Did she race here?
From her bed?
‘Do you always answer the door in your underwear?’ she asks, breathless.
I shake my head, half-expecting a screw to fall loose.
‘When someone comes banging in the dead of night, yeah.’
It feels like I haven’t seen her in years. Like something in me’s been locked up – held under, starved of oxygen – since I walked away from her. It’s only been hours, but my body doesn’t know that. It only knows relief. And want. And an ache I hate to name.
And all I can think is?—
