I’d spent the day biting my tongue through workshops on “ethical marketing strategies”. The kind peddled by suits who’d probably covered up three patient deaths before breakfast, then green-lit a stock buyback the moment the quarterly projections looked ripe enough to squeeze for profit.

And they did it with the same hand, same pen, same smile.

Working in Compliance was one thing. I could stomach the gray. I had. I did. That was the job. But getting up on a stage to preach about integrity with that kind of beatific conviction?

Please—spare me.

Gray used to mean nuance. Now it meant rot in a tailored suit.

This wasn’t about ethics. It was misdirection dressed in corporate drag—sleight of hand with just enough polish to pass for principle. Surrounded by smoke, mirrors, and teeth-baring grins while the knife was still lodged between your shoulder blades, and thanking the bastard who put it there.

The bathroom sweated with leftover steam, thick enough to choke on. I peeled the curtain back and reached for the towel—soft, white, hotel-issue cotton. Pressed it to my face like that could muffle the echo of the day. Still dripping, breath stirring the fog, hair shellacked to my neck, shoulders, and back.

Three steps to the vanity.

My reflection waited in the misted glass—mascara bleeding down my cheeks, black fingers streaking flushed flesh, lips parted. Like I was caught somewhere between confession and collapse.

I braced my palms on the counter. Cool stone. Anchor point.

Closed my eyes…

…and felt him.

Not physically. But the memory pressed against the backs of my eyes, settled heavy behind my ribs. Warm palms, grip flexing on my thigh. His mouth sealing over mine like he meant to swallow any protest before it formed. His weight pinning me, daring me to shove him off.

“Tell me to stop.”

Whether a ghost, or a fantasy wrung from the damp clench of my cunt—didn’t matter. My body didn’t know the difference between being touched and being haunted.

I dunked my face into the water gathered in my palms like it might jolt me back to reality. Hoping it could rinse the filth and want from me, and douse the heat burning under my skin.

I wiped the streaks away with a clean towel, as if cotton could erase a week’s worth of regret. As if it could blot out the echo of his mouth or the stain of my consent.

It couldn’t.

I twisted my hair into a towel and reached for the waffle-textured robe hanging on the back of the door. Dragged it over skin still damp from the shower. It clung in all the wrong places—too clean, too cool. Penance in cotton.

The room was freezing, and I should have been numb. Instead, my thoughts circled like vultures over the carcass of my composure. All I could focus on was how close he’d been in the lounge—how impossibly warm. A match that refused to go out. Heat I kept trying to convince myself I didn’t want, and couldn’t stop remembering.

I flipped off the bathroom light. The minibar winked at me from the corner. Slim pickings, a perfect reflection of this trip and of me, barely holding it together behind the veneer of hotel glass and corporate polish.

Pretending I wasn’t already fucked. Pretending my virtue hadn’t been manhandled by a man who looked just as decadent in custom Italian wool as he probably did in nothing at all.

I cracked the cap on a vodka shooter, knocked it back, and clenched my teeth against the shudder it left coiling at the base of my spine. Palmed the other.

Yesterday’s conference packet was still folded on the desk, smug in its refusal to be discarded. Lingering like it meant something, like anything about this fucking conference ever mattered.

But it did.

A list of sponsors ran along the bottom margin—small, clean logos, barely worth a second glance.

Except one.

A crescent: minimalist, precise, and sharp enough to split my fraying nerves like a whetted blade.

I stared, swallowed again, and not because of the vodka.

It was the same logo on the letterhead in the file we weren’t supposed to have. Unredacted, prominent, and too visible not to have been intentional.

I didn’t remember grabbing my keycard. Didn’t remember the hallway or the smooth plastic of the elevator call button under my thumb. Didn’t remember pressing the number for his floor.

Just felt it pulsing behind my eyes like a migraine:

Room 914.

I watched the floors climb. My reflection warped across the mirrored panel beside me while my pulse thudded in my ears—too steady. A the moment of apprehension before something breaks open. Like wandering through a house of mirrors, hunting for edges that didn’t push back. Searching for a path forward that didn’t shift underfoot.

I wasn’t sure why. Why I thought showing up at Miles’s door draped in damp cotton and denial was going to slide the pieces into place.

Why I was still arguing with myself. I wasn’t going in.

Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

The elevator dinged. The doors peeled open slow, like a warning. A plea for common sense.

Go back. Spare yourself the regret.

I stepped out. Rounded the blind corner.

Stopped cold.

Bare feet. Perfectly manicured toes. A blur of sun-kissed leg—long, tight, and toned.

I nearly slammed into her.

Her badge slipped from her grip and fluttered to the carpet between us. I opened my mouth to apologize. The words jammed in my throat the moment our eyes met, daring me to choke on them.

I knew her.

Knew the way she’d looked at Miles last night in the lounge like he was the axis the room spun around.

Blonde, damp hair towel-dried, heels hooked in her fingers, skin dewy. And the shirt?

Not hers.

Light blue, with mother-of-pearl buttons. I’d memorized the cut on him. I knew how it would smell if I pressed my nose to the collar—clean heat, faint smoke, cedar, and citrus. His skin. The same shirt he’d worn last night—top buttons undone, sleeves rolled to his forearms while he leaned in like an indulgence I wasn’t supposed to want.

