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I shake my head. “No, I—it’s not that kind of problem—”
But he kisses me all the same. It’s not feral, and it’s not sweet. It’s something in between. Something I didn’t know I needed.
He presses his forehead to mine. “You sure about that?”
“I’ve never been less sure about anything in my life.”
He smiles, takes my hand, and I let him lead me. No audience on the stairs to justify the hands.
At the top of the stairs, he stops me under the sconce and looks at me for a long moment, thumb moving over my knuckles, over the obscene stone I forgot I was wearing. “You are so much more than your ambitions, Veda.”
That fissure in my chest gnaws at itself. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“I know it for the both of us.”
In his room—our room—he slowly undresses me, but now the narration and commands have vanished. What remains is pure attention. He kisses the top of my head, my damp eyelashes, the pulse beneath my jaw, and both palms of my skilled, unoccupied hands.
“Veda. Look at me.”
I look. Can’t not look.
He lays me down on sheets gone silver in the low light and settles over me, one forearm braced beside my head as I spread my legs for him. I lean up to pull him to my mouth, and he enters me on one long breath that we take together.
This is what I needed. Him.
We make love slow and face-to-face, no distractions. He moves in me deep and patient, building me up the long way, a stroke at a time. I hold his face in both hands because I need to touch him. Need to feel his skin.
He licks my throat when my back arches, and he digs deep, hitting my G-spot with every pass. My fire builds until it pours through my veins, and he keeps going. Breathing would be an afterthought if I had thoughts left.
He murmurs in my ear, stubble brushing my cheek, “This is who you are. My beautiful Veda.”
I break on his words, on his cock, on the pain in my heart. It rolls through me in a long wave, high enough to drown me. I crash into him, meeting him beat for beat until my body can’t move. Until I taste his sweat on my lip. He follows moments later, forehead pressed to mine, my hands in his silver hair, and even that he does with his eyes open. Neither of us look away.
Neither of us has since a hotel bar.
After, we lie tangled in the middle of the vast bed. The border I drew down this mattress two weeks ago has no troops left on either side. The pillow border left the night of the gala. I search myself for the alarm that should raise—that all of this should raise—and I come up empty-handed and blissed out.
His fingers trace my spine. I press my cheek to his shoulder. The one with the bullet hole scar. It doesn’t bother me anymore. It probably should.
All of this should, my fading ambition hisses in my head.
But I find I don’t much care anymore. What is ambition compared to this moment? How do you weigh ambition against a child’s love or Sunday sauce? Who would pick that over a life of endless possibilities?
I thought the answer was me. Turns out, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.
A curiosity comes to mind that I haven’t been able to figure out. “Where is Sarah’s mother in all of this?”
He draws a long breath and doesn’t go stiff, so it can’t be too terrible. “She’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“It wasn’t… We weren’t together when it happened. Morella was a stripper I hooked up with one night at the club she worked at in Tampa. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant. She showed up at my place in Miami with a baby—turns out, Nick had given her his card, and she tracked us down. Tech-savvy girl. Anyway, she was about to leave the baby on my front step with a note, but her movement triggered the motion sensor camera, and my security team nabbed her.”
My heart’s already twisting in my chest. “She was going to leave Sarah on your front step?”
“She didn’t want any complications and thought Sarah should go with family. Morella was sick herself, and she was told she had a month to live. Brain tumor.”
“Oh God.”
