Chapter 5

Maya told herself she could control it.

She lasted exactly six hours and fourteen minutes.

The morning after the floor had been a carefully constructed performance. She woke at 5:40 a.m. already aching between her legs, already sticky with the evidence Cass had deliberately left inside her. She stood under a cold shower until her teeth chattered, scrubbed her skin raw, and dressed like she was going into battle: tailored black trousers, a silk blouse buttoned to the throat, blazer structured enough to feel like armor. Hair scraped back. Makeup precise. Every piece of clothing chosen to erase the woman who had shown up at his door at one in the morning with nothing underneath a T-shirt.

She took the stairs.

All twelve flights.

Her thighs burned by the time she reached the lobby. The ache between her legs burned worse. Every step reminded her of how deep he had been, how hard he had fucked her into the hardwood, how he had watched his cum drip out of her and then pushed it back in like he was sealing a claim.

She kept her eyes forward the entire walk to the subway.

At the office she was efficient. Professional. Cold. She answered emails with surgical precision, led a morning briefing without once letting her mind drift to the way Cass’s voice had sounded when he told her she would feel him every time she sat down. She sat down a lot. Each time the residual soreness flared, sharp and intimate, and she had to dig her nails into her palm under the table to stay present.

By eleven she had almost convinced herself she could do this.

Then her phone lit up on the desk.

**Wear a skirt tomorrow.**

Four words. No punctuation. No name. She didn’t need either.

Maya locked the screen so hard her thumb ached. She didn’t answer. She turned the phone face-down and forced herself through the rest of the morning on pure spite.

At 1:17 p.m. she went to the building’s café two blocks away for a salad she didn’t want. She sat by the window, forced herself to eat, and tried not to notice how every shift of her hips made her cunt pulse with the memory of him.

Her phone buzzed again.

**You’re thinking about it right now.**

She typed before she could stop herself.

**Stop texting me.**

The reply came in under ten seconds.

**Make me.**

Maya stared at the two words until her vision blurred. Then she deleted the entire thread, blocked the number, and spent the rest of the afternoon pretending her hands weren’t shaking.

She unblocked him at 4:03 p.m.

No new messages.

The silence was worse.

---

By the time she returned to the building at 6:52 p.m., the sky had turned the color of bruised plums. The lobby was quiet. Most of the residents who kept regular hours were already home. Maya walked straight to the elevator bank with her keys already in hand, determined to make it to the twelfth floor without incident.

The doors opened.

Cass stood inside.

He was in a dark suit today—charcoal, perfectly tailored, the top button of his shirt undone like he’d already started stripping the day off. His eyes found hers immediately. The look he gave her was slow and deliberate and full of everything they had done on his floor the night before.

Maya’s first instinct was to step back and take the stairs.

Her second instinct won.

She stepped inside.

The doors closed.

Neither of them spoke as the elevator began to rise. Maya kept her gaze fixed on the illuminated numbers. She could feel the heat of him from two feet away. Could smell the faint trace of his cologne and underneath it the clean scent of his skin. Her body reacted before her mind could stop it—nipples tightening against the silk of her blouse, cunt clenching around nothing, a slow slick heat gathering between her thighs.

Cass shifted his weight. The movement brought him half a step closer.

“You blocked me,” he said quietly.

“I unblocked you.”

“I know.” A pause. “I felt it.”

Maya’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means you lasted less than three hours.”

The elevator slowed at eight. Neither of them moved. The doors opened onto an empty hallway, lingered, then closed again.

Cass’s voice dropped even lower.

“How sore are you?”

The question landed like a hand between her legs. Maya’s breath hitched before she could stop it.

“Don’t.”

“Answer me.”

She turned her head and met his eyes for the first time. The air inside the elevator went thin.

“Very,” she said.

Something dark and pleased flickered across his face.

“Good.”

The elevator reached twelve. The doors opened. Maya stepped out first, spine straight, keys already in hand. She made it three steps down the hallway before she heard him follow. Not to his own floor. To hers.

She spun.

“What are you doing?”

Cass kept walking until he was close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. His voice was soft. Almost gentle.

“Laundry.”

Maya blinked. “What?”

“I have laundry to do.” He nodded toward the service door at the end of the hall that led to the small shared laundry room on their floor. “So do you, from the look of that bag.”

She glanced down. She had forgotten the small canvas tote of clothes she had meant to wash days ago. It hung from her shoulder like an accusation.

Cass reached past her and pushed the laundry room door open. The fluorescent lights inside flickered once, then held. The space was narrow—two washers, two dryers, a folding table, the faint chemical smell of detergent. No windows. One door.

