She comes first, just a few seconds later. Her pussy clamps down around my cock, and she buries her face against my shoulder to muffle the cry, but it’s still loud enough that Viktor must hear it. I might care about that later, but not right now.
The contraction is so intense that it pulls me over the edge, and I finish inside her with three final thrusts that pin her hips against mine. My cum fills her while she’s still shaking from her orgasm, and she holds on to me through it with her fingers locked behind my neck and her forehead pressed against mine. I grip her waist hard enough to leave marks, but she doesn’t pull away.
We stay connected, breathing hard, in a leather seat somewhere above the Florida Keys. She softens against me by slow degrees, and I keep my arms around her because letting go right now isn’t possible. I physically can’t.
The engine hum is the only sound. Viktor hasn’t moved in the forward seat. He won’t mention this and won’t need to. It happened ten feet from him, I know he heard, and he’ll know I know. He’s discreet and loyal.
She lifts her head to look at me. In the low light, her expression is unguarded in a way I’ve never seen from her. She isn’t measuring the risk or composing herself for the next interaction. She’s just looking at me, and what I see in her face scares me more than anything Karpov could do. She’s probably being more open and vulnerable than she intends to be. I won’t call attention to that to avoid this becoming something more than passion without emotion.
“We’ll be landing in fifteen minutes,” I say because saying anything else would require admitting what just happened, and I’m not ready for that.
She nods and climbs off my lap, disappearing into the small lavatory. When she returns, she looks fully adjusted, but the flush in her cheeks and swollen lips reveal more than conversation took place. By the time the descent begins, even the flush has faded, and she looks exactly the same as she did at takeoff, aside from fuller lips. She’s composed and giving away nothing, which makes Aurora terrifyingly good at this.
The wheels touch down at a private airstrip on Key Largo, and Viktor stands and opens the cabin door without comment. The warm salt air hits my face as I step onto the tarmac, and Aurora follows, pulling her bag behind her, with her expression locked down.
I’ve crossed a line tonight that I’ve spent my entire adult life defending. I let someone close enough to become a weakness, and I did it knowingly, and doing it on an airplane while Viktor pretended to sleep only amplifies that. I chose this in a confined space with my righthand man ten feet away, which means I stopped caring about appearances. I dropped my guard, which is a careless mistake in my business.
I look at Aurora walking ahead of me toward the waiting car. She’s already adapting to the next environment because adaptation is what she does. She’s either the best decision I’ve ever made or the one that unravels everything I’ve built. I don’t know which, and I don’t care.
11
AURORA
The Key Largo property is smaller than the penthouse but feels larger because the ocean surrounds it on three sides. The house sits at the end of a private road behind a gated entrance with cameras, and the nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile through dense mangroves.
I unpack my suitcase into the guest room closet, which doesn’t take long because Marisol packed generously but not practically. I have seven tops, four pairs of pants, workout clothes I’ll never use, three dresses I’d wear to brunch, and exactly one pair of shoes that work for anything besides a restaurant floor.
I don’t have sunscreen, a swimsuit, a decent jacket, toiletries beyond the basics, or shoes that can handle the crushed shell path between the house and the dock. I don’t have my work clothes because I don’t have a job. Most of my personal belongings are in an apartment I can’t go back to. The list of things I left behind keeps growing every time I open a drawer or reach for something that isn’t there.
I mention this to Adrian over breakfast the next morning. He’s drinking espresso from an identical machine to the one at the penthouse, because apparently the man owns the same coffeemaker at every property like normal people own spare phone chargers. I’m eating toast with peanut butter because it’s what I found in the pantry, and the domesticity of the scene is so absurd that I almost laugh.
“I need to go shopping.”
He looks up from his tablet. “For what?”
“For everything. Marisol did her best, but I left my entire life in an apartment I can’t go back to, and I’m currently wearing the same three outfits in rotation.” I gesture at the cotton shorts and tank top I slept in, which have become my default because nothing else in the suitcase works for a coastal property built for open-air living, where the bedrooms have ceiling fans and louvered windows instead of sealed glass. “I need shoes, toiletries, a jacket, and about sixty other things I keep reaching for and remembering I don’t have.”
He sets down his tablet. “There’s a town about twenty minutes south. Islamorada. It’ll have what you need.”
“I don’t have money.” My purse is probably still in my locker at the nightclub unless Eric has seized it as evidence.
He gives me a look that manages to communicate several things simultaneously, including that money isn’t a consideration, he finds it interesting I mentioned it, and he’s already decided this is happening. He pulls a card from his wallet and slides it across the table.
I look at it without picking it up. “I’m not taking your credit card.”
“It’s a prepaid card. Untraceable, loaded this morning. Viktor uses the same setup for operational expenses.”
I arch a brow. “You’re comparing buying me underwear to operational expenses?”
“I’m solving a logistics problem.” He almost smiles. “You need things. I have resources. The alternative is you wearing the same three outfits until Karpov is handled, and I’d rather not have that on my conscience.”
I pick up the card because he’s right, and because arguing about money with Adrian is a fight I’ll lose on principle before I start. “I’m paying you back.”
“You can try.” He flashes a smile. “I won’t let you though. This is one of several things I can do to help you with a situation beyond your control.”
I don’t bother to keep resisting. “That’s true. I always wanted a pony. Maybe you could get me one of those too?”
He laughs. “There are horses in a stable up the road if you really want to go riding on the beach while we’re here…if Viktor deems it safe enough.”
