LOGINChapter Two
NOVA
I arrived at six fifty-eight.
Two minutes early because I'd been awake since four and given up on sleep at five and been in the shower at five-fifteen thinking about his mouth and what he'd said about tasting me and had to finish myself off with my fingers just to get through getting dressed.
It didn't help.
I was still wound tight as a fist when the elevator opened on eighteen and the floor was dark and empty and silent except for the low hum of the city outside the glass and the single light coming from under his closed office door.
He was already there.
I knocked once.
"It's open."
I pushed the door in.
He was at his desk but not working — jacket off, shirt sleeves down for once, hands loose on the desk surface, looking at the door when I came through it like he'd been watching it for a while. The office smelled like his cologne and fresh coffee and something underneath both of those that was just him, warm and dark, the specific smell of a man I'd been thinking about since Monday.
He looked at me for three full seconds.
Then he stood up.
"Lock it," he said.
I turned and locked the door and when I turned back he was already crossing the room toward me and he didn't say good morning and he didn't ask how I'd slept and he didn't perform any of the professional theater we'd been doing for a week. He walked straight to me and put both hands on my face and tilted my head back and kissed me — deep and immediate and with the specific hunger of a man who had been waiting since Friday and was done waiting.
I grabbed his shirt.
He walked me backward to the desk.
Turned me around.
Both hands pushed me forward until my palms were flat on the mahogany surface and my ass was pushed back toward him and he leaned down and said against the back of my neck: "I said I had things I didn't get to Friday."
"I remember," I breathed.
"Then stay still."
His hands pushed my skirt up. All the way up, bunched at my waist, and his fingers hooked into my underwear and pulled it down my legs and off and dropped it somewhere on the floor and I heard him drop to his knees behind me and the knowledge of what was about to happen made my cunt clench so hard I moaned before he'd touched me.
His hands spread me open.
His mouth found my cunt from behind and I slammed both palms flat on the desk and cried out at the ceiling.
He ate me like he had the rest of the morning. Like he had nowhere to be and nothing to do except take me apart with his tongue — slow, thorough, parting me and tasting me and finding every place that made my thighs shake and returning to it with the specific deliberate memory of a man who learned things once and never forgot them. His tongue pushed inside me and I ground back against his face shamelessly and he let me, hands gripping my ass and pulling me closer, his mouth working my cunt with a focused patience that was going to make me lose my mind completely.
"Dominic—" Broken. Desperate. My fingers clawing at the desk surface for purchase. "Please—"
He pulled back just enough to say: "Please what." Low. Composed. Like he wasn't on his knees with his face buried in my cunt at seven in the morning.
"Don't stop—"
"I'm not stopping." He licked me slow, base to tip, one long devastating stroke. "I'm taking my time." Another stroke. "I've been thinking about this since Friday." Another. "I intend to be thorough."
He was thorough.
Obscenely thorough.
His tongue found my clit and worked it in tight circles while two fingers pushed into my cunt and curled and I came so hard I knocked a stack of documents off the desk and had to bite down on my own arm to muffle the sound that tore out of me. He fucked me through it with his fingers and kept his mouth on my clit until the last shudder left my body and I was limp against the desk with my cheek on the mahogany and my legs barely holding me.
He stood.
I heard his belt.
"I'm not done," he said.
"I know," I said. I couldn't move. Didn't want to. "Don't stop."
He pushed into me from behind in one long stroke and I came again immediately — cunt still sensitive and swollen and clenching around his cock before he'd even started moving — and he groaned against the back of my neck at the feel of it.
"Christ, Nova."
"Move," I said. "Please. Dominic. Just move."
He moved.
Hands on my hips. Cock driving into my cunt with a rhythm that was unhurried at first and then wasn't — building stroke by stroke until the desk was grinding against the floor and my moans were bouncing off the glass walls and his breathing had come completely undone behind me, rough and ragged and real, nothing composed about it.
"Harder," I said.
He gave me harder.
"More—"
He gave me more.
His cock hammered into my cunt with deep relentless strokes that drove the breath out of me on every thrust and I pushed back to meet every one of them because I wanted all of it, wanted to feel him for days, wanted the specific soreness tomorrow that would make me think about this every time I sat down in his office and looked at his face across a desk.
"Cum," he said against my ear. Low and certain. "Right now, Nova. Cum on my cock."
I came.
Clenching and shaking and crying out with my face turned into my own arm and my cunt gripping his cock so hard he cursed out loud — actual profanity, sharp and unguarded, the most undone sound I'd heard from him — and drove in deep and came with me, his cock pulsing inside me, his forehead dropped to my shoulder, his breath hot and ragged against my neck.
After.
The office was very quiet.
City sounds far below. The low hum of the building waking up around us.
His cock still inside me. His hands still on my hips. His breathing slowly returning to something even.
I turned my head and looked at the documents on the floor. At my underwear somewhere near the door. At the coffee cups on his desk going cold.
"We have a board call at nine," I said.
"I know." He didn't move.
"It's seven fourteen."
"I know that too."
He pulled out slow. Dealt with the condom. Straightened himself with those steady hands while I pulled my skirt down and found my underwear and tried to locate my professional composure somewhere in the wreckage of his office floor.
He poured me a coffee.
Set it at the left corner of my desk.
Exactly where it always was.
I looked at the coffee. At him. At the complete, returned composure of a man who had just wrecked me on his desk for the second time in four days and was now standing in his shirtsleeves looking like he was ready for the board call.
"Dominic," I said.
"Mm."
"Is this going to be a problem?"
He looked at me over the rim of his own cup. Those dark assessing eyes. The almost-expression that lived before a smile.
"That depends," he said.
"On what?"
