Page 58 of The Broken Keys

“I’ve got you, firecracker. Let it go.” My voice strains with effort.

I find her swollen bud and rub it in tight circles. It’s all she needs. She cries out, her walls convulsing around me as she comes. Her inner muscles pulse over my cock.

The sight of her, the feel of her, the sound of her—it’s too much. I push into her one last time. My body stills as I find my own release with her name on my lips.

We collapse together, our bodies slick with sweat, and our breathing ragged. I pull her into my arms and hold her close so I can feel her heartbeat against my chest. We liethere in the aftermath, our bodies entwined, and our souls bare.

“I’ll always want this,” she whispers with a sleepy voice.

“Me too.” I kiss the top of her head. “More than you’ll ever know.”

She falls asleep curled against me, her breath soft and even against my neck. I lie awake for hours, memorizing the weight of her in my arms and the way she smells.

Even then, I knew bringing her back to the States would complicate everything. I knew that the closer she got to my real life, the more danger she’d be in.

But in that moment, with her asleep in my arms, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wanted her more than I wanted anything else. And for that night, I let myself believe it could be enough.

Now

I close the laptop, that time with her still burning through my veins like expensive whiskey. I fell for her early, long before that trip.

The weekend on the Seraphine just made me realize how completely I’d lost myself to her. The memory is a knife I don’t pull out.

They say love bites, and now I know how true that statement is. I drain my drink and pour another. I tell myself she’s better off without me, and that fate’s already made its move by throwing her back into Cash’s orbit.

Maybe destiny is telling me to get out of the way before I ruin her the way everyone I touch eventually breaks. But the truth presses harder.

I don’t trust myself with her safety. My life is one stepaway from exploding at any given moment. And if she gets caught in the blast radius...

I force the thought away and grip the edge of the desk until my knuckles ache. And now she’s not okay.

The problem is, I can’t fix it because that would mean pulling her deeper into a world I’ve been trying to protect her from.

Before Cash was back in the picture, I hoped that when I returned from Malaysia, I would find her waiting for me in the Malibu house. I figured I would tell her everything and let her decide whether she could live with me and all that comes with my life.

My life isn’t complicated. It’s lethal. There are people who would use her to get to me and would hurt her just to torment me.

Her father knows enough about my past to understand why I’m dangerous, why loving me comes with a price tag most people can’t afford to pay. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to shield him from knowing about us.

Maybe Cash is exactly what she needs. Someone clean, someone whose secrets won’t get her used as a pawn.

But then I remember the way she looked at me in my office yesterday, the pain in her eyes when I dismissed her like a business associate. The honesty in her voice when she said she never stopped loving me.

I go back to my bedroom and to my dresser, opening the top drawer where I keep some of her belongings. Her nightgown is folded carefully. The soft material still holds traces of her warm, spicy perfume.

I lift it to my nose and breathe in the scent. It smells like her skin, like mornings when the world felt simple enough that we could have forever. I press it to my chest, closing my eyes as her voicemail echoes in my memory.

“How can we make this work, Livianna?” I whisper into the empty space. “How?”

But her clothes can’t answer me, and neither can the woman who wore them. All I have left are memories, and the growing certainty that walking away from her might be the only way to keep her safe.

The reality is killing me. I set the nightgown back in the drawer and close it with more care than necessary, like sealing away something sacred I have no right to keep.

I find the hidden compartment at the back of my closet where I keep my extra phones and take one out. The screen lights up, cold and impersonal in the darkness.

No contacts. No history. Just a tool for the uglier parts of my life that Livianna will never know about.

I open the encrypted communications app and type a message to Axel, the head of my personal security team.