MasukCHAPTER TWO
Alex's Pov
I stepped inside, and Damien closed the door behind me with a soft click that felt impossibly loud. The suite was all floor-to-ceiling windows and modern luxury, but I barely registered any of it. My entire focus was on the man standing too close, looking at me like I was a puzzle he needed to solve.
"Three months," he said quietly. "I told you things I've never told anyone."
"So did I." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "What now?"
"Now we stop pretending this is just online anymore." He set his phone down on the entrance table, never breaking eye contact. "I need to know if what we have translates here. In person. Without screens between us."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then we go back to professional colleagues on Monday and never speak of this again." His hand slid to the back of my neck, warm and possessive. "But I don't think that's going to happen. Do you?"
I should have said yes. Should have taken the exit he was offering. Instead, I closed the distance between us and kissed him.
The moment our lips met, everything ignited. This wasn't tentative or uncertain, this was three months of tension finally breaking free. Damien made a sound low in his throat and pulled me harder against him, his other hand gripping my hip. I'd imagined this, fantasized about it during our late-night conversations, but reality was so much better.
He tasted like expensive whiskey and desperation. His tongue swept into my mouth, claiming and demanding, and I gave as good as I got. My hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing more.
"Alex." He broke the kiss, breathing hard. "Are you sure about this? Once we cross this line…."
"I crossed the line three months ago." I pulled him back down. "Stop thinking and kiss me."
He did, walking me backward until my legs hit the sofa. We fell onto it together, his weight pressing me into the cushions in the best way. His hands were everywhere, sliding under my shirt, tracing the muscles of my stomach, making me arch into his touch.
I yanked at his shirt buttons, clumsy with need. He pulled back just enough to strip it off completely, and I drank in the sight of him. Damien Cross, always so controlled at work, was looking at me with raw hunger in his eyes.
"You have no idea how many times I've thought about this," he said roughly, his fingers working at my belt. "How many nights I touched myself thinking about you."
"Show me." I lifted my hips so he could pull my jeans down. "Show me what you wanted to do."
He groaned and yanked my pants off completely, then pressed hot kisses down my chest, my stomach, lower. When his mouth closed around me through my boxers, I nearly came apart right there.
"Damien…fuck…."
He pulled my boxers down and took me in his mouth properly, and coherent thought became impossible. His tongue was wicked, his mouth hot and perfect, and I grabbed at the sofa cushions to keep from thrusting up too hard. He took me deeper, hollowing his cheeks, and I couldn't hold back the sounds spilling from my lips.
"Wait…..stop…." I pulled at his shoulders. "I'm too close."
He released me with a wet sound, his lips swollen and eyes dark. "I want to taste you."
"Next time." I pulled him up and kissed him hard, tasting myself on his tongue. "Right now I need you inside me."
His control snapped. He stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes while I did the same, and then we were both naked, pressed together skin-to-skin. He was beautiful, all lean muscle and power barely contained.
"Bedroom," he said, but I shook my head.
"Here. Now. I've waited long enough."
He reached for his discarded pants and pulled out his wallet, retrieving a condom and lube. Smart man, coming prepared. He slicked his fingers and pressed one inside me, watching my face as I adjusted to the intrusion.
"More," I demanded, rocking back against his hand.
He added another finger, stretching me, finding that spot that made me see stars. I was writhing beneath him, begging without shame, and he looked like he was barely holding on to his composure.
"Please," I gasped. "Damien, please…."
He rolled on the condom and positioned himself, his eyes locked on mine. "Tell me you want this."
"I want this. I want you. Please….."
He pushed inside slowly, and we both groaned at the sensation. He was big, stretching me perfectly, filling me completely. He paused when he was fully seated, giving me time to adjust, his forehead pressed against mine.
"You feel incredible," he breathed.
"Move," I urged, wrapping my legs around his waist.
He did, pulling out and thrusting back in, setting a rhythm that had me clawing at his back. Every thrust hit exactly right, building pleasure that coiled tighter and tighter in my gut. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
"Touch yourself," he commanded. "I want to feel you come around me."
I reached between us and stroked myself in time with his thrusts. It only took a few pulls before I was there, falling over the edge with his name on my lips. He followed moments later, his rhythm stuttering as he found his own release.
We stayed like that for a long moment, both breathing hard, sweat cooling on our skin.
Finally, Damien pulled out carefully and disposed of the condom. When he came back, he pulled me against his chest, and we lay tangled together on the sofa.
"So,"
I said eventually. "What happens Monday morning when I walk into your office?”