Now it was draped across skin he’d definitely touched.

The hem brushed her mid-thigh. Long enough to play at modesty, but only if you weren’t really looking.

And I was. I couldn’t stop.

The fabric clung like a whisper, thin enough to reveal everything it pretended to hide. The dark pink peaks of her nipples were visible through it, pert against the sheer material. The faint, shadowed wedge of her black lacy panties made more obscene by the half-assed attempt at chastity.

Jesus.

Heat slammed through me, vicious and sudden. My chest clenched tight, and I hated it. Hated him. Hated her, a little.

But mostly? I hated myself for how easy it was to imagine what his heat soaking through fabric felt like. How his palms glided across bare skin with the confidence of a man who knew he wouldn’t be denied.

He’d be leaned into, embraced, begged for more.

I swallowed hard, and stooped to pick up the badge on the floor.

Her name: Harper—printed in heavy black type set. And underneath: Synthera.

I stood slowly, holding the badge out to her like an offering. Her eyes met mine. Held.

And everything clicked. So loud it echoed in my skull. In my teeth. In the cool surety of reason as it came flooding back.

Fuck me. I’d just found my smoking gun.

Now I knew what Miles had traded for the file we weren’t supposed to have, and who he’d gotten it from.

Her gaze dragged over me, head to toe. Deliberate. Lingering. Sizing me up, as if she’d just watched the full picture come into focus behind my eyes.

The way her lips turned at the corners? Yeah, I’d seen that look on another face too—direct and smug as sin.

She didn’t look like a woman caught at the tail end of a regrettable decision. Not one making her walk of shame back to her room. Not one caught sampling the forbidden fruit or dancing with the devil.

She stepped past me without a word, rounding the corner with the sort of loose, easy grace that didn’t need an audience to feel like victory. Like she’d won something. Like she’d ever really been playing the game. Like she’d taken something I hadn’t wanted until I saw her holding it.

She had his hands on her skin. Walked away draped in his shirt, heels hooked over two fingers like proof of conquest.

I saw it too clearly: the way he’d cradle her jaw while he tongue-fucked her mouth. Not sweet. Not careful. Just heat and pressure and that low, filthy growl he’d let go when I’d let him slide deeper.

Like he was starving.

My cunt clenched, sharp and wet. Stuttering around nothing but air and regret. My body remembered the way his fingers sank into me. The way my thighs shook while my body begged.

She’d been toyed with, but in all the right ways. The ways that had you choking on your own pleas for more.

My pulse roared in my ears. My face burned. My skin crawled.

Miles Wren.

Corporate-slick motherfucker with a god complex. A walking, talking, breathing conflict of interest wrapped in vice and luxury. My boss.

And I still fucking wanted him.

The ghost of his grind surged between my thighs—slow and relentless. Memory with a hard-on. Hung like sin, cocky enough to know it, and smug enough to make you say please.

I braced a hand against the wall, breath catching as I chased clarity through a brain soaked in sweat, heat, and bad decisions.

Forget the giggly bitch in Wren’s shirt. I had ammunition now. I wasn’t the only one being played.

I could burn them both to the fucking ground and walk away without a single singed hair on my head.

And I knew someone who’d strike the match with a smile. There was one person, besides me, who’d love to see Miles Wren go up in smoke—especially if the scandal had teeth.

Liam Rourke.

I had the full picture now. And god, I could see it: the look on Miles’s face when it clicked. The slow drain of control he commanded so effortlessly. And his giggly side-piece with her little smirk wiped clean while the walls caved in on both of them.

Because Miles was slick—yes. But he wasn’t infallible. He wasn’t nearly as untouchable as he liked to think.

And I wanted him to know. Wanted to look him in the eye and say:

When the fuse runs out—it’s me. I lit it. And I’m going to watch while it burns.

Game. Fucking. Over.

Room 914.

I knocked once. Hoped he’d come to the door slicked in Miles Wren swagger so I could watch it liquefy in real time.

What I didn’t know—what I wouldn’t admit—was that this was never about revenge.

Not really.

I couldn’t admit I was chasing the low hum under my skin, sweet and poisonous. A pull I’d been pretending to ignore.

Because for all my righteous fury, if he opened that door, if he asked me in…

There wasn’t a chance in hell I could say no.

So I stood there, caught in the hinge between vengeance and ache. Between cold reason and raw need.

Going back meant silence. It meant playing the long game, and cold sheets against skin still burning from fantasy. It meant lying in the dark, breath shallow, heart racing, with his name hot on my tongue. Like it had been every night since the basement.

And my fingers would drift low, starving for what I refused to name while the rest of me screamed the truth.

The door opened.

Fuck.

He was temptation given flesh. Naked from the waist up, hair a damp, tousled mess. Sweatpants slung low, clinging to the deep cut of his hips.

Double fuck.

No underwear. And the outline? Criminal.

Just above the band of fabric—ink. Lettering carved across the front of his pelvic bone, a whisper of temptation:

Sub pectore ferro.

I felt the heat rise in my cheeks—a scalding swell that rolled down my spine and settled in my core.

