But not tonight.
The leather tails tap against her shoulders once more, leaving them beet red before I focus on her bottom, bringing all that delicious heat there—to where I want her sensation to go. My cock is suffering, so desperate for her touch, as I endure hearing her soft, sensual moans.
Each swipe of the flogger floods me with my own sense of pleasure, and I want to keep going, never stopping until I reach her limits, but I spot her hard quivers before I hear the cracks in her moans.
I won’t push her, not tonight. This is a taste. I want her to want more.
I toss the flogger to the ground and grab her hips, flipping her onto her back. Those eyes…I have to see them. The moment I do, I need to be deep inside her, owning her.
The way she’s staring at me now is something different—something so pure and beautiful it should be untouchable. Yet somehow it’s mine. I reach back for the condom she’s left on the bed and my hands are shaking as I sheath my rock-hard dick.
I don’t wait.
I can’t.
I nudge her thighs open for me and enter her in one swift stroke. Her shout of ecstasy slides over me in a sizzling embrace, and I grind my hips, pressing my weight on her, holding her pinned beneath me. Hot pleasure seeps into my body as I ride her hard—harder than ever before, to bring us both to orgasm. I don’t need hours to fuck her. I simply crave to fuck her right.
I want to possess her body.
I need to mark her soul as mine.
My cock hardens with my thrusts and those pretty eyes are huge and glassy, not even seeing me. Her chin angles up, her inner walls become a vise grip around my shaft. I’m staring at her, knowing the battle is lost to us both. We fought the end, not wanting the moment to vanish, hoping this feeling could go on and on.
But I needed her, and she loved me.
With one final thrust, her eyes clear and she’s all I see—all I know—as we both give in and crash over the edge together, leaving me bucking and jerking, roaring out my release.
Then it’s just us, sweaty skin, fulfilled promises, and healed hearts.
Many more moments pass, while I’m breathless, resting my forehead on hers. “I get it now,” I eventually say.
“Get what?” she whispers, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath mine.
“Your secret.” I move away, looking into those soulful eyes that somehow shredded me to pieces and rebuilt something better in its place. “Love, that was the secret you seemed to keep hiding from me, and that I so desperately wanted to find out. That’s what you knew all along, isn’t it? This, us, it’s love, and all I had to do was see it.”
She gives me the only answer she needs to.
Her smile.
Epilogue
Allie
One month later, I’m staring at Micah and Darius from my kitchen, watching them chat away as I fill my wineglass to the rim. Micah joins our Sunday night dinners now, and my brother is changing in ways I never imagined. He hasn’t asked me a single financial question in the past month, nor does he bother me about the remaining money in my trust fund. Our conversations are more normal than they’ve ever felt before.
It’s a good change.
I stick the cork back into the wine bottle, regarding them closely. Regardless, it’s all weird that I know things about Darius that I truly don’t want to know, I try my best not to think about him owning a sex club or his involvement in the darker delights of sex, because there’s something special in the way Darius and Micah interact. They share a closeness that I like.
I’ve never really seen Darius like this—so at ease, so comfortable.
Even so, I’ve never asked my brother or Micah more about the DC than what I learned from Juliet. Micah made a vow of secrecy to protect those in that particular group, and I feel to ask him to break his promise makes him choose between his word and me. And the truth is, I don’t care. The past is the past. I have Micah’s future, and so far that future has been introducing me to the absolute best sex of my life, so full of love.
I return the wine bottle to the fridge and join the men again, taking a seat beside Micah on the couch. This is my last night of being in my condo. Tomorrow, Micah and I will live together at his home. I look around at the boxes of all my belongings, not with sadness, but happiness that we’re taking a big step now, instead of baby steps. Marriage doesn’t seem so far away, and that feels great, making me realize how good things are between Micah and me, when it definitely hadn’t been easy getting to this place in our lives.
I glance between them, sipping my wine, listening to them chat away, completely unaware I left and came back into the room. I haven’t gotten a word in for the last fifteen minutes, but I understand why the tension is thick in the air when I look at the two ripped-out magazine articles from the tabloid Gotcha! on my coffee table. The first headline reads: Can Micah Holt be forgiven for the ultimate betrayal? Or will Allie Parker come between two billionaires?
That article isn’t the first time I’d been mentioned in the tabloids in an odd way. I glance at the very first article that