TABOO (A DEAL WITH THE SHADOW ALPHA) のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 101 - チャプター 110

ADDISON.I woke up warm.That was the first thing. I was on my side, tucked against Axel who was breathing so slowly and steadily beneath my cheek, and for a few seconds I just laid there and breathed his scent in and let myself be completely, undemandingly present in it.Then I tried to move my legs.I made a sound that I would describe as embarrassing and would prefer not to repeat.Axel was awake instantly. His arm tightened around me before I had finished making the sound."What's wrong?" Low and sharp, sleep stripped entirely from his voice."Nothing is wrong," I said, through my teeth. "Everything is fine. My legs are just, they're not cooperating."A pause. "Cooperating with what?""With being legs," I said. "With doing the basic fundamental thing that legs are supposed to do."Another pause, different quality this time. "Are you sore?""I am absolutely fine and this conversation is not happening.""Addison.""I am fine," I said, with great dignity, attempting to shift again an

ADDISONShe had been quiet on the way down from the mountain.Not the bad kind of quiet — I had learned the difference by now, had spent enough time in Addison's silences to understand that they came in different varieties and meant different things. There was the quiet of someone who was comfortable and present and simply not in the mood for words, which was one of my favorite things about her. There was the quiet of someone processing something, turning it over, looking at it from different angles before deciding what to do with it. And there was the quiet of someone carrying something they hadn't decided whether to put down yet.That last one was what she'd had on the mountain.I had felt it sitting beside her, felt the shift in her that had happened somewhere between arriving and leaving, some thought moving in behind her eyes and staying there while she leaned her head on my shoulder and looked at the city below and said nothing when I asked what she was thinking.I hadn't pushed

AXELFeign Paxton had been my guest for three weeks.I had him kept in the lower facility of my building in the outskirts of the city. I owned the building outright. The surrounding three blocks were mine too. It was, in every practical sense, the most private address in the city.Feign had not been enjoying his stay.I hadn't visited yet. I had been deliberate about that — about making him wait, about letting the waiting itself do its work. Fear, I had learned a long time ago, was most effective when it had time to grow in the dark without anything to measure itself against. Imagination was always more creative than reality. Let a man sit with what he thought was coming and by the time you actually arrived, half the work was already done.Three weeks was enough time.I finished my morning coffee, answered four emails that required answers, and told my assistant I would be unavailable until afternoon. Then I took the car to the east side.—-Marcus met me at the building entrance. He

ADDISONWe both stumbled into the elevator, his hands on my waist, pulling me deeper into the kiss, for some reason, today Axel took me through a different elevator; apparently it was his own private elevator he created when he bought the Castino building. I pulled away to catch my breath, my lips swollen and my cunt practically dripping for him. “There are no cameras in here.” he murmured, his lips skimming along my ear. “I can do anything I want to you…” he nipped my earlobe, hard enough to make me whimper. “And no one would know a thing.” My nipples hardened, and I didn't even bother to hold back my moan when his hand slipped under my dress. He groaned, he pulled me in for another rough kiss and I returned it eagerly. My fingers digging into his shoulders as he set me on the rail. It wasn't large enough to hold me, so I wrapped my legs around his waist for support. The thick hard press of his erection against my clit prompted another shameless moan from me. Axel’s kiss grew

ADDISONI don't know exactly when I decided.It wasn't one moment. It was more like a slow accumulation of moments adding up to this time, I wanted this.Not because I was afraid of losing him. Not because the alternative was too sad to look at directly. But because I had sat with it the way I sat with every decision that actually mattered — fully and honestly and without rushing it — and when I got to the bottom of it, past every question and every reasonable hesitation, what was there was just a very simple and very clear yes.I wanted to be with him.All the way. For all of it.For centuries if that's what it took."Mark me," I said.He pulled back just enough to look at my face properly, those green eyes doing what they did — reading, assessing, my face. His hand was warm at my jaw, tilted my face up toward his, and he looked at me for a long moment with an expression I could only describe as the most serious I had ever seen on him.Which was saying something because Axel Rex had