LOGIN“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 cElias’s POV Elias stands in the back of a high-end electronics boutique three miles from the Reid estate, waiting for a custom-ordered encryption module for the house’s primary server. A man in a nondescript grey hoodie approaches the counter, setting down a faulty tablet. He slides a small piece of paper toward Elias under the guise of reaching for a brochure. Elias waits until the man leaves, then palms the note while the clerk is in the back room and reads the instructions: 《Meeting at The Yard. Midnight tonight》 The yard in Carver’s network refers to a specific loading area behind a defunct textile warehouse in the lower east quarter, a place Eli has been to twice before, both times in daylight, both times by choice. He returns to the Reid mansion and proceeds with his daily routine until the house is fully asleep. Later that night, he arrives at eleven fifty-eight and the area is dark except for the orange bleed of a streetlight at the far end. He takes three steps into it
Breakfast the next morning is a performance I was not given a script for. Eli sitting at his usual end of the table, eating his usual breakfast, and responding to the things said to him with the pleasant, contained efficiency of a man doing his job and nothing else. He doesn’t look at me any differently than he looks at the orange juice. When I come in and say good morning to the table, his eyes move to me for exactly the time it takes to register my presence and then move on. I sit down and pour my coffee and tell myself I am not bothered by this, then I proceed to spend the next twelve minutes being very bothered by it. “You’re quiet this morning,” my mother observes, to me. “Migraine’s still lingering,” I say, which is the story I went to bed on and am apparently still living in. Eli says nothing, just keeps buttering his toast. Lucas is talking about something, Tyler is eating quantities of food that should concern someone medically, and my father comes downstairs and moves
The world outside of this singular, suffocating point of contact ceases to exist. There is no roar of the crowd, no smell of stale beer, and no metallic tang of blood in the air. There is only the crushing pressure of Eli’s mouth against mine and the frantic, heavy thud of his heart echoing against my own chest. His hands are massive and hot, anchoring me to him as if he expects the floor to vanish beneath us at any second. It is a messy, desperate thing, fueled by the adrenaline of the ring and the sheer terror of almost losing him to a man twice his size. I can taste the copper of the blood on his lip, but I don’t pull away. I lean into it, my fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer until there isn’t a single inch of air left between our bodies. When he finally breaks the kiss, he rests his forehead against mine and we’re both breathing hard. “Damn,” I whisper breathlessly. “I just might consider sneaking out of the house more often.” Eli let
I 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
My brain is both frozen, and moving too fast. It can’t think quick enough to make my body move, to plan my next step, because it is too busy thinking over what just happened.My boss just killed someone. In his office. In the chair that I sometimes sit in.My biggest question is why?
The office day is stilted, to say the least.David doesn’t speak to me again, and I don’t speak to him again. I just do my work, clock off at 5.30pm, and march out of the building.I speak to Marcus on the way home about spending the night at my ‘friend’s house’, i.e. my night job. Sel is
Between the sting of the rope on my skin and the impact of the Nine Tails hitting my exposed ass, I feel the wetness pooling at my core in seconds.“Scale, Doll.” He repeats through clenched teeth.“5.” I say quietly. He doesn’t respond. He does hit me again, and this one makes my back arch.“7.”“
My eyes widen slightly at his answer. No one calls Mr. Reid ‘David’, no one except me, and his family, he says. So hearing Marcus call him David, it means something. “What do you mean?” I ask, my voice quieter this time. He notices, and he loosens his grip on me slightly.