Suddenly I was aware that I’d left my room in nothing but a bathrobe. I stood there for a second, hips angled like I might bolt. Like I hadn’t just imagined the press of his hand between my thighs, confirming the want we both knew I was desperate to swallow.

He looked like every mistake I’d always wanted to make, and never had the guts to.

I forced my eyes up to meet his.

“You always sign your checks with your dick?”

His brow lifted. His eyes skimmed over me, slow and unbothered, from throat to ankle. Not leering, not exactly. But my robe felt stupidly porous under his gaze.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Maddox?”

His proximity felt like a fucking invitation. That smug, magnetic pull he wielded like a weapon. Like he knew its effect, and counted on it.

My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails biting sharply into the meat of my palms, hard enough to sting. Clenching tight like they could hold the line.

“I could burn you.” I said, voice tight as my throat. “Burn you and the giggly bitch. Thought you should know.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. A crack in the veneer. Like he almost smiled, or almost snapped.

“That right?” he asked, voice thick with illicit promise. He nudged the door wider with the slow press of his foot, leaned into the frame like sin wearing skin. “Come in. You can tell me all about it.”

No way in hell.

Not with him looking like that—half undone, wholly dangerous. Reeking of heat, scotch, sex, and a dozen bad decisions I hadn’t let myself make. Yet. Grinning in that well-fucked way that said the night wasn’t over—he was still hard for it. Like whatever he’d just taken apart wasn’t quite enough.

He looked at me like I was the fire he wanted to dowse in gasoline. Like he wanted another taste of me, because the first wasn’t enough. As if he needed to see if I’d burn hotter the second time.

The threshold felt like a line I’d drawn in chalk, only to pray for rain. Looming like an exit sign from hell, or maybe it was the entrance. I couldn’t tell anymore.

I felt the tremble in my hands. Restraint stretched so taut it hummed through my limbs, threatening to snap. I knew it, he knew it. It wasn’t rage dragging me here, or revenge. Not really.

It was desire: gnawing, relentless, real.

He reached, fingers brushing my wrist. A whisper of contact that sent an electric pulse careening up my spine.

I didn’t pull away.

His fingers curled, grip firming, thumb dragging lightly against the underside of my arm. He stepped back, just enough to draw me with him, the pressure on my wrist deepening—not forceful, but insistent.

My feet moved before my sense could tell them to stop.

The door slammed shut behind me, hard enough to rattle the cheap art on the walls. The room was dark, lit by only a single lamp by the bed—its glow low and honey warm, throwing long, deliberate shadows across the walls.

Across him.

All shadow and muscle, cut in angles and suggestion. Broad shoulders, bare skin burnished gold where the light kissed him. Half-undressed, half feral.

“How do you sleep at night?” I asked, voice low. “Using people like currency. Like leverage. Like something to be spent.”

“I sleep rather well actually,” he said, eyes finding mine through the gloom. “All things considered.”

He spoke with the lazy confidence of a man who knew guilt looked better on other people. And sin?

Better on him.

He tracked the tension in my jaw, the heat burning just beneath the surface. Tilted his head, filed it away like proof, mouth twitching like he’d just confirmed a theory.

“This about Harper?” He asked, lips curling into a smirk. “Lovely lady. Not much of a conversationalist, though—not like you.”

He was watching me unravel like he’d pulled the thread just to see how far it’d go. To map my fault lines himself, witness the way I’d come apart.

“Don’t look so dejected sweetheart,” he said, voice all smoke and provocation. “If you want me Maddox… all you have to do is say so.”

He took a step, then another. Stopped only when he eclipsed the light. The weight of his palm landed heavy against the door behind me. I pressed back against it, half-hoping if I leaned hard enough it might swallow me out from under him.

He cradled my jaw in his hand, kept my gaze caught by his, and leaned down close enough that his breath ghosted across my lips.

“So say please.”

The memory hit like a punch to the gut. Not just the kiss—what followed.

The scrape of teeth. The wet heat of his tongue in my mouth, his fingers buried in my cunt like he knew the terrain.

And the worst part?

I’d wanted it. Wanted more. Spent every night since trying to forget how good it felt to be broken open by a man who never asked, just dared me to tell him to stop.

My lips parted, tasting the memory of him like a sin I’d already confessed to.

Where the fuck was my resolve?

Gone, ripped away by the gravity of him.

What remained wasn’t anger. It was need, raw and unrepentant, throbbing beneath my skin like a bruise.

The air pulsed—charged and feral. It crawled under the robe, up my legs, between my thighs and found the heat between them like it meant to touch me before he did.

My breath hitched.

“Please,” I whispered.

That was all it took.

His mouth crashed onto mine—teeth, tongue, pure fucking claim. I met him just as hard, bit his lower lip, devoured the taste of him like it was the only thing tethering me to the present.

Maybe if I kissed him hard enough, it would absolve me of all the ways I’d already said yes.

He claimed every inch he could reach—lips, throat, jaw, collarbone. Teeth scraping more than kissing. Like he’d waited too long and hated himself for every second of restraint.

