Page 88

I trailed kisses down her neck, and when the last of her clothing was gone, I pulled her back flush against me, her bare skin against my chest, the length of me hard against her through my trousers. I felt her breath catch.

She pressed back against me, a small, helpless motion she didn’t seem to decide on, and a sound escaped her. Not my name, not yet, but close. She almost reached for me but then dropped her arms to her side. She was trying so hard to do as I’d asked. I could feel myself harden even more.

“On the bed,” I said against her ear. “Lie back.”

She obeyed and the sight of her stretched across my bed snapped the rest of my restraint. I came down over her, still half-dressed, past caring about anything but getting my mouth on her.

I took a fistful of her hair, tilted her neck back, and devoured her lips with mine.

“Alexander…” she moaned against my lips.

“That’s right, darling.”

I kissed my way down her neck. Her scent, the warmth of her skin, I would have recognized it anywhere. My desire for her was becoming difficult to contain. A low sound escaped me before I could stop it and I kept moving down.

When I got to her breasts, I cupped one in my hand, drawing my thumb over her nipple while I took the other in my mouth. She arched off the bed, my name breaking out of her, and I felt her hands find my hair. The more undone she became, the harder it was to remember I wasn’t going to take anything for myself tonight.

I moved down her stomach, kissing all the way until I reached her thighs. I pushed them apart and settled between them. I couldn’t resist one more breath of her.

“Your scent,” I whispered. “Made for me.”

The moment my lips touched her core, she quivered and moaned my name. I worshipped her, devouring the taste of her while something animal in me grew. I pushed it down and focused on her. Licking, kissing, taking my time. Her hands found their way back to my hair.

“Move me exactly how you want me.”

She nodded as I got back to work. Soon, she had stopped trying to hold still. Her hands were fisted in my hair, guiding me, no longer asking but taking what she needed, and I gave it to her gladly. Her hips rose to meet my mouth, her rhythm going ragged, her control unraveling by the second. My name had become the only word she knew, leaving her lips broken and breathless, over and over, exactly as I had promised her.

Watching her come undone like this, with nothing held back, was more than I could stand. My own need had gone past bearing. I reached down, freed myself from my trousers, and took my cock in my hand. Not because I meant to take anything, but because I could not have survived another second otherwise. Even then, I never stopped. My mouth stayed on her. She was still the only thing that mattered.

When she broke, she broke completely. She cried out my name one last time and her whole body drew tight. I stayed with her through every second of it, easing her down, unwilling to let go until the last of it had moved through her.

Then she went still, her chest rising and falling, one hand loose in my hair. It was only then that I allowed myself to reach completion, my face pressed to her, her scent against my lips.

Afterward, I gathered her against me. She was already more asleep than awake, turning into me without a word. I held her there until her breathing slowed and evened out.

* * *

Hours had passed, and everything around us was quiet. Beside me, Emilia slept deeply and peacefully, with her hand on my chest and her mouth against my shoulder, sated and trusting. She had not stirred.

I had closed my eyes more than once. Sleep never came.

Ordinarily that meant there was a problem I had yet to solve. A restoration detail that refused to settle into place. A decision waiting patiently until morning. Tonight it was something else entirely. I turned toward Emilia.

A loose strand of her hair rested across her cheek. Sofia’s necklace caught the faintest trace of moonlight where it rested on her throat. For a long time, I just watched her sleep and felt something close to fear. The fear of a man who had finally let himself want something he could not afford to lose.

The apartment had never felt this still. Or this full. I intended to protect what we were building here.

Tomorrow would be different. There were parts of Blackwood Hall almost no one had ever seen. Rooms that belonged neither to the institution nor to the Chairman, but simply to me. For years I had been content to leave them that way. I intended to change that.

Yesterday afternoon, after walking Emilia back to her suite, I had left Blackwood Hall for the first time in weeks. I had spent far longer than necessary standing in a department store, trying to decide which clothes she would have chosen for herself.

The shopping bags waited quietly in the closet. I hoped I had chosen well.

Emilia stirred. She frowned faintly in whatever dream had found her, then relaxed again when her fingers brushed mine. I didn’t move. Some moments were better left exactly as they were.

Eventually, Margaret’s description of the woman returned to me. She had barely finished describing the woman before I stepped onto the terrace and called Marcus.

Blonde. Composed. Questions no stranger had any reason to ask.