Chapter 004

CELESTE

I pushed my chair back and stood up. My heart was beating faster than it had any right to. "This might be the pain talking. I know that. But tell me you wouldn't want to see the look on their faces if they found out we were having an affair."

Dominic pushed off the doorframe and moved toward me slowly. "An affair."

"Yes." I held his gaze. "An affair. No strings. No feelings. Just two people who got dealt the same hand giving their partners exactly what they deserve."

He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I had to tilt my chin up slightly to keep his eyes.

"And how exactly does this work?" he asked. The shirt was still in his hand. He still hadn't put it on.

I smiled and it felt nothing like a smile. "If they can play this game, so can we." I paused. "If you're willing."

My heart was racing. This was all new territory for me. Something I would have sworn on my life I wasn't capable of twenty four hours ago.

He looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he was going to be the reasonable one. Long enough that I started to think he would say something sensible and talk us both down from this ledge.

Then his hand came up slowly and his fingers curled around my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.

My heart stopped.

His mouth came down on mine and every single thought I had left went completely quiet.

My eyes closed as I welcomed his lips, hot and certain against mine. Then without warning he lifted me clean off the ground and I yelped, grabbing onto his shoulders as my legs wrapped around his waist.

He carried me toward the bedroom like I weighed nothing.

Like Sera weighed nothing yesterday too.

I pushed that thought away before it could take root.

He threw me onto the bed and I bounced once against the soft mattress and sat up immediately, my pulse hammering everywhere at once. Scared. Hurt. Wanting this so badly it frightened me.

His towel dropped and I forgot how to breathe.

He was hard. His cock thick and girthy and veiny, a bead of moisture already at the tip, and the sight of him hit me somewhere low and immediate and I had to press my thighs together just to manage it.

His eyes were completely focused on me like a predator.

I reached into my small pocket, pulled out my phone and set it on the nightstand without looking away from him. My hands were shaking slightly. He noticed. He didn't comment.

He wrapped both hands around my ankles and drew me slowly toward the edge of the bed, toward him, holding my eyes the entire time like I was the only thing in the room worth looking at.

His fingers found the hook of my shorts and undid it easily. One pull and they were gone.

Then my top.

And the moment it came off, Julian's face appeared in my mind, uninvited and unwelcome. Our wedding day. His voice, low and sincere, swearing to love only me for the rest of his life.

Then I remembered Sera's head falling back in the rain.

I shook Julian loose and let him go.

I hadn't been touched in three months. Three long months of exhaustion excuses and forehead kisses and promises of later. And maybe that was part of why every nerve ending in my body was already on fire before Dominic even touched me properly. Or maybe it was the revenge of it. The wrongness of it. The fact that for the first time since yesterday I was doing something that was purely, selfishly mine.

Dominic climbed onto the bed and settled between my legs and my entire body tightened with anticipation.

His hand wrapped around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, warm and firm and commanding, and then his mouth found mine again, deeper this time, hungrier, like he had been patient long enough and was done pretending otherwise.

His lips moved to my neck and found that spot, that specific spot that I didn't even know existed until his mouth landed on it and I gasped so loud it embarrassed me.

I threw my head back and stopped being embarrassed.

Both his hands found my breasts and he gripped them, his thumbs rolling over my nipples until they hardened and a sound escaped me that I couldn't have held back if I tried. He squeezed and I arched into his hands like my body had already decided it belonged to him and was just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.

His mouth followed. Hot and wet, his tongue circling one nipple and then the other while I panted against the top of his head and gripped his hair and tried desperately to remember what self control felt like.

I couldn't.

He kissed down my stomach. My belly button. My hip bones. Each kiss deliberate and slow, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it.

His lips reached my inner thighs and I was already shaking.

He took his time there too. Kissing and grazing and deliberately avoiding where I needed him most until I was trembling and making sounds I hadn't made in a very long time.

"Please," I heard myself say.

He pressed one soft kiss directly to my clit and I nearly came off the bed.

Then two fingers pushed inside my pussy and I did come off the bed, my elbows catching my weight as I stared down at him with my mouth open and my mind completely blank.

He looked up at me and smiled. Actually smiled. Slow and knowing and absolutely devastating.

Then his fingers began to move.

"You are so wet," he said, his voice rough and low, and the words alone sent another rush of heat through me.

His tongue joined his fingers, his lips wrapping around my clit and sucking while his fingers curled deep inside my pussy and found something that made my entire body seize up with pleasure so sharp it was almost painful.

