“Yes. I hadn’t planned for us to stay so late, but you were having a good time, and I like seeing you happy.”
“Is there a back entrance?”
He hesitates before his smile shifts. “I have a better idea.” Adrian makes a call, exchanges three sentences in Russian, and turns tome. “There’s a private suite attached to the club. One bedroom. We’ll stay overnight and drive back in the morning.”
I look at him. “One bedroom.”
“One bed.” He holds my stare without apology. “I can sleep on the couch.”
I should let him sleep on the couch. That would be the emotionally responsible choice. We’ve been sleeping together but haven’t shared a bed overnight with this kind of forced intimacy, with no separate rooms or a corridor between us allowing the fiction that this arrangement is still primarily about protection.
“Don’t sleep on the couch.”
He looks at me for a moment before nodding.
The suite is above the club, accessible through a private staircase behind Reina’s office. It’s smaller than the penthouse and the Key Largo house, and more intimate than either. It’s just one room, basically a studio, with a king bed, a sitting area with a couch and a small kitchen, and windows that look out over the marina.
I expected it to be loud up here since the music was starting with opening, but the soundproofing is exceptional. The bass from the club below is faint, and the room is cozy.
Adrian pours two glasses of water and sets one on the nightstand on what he apparently considers my side of the bed. The domesticity of the gesture catches me by surprise because it implies a future where sides of the bed are established things, and we haven’t had a conversation about any of that.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take off my shoes. He stands near the window watching me. “This isn’t casual anymore.” I say it because someone has to, and Adrian will wait forever for me to speak first on things that matter. “You know that.”
“I’ve known that since the service corridor.” He doesn’t move from the window. “I kissed you knowing it would change everything, and I did it anyway.”
“That’s not the same as admitting it.”
“I’m admitting it now.” He crosses the room slowly with the same deliberate pace he used in the corridor at Echelon, giving me time to change my mind, redirect, or put distance between us. He stops in front of me and looks down at where I’m sitting on the edge of his bed in his club.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say something careful.” I look up at him. “Something about keeping my distance, not confusing gratitude with desire, and making sure I’m choosing this for the right reasons.”
He nods. “I suppose it is if this were a script. Are you choosing it for the right reasons?”
I shrug a shoulder. “I’m choosing it because I want you, and I’m done pretending that isn’t enough.”
He sits beside me on the bed and cups the back of my neck with one hand. The kiss is different from the others, slower and more deliberate than the collision in the private room or the reckless heat on the airplane, and it communicates something neither of us has said out loud. He kisses me as though he’s memorizing the shape of my mouth and planning to reference it later, and I kiss him back with my hand on his chest because I want to feel his heartbeat while he’s this close.
We undress each other slowly. He unbuttons my blouse one button at a time, and I pull his shirt over his head to press my palms against his bare chest. The urgency from our previous encounters is absent, replaced by the lack of anything left to hide. It feels dangerous and intoxicating.
I push him back on the bed and straddle his waist. He looks up at me, and the expression on his face is stripped of everything except raw need. I lean down and kiss his neck, his collarbone, and his sternum, working my way down his body with my mouth while he threads his fingers through my hair.
When I reach his waistband, I undo his belt and pull his pants down his hips. His cock is hard when I wrap my hand around it, and I stroke him twice before lowering my mouth.
He moans as my lips near the head, and a bead of pre-cum drips from the tip. “You don’t have…” He trails off with a groan as I wrap my lips around his cock.
I take him in slowly, tasting salt and warmth, and the sound he makes is unguarded and nothing like the measured man who sits behind a desk and orders people’s deaths.
I work his cock with my mouth and my hand, tasting salt and the faint bitterness of skin, finding a rhythm that makes his fingers tighten in my hair and his breathing go ragged. He says my name once, rough and strained, and the sound of it sends heat straight to my pussy. I press my thighs together and keep going, taking him deeper, and he shifts his hips beneath me in an involuntary motion he can’t suppress.
“Aurora.” He says it again, and this time it’s a warning. “Come here.”
I lift my head and look at him. He reaches for me to pull me up his body, and the kiss is harder now, fueled by his need and lack of control. He rolls us so I’m beneath him and peels off my jeans and underwear in one motion. He moves his mouth from mine to my neck, then my breast, and the wet heat of his tongue on my nipple pulls makes me stifle a cry of pleasure against his shoulder.
He reaches between us and slides two fingers inside my sheath, testing my readiness. I’m so wet that he enters without resistance, and the contact makes me arch into his hand. He works me slowly, circling my clit with his thumb while his fingers curl inside me, and I grip the sheets because the deliberateness of his touch is more intense than urgency ever was.
“Tell me what you want.” He murmurs it against my neck.
“You… Inside me…now.”