He fisted in the fabric at my waist, yanked the tie loose with the fury of a man who blamed the knot for keeping him from what he wanted. Forearm taut beside my head, braced, boxing me in.

Mine.

Like he knew I wouldn’t stop him—and I didn’t. I needed this. All of it. The roughness, the dominance, the breathless devotion of it. I was burning alive in his hands, coming apart where his mouth branded my skin. Scorched from the inside out with no promise of mercy.

And I hated him for giving me exactly what I needed. For knowing how.

I hitched a leg on his hip, fingers digging into his shoulders for leverage. Felt him—fuck—rock hard and throbbing through the thin fabric of his sweats, pressing into the weeping ache between my thighs like a loaded weapon—cocked and ready.

A threat. A promise. An inevitability.

He growled, deep and guttural, fingers locking under my thigh as he hiked my leg higher. The shift dragged me flush against him, every rigid inch grinding into the soft, soaked part of my need.

“Is this what you came for?” He rasped against my mouth, grip flexing on my thigh as his fingers dug in. “You can still walk away, Maddox.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Not when every inch of me was screaming for him. My lips parted on a sound I didn’t mean to make, dangerously close to a confession.

There was no pretense now. No performance. Just friction and heat coiled so tight it threatened to snap the hinges of my sanity.

“Say it again,” he growled against my lips, rutting once—hard enough to feel everything.

I expected smug amusement. What I witnessed instead was desire that burned hot enough to reduce me to cinder.

My slick smeared hot against him, soaking through the thin fabric of his pants. There was no hiding it. No pretending I wasn’t already wrecked for him.

Every roll of his hips whispered the same dark mantra:

You want this. You need this.

Say it. Take it. Beg for it.

Break for it.

I shuddered. Hated him. Wanted him. Clung harder.

“Please,” I hissed, voice raw, breath broken.

He groaned like I’d just given him something necessary for life.

“Still hate me?” He asked, lips dragging along my jaw, then lower along the curve of my throat. His tongue was molten, possessive. Teeth grazing just enough to sting.

“Yes,” I breathed, and arched into him anyway, because the truth came easier than restraint.

“Good.” The word curled low and dark in his throat.

Then he sank his teeth into my collarbone like a fucking signature.

And—fuck me—I let him sign.

He yanked the robe off the other shoulder. The fabric collapsed from my frame in one fluid motion, pooling uselessly on the floor.

Cool air licked across my bare skin.

So did he.

His hands were greedy, moving to cup my breasts. His thumb brushed over one pebbled peak, and he cursed lowly before his lips closed around the other. The wet, fervent slide of his tongue was devastating—teeth catching, drawing me in.

“Ah—fuck, Miles—” I gasped, fingers raking through his dark hair as I arched into his mouth.

His eyes burned. His mouth bruised. He was a god carved in heat and hunger, pinning me to the door like worship could only amount to ruin.

And then…

He sank lower. His mouth blazed down my center, and he knelt like it was natural. Like he’d always planned to end up there—between my legs, dragging one over his shoulder like that’s where it belonged.

I’d never dared to imagine that the man on his knees before me would be Miles Wren.

This man haunted every thought I wasn’t supposed to have. And now he knelt, eyes level with the ache he’d coaxed into a fever.

Mouth parted, hands reverent.

Like I was the alter, and he was ready to sin.

A hand on the small of my back guided my hips forward, toward his mouth.

I stared down at him, eyes wild. “Wait—”

The word barely formed before it died on my tongue.

He touched me. His finger, slow and certain, eased through my wetness. Spreading me in a single obscene stroke. He circled my clit once, twice, then pressed his thumb against it. The pressure was perfect, the way he rolled his finger over it stole my breath, had my core clenching, eyes rolling. My hips jerked with every pass, like my body was chasing the friction, begging for more.

I moaned.

“You’re soaked,” he murmured, more to himself than to me.

And when he looked up—when his eyes met mine—I watched the slow drag of his tongue over his lower lip.

He pulled his thumb away slowly, his breath skating over my sodden sex. “I’m gonna fucking devour you, and ruin you for anyone else.”

If the words weren’t enough to buckle my knees, or the look of that infuriatingly smug smirk between my thighs, the first pass of his tongue would have been.

One slow, deliberate lick along the length of me—from entrance to clit—peeling me open. If he weren’t on his knees, mouth on my soaked cunt, I might consider it cruel. My body answered when words failed, hips surging, thighs trembling, chasing the heat of his mouth. Desperate for more.

His lips closed around the throb of me—tongue swiping, swirling, flicking against my clit with the kind of patience that spoke of nothing less than worship. Like he was learning me by feel.

Then his finger slid in, knuckle-deep, and curled like a secret I thought I still held behind my teeth. The moan I gave him in return was raw, dragged from deep in my chest, filthy and helpless.

And still, he wasn’t done.

I whimpered when his finger withdrew, gasped when the wet slide of his tongue found my entrance. He drank me down like he was parched, and my wetness was the only cure.

My hands tangled in his hair. I could hardly remember how to breathe. Each time he delved into my depths another thread unraveled:

My jealousy.

My anger.

My hatred.

My determination to see him bleed for all of it.

Forgotten, dust in the wind.

And what was left?