My legs were shaking. My thighs trembled against his shoulders. I was making sounds I would never be able to explain to anyone and I did not care even slightly.

He kept going. Relentless and focused and impossibly patient, reading every sound I made and adjusting until I had nowhere left to go, no way to hold on, nothing left to do except fall.

And I fell.

Hard.

The orgasm hit me like something breaking loose, rolling through me in waves that wouldn't stop, and just when I thought it was over, he pushed his fingers deeper inside me and curled them and something else happened entirely, something I had never experienced before, a rush so intense and overwhelming that I cried out and gripped the sheets and felt myself squirt, warm and uncontrollable, soaking his hand and the sheets beneath me while I shook from head to toe with shock and pleasure.

I lay there for a moment, chest heaving, completely undone and deeply embarrassed.

Dominic looked up at me from between my thighs with an expression that was equal parts satisfaction and raw hunger.

That, I thought distantly, is why Seraphine Ford you are the biggest fool alive.

He pulled me to the edge of the bed again, lifting me easily so my legs bracketed his waist and my arms found his neck on instinct. One hand gripped my ass firmly. The other guided his cock to my pussy.

He pushed in slowly.

I stopped breathing entirely.

Because nothing in my entire life had ever felt like that. Not once. The stretch of his cock filling my pussy so completely, the way we fit together like something designed rather than accidental. Like my body recognized him even though my brain was still catching up.

My mouth fell open.

"Oh God," I whispered.

He said nothing. He just watched my face with those dark eyes and pushed deeper until there was nowhere left to go and I felt him everywhere, his cock buried so deep inside me I could feel it in my stomach.

Then he fucked me.

His thrusts were hard and deep and hit something inside me that I genuinely had not known existed before this moment. I wasn't sure if I was crying or moaning. My eyes were wet and my throat was raw and I could not tell the difference and did not care.

Julian had never fucked me like this. Not once in our entire marriage had I felt anything close to this.

The thought appeared and disappeared in an instant because Dominic shifted his angle and everything went white.

He gripped my ass with both hands and controlled the rhythm entirely, pulling me forward to meet each thrust, fucking me so thoroughly that the sound of it filled the entire room and I stopped caring about anything except the next thrust and the one after that.

The second orgasm built faster than the first. Deeper. It started somewhere in my spine and radiated outward and I buried my face in his neck and held on for my life while my whole body shuddered through it, my pussy clenching around his cock so hard that he groaned out loud against my ear.

His pace increased. His breathing roughened. He fucked me harder, deeper, rougher, his grip on my ass tightening to the point of almost pain and I loved every single second of it.

Then he stilled with a rough groan and I felt his cock throb and release deep inside my pussy, hot and overwhelming, his entire body shaking while his arms held me so tightly I could feel his heartbeat slamming against my chest.

We stayed like that for a long moment. Both breathing hard. Both completely wrecked.

Then slowly, carefully, he carried me back to the bed and laid me down and sat quietly beside me.

I stared at the ceiling.

Wow.

I kept that entirely to myself. There was no need to say it out loud. Some things didn't require commentary.

I turned my back to him, suddenly aware of everything. What I had proposed. What I had done. How much I had enjoyed it when enjoyment had never been part of the plan.

The shame came quietly. Not because of him. But because of how completely and willingly I had come undone in the arms of a man who was not my husband, and how little I regretted it.

How was I supposed to face him now?

"I'm sorry." His voice came from behind me, low and careful.

I felt his hand move lightly across my back.

"I shouldn't have released inside you. I lost control and..."

"It's okay," I cut him off. "I'm on the pill."

There was a pause. "Why?"

I turned to face him, wondering how to answer that, when my phone on the nightstand lit up.

He was closer. He picked it up and held it out to me, glancing at the screen.

"Your world is calling," he said quietly.

I looked at the name and felt the warmth drain out of me completely.

Julian.

I took the phone. I looked at Dominic once.

Then I answered it and put it on speaker and set it on the bed between us.

"Good morning to the love of my life."

Julian's voice filled the room. Warm. Tender. Completely convincing.

I opened my mouth to respond.

And then Dominic's lips landed on that sensitive spot on my neck.

I hadn't expected it. Not even slightly. The warmth of his mouth against my skin sent a shock straight through me and my head fell back before I could stop it and a sound left my throat that was completely and unmistakably a moan.

There was dead silence on the line.

Then Julian's voice returned. Every trace of warmth completely gone.

"Celeste." His voice sounded flat. Hard. Dangerous. "Are you with a man?"