I reopened the laptop and watched the cursor blink in the subject line of an email draft. Eliza’s edits were precise. The deck was better for them. She’d been right, as always.
I thought about the flight we’d be sharing. How I’d have her trapped in a fuselage at thirty thousand feet, all pretense stripped away by jet lag and recirculated air. How she’dinevitably challenge every slide, every bullet, until the truth emerged sharp and raw.
I wondered, not for the first time, if I was giving her the shot she deserved, or if I was setting her up for a fall she couldn’t recover from.
Either way, I’d know very, very soon.
Chapter Nine
Eliza
Gabriel and I argued late, long after the cleaning crew left the building, after the city outside went as quiet as it could.
The conference room echoed our hostility. The words were razor-thin, Gabriel’s voice sanded smooth as always, mine pitched on caffeine and hunger and stubbornness.
I hated how calm he stayed. I hated that I needed to match him, moment for moment, threat for threat, like some fucked-up arms race between two people who didn’t know how to back down.
He wore black: obsidian suit, deep blue silk shirt open, just enough to show the man took damn good care of himself. Every move a warning shot. The outline of his jaw, honed by refusal and self-denial, looked sharp enough to draw blood.
He leaned over the end of the table, fingertips pressed to the mahogany. And he watched me. Watched me pace. That’s what I’d always suspected; Gabriel Valor wanted to see if he could break me, and every day I showed up in tailored armor and red lipstick just to prove he couldn’t.
The final volley was so boring it was tragic.
“We won’t make the deadline, it’s not possible,” I said, already knowing the outcome.
He watched me with that dissecting stare. “Then we work through the weekend. Call in the team.”
“Which team? Half of them are off. You know that.”
He waited for a moment and said, “Find a way. Or tell me you can’t.”
He wanted me to flinch. I set my jaw and glared straight through him. “Fuck you, Gabriel.”
“Noted.” He smiled, just a little. And that’s where it should have ended. But it didn’t. I caught his scent; something cold, metallic, expensively forbidden. He was in front of me before I realized he’d moved. His hand clamped around my wrist, and he bullied me backward to the wall, the wainscoting biting my back as I glared up at him. But he grabbed my hips and lifted me up, my legs wrapping around him for survival. He pressed in, his body heat radiating through my clothes. His mouth crashed onto mine, scorching hot and deliciously wicked like the burn of winter air and crisp mint.
My hands circled his shoulders, nails biting in for fear he’d drop me. He growled at the sensation and ground his hips into mine. I could feel him, hard and insistent, through the tailored fabric of his slacks. An animal need hit me square in the gut, along with total erasure of everything but the urge to win or be ruined.
“You’re such a fucking bastard,” I said into his mouth, teeth grazing his lip.
“And you’re impossible,” he shot back, voice ragged now. “But at least you know what you want.”
He hiked my skirt up and his hand reached my panties. The movement was brutal, deliberate, exposing my bare ass to the chill of the wood as he removed my panties. My breath knifed out of me when I heard the sharp slap of his belt unbuckling as he pinned me to the wall with his hip. His hand was between my thighs before I could process that I was half-naked below.
He didn’t waste any time and he was inside me in few seconds. The head of his cock was hot, blunt, shoving into the slick center of me with zero preamble. It hurt so fucking good, just a sting, and I gasped, but there was no pause. He thrust in hard and forced my body to stretch to accommodate him.
“Don’t you dare fucking stop,” I said, my own hips trying to shift into him more and more, desperate to grind on him and release the deep aching need he’d awoken in me. I’d given up dating. Swore off men. They were a distraction at best, annoying at worst.
His hands grabbed my ass, forced me up, spread me wider. I gripped his waist with my knees on instinct, gripping so tight my thigh muscles burned.
He pumped into me, ruthless and steady, all that businesslike restraint disintegrating in the dark. Every time he bottomed out, I felt it in my core. He bit my neck, not sweet, not gentle, just a mark to show he’d been there. It was possessive and mean and perfect.
I clawed his shoulders, left little crescent moons in the fabric. He liked that. He sped up, hips snapping into me, breath hitching in my ear. I couldn’t tell which of us was making the noise anymore; it all blurred into this rhythm, a punishing pace built from friction and anger and years of wanting something you were supposed to hate.
I came first. It blindsided me, tore through my center and up my spine. I shattered around him, nails raking his back, voice gone hoarse and helpless.
He followed with a low, guttural sound, slammed me into the wall one more time and let go inside me, hot and deep and unprotected. The mess of it was instant, slick and undeniable. Then he kissed me. And he didn’t stop kissing me, not even as we both started to slide down the paneling, his hands still squeezing my flesh like he thought I might disappear.
I felt his cum leaking around him before I could get my breath back. There was a satisfaction in it, a kind of territory marked, a reminder I’d let him do exactly what I’d sworn I wouldn’t. He pulled out, slow and lingering, and set me carefully on my feet. His belt hung loose around his hips. My skirt was still pushed up, my blouse askew, lipstick smeared across his mouth and probably mine, too. I didn’t fix it. I didn’t look away.