Only the blistering want that drove the shamelessly lewd roll of my hips against his mouth. He licked me with the focus of a man who knew exactly how to make me fly apart. Violently.

My breath hissed like a pressure valve on the verge of failure—interrupted only by my desperate, half-whispered, half-moaned pleas for more.

“Miles,” I breathed, my eyes rolling as my head thumped back against the door. “Fuck—please—don’t stop.”

He groaned against me, the vibration making my hips jerk.

If this was what ruin felt like, I’d gladly let him pull me apart.

My grip tightened in his hair, dragging his mouth harder against the unbearable throb of me, want sharpened into a razor’s edge. I needed to cum while riding his tongue. My hips moved in a desperate rut, chasing the finish.

But he only growled; gripped me just shy to the point of bruising. Locked me in place.

And denied me.

One final drag of his tongue over my clit, enough to make me whimper.

Then gone.

My desperation ignited into frustration. I glared down at him like something feral, something cornered and still clinging to control—teeth bared.

His lips and chin were wet with the remnants of me, and that fucking grin made my blood boil. Want skittered just beneath my skin—volatile. Violence crackled like static between us.

He drew his hand across his mouth slowly, and then it slid up my thigh, coaxing it from his shoulder as he rose.

But he didn’t let go.

He hitched it high over his hip again, the motion rough, possessive. One hand firm on my leg, the other rose to grip my throat. Not hard, but like he meant to both hold me still and make me feel everything.

I tasted myself on his tongue when it slid languidly into my mouth. Sweet, and needy enough to fucking beg for him.

“The only way you’re coming tonight sweetheart,” he spoke slow, voice low, velvet fraying like his control. “Is on my cock.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He shoved his sweats down just low enough on his hips to free himself. I felt the blunt, hot press of him as he dragged himself through my slick, swollen lips.

“Last chance,” he murmured, breath fanning hot across my cheek.

I didn’t hesitate.

“Shut up and fuck me.” I growled through clenched teeth.

He thrust into me—hard—and it punched the air from my lungs like a fist to the ribs. I choked on it. His hands shifted, sliding high on my thighs, under my ass, and he lifted me against the door, spreading me open wide around him. My ankles locked at the small of his back. Fingernails raked down his chest as gravity did most of the work for him, and I bit down on the curve of his shoulder to keep from screaming.

His growl splintered through me, the feral sound of a man gone fully primal. His next thrust came slower—brutally precise—like he was searching for something darker.

And found it.

My spine bowed. My eyes rolled back. The world careened off its axis and spun into a fathomless void as he dragged against the origin of my feverish ache.

He didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Didn’t let up.

He didn’t let me fucking breathe. He just dragged me deeper, anchored me in the wave of sensation. Made me feel it. All of it. Every fucking inch.

“I’ll still burn you,” I gasped, breathless, half-wild, fury sharpening the edge of my pleasure. “I’m not her. You can’t fuck me into silence. Don’t think this means anything.”

His chuckle was deep and decadent. Too refined for the filth of the act, too controlled. Like he knew that was bullshit.

And fuck, maybe he was right.

“Of course it doesn’t.”

The declaration was punctuated by another thrust—deeper, harder, devastating.

His voice was softer, crueler, closer:

“Not unless you want it to mean something.”

He said it like an offering. Like a threat. Like he knew I wouldn’t admit that the lines I’d so carefully drawn had already bled into nothing. Because I couldn’t admit it.

He filled every fucking millimeter. Made me feel every ridge, every vein, every pulse of what I’d let inside. All of him. Every brutal, beautiful inch. He was cracking me open each time our hips met. Lights exploded behind my eyes in bursts of fractured gold.

And he didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Didn’t let me forget who it was pulling me apart.

“I’ll make sure you feel me,” he breathed into my throat. Wrecked—and wrecking me with every breath. “Hours from now. Days.”

I hated how my hips moved to meet his in a perfect, ruinous rhythm. Hated how he filled me, claimed every inch of space inside me like a right. How he stole my breath with every plunge, left me gasping, drowning—choking on sensation while surrounded by air I couldn’t breathe fast enough.

Every drive of his hips struck deep, and the pain was—god—it was delicious. Jagged. Mind-bending.

My head thumped back against the door. I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling. I was moaning—unhinged, needy, shameless.

And I didn’t care.

It only spurred him on. Every thrust jolted me against the door—its cold weight biting into my spine, while his heat devoured me from the front. The dichotomy was a perfect contradiction—sensation and silence. Cold and burn. Him and me.

He demanded my surrender with every grind of his hips, every scrape of his teeth, every wet, possessive drag of his tongue.

And god, I wanted to give it. I wanted him. Every inch. Every word. Every fucking lie he’d ever whispered, and every truth I’d never let myself believe. I wanted to hate him until the end of time. And I knew if he asked me to, I’d beg him to let me.

I broke—shattered into a million pieces around him. Soaked him, myself, the floor. My body convulsed beneath the weight of it. Breath fleeing my lungs as my inner walls clenched around his cock, desperate to hold him inside me like I couldn’t bear to let go.

And he stopped. Paused. Let me ride out the waves—every last fucking ripple—while he remained buried to hilt. While he felt me come apart. All the way to the bitter end.

