She’s looking at me. I watch her take it in. The way her jaw shifts when she’s processing something she didn’t expect to be told.
“Why did you tell me?” she says.
“Because you asked.”
“You never answer when I ask.”
“I’m answering now.”
She looks at me for a long moment. The kitchen is quiet. The city outside the window is doing what it always does, indifferent. She’s close enough that I can see exactly what the last sixty seconds cost her to hold together.
“He brought another woman’s photograph,” she says.
“Yes.”
“To replace me.”
“Yes.”
She breathes out once, slow. Looks at the counter. Looks back at me. “Say something,” she says.
“I just told you the meeting is over.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I know what she means.
The distance between us right now is less than an arm’s length. It has been less than an arm’s length for the last several minutes, and neither of us has moved to change that. She’s looking at me with the look she gets when she has stopped deciding what to give and is just giving it, and I’ve been in enough rooms with this woman to know exactly what that means.
I reach out. Push a strand of hair back from her face. She doesn’t move away.
“You’re not being replaced,” I say.
She looks at me for one more second.
Then she closes the distance herself, and I meet her halfway. There is no grace in it, no careful negotiation of space. The moment her body collides with mine, the air between us ignites, weeks of restraint and resentment catching fire all at once.
My hand fists in her hair, thick and warm, and I drag her head back so I can take her mouth the way I’ve wanted to since the first time she looked at me like I was both salvation and damnation.
The kiss is brutal, open-mouthed, tongues sliding and teeth clashing. She tastes like fury and the faint sweetness of the tea she drank earlier, and I drink her down like a man who has been starving in the desert.
Celine makes a low, angry sound against my lips and bites me back, hard enough that the sting blooms bright and sharp.
The pain only makes me harder. I press her backward until the edge of the marble counter bites into her hips, then lift her onto it with both hands under her ass. The movement is effortless; she weighs almost nothing to me, and the way her thighs part around my hips feels like absolution and sin at the same time.
I tear her blouse open. Buttons fly across the kitchen floor like scattered rosary beads. She gasps into my mouth, but her hands are already yanking at my shirt, greedy and furious. I shrug it off and let it fall, then reach behind her to unhook her bra.
When her breasts spill free into my hands, I groan low in my throat, reverent. They are perfect—soft, heavy, the nipples already drawn tight and dark. I cup one, thumb dragging slowly over the peak until she shudders, then lower my head and take it into my mouth.
I suck hard, hollowing my cheeks, tongue flicking mercilessly over the sensitive bud while my teeth graze just enough to make her cry out. Her back arches, pushing more of her breast into my mouth like an offering.
I lave the other nipple with the same devotion, sucking and biting until both are swollen and glistening. All the while, my hand slides up her thigh, under the hem of her skirt, pushing the fabric higher until it bunches uselessly around her waist.
She’s soaked through her underwear. The heat of her burns against my fingers. I pull the lace aside and slide two thick fingers through her slick folds, parting her, coating myself in her wetness before pushing both inside her tight cunt in one smooth stroke.
“God,” I mutter against her breast, the word half prayer, half curse.
Celine clenches around my fingers, velvet heat and pulsing need. I curl them, stroking that spongy spot deep inside her while my thumb finds her swollen clit and begins slow, devastating circles.
