The scent of him—raw male musk—is dizzying; I could come untouched from the taste of him alone.I pull off with a gasp, lip slick, fist the base, jack him twice just to see the veins bulge.
“Fuck,Nikolaj—” The way he says my name, like a man dying of thirst, burns straight through me. “You still—God—”
I take him down again, finding a rhythm he loves: deep, slow pulls matched with firm strokes at the base. Every time I swallow around him, I feel him jerk, feel his control fray another thread.
He’s close; I know the signs. His fingers turn bruising in my hair, the tremor in his abs, the way his knees lock, how his hand shifts from my hair to my jaw as if he needs the feel of me working him.
I hum around him—approval, devotion, ruin. The vibration punches a growl out of his chest.
“If you don’t stop, I’m going to—”
His warning slashes off into a raw, choking moan. He’s past choosing now; his body decides. He breaks with a guttural cry that dies against the back of his fist.
The hot spill of him hits my tongue, and I take every desperate pulse he gives me as penance paid in full. I swallow everything, keep him deep until the spasms ease, only easing off once he twitches from oversensitivity.
When I finally let him slip free, I rest my forehead against his hip, breathing roughly against sweat-damp skin. His hand strokes my hair once—tentative, shaking—then he sinks to a crouch and meets me at eye level. He cups my face, thumbs brushing spit from my swollen lips.
“Still my ruin,” he whispers, then he kisses me and I taste the eight years bleeding out between our teeth. His hands frame my face as if I might break, and he regrets every second we lost. When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine, breath mingling.
We rise together, and I smooth his trousers, fasten the clasp, and straighten his cuff links. He watches, dazed, pupils blown wide and dark. When I finally meet his eyes, the heartbreak there is quieter, but it’s still fierce enough to level continents.
I lean in, brush my mouth once against the corner of his, tasting the faintest echo of what I just stole back, then reach into the inside pocket of my jacket. A white-and-gold keycard glints between my fingers.
“Suite 2103,” I murmur, sliding the card into his tuxedo pocket, my knuckles grazing his heart. “Hotel Aurelia, two blocks east. The elevator requires the card after midnight—the room doesn’t.”
His breath hitches again.
I flatten my palm against the pocket, sealing the invitation in place. “Come if you want to finish what neither of us ever stopped starting.”
I step back before I can second-guess the offer—or beg him to accept it.
My knees ache, my throat burns, and every inch of me wants to stay. But I force myself to turn, collect the wreckage of my dignity, and head for the service door at the far end of the corridor.
Just before I slip out, I glance over my shoulder. Vincenzo hasn’t moved, not even to fix the bow at his throat. One hand covers the pocket where the keycard rests. His eyes are on me, unreadable, unfathomable… and still, after all these years, catastrophically mine.
The latch clicks shut behind me, and the echo of it rings like a loaded promise down the empty hall.
seventeen
Vincenzo
I’mstillnotfullyback in my body by the time I get Arabella into the car.
The gala continues behind us in waves of music, polite applause, and expensive laughter, but it all sounds far away now, like it’s happening underwater or in another century.
My pulse hasn’t settled since Nikolaj was on his knees in front of me with his mouth on me and that look in his eyes that I thought I would die without ever seeing again.
Eight long, ugly, whiskey-soaked years of carrying us alone, and the love of my life looked at me tonight like he remembered exactly why we were doomed, and he still wanted me anyway.
Arabella notices none of this, or if she does, she mistakes it for the usual fatigue that follows events like these. She is flushed with social triumph, diamonds, and donor promises, her mood fully restored by the time the car turns through our gates.
She leans over to kiss my cheek and thank me for the necklace, the evening, the apology, the smoothness of our performance before the room.
I murmur something appropriate in return and let the ritual run its course. She deserves consistency, if not love. She deserves the version of me I’ve always promised her publicly, even if, privately, I have never once belonged here in the way a husband should.
When I drop her at home and watch her disappear up the front steps with her security detail and all that cold, glittering grace, I feel no guilt for what I’m about to do.
That realization should disturb me more than it does. Instead, it lands with the same brutal clarity as everything else has tonight.
