I push her panties aside—black, lace, a tiny useless scrap that just makes me harder—and run two fingers over her velvety folds, amazed at how wet she already is. She gasps. Her head thumps the back of the mirror, her hair fans out like a halo, hereyes glitter with desire. She meets my gaze, unblinking. "Fuck you," she whispers, voice low and guttural.
"You will," I promise, and mean it. "Count on it."
There's no room or reason to wait. I grip her ass, lifting, shifting so that the tip of me finds her. I want to take it slow, to remember every fucking second, but my body isn't wired for that, not when it's this woman and this moment, when it's everything I've ever denied myself. I want to ravage her, to remake her, to carve my shape into the parts of her Carter Whitford never touched.
She hauls me into place with both legs, locking her ankles at the base of my spine, and I almost lose my grip when she does. She's so small compared to me, but she's pure leverage; she uses my body as a fulcrum to drive me into her. The first thrust is an electric shock, too much and not enough, and I have to grab the wall behind her. The cracked glass bites my palm, and pain spikes up my arm, goading me on.
I bottom out inside her, and we both freeze for a second, forehead to forehead, dripping sweat, the mingled sounds of our breath and our hearts pounding deafening in the small space. Her nails dig into the back of my neck, scraping, and she bites my jaw, hard enough to send a jolt straight to my cock. "Jesus Christ, Massimo," she breathes, but she doesn't tell me to stop.
"Tell me to stop," I rasp. I don't know if I can, but I have to say it.
"Don't you fucking dare."
That's all I need. Every motion is a confession, every thrust an apology or accusation. I fuck her like I'm at war with her, like if I stop, we'll both fall apart. She claws at my shirt, popping buttons, and I do the same to her blouse, yanking it open and freeing one perfect breast. I take her nipple in my mouth, biting until she gasps, then sucking the sting away with my tongue. She arches into me, her whole body straining for more, skin slickwith sweat and desperation. For a brief moment, the colors of her tattoo catch my eye, sending a spiral of emotions through me, but I push them aside. I want to break her open, to see what's left inside after all this time. Her skirt is hiked around her waist, her panties bunched at one thigh, and I don't bother slowing down, not even when I feel the sharp edge of the mirror driving deeper into my palm. Blood streaks the glass behind her, bright and vivid, but it barely registers. All that matters is the sound she makes—pure need, guttural and exposed—I ram into her, over and over, taking her higher.
She's close, I can feel it. The way her hips jerk, the way her nails scrabble for purchase on my back, the way her breath comes in little shattered bursts. I remember those. Everything about her comes back to me, making me question how I survived the past ten years without hearing them. I reach down, thumb rough and sure on her clit, and she bucks hard enough I nearly lose my footing. "Fuck—oh fucking hell—" she chokes, and I watch her come apart for me, face contorted, hair wild, lips bitten red and wet.
She tries to fight it. She does. But she's got nothing left; she surrenders. Her whole body convulses, and in the chaos, she buries her teeth in my shoulder to keep from screaming. I feel the bite. I want her to leave a scar so I can remember this every time I look in the mirror.
That's when I lose it. I slam into her, harder, faster, until I'm sure the elevator itself will break, the whole world will break, and it's only us left locked together. The sight of her, ruined and perfect and exactly how I always wanted her, pushes me over the edge. I come so hard the edges of my vision shrivel, and all I see is white, all I hear is her voice, my name, over and over.
We don't move. Not right away. I hold her, arms braced so I don't crush her; her legs are tangled around me, both of us gasping. I can't tell where her skin stops, and mine starts. If theelevator plummeted now, I'd still be inside her when we hit the ground.
Eventually, she kisses my jaw, softer this time, almost gentle. "You're bleeding, idiot," she observes.
I glance at my hand, red. Lines of wet on her neck, her cheek, probably more all over her. It doesn't matter. I swipe it away with my thumb, smear it down her throat, a mark I want the world to see.
She rests her head on my shoulder. For a minute, she lets herself be held. The elevator is silent except for our breathing. We collapse together against the mirrored wall, the web of cracks radiating from the spot where my fist had landed. In the reflection, we're doubled and fractured and inseparable.
She runs her palm up my chest, slow, almost gentle, as if she forgot how to touch without leaving a scar. "If you ever leave me again," she says, "I'll murder you before you even see me coming."
"If you ever leavemeagain," I answer, voice hoarse, "I'll burn the world down finding you."
She leans in and mouths my throat, almost a kiss, almost a warning. I should ask what happens now. I should say something about Amauri, or about her husband, or about the sharks circling outside these walls. Instead, I stay right where I am, holding her, memorizing the weight of her against me.
I force myself to move first. Not because I want to, but because if I don't, I'll stay right here with her until the world outside this elevator becomes irrelevant, and that is a weakness I can't afford. I adjust my jacket, ignoring the blood on my hand, the heat still humming under my skin, and the way her body seems to resist being let go even after I step back. I don't apologize. I don't explain. Whatever just happened between us doesn't need language yet. It needs containment.
This shouldn't have happened before the truth was fully unfolded. I know that. I crossed a line without knowing who put it there in the first place. Bello. Whitford. Her father. Too many hands in a story that should have been simple. I claimed her on instinct, on rage, on ten years of unfinished fire, and now there's no version of this where she walks away untouched by my decisions. Or where Amauri does. That awareness settles into me, heavy and permanent. I don't regret it. But I feel the cost forming.
The elevator hums back to life beneath our feet. When the doors open, I don't look at her again. If I do, I won't leave. And leaving—right now—is the only way I don't turn this into something that destroys us both. I step out first, already recalibrating, already locking the pieces into place. Bello will answer. Whitford will suffer. The lies will be dragged into the light and burned down to the bone.
And when this is over—when every man who thought he could decide our fate is dealt with—there will be no more misunderstandings. Because she's back in my world now. And nothing that's mine ever leaves it, especially not twice.
The doors slide open,and the antechamber hits me like a mirror I didn't ask for. Max's eyebrow lifts—just a fraction—but it's enough. He doesn't need to look me over carefully. The evidence is everywhere. Blood—Massimo's—on my throat and collarbone. My hair is a wrecked mess, pulled loose from its careful lie. My pulse is still loud enough to be mistaken for guilt. I know what I look like. I can feel it in the way my skin hums, in the ache between my thighs that hasn't caught up with reality yet.
Massimo sees it too. He growls something low and lethal at his men—Italian, sharp—and before I can open my mouth, his jacket is on me. Heavy. Warm. It smells like him. Dark. It shouldn't feel like safety, but it does. He doesn't ask. He doesn't explain. He just wraps it around my shoulders and steers me forward, palm firm at my back, pushing me toward the suite like he's shielding me from a firing line instead of his own people.
"Inside," he says, and I go.
Before the door closes behind us, he stops me and wipes my face with a handkerchief from his pocket. My eyes are already scanning. Couch. Hallway. Guest room.
Amauri.
"We don't want you to scare Amauri," Massimo nods to himself.
Amauri! He's not where I left him.
My heart drops so fast it feels like freefall. The room tilts. For half a second, my mind is back to when he was missing, echoing the sound of my own breathing in my ears while I counted seconds and prayed I wasn't too late.
