Chapter 4_ The Reckoning Three

Mira pov

His tongue moved in slow circles, deliberate and unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be. Like the city below wasn't still humming with life, like the world outside this room had simply stopped existing.

My heel dug into the mattress. My fingers twisted tighter in his hair.

He groaned against me—a low, satisfied sound that vibrated straight through my pelvis—and the vibration made my thighs clamp around his ears.

Elias didn't stop. He never stopped. He just adjusted, his hands sliding under my ass to tilt my hips higher, opening me more. The angle changed everything. His tongue pressed flat and dragged upward, slow, and I felt every ridge of it, every texture, the wet heat of his mouth sealing over my clit.

The ceiling blurred. The city lights smeared into streaks of gold.

"Elias—"

He pulled back just enough to speak, his breath cooling the slick skin between my legs. "Third one's coming. I can feel it."

"I can't—" My voice cracked. "I can't again."

"You can." He kissed my inner thigh, wet and open-mouthed. "You will."

His fingers slid inside me without warning. Two of them. Crooked just right, pressing up against that spot that made my vision white out at the edges. His mouth returned to my clit, sucking in a rhythm that matched the curl of his fingers, and the pressure inside me coiled so tight I thought I might break apart at the seams.

"Let go," he murmured against me.

And I did.

The orgasm ripped through me without warning, a hard clench that started deep and radiated outward, my back arching off the bed, a sound tearing from my throat that didn't sound like me. He worked me through it, fingers still moving, tongue still circling, drawing it out until I was twitching, oversensitive, pushing at his head.

Only then did he stop. Only then did he lift his face, chin glistening, eyes black in the low light.

"Three," he said.

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. My legs were shaking.

He crawled up my body, dragging his wet mouth across my stomach, between my breasts, up my throat. When he reached my ear, he bit the lobe—sharp, quick—and I flinched.

"Now," he said, "I'm going to fuck you. Not gentle. Not slow. And you're going to take it."

A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.

"Is that a request?"

"No." He pulled back, meeting my eyes. "It's an offer. One word and I stop. You know the word."

I didn't even have to think. "I know."

"Good."

He flipped me onto my stomach. The movement was fast, efficient, his hands gripping my hips and hauling me up onto my knees. My cheek pressed into the dark sheets, my ass in the air, and I felt him behind me—the heat of his thighs against mine, the head of him pressing against my entrance.

He didn't push in. Not yet.

His hand slid up my spine, fingers tracing each vertebra like he was counting them. When he reached my neck, he gripped—not hard, just enough to hold me there.

His fingers tightened at my nape, a possessive anchor holding me in place. I waited for him to push inside, my body aching for it, my pulse a war drum in my ears.

Instead, his hand released me. The weight of him behind me disappeared.

Cold air hit my skin.

I twisted onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow. Elias was already off the bed, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. His jaw was tight, his body still hard and gleaming in the dim light. He didn't look at me.

"I have to take this."

The words were flat. Clinical.

A phone buzzed in his hand. He pressed it to his ear, already walking toward the bathroom, his back to me. "This is Elias."

I lay there, naked, legs still trembling from what he'd done to me. My thighs were slick. My chest was heaving. And he was... leaving.

The bathroom door clicked shut.

I stared at it for a long moment. The city lights flickered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long shadows across the rumpled sheets. Slowly, I sat up. My clothes were scattered across the floor—my dress, my heels, my underwear torn somewhere in the heat of it all.

I dressed in silence.

By the time I heard the faint murmur of his voice through the door, I was already putting on my earrings. My hands shook, but I didn't know if it was from what we'd just done or from the cold realization settling in my chest.

I don't even know his last name.

I stopped, mid-step toward the door.

Elias. That was all I had. A first name. A stranger's face in a dark club. A night I'd let myself pretend was something more than escape.

My mother's face flashed in my mind. The hospital room. The beeping machines. The stack of bills on the kitchen counter I couldn't look at without my stomach turning.

I worked three jobs. Three. And still, it wasn't enough. The diner. The late-night cleaning shift at the office building. The catering gigs on weekends that left my feet blistered and my back aching. Every penny went to her medication, her specialists, the rent we were barely keeping up with.

And the culinary school brochure I kept hidden in my nightstand drawer? A fantasy. I cooked because it was the only thing that made me feel like myself—like I was more than a daughter watching her mother fade, more than a girl drowning in debt. But dreams don't pay for chemotherapy.

I left the penthouse without looking back.

---

The next morning came too fast.

I stood outside a high-rise in the Financial District, clutching a folded piece of paper with an address scrawled in blue ink. The cleaning agency had called at 7 a.m.—a rush placement. A billionaire's private residence needed a housekeeper. The pay was obscene. Almost too good to be true.

I straightened my blazer, a thrifted piece I'd pressed three times that morning, and walked inside.

The lobby was marble and chrome. A concierge directed me to the private elevator. Floor 48. Penthouse.

The doors opened into a foyer that smelled like cedar and something expensive. I stepped inside, my flats silent on the dark hardwood, and froze.

He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, back to me, a phone pressed to his ear. The same broad shoulders. The same dark hair, slightly disheveled at the nape. The same voice that had murmured against my skin just hours ago.

He turned.

Elias.

Our eyes met.

I felt the blood drain from my face. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought I might be sick.

He didn't react. Not a flicker of recognition. His gaze swept over me—cold, assessing, detached—and then he returned to his phone call as if I were furniture.

"—deliver the documents by noon. I don't care about the logistics. Make it happen."

I stood frozen in the doorway, my fingers numb around the strap of my purse. He doesn't remember me.

Or he does, and he simply doesn't care.

He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. When he looked at me again, his expression was unreadable.

"You're from the agency?"

My throat closed. I swallowed. "Yes. Mira. Mira Delgado."

He nodded once, curt. "I don't have time for orientation. The kitchen needs deep cleaning. Linens are in the hall closet. You'll find a list of duties on the counter. Don't touch anything in my office."

He walked past me without another word.

I stood there, alone in his penthouse—the same penthouse I'd left hours ago, my thighs still bruised from his grip, my skin still carrying the ghost of his mouth.