Page 63

"Four years angry." My hand covers hers against my chest. "A son angry."

She pulls her hand free, takes my wrist, and places my palm against her ribcage just below her breast. Her heartbeat runs fast and hard beneath my fingers, and the gesture is so direct it takes me a second to parse.

"You want the truth," she says, "or do you want this?"

"Both."

"You get one." She steps forward until her hips meet mine, and I feel her heat through the fabric between us. "Pick."

My jaw works. The question burns in my throat, but so does everything else, and she knows it. She's offering me the same escape she used four years ago, her body instead of her honesty, and every cell in mine says yes before my brain can vote.

I pick her up.

Her legs wrap around my waist before I've taken two steps, and her back hits the library wall hard enough to rattle a framed map overhead. She gasps, and I swallow the sound with my mouth on hers, kissing her with the kind of fury that doesn't ask permission. Her nails rake down the back of my neck while her tongue meets mine, and the kiss turns filthy in seconds.

"You think fucking me will make me forget the question?" I say against her mouth.

Her fingers fist in my hair and pull until my head tips back. "I'm counting on it."

I spin her away from the wall and lay her back across the library table. Reports scatter, the freight map crumples beneath her shoulders, and her skirt rides up to her hips as she braces her weight on her elbows and looks up at me with her chest heaving.

I pull her underwear down her legs and stuff it into my back pocket. Her knees fall open, and the sight of her, wet and flushed and spread across evidence of every crime committed against her family, makes my cock strain against my pants hard enough to hurt.

"Alexei."

"Quiet." I fold her knees higher and put my mouth on her.

She jolts like she's been struck. Her hand grabs the back of my head, fingers twisting in my hair, and her hips roll up against my tongue while I lick her open. She tastes like salt and skin and something darker, and I push my tongue inside her before dragging it up to her clit in a slow, devastating stroke.

"Oh, God." Her head falls back against the table, and the Blacklist papers crinkle beneath her hair.

I suck her clit into my mouth and work it with my tongue in tight, ruthless circles, and the sounds she makes climb from quiet to desperate in under a minute. Her thighs shake against my ears, and her heel digs into my back, and I hold her hips pinned to the table with both hands while I take her apart.

"Stop," she gasps, pulling my hair. "Stop. I'm going to come."

I press my tongue flat against her clit and hold still. "I know."

"I don't want to come yet."

"You don't get to decide." I suck harder, and her back arches off the table. "You made the choice when you sat on this table instead of answering my question."

She comes against my mouth with her hand clamped over her own lips, muffling a sound that fills the library anyway. I work her through it, slowing my tongue in lazy strokes until her thighs stop trembling and her grip on my hair loosens.

I stand and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand while she watches me with heavy-lidded eyes and flushed skin. Her sweater has ridden up, exposing the flat plane of her stomach, and the Blacklist contract lies crumpled beside her elbow.

"Take off the sweater," I tell her.

"You take off your shirt."

I pull it over my head one-handed, and the movement tugs at my dressing, but the pain barely registers. Her eyes move over my chest, tracking the ink and the scars and the bruised skin around my ribs, and her fingers reach up and trace the chess knight on my left side.

Her mouth opens, and I cut off whatever she's about to say by unzipping my pants and pushing into her.

She cries out and grips the edge of the table with both hands, and I hold her hips and sink the rest of the way in a single stroke that bottoms out inside her. She's swollen from coming, tight and slick and clenching around me so hard my vision goes dark at the edges.

I don't move. I stay buried to the hilt and watch her face while her body adjusts, and her lips are parted and her breathing comes in short, sharp bursts, and she looks up at me with something raw and unguarded that she's been hiding behind anger for days.

"There," I say. "That's what I wanted."