Chapter 4

He shoved her away harder than he meant to.

The second his hands left her bare waist, the loss hit him like a physical blow. He turned and walked out of the kitchen without looking back, every step a war. His cock was so hard it hurt, throbbing against the front of his trousers in heavy, angry pulses. The wet spot where the head had pressed against her bare cunt was still damp, and the memory of how soft and slick she had felt made his jaw lock so tight his teeth ached.

He didn’t stop until he reached his office.

The door slammed behind him. He braced both hands on the heavy desk, head bowed, breathing like he had just run for his life. His knuckles were white. The thick length of his cock strained so rigidly against the fabric that it was almost painful, the outline of it clear and obscene even through the expensive material.

“Fuck.”

The word came out low and rough.

“Fuck, fuck, *fuck*.”

He could still feel her. The heat of her bare pussy against him. The way she had rolled her hips and pressed that soft, wet slit along the head of his cock like she was trying to mark him. The filthy words that had poured out of her pretty mouth — *I want you to ruin me, Lucien. Right here. Right now.*

His cock jerked hard at the memory.

He squeezed his eyes shut and cursed again, louder this time.

“Goddamn it.”

He was forty-one years old. He had built an empire on control. He had never once in his life been this close to losing it over a nineteen-year-old girl in an open robe who had walked into his kitchen and offered him everything like it was nothing.

But she wasn’t nothing.

She was Victor Vale’s daughter. The living collateral of a deal that should have stayed cold and businesslike. She was nineteen. Virgin. Soft and wet and looking at him like she already belonged on her knees for him.

And he had almost taken her.

He had grabbed her. Felt every inch of that bare body against his. Felt how ready she was. One more second — one more filthy little plea — and he would have bent her over that marble counter, yanked his cock out, and buried himself inside her so deep she would have felt him in her throat.

The thought made his stomach tighten and his cock leak.

He shoved away from the desk and paced, one hand dragging roughly through his hair. The other stayed clenched at his side because if he touched himself right now he was going to lose what little control he still had left.

“I’m trying so fucking hard,” he muttered under his breath, voice raw. “I’m trying so goddamn hard to control myself.”

He stopped in front of the windows and stared out at the city without seeing it. All he could see was her. Bare tits. Hard pink nipples. That smooth, shiny little cunt she had spread open with her own fingers just to show him how wet she was for him.

His cock throbbed so violently he had to reach down and adjust himself, hissing through his teeth at the contact. Even that small touch sent a dark rush of heat up his spine.

He wanted to go back.

He wanted to walk straight into that kitchen, shove her against the nearest surface, and fuck every single filthy promise out of her. He wanted to watch her face while he stretched that tight virgin pussy around his cock for the first time. He wanted to hear her scream his name while he filled her so full she wouldn’t be able to walk without feeling him for days.

His hands curled into fists.

“Not like this,” he growled to the empty room. “Not when she’s offering herself like a fucking sacrifice just to get a reaction out of me.”

But the truth was uglier than that.

The truth was that he had wanted her long before she ever walked into his house. Long before the deal. Long before she ever looked at him with those wide, hungry eyes and started touching herself to the thought of him.

And now she was here — under his roof, under his rules, under his protection — and she was doing everything in her power to make him break.

He dragged a hand down his face and let out a harsh, humorless laugh.

“I’m trying so hard,” he said again, quieter this time, almost to himself. “And she’s making it fucking impossible.”

His cock was still rock-hard. Still aching. Still leaking for a nineteen-year-old girl who had no idea how close she had come to being ruined on a kitchen counter by the one man who was supposed to keep her safe.

Lucien closed his eyes.

He could still smell her on his skin.

And for the first time in years, control felt like the most dangerous thing he had ever tried to hold on to.

Because the next time she came at him like that — bare, wet, begging to be taken — he wasn’t sure he would be strong enough to walk away again.