My breath broke. My body clutched at him, spasming, wrung out and wrecked, trying to hold onto something. Not realizing it was over. I fought to pick up the pieces of myself, struggling to understand what the hell had just happened.

Where my sense had gone.

Sweat-slick, legs trembling.

He leaned in, pressed his forehead to mine. Our gazes locked—open, unguarded. Our gasps fell into sync, like we were trying to remember how to breathe, together.

And when he spoke…

It was so low, so rough, I could almost pretend he hadn’t said anything at all.

But I heard it.

“Wasn’t her I wanted.”

I froze, going rigid beneath him. Saw something flicker through his gaze. A crack—too fast to be calculated. A confession—too deep to be causal. Too raw to be meaningless.

How fucking dare he. Balls deep inside me and he still had the nerve to play these games.

My hands flattened on his chest, ready to shove—but he moved first. He carried me, still inside me. Mine to hate. His to defile. My legs tightened as the cold press of the door fell away from behind me.

He threw me down on the bed, and was poised over me before I could orient myself. One arm braced on the mattress, the other nudging my knees apart. Left vacant, clenching around absence, chasing the phantom shape of him.

And I couldn’t tell if my hate was aimed more at him for letting me feel it, or at myself for wanting more.

“You want to ruin me?” he murmured, a question that wasn’t a question. His eyes were dark, but crystal clear. “Didn’t I warn you—be careful who you threaten? Now look at you. Wrecked. Looking like something I broke open.”

My gasp was ragged as he dragged a finger through my slick folds. The sensation cracked through me like a live wire, tightening everything. Cunt clenching hard around nothing but emptiness and humiliation.

He sank into me slow, unerring. A man too familiar with exactly how to crack me open. I clawed at the bedsheets as he curled his finger, arched when he dragged over the same spot he’d sawed against to draw my first orgasm in record time. And he stayed there, pressed against it, his thumb rolling over my swollen clit.

“You fight like you’re not already wounded.” He leaned over me, teeth dragging over my nipple. His tongue followed, lips closing around the tight peak, tongue swiping until I whimpered.

“Still wanting to pretend you have some control over how this ends. But that’s not what you want… is it, sweetheart?”

His grip was bruising as he hiked my leg over his shoulder, spreading me open like he meant to erase any footnote of resistance.

And then he was inside me—no warning, no softness.

Only certainty.

My breath choked off, fingernails raking down his back as I arched into him, needing to take more. He settled deep, and held there like filling me was a right he’d earned—not stolen.

His hand curled around my throat, voice sliding over my skin like smoke, curling against the bruise blooming at my collarbone.

“You think baring your throat is weakness?” His tongue was molten as he drew it across the stamp of his teeth in my flesh. “Wrong again. It means you have nothing to lose.”

He rolled his hips, pulling back—just enough to make me feel the drag of his retreat—before easing back in. A threat. A promise. A line he knew how to cross and make me thank him for it.

“That’s the difference, Maddox.”

He fucked it deep, carving his truth into the softest, rawest part of me like a signature. “I bleed with intention. But you?”

And I realized—he hadn’t flinched.

Not while I held the file like a dead man’s switch.

Not when I accused him of stealing it.

Not when I’d confronted him about the bitch from Synthera, or how I could burn them both to the fucking ground.

He never tried to defend himself. Never offered an excuse. But he had turned every accusation around on me like he wasn’t sitting on the same powder keg.

Because he wasn’t.

He’ll watch you bleed out and call it a strategic pivot.

He’d only ever offered one thing. And I was on my back, taking it.

His gaze never left mine, watching the pieces slide together behind my eyes. Buried to the hilt.

“You’re already gutted, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Just too proud to admit it.”

He pulled back with a groan as I clenched around him, reflexive and desperate. Still clinging onto the high of him even as I struggled to piece my sanity back together.

He paused at the brink of leaving me empty, just to remind me who held the fucking cards. Even as my nails scored his back, red welts rising like rage branded into flesh.

He stroked my jaw with his thumb, grip flexing around my throat—just enough to feel the threat in it.

He leaned in, close enough that our lips brushed when he spoke.

“You want to hate me.” He smiled against my mouth, cruel and quiet. Certain.

Then his hips snapped forward, driving deep, bottoming out like he meant to anchor me in the depths of my own insanity.

My legs wrapped around his hips and bound him tight to me. I ground against him, chasing the stretch, the pressure. The kind of pain that lingered. That rewrote something. I was caught between held breath and release. My body confessed the truth my mouth refused to.

“I do hate you.” I bit out—then moaned when he rolled his hips again, slower this time.

I didn’t know if I meant it anymore.

Didn’t care.

All I could feel was the way he filled me—like he meant to break me open and carve his name into the soft meat of the wreckage. It was the kind of pleasure that didn’t come without consequence.

This was the sin of choosing surrender. Of choosing the fall with eyes wide open.

And I was already so far down the rabbit hole, I couldn’t see the light anymore.

I was never supposed to want him. I was supposed to hate him. Hating him made it easier to deny the pull. I could almost forget how it started. How effortlessly he’d drawn me from the clarity of black letter law, and onto a path lined in teeth. Into the grey fog of Compliance.

