Page 128 of Boardroom Mask

I stand up.

Kir goes quiet. His hand tightens on the doorjamb as I close the distance between us, and I can see the exact moment he registers what I’m doing, because his whole body locks up.

I stop right in front of him. Close enough to feel the warmth still radiating off his shower-damp skin, to smell his soap and, underneath it, always, that faint cinnamon.

I reach for his right hand where it hangs by his side. He lets me take it, though his fingers stay stiff, like he’s not sure what I’m going to do with it. I raise it to my eyes and examine. His knuckles are wrecked. The skin is split across the first two, and the third is already turning a deep, angry purple. I look him in the eye, then I lift his hand to my mouth and press my lips against the torn skin, one knuckle at a time.

It’s intensely intimate. I could lock eyes with him while giving him a blowjob and I don’t think it would be quite like this. Neither of us blink nor breathe. There’s only the soft press of my kiss on his ruined hand and theplinksof the last droplets of water falling from the showerhead.

Kiss.

Plink.

Kiss.

Plink.

Kiss.

Then I let his hand go and drop my gaze to his torso. There’s a bruise blooming across his left side, just below the ribcage. It’s fresh and livid, red fading to purple at the edges, ugly.

I sink slowly onto my knees. My pulse is borderline painful where it throbs in my throat. Then, with my hands on his torso, I put my mouth on it. Gently. My lips against the hot, swollen skin, holding there, breathing against him. His stomach contracts under my cheek and his hand comes up to hover near the back of my head without quite touching, as if he’s afraid that the weight of his palm might break something fragile.

I straighten up and look at him. “I’m not afraid of you anymore,” I tell him.

Shockingly, it both feels and sounds true. I’m not afraid of Kir Lazarev. I haven’t been for a while now, if I’m honest.

Kir’s hand finally settles properly on the back of my head. “You shouldn’t have been afraid of me in the first place,” he growls. “I’m not a danger to you, Jillian. I never will be.” His thumb traces a slow path behind my ear. “But anyone who tries to hurt you? Them, I’m very fucking dangerous to.”

He bends down and cups my chin in his huge hand. Tilting my face up toward his, he kisses me delicately. Then he pulls me tomy feet with one hand and undoes the knot in his towel with the other.

I’m naked shortly after, though I don’t fully realize it until my bare back lands on his cool-to-the-touch bedsheets. He’s crawling over me, limbs endless in every direction, his erection hard but patient between my thighs.

“I’m going to go slow with you tonight,” he whispers in my ear as I trail my fingernails along the old, familiar grooves in his spine. “For once, we have all the time in the world.”

I nod eagerly. He does as he promised. First, fingers, then tongue, then, when I’m finally ready to take him, the scary plunge of him inside me. I groan and stretch my legs as wide as they’ll go so he can settle in.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. I’m perfect.”

In the half-dark, we move together, slow at first, then faster and faster. His shower-damp skin and hair leach onto mine, so that by the time we’re both almost there, we’re each as wet, hot, and soap-scented as the other. He’s an urgent mass on top of me and I’m a writhing mess beneath him. I’m moaning, he’s grunting, and then it all swallows us up so beautifully that everything that’s notthisceases to matter.

When it’s all finally finished, I close my eyes.

For the first time in five years, I fall asleep in a man’s arms. There isn’t a sock on the floor or a crack in the ceiling. I’m safe here.

IknowI’m safe here.

51

JILLIAN

“We found love in a hopeless place”

— “We Found Love (DJ Dark Cover Remix)” by Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris

I wake up to the sound of a buckle. Kir is already dressed, standing at the foot of the bed in a black suit, threading the leather of his belt through the last loop. His hair is damp from a second shower I slept through entirely.