Chapter Four - Aftershocks

Elara did not sleep.

She lay in the dark of her hotel room, rain tapping against the floor-to-ceiling windows like impatient fingers, replaying every second of that kiss until her lips felt bruised all over again. The taste of him lingered: aged scotch, cigar smoke, and something uniquely Cassian that she could not name but already craved. She touched her mouth, half expecting to find it swollen, marked. It was not. The mark was deeper than skin, carved somewhere behind her ribs where her heart refused to slow.

She rolled onto her stomach, pressed her face into the pillow, and still felt the phantom pressure of his body pinning her to the balcony wall, the way his thigh had slid between hers, the way he had swallowed her moan like it belonged to him.

At 4:17 a.m. her phone lit up on the nightstand, casting cold blue light across the ceiling.

Cassian: Are you awake?

She stared at the screen, heart kicking violently against her ribs.

Elara: Yes.

Cassian: Good. I can’t stop tasting you.

Her breath left her in a rush that sounded too loud in the silent room.

Elara: You shouldn’t say things like that.

Cassian: I’m done pretending I’m a gentleman when it comes to you.

Cassian: Tell me you’re not lying there thinking about my hands on you right now.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She was wearing nothing but an oversized college T-shirt and the memory of his palm sliding up the bare skin of her thigh, stopping just short of where she had needed him most.

Elara: I’m thinking about a lot of things.

Cassian: Name one.

Her fingers trembled.

Elara: That if you’d asked me one more time on that balcony, I would have gone with you. Anywhere.

The typing bubble appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

Cassian: Cruel, cruel woman.

Cassian: I’m downstairs. Let me up.

Her heart actually stopped for a full second.

Elara: It’s four in the morning.

Cassian: I don’t care if it’s four in the afternoon in hell. I need to see you. Need to touch you. Need to finish what we started before I lose my fucking mind.

She flew out of bed, pulse hammering so hard her vision blurred at the edges. Ten minutes later she was in the lobby wearing soft gray yoga pants and an oversized Columbia hoodie, hair twisted into a messy bun, face scrubbed clean of every trace of gala makeup. She looked like a college student pulling an all-nighter. She did not care.

He was waiting by the revolving doors, coat open despite the biting cold, white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, looking unfairly perfect for a man who probably had not closed his eyes either. When he saw her, something fierce and relieved flashed across his face. He closed the distance in three strides and pulled her into his arms without a word.

She went willingly, burying her face in his chest, breathing him in. Rain and cedar and warm male skin. Home, her traitor brain supplied.

“I tried to stay away,” he muttered against her hair, arms tightening until she could barely breathe. “I really did.”

“I’m glad you failed,” she whispered.

He laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest and into her bones. Then he tilted her chin up and kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, like he was memorizing every corner of her mouth. When they broke apart, his thumb traced her bottom lip, eyes almost black in the dim lobby light.

“Come upstairs,” she said, the words barely audible.

He searched her face, jaw clenched. “If I come upstairs, I’m not leaving until morning. Maybe not even then.”

“I know.”

That was all it took.

The elevator ride was exquisite torture. They stood on opposite sides, staring, the air thick with everything they were not saying. His hands stayed in his pockets, knuckles white. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from reaching for him. When the doors finally opened on her floor, he followed her out, silent, predatory.

Inside the room he shrugged off his coat slowly, eyes never leaving her. She kicked off her shoes, suddenly shy under the intensity of his gaze.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“Hey,” he said softly, stepping close enough that she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. “We stop the second you say stop. No questions. No pressure.”

She nodded, throat tight.

He cupped her face with both hands and kissed her forehead, then her closed eyelids, then the tip of her nose. Gentle. Reverent. Nothing like the storm on the storm on the balcony. When his lips finally found hers again, it was slow, drugging, perfect. She sighed into his mouth and felt him shudder.

They undressed each other like unwrapping something sacred. His shirt first: she pushed it off his shoulders, fingers tracing the hard lines of muscle, the faint scars she wanted to ask about but did not. He tugged her hoodie over her head, breath catching when he realized she wore nothing underneath. His palms skimmed her sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts until she arched into him with a broken sound.

He walked her backward until her knees hit the bed. She fell onto the duvet and he followed, covering her body with his, mouth never leaving hers. Every touch was deliberate, worshipful. He kissed his way down her throat, lingering at the frantic beat of her pulse, then lower, tasting every inch of skin he had exposed. When his mouth closed over one nipple, she cried out, fingers threading through his hair, holding him there.

He took his time. Hours, it felt like. Learning what made her gasp, what made her beg, what made her sob his name into the dark. When he finally settled between her thighs, she was trembling so hard the bed shook. He looked up at her, eyes asking permission even now.

“Please,” she whispered.

He gave her everything. Slowly, thoroughly, until pleasure shattered her into a thousand pieces and rebuilt her around him.

Afterward, he held her like she was something infinitely precious, fingers tracing lazy patterns along her spine, lips brushing her temple every few minutes like he could not quite believe she was real.

“I should go,” he said eventually, though he made no move to leave.

“No,” she whispered, tightening her arm across his chest, leg hooking over his hip to keep him close. “Stay.”

He stayed.

They woke tangled together, sunlight striping the bed in golden bars. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, the spot behind her ear that made her shiver every single time.

“Good morning,” he murmured, voice gravel-rough from sleep and satisfaction.

She smiled against his skin. “Best morning of my life.”

They ordered room-service pancakes drowning in maple syrup, fresh strawberries, whipped cream, and too much coffee. They ate cross-legged on the bed wearing nothing but sheets and matching stupid grins. He fed her strawberries from his fingers, watching with dark fascination as she licked juice from his thumb. She retaliated by painting chocolate sauce across his collarbone and licking it off slowly, deliberately, until he growled and flipped her beneath him again.

They made love a second time with the sun high in the sky, lazy and laughing and perfect, until both of them were breathless and boneless.

At noon he finally dressed, slow and reluctant, every button a small tragedy.

“I have meetings,” he said, sliding his watch onto his wrist. “But tonight.”

“Tonight,” she agreed, still wrapped in the sheet, hair a wild tangle around her shoulders.

He kissed her one last time at the door, deep and possessive and promising sin. “Lock this behind me. And answer when I call.”

She did both, leaning against the closed door with a dreamy smile that lasted exactly four seconds.

The second the lock clicked, her phone rang. Unknown number.

She almost let it go to voicemail.

She answered.

“Miss Monroe,” Damian Locke’s voice purred, smooth and poisonous. “We really must talk. About your mother. About that charming little brass key. And most importantly, about why Cassian Vale is suddenly, obsessively interested in the one woman who could ruin him.”

Her stomach dropped through the floor.

Across town, Cassian sat at the head of a glass-walled boardroom on the eighty-sixth floor of Vale Tower, staring at a high-resolution photograph of the exact same brass key on his phone screen. The same key Damian Locke had handed Elara two days ago.

He had waited twenty-four years for the last Monroe to surface.

He had planned every possible move: surveillance, leverage, destruction.

He had not planned on falling so hard that the thought of hurting her felt like carving out his own heart.

His assistant knocked once and entered. “Mr. Vale, the file you requested on Victoria Monroe’s offshore accounts is ready. And… there’s been movement on the Locke front. He just called the Monroe girl.”

Cassian’s jaw turned to granite.

“Get the car,” he said quietly. “I’m going to her.”

Because whatever game Damian Locke thought he was playing, it ended today.

And Elara Monroe?

She was no longer a pawn.

She was his.

Whether she knew the full truth yet or not.