Se connecter“No… doesn’t feel boring…” I pant, as the hand on my ass moves to my hip, his fingers gripping me and slowly pulling, making me rock into him. My hands are still uselessly clutching the material of his shirt by his chest, as he keeps guiding my body, the feel of his bulge pressing into my core, making my body feel warm.
He trails his hand from my hair, around my neck, flattening his palm as he runs it down my panting chest, pulling his lips from my skin to look up at me.“Reckon you cI take the stairs two at a time, heading straight for my suite. I don’t have time to change into something sensible, and honestly, a pair of pajamas will actually sell the lie I’m about to tell a lot more. So that’s what I throw on and go find Holt.I find him near the top of the grand staircase. He’s the most stoic of the security rotation, a man who looks like he was carved out of a single block of granite and then taught how to say “Yes, Ma’am.”“Miss Reid,” he says. “Is everything alright?”“Everything’s fine, Holt,” I say, forcing a hand to my forehead and squinting as if the ambient light of the hallway is a physical assault. “Or will be. I’ve got a migraine coming on that feels like a railroad spike through my left eye. I’m going to bed. I’ve already taken some medicine, so I’m going to be out for the count. Don’t let anyone wake me unless the house is actually on fire.”He looks at me with the mild concern of a man who takes his job ser
“Show me what the Reid family money bought you.” Elias says with a wink. I get in position. I am a professional. I am in complete control of all of my faculties and the fact that he is standing across from me without a shirt in excellent lighting is entirely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is hitting him, which I am going to do. We go again. He is faster without the shirt, or maybe I am slower, or maybe I am fractionally less focused than I was two minutes ago. Every time I get close, the sight of his bare chest and the way his muscles ripple when he moves makes my focus falter and he uses it to his advantage, closing the distance between us. I swing for his jaw, but he deflects the hit and twists me around in one swift motion. “Distracted for some reason?” he asks, his breath warm against my cheek. “Shut up,” I mutter, pushing off him and readying for another hit. He catches my wrist midair and pulls, spinning me so my back is against his chest, one arm across the front of
“I’m not sure what secret you’re referring to,” he says, and his voice is perfectly even, perfectly neutral, perfectly nothing, which is how I know immediately that he knows exactly what secret I’m referring to. “You know,” I say pleasantly. “Lucia–” “You know, and I know you know, and we can spend the next ten minutes doing this particular dance or you can accept that I found what I found and we can move on to the part where you agree to my terms.” I hold his gaze from the edge of his bed and I watch him think, running through the variables and I wait, because I have been waiting for him to come home for the better part of the day and a few more seconds costs me nothing. Finally, something in his face shifts and he exhales through his nose and says, “What exactly did you find?” “Enough,” I say simply. He is quiet for a long moment. The afternoon light sits between us and neither of us moves and I can hear the house e
Elias's POV Eli drives the way he thinks, which is fast and without wasted movement. He texted Marcus, arranged the afternoon off, and drove across the city in the grey morning light with the conversation he was about to have already assembled in his head. He parks outside his mother’s building and sits in the car for exactly four seconds before he gets out. He takes the stairs. The lift is too slow and he needs the climb right now, needs something to do with the energy that is moving through him because if he arrives at that door without burning any of it off, he is going to end up in a prison cell. He already knows Carver is here. He knew it before he started the drive because Carver has been treating his mother’s kitchen like an annex of his own operation for the last month since he found out about David Reid and Eli has been allowing it because it kept his mother feeling connected to something larger than her own four walls, and that, he is realizing now, was a calcul
“I thought,” a low rough voice murmurs right against my ear, “I told you to stay put.”The wave of relief that crashes through me at the sound of Eli’s voice is so intense that my knees actually buckle. I turn in his arms and throw mine around his neck, holding on tighter than I probably should.“I was about five seconds away from coming back for you.” I murmur into his chest, still feeling my body shaking. “I heard the shots and then nothing. I thought… I thought…”“I know,” he says quietly, placing a hand at the small of my back and pulling me closer. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”We stay like that for a long moment, just breathing, the adrenaline still surging through both of us. When we finally pull apart, our faces are only inches away. His eyes search mine in the dim light filtering through the trees, and I can feel my pulse still racing, though now for an entirely different reason.“I thought I’d never see you again,” I whisper, feeling my body relax into
The world comes back in pieces. My head throbs like someone is hammering nails into my skull from the inside. Metal groans around me and the sharp smell of burnt rubber and gasoline fills my nose. I blink hard, trying to make sense of the upside-down angle of the streetlights filtering through the cracked windshield. The car is on its side but I am still strapped in, my body hanging awkwardly against the seatbelt with one leg pinned beneath something heavy.Eli’s voice cuts through the haze. “Lucia. Lucia, stay with me. Open your eyes.”I turn my head toward the sound and find him half inside the driver’s side, which is now above us, his face tight with focus as he works at the crumpled metal near my legs. Blood trickles from a cut on his forehead, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. His hands move fast, prying at the dashboard that has shifted inward and trapped my left leg.“Eli,” I manage in a dry voice. “What happened?”“Another car slammed into us. We need to get you out q
I wake up the next day face down on Sel’s sofa, my right arm completely numb from where it had been hanging off the side all night. The minute I open my eyes, there is a sharp shooting pain in my head, and I quickly close them again and groan.“Well she’s alive at least.” I hear someone say
It is like I can feel the groan shoot down his entire body as he pulls my mouth back to his, flipping the two of us over and grinding down on me. He has one hand on the bed next to my head, propping himself up, the other fumbling among the toys to grab what he needs first.He picks up the gag
I can feel everyone’s eyes switching between David and me, the air completely still as they wait with bated breath to see what their boss will do. I can see David’s mind spinning, figuring out how to react, what impression his next action will give. His eyes are narrowed, staring at me as if dari
Tangled. Warm. Snuggled. Those are the first three sensations I register as I open my eyes the next morning. Then the smell of David hits me and I suddenly remember everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours. David is wrapped around me, caging me to his body, in a