He stepped inside and held the door open with one hand, waiting.

Maya told herself to walk to her loft, lock the door, and ignore him.

She walked into the laundry room instead.

The door swung shut behind them with a soft metallic click.

For a moment neither of them moved. The only sound was the low hum of a dryer already running on the far side of the room—someone else’s cycle, still spinning. Cass set his own small bag of clothes on the folding table without looking away from her. Then he reached past her again and locked the door.

The sound of the deadbolt sliding home was very loud.

Maya’s pulse kicked hard in her throat.

“Cass—”

He was on her before she finished the name.

One hand fisted in the front of her blouse, the other gripping her jaw as he walked her backward until her hips hit the folding table. He kissed her like he was angry about it—open-mouthed, deep, teeth scraping her lower lip hard enough to sting. Maya made a broken sound against his mouth and kissed him back just as hard, fingers already scrambling at the front of his shirt.

Cass pulled back just far enough to speak, lips wet, eyes almost black.

“Skirt tomorrow,” he said. “I wasn’t asking.”

Then he spun her around, bent her forward over the table, and yanked her trousers and underwear down to her thighs in one rough motion.

Cool air hit her bare skin. Maya’s hands splayed across the laminate surface. She heard the sound of his belt, the rasp of a zipper, and then the thick, hot press of his cock sliding through the slick mess she had already made.

He didn’t tease.

He thrust in to the hilt in one hard stroke that forced a sharp, helpless cry out of her throat.

Cass’s hand clamped over her mouth immediately.

“Quiet,” he growled against her ear, already fucking her in deep, steady strokes. “There’s someone in the hallway.”

Maya’s eyes flew open.

Footsteps. Soft. Moving past the laundry room door. A resident’s voice, muffled, talking on the phone. Completely unaware that on the other side of the thin wall Cassian Hale had her bent over a folding table with her trousers around her thighs and his cock buried so deep she could feel him in her stomach.

The risk made everything sharper.

Cass’s hand stayed locked over her mouth. His other hand gripped her hip hard enough to bruise as he fucked her with short, powerful thrusts that kept the table from banging against the wall. Every time the footsteps paused outside, he ground into her harder, forcing her to take him deeper while his palm muffled the sounds she couldn’t stop making.

“You love this,” he rasped against her ear, voice barely above a breath. “Getting fucked where anyone could hear you. Getting filled where anyone could walk in. Look at how wet you are for it.”

Maya’s answer was a broken, muffled moan against his hand. She was already close—had been close since the elevator, since the texts, since the moment he locked the door. The fear of being caught and the overwhelming stretch of him tangled together until she couldn’t tell them apart.

Cass’s rhythm turned ruthless.

“Come,” he ordered, low and dark. “Come on my cock while someone’s right outside. Let them hear what you sound like when you break for me.”

She did.

The orgasm tore through her so hard her knees buckled. Cass held her up with the hand over her mouth and the brutal grip on her hip, fucking her through it in deep, grinding thrusts that forced every pulse of her climax to clamp down around him. She sobbed against his palm, shaking, completely gone.

He followed a handful of strokes later with a low, guttural sound he buried against the back of her neck, flooding her in thick, hot pulses that she felt with every heartbeat.

They stayed locked together, panting, his hand still over her mouth, his cock still twitching inside her, while the footsteps outside finally moved away and a distant apartment door closed.

Cass slowly lifted his hand.

Maya’s breath shuddered out of her in a broken rush.

He pulled out just enough to look down between them, watching the slow slide of his cum starting to leak out around his cock. Then he pushed back in once, deep and deliberate, like he was trying to keep every drop inside her.

“Tomorrow,” he said against her ear, voice rough. “Skirt. No underwear. I want to know you’re walking around this building with me still dripping out of you.”

Maya’s forehead rested against the cool laminate of the table. She could still hear the dryer tumbling on the other side of the room. Could still feel the phantom echo of footsteps in the hallway.

She should have told him no.

She should have pulled her trousers up and walked out.

Instead she whispered, hoarse and wrecked,

“Okay.”

Cass pressed a single, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck—almost tender, almost cruel—and stepped back.

By the time she straightened and fixed her clothes with shaking hands, he had already unlocked the door and left.

Maya stood alone in the laundry room, thighs pressed together, feeling the warm slow slide of him leaking out of her with every heartbeat, and understood with perfect, terrifying clarity that she was no longer pretending this was temporary.

She was already addicted.

And he knew it.