Damien's POVThursday evening Alex showed up at my apartment with groceries.Not announced. He texted from the lobby: “I'm teaching myself to cook something. You're the test subject. Buzz me up.”I buzzed him up.He arrived with two bags and the focused expression of someone who had a plan they were moderately confident in."What are you making," I said."Pasta. Carla's advice. Better ingredients first.""You bought ingredients based on advice from a woman you met for one dinner.""I bought ingredients based on advice from a woman who made the best pasta I've ever eaten." He set the bags on the counter and started unpacking. "There's a difference."I leaned against the counter and watched him organize things with the particular methodology he brought to tasks he was learning. Everything laid out before anything started. Sequence established first."You don't need to watch," he said."I'm not watching. I'm standing in my kitchen.""You're watching with your arms crossed."I uncrossed m
Alex's POVSophie's nine o'clock became a ten o'clock because she was on a call when we arrived and her assistant made apologetic faces at us through the glass.Damien and I waited in the corridor outside her office. He had his phone. I had coffee. We stood close enough that our shoulders were almost touching and neither of us adjusted."Jordan withdrew the complaint," Marcus had texted me at seven that morning. Single sentence. No elaboration. Marcus communicated like someone who billed by the word."Did he tell you why Jordan withdrew," I said."Sophie applied pressure on the authorship question," Damien said without looking up from his phone. "Once it became clear she could demonstrate the complaint hadn't originated with Jordan, whoever helped him write it got nervous.""Richard.""Adjacent to Richard. Same result.""So it's over.""The complaint is over. Richard isn't." He put his phone away. "But we knew that."Sophie's door opened. She waved us in with the brisk efficiency of s
Damien's POVThe flight home left on time.Alex fell asleep forty minutes in, which didn't surprise me. He'd been running on canal air and good coffee since eight in the morning and the adrenaline of the Rossi deal had taken more out of him than he'd admitted.He slept differently than most people. Still. Like he'd made a decision about it.I worked for two hours and then stopped because the work wasn't urgent and the alternative was watching the dark outside the window and thinking about the last forty-eight hours, which I found I didn't mind doing.It was his first time in Milan. I'd known that going in and had wanted, without making it a production, for it to be good. The square. The bookshop. Carla Rossi called him smart and fed him pasta and hugged him longer at the door.It had been better than good.The thing I kept returning to was the canal. Him saying *like yourself, the version without the building.* Not as a compliment. Just as an observation, the way he said most true thi
Alex's POVOur flight home was at six in the evening.That left the morning free and neither of us wasted it. We were out of the hotel by eight-thirty with no plan beyond Damien saying there was a market near the Navigli canals he'd been meaning to get back to for two years.I didn't ask questions. I'd learned that following Damien somewhere he'd been meaning to return to was always worth it.The market was small and permanent, the kind that existed for the neighborhood rather than for visitors. Produce cheese, a man selling bread from a cart who had a line six people deep at nine in the morning. We joined it without discussing it."What are we buying bread for," I said. "We leave in eight hours.""We're buying it to eat now.""We had breakfast.""That was coffee.""You had eggs.""Hotel eggs." He said it with quiet disdain. "That doesn't count."I looked at him. "You're a snob.""I have standards. There's a difference.""You say that constantly.""Because it's constantly true."The l
Damien's POVCarla Rossi was seventy-two and had no interest in pretending dinner was a business occasion.She'd said so within the first five minutes of us arriving at their home in Brera, a townhouse that had been in the family for four generations and showed it in the best way. Photographs on every wall. Books on every surface. A kitchen that smelled like something had been cooking since morning."Carlo talks about business at the office," she said, taking our coats with the efficiency of someone who'd been hosting people her entire life. "Here we eat. Sit."Carlo caught my eye and shrugged pleasantly. "You see how it is.""I see how it is," I said.Alex was already looking at the photographs in the hallway. He did it the way he did most things, with full attention and no self-consciousness about the attention. Carla noticed immediately."You like old things," she said to him."I like things that have been kept," he said. "There's a difference."She looked at him for a moment. Then
Alex's POVThe Rossi meeting ran long. Just the particular length of a room full of people who were genuinely interested in each other's ideas and kept finding new threads to pull. Damien was different there than he was in New York meetings. Still precise, still authoritative, but there was less armor. Like being on someone else's ground gave him permission to be slightly more human about it.I watched him across the table and tried to focus on my notes.Carlo Rossi was seventy and looked sixty and had opinions about everything that he delivered with the cheerful certainty of someone who'd been right often enough to stop qualifying. He'd taken to Damien immediately, the way older self-made men sometimes recognized each other across a table.He'd taken to me too, which I hadn't expected."Your marketing man," he said to Damien at one point, gesturing at me. "He asked the right question.""He usually does," Damien said. He didn't look at me when he said it. Just stated it like weather.
Alex's POVChris Morrison called on a Thursday.I hadn't thought about him in months. We'd dated for eight months two years ago, ended badly when he took a job at a competitor firm and decided his career mattered more than we did. I didn't blame him for that anymore. But I also hadn't missed him."
Alex's PovEleanor died at 3:47 AM with Damien holding her hand and me standing uselessly in the corner.I shouldn't have been there. But when I'd tried to leave, Damien had grabbed my wrist without looking away from his grandmother."Stay," was all he said.Afterward, Damien sat perfectly still, n
Alex's POVThe first consulting project went better than expected.Three weeks in and the client loved everything I'd presented. They extended the contract and referred me to two other companies. By the end of the month I had more work than I could handle alone.Damien watched me stress about it ov
Damien's POVVictoria invited us to dinner on Wednesday."Both of you," she said when she called. "At my place. Seven o'clock. Don't be late."Alex looked skeptical when I told him. "Your sister wants to have dinner with us?""Apparently.""Is this an ambush? Is she going to try to convince you to