"On whether you can sit across from me in a board meeting in—" he checked his watch "—one hour and forty-six minutes and focus on the quarterly projections."
I thought about his cock. About his mouth. About the fact that I was going to be sitting on a very specific soreness for the rest of the day and thinking about exactly how it got there.
"Probably not," I said honestly.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Good," he said. "Neither can I."
He picked up his jacket from the chair and shrugged it on and straightened his tie and walked to his office door and paused with his hand on the frame.
"Tonight," he said. Not a question.
"Tonight," I said.
He nodded once and walked in and closed the door and I stood at my desk with my coffee and my ruined composure and the specific deep ache of him still sitting between my legs and thought: I am in serious trouble.
The board call notification pinged on my screen.
One hour forty-five minutes.
I sat down carefully.
Chapter FiveLILYDay five had a rhythm.Morning kitchen. His coffee. My newspaper. Bare feet on cold tile and the third floorboard and the specific ordinary intimacy that had stopped frightening me somewhere around day three.His bed at night. Every night.Days in between that moved between ordinary and electric — grocery runs to Wrenfield village where he put his hand on my lower back in the produce aisle without thinking about it. Afternoons in the library where I read and he worked at the desk and occasionally looked up and caught me watching and said nothing. Evenings where we cooked together and argued about seasoning and he was wrong and wouldn't admit it.It felt like something.It was something.My phone rang on day five at two in the afternoon.Cara.I looked at the screen. Looked at Cole across the kitchen. He raised an eyebrow.I answered."I'm in Wrenfield," Cara said. No preamble. That was Cara entirely. "My cousin's wedding is Saturday. I'm here until Sunday. Please tel
Chapter Four LILY He was cooking when I came downstairs. Not coffee and toast — actual cooking. Eggs in one pan, something with mushrooms and tomatoes in another, the specific smell of butter and good bread toasting that hit me at the bottom of the stairs and stopped me where I stood. Cole at the stove in sweatpants and a grey shirt with a dish towel over his shoulder and bare feet on the kitchen tile. That was what frightened me. Not the bedroom. Not the things we'd done in it or the sounds we'd made or the way he'd looked at me in the moonlight afterward. All of that I'd been prepared for — had been bracing for it in some form since I was nineteen years old. This I hadn't been prepared for. Cole making breakfast like we were something. Like this was a morning that belonged to us. He turned and saw me in the doorway and said nothing for a moment — just looked at me with dark eyes that had seen me thoroughly undone twelve hours ago and were apparently perfectly comfortable wi
Chapter Three LILY He knocked at ten. One knock. The same as Rowe's single knock — I thought about that briefly and then stopped thinking about anything because Cole pushed the door open and looked at me sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark and said nothing and crossed the room. No kitchen counter this time. No midnight urgency or morning improvisation. He stood in front of me and took my face in both hands and looked at me in the dark for a long moment — dark eyes, jaw tight, something in his expression that had nothing managed about it. "Lily," he said. "I know," I said. He kissed me slow. Both hands still on my face. Thumbs at my cheekbones. Kissing me like he had all night and intended to use it — deep and unhurried and with three years of waiting underneath every movement. His hands moved to my shirt. Lifted it off. Unclasped my bra with steady fingers and dropped it and stepped back and looked at me properly in the low moonlight coming through the curt
Chapter TwoLILYHe was already in the kitchen when I came downstairs.Seven am. Coffee made. Two mugs on the counter — one for him, one placed at my usual spot like he'd been doing this for years. Like I hadn't been gone three years. Like midnight had simply happened and now morning had arrived and both of them were facts.I sat down.Picked up my mug.He leaned against the counter across from me with his coffee and looked at me with dark eyes that were doing absolutely nothing to pretend last night hadn't happened."Sleep?" he said."Eventually," I said.The corner of his mouth moved.We drank coffee in the quiet Wrenfield morning. Outside the kitchen window the grounds were pale and still. The third floorboard creaked when he shifted his weight. Same creak. Same kitchen. Everything different.At half past eight his phone rang.He looked at the screen.Then at me."Our parents," he said.Video call. Both of them on screen — my mother's face and his father's face, Edinburgh hotel roo
Chapter OneLILYI heard him before I saw him.The refrigerator opening. The specific creak of the third kitchen floorboard that had been complaining since I was nine years old. I stood at the bottom of the stairs in the dark Wrenfield house at midnight and thought: of course.Of course it was Cole.I pushed the kitchen door open.He stood at the counter with his back to me in grey sweatpants and nothing else. Broad shoulders. The specific built stillness of a man who had grown into his body somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-eight and was completely comfortable in it now. His hair was dark and slightly too long and he hadn't heard me yet.I should have gone back upstairs.Three years of staying away from this house — from him specifically, from the specific problem of Cole Ashford in close proximity — and I'd lasted eleven hours before standing in the kitchen doorway at midnight failing to make myself leave.He turned around.Saw me.Neither of us moved.He looked different. Sam
Chapter SevenCHLOEHer father's car crunched on the gravel at seven fifty-eight.I heard it from my room. Sat up. Rowe's side of the bed was cold — he'd been gone before six, back to the guest cottage, back to the professional version before the house woke up.I dressed slowly.Stood at the top of the landing and looked down.My father came through the front door at eight exactly. Tall, silver-haired, the particular contained energy of a man who moved through the world like he'd already decided how it was going to go. He handed his coat to Mrs. Hollis and looked around the entrance hall with the satisfied expression of a man coming home.Rowe was already there.Standing at the foot of the stairs. Straight. Hands at his sides. The full professional composure — but I'd spent ten days learning the difference between Rowe's professional stillness and his real stillness and this was neither. This was something else. Something braced.My father saw him.Stopped.Something passed between th







