I increase the pressure. I rub my thumb in rapid, slick circles. The wetness coats my entire hand. Every twitch of my fingers sends a violent shudder through her body.
I press my hips flush against hers. I pin her in place with my body weight. The heavy, aching mass of my cock grinds against her stomach while my hand works between her legs.
Her breathing fractures. The staccato gasps echo in the vault. Her amber and musk scent flare hotter, thicker, the scent of an approaching climax.
"Let go for me," I demand. I pinch her swollen clit between my thumb and forefinger. I roll the slick flesh gently.
She breaks open.
Her entire body goes rigid. A raw, piercing cry rips out of her throat. Her clit pulses violently under my thumb. The rhythmic spasms shudder through her hips and thighs. Hot, sweet wetness floods over my hand. She sobs, her head falling forward to rest against my shoulder. "Dio mio," I breathe into her hair. The closest thing to prayer I have left.
I hold her. I keep my arm clamped around her waist. I let her ride the violent waves of the orgasm. Her legs shake so badly she cannot support her own weight. I hold her up. I will always hold her up.
The spasms slowly subside. Her breathing remains ragged. The sweat cools on her skin in the freezing air of the vault.
My hand withdraws slowly, fingers coated in her slick. The scent of her climax is branded into my skin. I pull the delicate lace of her panties up. I pull the zipper of her jeans up. I fasten the metal button.
I pull the flannel shirt down, covering her bare stomach. Covering her breasts.
A soft, lingering kiss to her forehead.
The agony in my groin is severe. The blue-ball ache radiates up into my stomach. It is a necessary torment. I have claimed her space, her scent, the sounds she makes when she breaks. I have taken her body apart in my hands. The final claiming will happen when the walls of this vault are no longer trapping us.
She leans heavily against my chest. Her hands rest flat against my chest, right over the frantic hammering of my heart against my ribs.
"You didn't finish," she whispers. Her voice is thick. Dazed.
"I am a patient man." I wrap my arms fully around her. I bury my face in her hair. The soft amber scent is a fortress. The noiseis gone. The static is dead. "I should wait until we are out of this vault to bury myself inside you."
She goes still. My confession settles between us. The eight-year exile from touch. The reality that she is the only frequency I can tolerate.
Then she tips her head back, looking up at me. The dark eyes are wide, searching my face. Searching the grey-green eyes that usually offer nothing but dead air and death. She finds the absolute devotion burning in the center of the ice.
Her hand reaches up and cups my cheek.
The touch does not burn.
"Okay," she breathes. The single word lands like surrender. She is not fighting the claim. She is not flinching from the obsession.
I turn my head and press a kiss into her palm. The vault is still sealed. The Bellanti ghost-signatory servers sit dark and silent, the power still cut. The four feet of reinforced steel still separates us from the Chicago sky.
But I am no longer trapped in the dark. I have found my signal. And I am never letting her go.
5
Imani
"Eight years."The words hang in the freezing air of the underground vault, jagged.
They bounce off the dead server racks, swallowed by the low yellow backup glow we are left with after killing the power. My body still vibrates from the force of my climax. My legs are weak. My skin is flushed, burning hot against the damp, biting chill of the concrete room.
I lean back against the metal cage of the server tower, pulling his flannel tighter over my sweater. It smells of clean linen, ozone, and faint copper. It smells like him. The scent of a lethal predator who just brought me apart with nothing but his hands and his terrifying focus.
Vincenzo pushes up off the floor and rises over me in the gloom, a shadow carved out of granite and quiet menace. His broad chest rises and falls. The gold cross pendant lying against the black cotton over his sternum shifts with every ragged inhale.
He is a man who operates off the grid, a ghost in the Costa family machine, a weapon who exiled himself from human contact for nearly a decade. Touch is static to him. It is pain. It is an ambush.
And yet his hands find my hips again. His long, calloused fingers dig into the soft flesh above my waistband, anchoring himself to me like I am the only solid thing left on the planet.