Positioned me like a pawn, exactly where he wanted me. Always within reach. A move executed with his signature precision.

He was never supposed to have me.

And somehow, that only made it better.

“Let me show you,” he murmured, dragging his lips along my jaw. “I can teach you how to bleed with intention, Delaney. How good it can feel.”

Hard to imagine anything feeling better than this. How he pulled me apart with the steady thrust of his cock. How he buried himself so deep I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. How my cunt clenched around him each time he withdrew, trying to pull him back.

Whether I hated him or not didn’t matter anymore. My body told the truth in the loudest, most obscene way. Every gasp, every choked breath, every moan evidence of the inevitable.

I didn’t want to want him. But want was already too small a word for what throbbed between my thighs. What gripped him tighter with every stroke. I could hate him later. Right now, I’d let him teach me.

I pressed my mouth to his. Not gently. Not sweetly.

Like a reckoning. Like I meant to leave a mark of my own.

He rose to it. Rolled onto his back like a man ready to be worshipped. One arm bent behind his head, his other hand wrapping around his cock—slick with the mess of me. His fist moved from base to tip, tight and deliberate. Stroking slow like he wanted me to watch.

When he blinked his eyes held shut a beat too long. He was pulsing in his grip, throbbing. Making a show of it.

For an audience of one.

Not looking at me, but absorbing the heat of my gaze. He knew I was watching. Knew I couldn’t look away. Letting me see the effect I had on him—raw and unfiltered.

Bleeding with intention.

The emptiness he’d left in his wake started to ache. Like he’d hollowed me out, and I hadn’t noticed just how deep he’d burrowed until he was gone. Until my cunt was left weeping for more.

I could walk away, right now.

I sat up off the bed. Stood. My eyes found my robe, laying lamely in a heap by the door.

And then I turned. Mounted him like a command, and reclaimed him in one long, slick stroke. I watched his jaw tighten, heard the moan he tried to choke back, the way his breath stuttered. Just for a moment.

A crack in his carefully architected control. A load bearing wall wobbling beneath the weight of his own need for release.

“God, that’s fucking perfect,” he murmured—reverent, eyes locked on me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered. “That’s how you take what you want, sweetheart.”

The heat of his palms ghosted along my thighs, curling around my hips as he gripped me. Held me there, fully seated, impaled by all of him. And then he pulled my hips forward, just a little, but enough that my clit dragged against him. I let my head roll back, my moan—wet and needy—folding into the sound of his as I bared down on him. The sensation reverberated up my spine like an electric pulse.

I cupped my own breasts, rolled my nipples between my fingers, and rocked my hips, wringing the slickness of my cunt and grinding down on my clit in a slow, lecherous rut.

I thought I’d take his cock to punish him. But this wasn’t about retribution anymore.

This was indulgence. Knowing it was wrong, and doing it anyway. And loving every fucking second of it.

I braced my hands on his chest, nails biting viciously into flesh, and tightened around him as I worked up his length. Released on the downstroke, and he slid into me like he belonged there.

Skin slapped—hot, wet, filthy.

I fucked him like he was the last man on earth.

“Fuck—Delaney—”

Something ugly clenched in my chest when he said my name. Something like recognition.

He hadn’t cornered me this time, and when given the choice to walk away—I hadn’t.

My name on his lips? It sliced through the heat like a blade, forged for purpose.

“Shut up,” I snapped, catching his lip between my teeth hard enough to sting.

I sank down on him—all the way—until he was buried to the hilt. I took every inch slowly, deliberately. Until I could feel the blunt press of him against the deepest part of me.

Until it felt like I’d tear on it. Split down the middle by pain and fuck.

His groan broke from deep in his chest, low and feral, as my tongue swept into his mouth and met raw heat. He fisted my hair, anchored me against him, mouth to mouth. Then fucked into me, hard, his other hand bruising my hip like he meant to hold me until the truth broke me open again.

Grip tight, commanding. Almost…

Reverent.

He forced me still, and bucked with savage precision that punched the breath from my lungs. No mercy. Rhythm breaking into something carnal. Need given flesh. Bruises bloomed beneath his fingers.

And my body gave—claimed and begging for more.

The swell rose with vicious inevitability. It built tight behind my ribs, low in my belly, burning through every frayed nerve ending. The bite he sank into my shoulder lanced pain through my spine. Made me gasp, my breath leaking from me in a groan like he’d punctured something just to see it bleed.

“You need to get off,” he rasped at my throat, voice thick with the edge of release.

“Not a chance in hell,” I panted, already too far gone to bluff.

Then lower, heat and venom sharpening the words into something deadly:

“Come in my pussy, Miles.”

His groan tore out of him like it hurt to hold back. I clenched like I could squeeze it out of him—milk every last drop. His hips stuttered. His breath choked.

“You’re fucking insane,” he bit out, jaw locked.

I braced myself, waiting for the recoil. I half expected him to shove me off, toss me my robe, and slam the door in my face. To erase the whole thing with that corporate precision of his.

But he didn’t.

