Page 42 of Take Me Darkly

“Perfect.” Her tongue darted out to catch a stray drop at the corner of her mouth, and I had to shift in my seat to accommodate the sudden throb in my slacks.

I took an oyster for myself, keeping my eyes locked on hers. “Oysters are a potent aphrodisiac.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Not that you need any encouragement.” I reached under the dark tablecloth, my hand sliding up her inner thigh, parting her legs wider. “Do you?”

She squirmed against the seat, her breathing shallow. “Anton...”

“Tell me, princess.”

“No,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to my mouth. “I don’t need any help.”

“Good girl.” My fingers stroked higher, teasing the sensitive skin near her core without giving her the pressure she craved.

We moved through seared scallops, lobster risotto, and duck breast. Between courses, my hand roamed, stroking her skin, thumbing close to her heat, keeping her right on the edge of frustration. By the time I cleared the plates, her chest was heaving, her cheeks flushed bright red.

“Tell me something,” she said, her voice breathy as she tried to distract herself from my hand on her leg. “How did you build all of this? The empire, the capital, the club?”

I refilled her champagne, watching the bubbles rise. “You already know some of it. The crypto trades.”

“But how did you learn? You were so young.”

The question pulled me back to memories I rarely visited.

“I crossed paths with a high-stakes underground poker player in Manhattan. Brilliant with numbers, reading human weakness, and calculating risk. He took me under his wing.” I leaned back, the ghost memory of cigar smoke and aged scotch hovering in my mind. “It turned out that I was good with numbers, but better at reading people. That’s when I realized I saw numbers as a language.”

“And that led to crypto?”

I nodded.

“I got good at projections,” I explained, sliding my palm up between her thighs, cupping her drenched core through the lace. She gasped, her fingers clutching the edge of the table. “And in a way, trading crypto was just that. It’s an emotional market, and I made millions by predicting reactions.”

“Dio mio,” she breathed, her hips instinctively tilting up into my hand.

I slid a single finger deep inside her slick heat, keeping my voice conversational as I worked her. “Money is just a tool, Serena. It’s meaningless without a purpose.”

Without someone to protect. Without you.

The words sat heavy on my tongue, but I kept them buried. It wasn’t time yet. Not while the threats against her were still active.

“What do you mean?” she panted, her inner walls clamping around my finger.

“I’ve been talking to Alexander Stone about his philanthropic models,” I murmured, my thumb finding her swollen clit and applying a light, agonizing pressure. “His foundation funds Stone’s Hope—a secure shelter system for women escaping domestic violence.”

“Oh, God...” She arched off the chair as I pushed a second finger inside her, curling them upward to hit that deep, electric knot of nerves.

“It inspired me,” I whispered, watching her unravel before my eyes. “I want to pivot my private capital into something permanent. Arts, sciences, safe havens.”

“You’d... you’d be incredible at that,” she whimpered, her hands gripping my forearm as her body began to quiver around my hand.

When her inner walls clamped around my fingers, my cock jerked in response, hard and aching, and I wasn’t sure who was torturing whom. Every whimper, every pulse of her body around me pushed me closer to the edge.

She was panting now, her hips rolling against my hand. She was destroying me as much as I was unraveling her. I slowly withdrew my fingers, ignoring her soft cry of protest, and brought them to my mouth, licking her slick sweet taste off my skin.

“You’re intoxicating, princess,” I growled. “Like honey and need and mine.”

“Anton, please...”