DEREK
shouldn’t have done that.
Goddess help me, I shouldn’t have fucked her in the car.
Not in a public alley. Not in a luxury vehicle with windows that weren’t even tinted dark enough to shield us from passersby. Not with photographers crawling through every backstreet hoping to spap a scandal.
Paparazzi. Nosy citizens. Some rogue looking to sell secrets for con. Anyone could’ve seen us. And they might have.
But I couldn’t help it.
She reached across the console and took hold of me like she owned me–and maybe she did. From that moment, I wasn’t a man anymore. I was hers.
Completely. Feral for her. Devoted and undone in equal measure. The world could have gone up in flames around us, and I still would’ve stayed in that seat, letting her ride me like I was born for it.
It was good.
No it was divine.
I hadn’t even managed to get my seatbelt off. I was still strapped in, chest locked against the harness like a man imprisoned by his own restraint, while she destroyed me. She took everything. Every last shred of self–control. And then she gave it all back
tenfold.
And now…
Now she was tucking me back into my trousers with the unbothered calm of a woman smoothing her napkin at a fancy restaurant. Like she hadn’t just shattered me. Like she hadn’t rewritten the definition of surrender in my blood and breath and
bone.
She smoothed her dress down over her thighs, adjusting the fabric carefully. Every movement was tidy. Precise. The same hands that had clutched at my hair and clawed down my chest were now dainty and demure.
She flipped down the passenger–side visor and checked her reflection in the mirror. She dabbed lightly at the edge of her lipstick, then blotted with her finger and nodded, satisfied.
She looked flawless.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t remember how to breathe.
She glanced sideways at me, lips curling like she hadn’t just unmade my entire goddamn world, and said–cool as ever- dinner? I’m starving.”
I was wrecked.
If I didn’t love her before, I was utterly besotted now.
Powerless to her wiles.
Lovesick at her feet.
Utterly laid to waste.
Elena settled back in her seat and pulled her own seatbelt across her chest with practiced ease. Like nothing at all had just happened.
–“So…
I started the car again, shifting it into reverse, and backed out slowly, inch by inch, still half in a daze. My hand rested on the back of her headrest as I craned to check for traffic.
1/3
Chapter 279
+25 BONUS
I could still feel her warmth on my thighs. Could still feel the ghost of her breath on my mouth. My skin buzzed with aftershocks.
When I eased us back into the flow of traffic, I caught a glimpse of her in my peripheral vision.
She looked calm. Content. A faint smile curved the edges of her mouth as she watched the city roll past us again. The glow of the streetlights caught in her hair, weaving gold into the braid resting against her collarbone.
I risked a glance at her from the corner of my eye.
She was radiant.
Untouchable.
Mine.
If she asked me tonight–if she looked at me with those fire–glass eyes and asked me what we were–I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d tell her everything.
I’d tell her about the girl I fell in love with in the forest. About the woman who saved my life when I was a child. I’d tell her how I lost her. How I mourned her. How I broke myself trying to move on, and how none of it ever worked because she was it.
I’d tell her that loving her has been the one constant in a world that keeps shifting beneath my feet.
But she didn’t ask.
She just sat there, composed and devastating, as if she hadn’t just shattered every ounce of my composure and rebuilt it into something wholly hers.
She reached for the dial on the dashboard and turned the music back on. Something low and warm spilled through the speakers. I didn’t even register the melody. All I could hear was her.
I gripped the wheel tighter and drove us toward dinner on legs that still remembered the feel of her wrapped around my waist. Pretending–for the sake of sanity–that I hadn’t just fallen completely, irrevocably in love with her.
Chapter 280
