Page 84

"Don't make me repeat it."

His mouth curves, and the expression is so rare and so devastating that my chest contracts around it. He reaches for me, but I catch his wrist and push his hand back to his side.

"My turn." I unbutton his shirt the rest of the way and push it off his shoulders, careful to avoid the dressing on his abdomen. The bruises have bloomed into a watercolor of healing tissue across his ribs, and the chess knight on his left side sits above surgical tape that's starting to curl at the edges. Bratva ink covers his chest and shoulder in dark, deliberate lines, and my fingers trace the edge of a scar I don't remember from Moscow.

"You got this after," I say.

"Two years ago." His voice roughens as my fingers move lower across his stomach.

I walk him backward until his shoulders meet the door, undo his belt, then the button, then the zipper, and sink to my knees.

His hand finds the back of my head immediately, fingers sliding into my hair with a grip that's firm but doesn't pull. I look up at him while I take him in my hand, and his face is stripped bare of everything I've come to expect from him. No control, no calculation. Just want.

"Vera."

"Keep still." I lean forward and run my tongue along the underside of him from base to tip, and the sound he makes cracks open something in his chest. His fingers tighten in my hair, and his hips fight the instruction to stay still, so I press one hand flat against his hip and hold him against the door.

I take him into my mouth slowly, inch by inch, coating him with wet heat while my tongue works the sensitive underside. His breathing turns ragged above me, and his thighs tense beneath my palm. I pull back and circle the head with my tongue, then take him deep again, setting a rhythm that's slow enough to make him desperate.

"Christ." His head falls back against the door, and his Adam's apple bobs. His hand trembles in my hair. "Your mouth."

I hum around him, and his hips buck once before he catches himself. I pull back far enough to speak, my lips still brushing the tip. "You're fighting me."

"I'm trying not to fuck your mouth."

"Maybe I want you to."

His fingers clench in my hair, and a sound leaves him that I feel between my legs. I take him deep again, and this time he lets his hips move, thrusting into my mouth in shallow strokes while I work him with my tongue. Pressure builds at his base, and his rhythm turns erratic, so I pull back and grip him hard at the root.

"Not yet." I look up at him while I stroke him slowly. "You don't finish until I say."

"You're going to kill me."

"Consider it proportional." I release him and stand, and his hands are on me before I've finished rising. He unfastens my bra with shaking fingers and cups both breasts, thumbs dragging across my nipples until my back arches. He bends and takes one in his mouth, tongue working in tight circles while his hand kneads the other, and I grip his hair and hold him against me.

He walks me backward until my hips hit the desk. Reports scatter, a pen rolls off the edge, and his hand shoves beneath my skirt. His fingers find me through the thin fabric of my underwear, and he groans against my breast when he feels how wet I am.

"That's from your mouth on me," I tell him, breathless. "From the sound you made."

"You want to know what you do to me?" He pushes the fabric aside and slides two fingers inside me, and my knees buckle against the desk. "This. Every time."

His thumb finds my clit while his fingers curl and stroke, and I grip the edge of the desk with both hands. He watches my face while he works me, reading every response with the same precision I use in surgery, adjusting pressure and angle until my thighs are shaking and my breathing comes in broken gasps.

"Come on my hand," he says against my ear. "Then I'm going to bend you over this desk."

The words push me over. I come clenching around his fingers, biting down on his shoulder to muffle the sound, and his free arm locks around my waist to hold me upright while my body shakes through it.

Before I've recovered, he turns me around and bends me over the desk. My palms hit the wood beside a freight map and a customs report, and the cool surface presses against my bare chest. He pushes my skirt up to my waist and pulls my underwear down my thighs, and the night air hits my skin for a second before his body covers mine from behind.

He doesn't enter me yet. He drags his cock through the wetness between my legs, pressing against my clit, sliding back and forth until I'm pushing myself toward him. His hand comes down on my hip, firm enough to pin me in place.

"Tell me." His mouth finds the back of my neck.

"Inside. Now."

He pushes into me from behind in one long stroke, and the angle opens me so wide that my elbows buckle. I grip the far edge of the desk and hold on while he fills me completely, his hips flush against my backside, his chest pressed warm between my shoulder blades.

He starts to move, and the pace is different from the library. Slower, deeper, each thrust deliberate, like he's trying to memorize me from the inside. My body opens around him with each stroke, and the friction against my front wall builds a pressure that makes my vision blur.