I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the wall beside the bookshelf with a solid thud that rattles the books on their shelves. I cage her in with my body, one hand still gripping her neck while the other finds her hip and squeezes hard enough to leave bruises. She whimpers into my mouth and arches against me, her breasts pressing against my chest through too many layers of clothing.
"This is a bad idea," she pants when I break the kiss to drag my teeth down the column of her throat, tasting her skin and the rapid flutter of her pulse against my tongue.
"Da." I bite the junction of her neck and shoulder, feeling her shudder beneath my teeth, and soothe the sting with my tongue. Her head falls back against the wall, exposing more of that pale throat to me. "Terrible idea."
"We should stop." But her fingers are already working the buttons of my shirt, fumbling in her haste.
"We should." My hands slide beneath her sweater, palms flat against the warm skin of her waist, and she arches into my touch like she's been starving for it.
Neither of us moves to stop.
She gets my shirt open and pushes it off my shoulders, and I hear the sharp intake of her breath when she sees my chest for the first time. The ink that covers me from collarbone to hip, dark lines and darker images twisting across muscles honed by decades of violence. The barbed wire wrapping my arms. The roses blooming through the metal. The scars that pucker beneath the artwork, raised lines of damaged tissue that even Luca's best tattoo artist couldn't completely hide.
My hair falls forward across my jaw as I lean over her, and she reaches up to push it back, her fingers lingering against my cheek before they drift lower. Her fingers trace the wire on my forearm, following it up to my bicep where it disappears beneath a cascade of blood-red petals. She finds a scar beneath the ink, her fingertips tracing its jagged path, and I see the questions building in her eyes, a thousand of them, stacking up behind the desire.
"These are beautiful." Her voice is hushed, reverent. "And these..." Her fingertips follow another raised line, this one disappearing beneath the roses on my ribs. "What happened?"
"Later." I capture her hand, bring it to my mouth, press a kiss to her palm and feel the tremor that runs through her. "Right now I need you to stop talking."
"I have so many questions."
"I know you do." I nip at the base of her thumb and watch her eyes go dark, her lips parting around a soft gasp. "Ask them later. Right now, I want to hear you make other sounds."
I pull her sweater over her head in one smooth motion, revealing the black lace bra beneath. She's beautiful in the filtered afternoon light, all creamy skin and gentle curves and the fading bruises from her time in captivity that make my blood boil and my protective instincts roar to life. A purple shadow on her ribs. A yellow-green stain along her hip. Each one a mark left by men who will die slowly for touching what's mine.
I'm going to kill every one of them. But first, I'm going to replace every bad memory with something good.
"Not here." I force the words out through a jaw clenched tight with want. "Not against a wall. Not for your first time."
"What?" She blinks up at me, dazed, lips swollen and red from my kisses.
"You deserve better than a quick fuck in my office." I take her hand, lace our fingers together. "Come with me."
I lead her up the stairs to the rooftop. The stairwell is cool after the warmth of my office, and I feel her shiver behind me. Then I push open the metal door and warm afternoon sunlight spills over us.
The garden is alive with color, vegetables and herbs and the roses climbing their trellis. Gravel crunches beneath our bare feet, sun-warmed and rough against my soles. The city sprawls below, a glittering maze of steel and glass, but up here everything is quiet. A sanctuary I built with my own hands because I needed to prove that I could create something instead of just destroying.
"Kon." She breathes my name like a prayer, and when I turn to face her, there are tears tracking down her cheeks, catching the sunlight. "It's even more beautiful in the daylight."
"So are you."
I pull her against me, gentler now, cradling her face in my hands as I kiss the tears from her skin. This woman who has every reason to hate me, every reason to fear me, is standing in my garden with her heart in her eyes, letting me see her.
I lower her onto the cushioned chaise beside the rose trellis, the sun-warmed fabric soft against my heated skin as I settle over her. A fallen rose petal, crimson as fresh blood, brushes her shoulder as she lies back, and the trellis casts latticed shadows across her skin, stripes of light and dark that make her look like a painting come to life.
Her hands roam my back, tracing the muscles, mapping the scars, learning the topography of violence written on my skin. Her fingertips pause on every raised line, every puckered reminder of Volkov's wire.
"I want to know every story," she whispers. "Every line. Every mark."
"You will." I kiss her again, deep and slow, tasting her thoroughly. "I'll tell you everything. But not now."
Her smile turns knowing and yet she still asks, "What do you have planned for now, then?"
"Now I make you mine."
I strip her slowly, reverently, peeling away denim and lace until she's spread beneath me. The sunlight gilds her skin in gold, catching the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the softfolds between her thighs already wet with her arousal. A bead of moisture catches the light there, and my mouth waters at the sight.
I start at her throat, pressing my lips to the flutter of her pulse, feeling it jump against my mouth. She sighs, her fingers threading the length of my hair, and I take that as permission to continue my descent.