“Maybe it’s insanity we’ve got in common,” he whispered, wrecked and reverent. “And fuck me—maybe that’s your best quality.“

Oh, fuck yes!

My orgasm slammed into me with violent finality, ripping through muscle and breath like fire through dry timber. Every inch of me clenched, trembled, and he only pulled me tighter against him, drawing me close. Every soft curve of me melted into the hard, unrelenting lines of him.

He came with a sound that didn’t belong in a boardroom—a growl like violence carved into skin.

“‘Laney—“

He barely got it out through clenched teeth and choked breath. His body locked beneath mine, hands gripping me like he could hold me together just long enough to fall apart.

I felt it. All of it.

Everything.

The twitch of him inside me.

The burn of it dripping down my thighs.

The way I clenched around a truth I didn’t dare acknowledge.

I stayed straddling him, chest heaving. My sweat-soaked hair was wild, clinging to my cheeks, my throat. His grip stayed firm on my hip, but the hand tangled in my hair slowly unraveled, fingertips tracing the line of spine.

Warm. Careful. Dangerously tender.

The silence hung thick, broken only by our ragged breath.

I fucked him like I meant to leave. Like I still had the upper hand. Like I could keep pretending this was about power.

Like it hadn’t cracked something open inside me, and I wasn’t still bleeding from the truth of it.

My cheek rested against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow to something steady.

And then, so quiet I almost missed it:

“I wasn’t supposed to,” he said, voice broken.

I lifted my head, looked at him. Really looked.

I’d never seen Miles so pliant. The blue of his eyes was soft. Raw—and that rawness spoke of truth.

It scared the hell out of me.

“Wasn’t supposed to what?” I asked, guarded.

He swallowed, jaw tight. His hand settled, warm and steady, against the curve of my spine.

“Want you like this,” he murmured, brushing my hair from my cheek, from my throat. He gathered the sticky strands and guided them gently over my shoulder.

…gentle.

He wasn’t supposed to be gentle. Tenderness meant care, and he wasn’t supposed to care—at all.

My throat tightened. My hands, still splayed on his chest, trembled.

I wanted to spit something cruel to bury the ache of it. I wanted to laugh in his face, and fucking crush him just to witness the carnage.

Now would have been the perfect time to do it.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Instead…

“Too bad,” I said, quiet but clear.

His brow furrowed—just a flicker. But it shifted something in the air. Enough to let me breathe. Enough for me to look away.

“You weren’t supposed to have me like this either,” I added, with more steel than I felt.

I pressed my palms flat to his chest. Pushed off him—not rough, not tender.

Just done.

I rolled onto my side without looking at him. Kept my back to him. Not because I didn’t want to see. Not because I didn’t want to stay, or be held.

Because I did.

That want held me so still I barely breathed, terrified he might pull me in. More afraid he wouldn’t.

Behind me, I heard him shift. Heard the rustle of sheets, a breath held and let go—slow.

He didn’t touch me. Didn’t reach. Didn’t dare.

And the silence between us burned worse than anything he could’ve said.

***

The shrill ring of the hotel phone tore me from sleep. Sunlight slashed through the barely parted curtains—too fucking bright.

I yanked the receiver off the hook, a little harder than necessary.

“Yeah?” I snapped.

“This is your nine a.m. wakeup call, m’am. As requested.”

“…Thanks,” I muttered, dropping the phone back into its cradle.

I hadn’t requested a wake-up call, but sure. Nothing like a polite kick in the ribs to start your morning.

I sat up. Rubbed at my eyes.

Same hotel bedding, but the silence screamed. The unmistakable absence choked like spent air.

I scanned the nightstand.

No phone. No note. No trace of him.

Just me, naked and alone, in a room that looked scrubbed of presence. Like he’d never been there, and maybe I’d hallucinated the whole goddamn thing.

The soreness between my legs begged to differ.

For a second, I wished I could peel back time and forget. But his scent still clung to the pillows. To my skin. A ghost with teeth that knew how to bite back.

My robe lay crumpled by the door like proof, as if I needed more of that. I moved slowly, wincing as I bent to pick it up. Checked the pocket—keycard, still there.

Checkout was at ten.

No sign of Miles. No toiletries, no suitcase, not even a half-drunk glass of water.

I wasn’t sure what I expected. Of course he’d done what he does best—slipped out clean. Made sure I had a wake-up call.

Because that’s the thing about power, isn’t it? I’d given my body, fucked until he’d split me wide. Thought it’d give me an edge. Thought I’d glimpsed the man behind the fiction.

But Miles wrote this playbook. Slung truth bombs like weapons. Because for some reason, fucking me hadn’t been enough. He wanted to see me bleed.

Leaving me here? That was his final move. His way of flipping the board while I was still reaching for my next piece.

And letting me think I’d seen him falter.

I snarled and wrenched the door open, making the walk back to my room like every step was a goddamn indictment.

I cranked the shower to scalding and scrubbed until my skin burned.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t scrub away the way he’d looked at me. The way he’d held me against him like it meant something.

I couldn’t forget that I wanted him to.

My hands shook as I braced them against the tile. Chest tight. Heart knocking against my ribs like a battering ram.

I could feel the migraine coming from miles away.

Pun fucking intended.