Chapter 41

He positions himself at my entrance, the blunt head of his cock pressing against my core. Our eyes lock. Something passes between us—an acknowledgment that, whatever happens next, there’s no going back.

“Tell me one more time,” he says, his voice barely recognizable. “Tell me you want this. I want to make sure you⁠—”

“I want this.” The words come easily now. I want to give him every single thing he could ever ask of me. Take me from any angle, destroy me, give me or take me or hurl me out of the fucking window if that’s what he craves. “I want you.”

He nods. “So be it.”

Then he pushes inside in one brutal thrust, and I scream—from pain, from pleasure, from the overwhelming fullness of finally having him inside me after years of desperate wanting.

He stills, allowing me to adjust to his size, his forehead pressed against mine.

For one heartbeat, two, we stay suspended in this moment of connection.

Then he begins to move, and the world erupts around us.

There’s nothing gentle about the way he fucks me. He pins me down, one hand gripping my thigh to spread me wider, the other tangled in my hair, forcing me to maintain eye contact as he splits me apart.

“Is this what you wanted?” he demands, voice raw. “To be fucked by a monster?”

“Yes,” I gasp, beyond pride, beyond shame. “God, yes.”

His rhythm falters at my honesty, something vulnerable flashing across his features before the mask slams back into place.

He hooks my leg over his shoulder, driving deeper, hitting a spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.

“Say my name,” he commands. “I want to hear it when you come.”

The pressure builds inside me, a tidal wave gathering force. I’m balanced on the knife’s edge of pleasure.

I can’t take it.

I can’t⁠—

I can’t⁠—

“Vince,” I whisper, then louder as he drives into me harder, faster. “Vince!”

My release crashes through me with such violence that it feels like dying. My body convulses around him, pulse after pulse of ecstasy tearing sounds from my throat I didn’t know I could make.

He follows me over the edge with a guttural groan, his body going rigid against mine, his face transformed by pleasure into something almost beautiful.

For a moment afterward, we lie together, sweat-slicked and panting, the anger and wrongness that fueled us temporarily sated.

His weight crushes me into the cushions, but I don’t care. I want to be crushed by him, consumed, obliterated.

Because in this moment of perfect annihilation, I don’t have to think about what comes next.

I don’t have to face the truth that I’ve just fucked my boss.

That I’ve just fucked a killer.

That I’ve just fucked a man who’s already promised to someone else.

I don’t have to face the truth that I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now, lying beneath the most dangerous man I’ve ever known.

A man who’s watching me with eyes that have gone cold and calculating again, the iron of the ruthless businessman sliding back into place even as he’s still inside me.

“We need to talk,” he says.

And just like that, reality comes crashing back.

Along with the sickening realization of what I’ve done.

29

ROWAN

The morning after is supposed to be soft light streaming through curtains, whispered promises. Maybe breakfast in bed, if I play my cards right.

This is not that kind of morning.

I wake up alone on my couch, my body aching in places I didn’t know it could ache. The apartment is empty. No sign of Vince except the lingering scent of his cologne and the marks he left on my skin.

I touch my neck where a bruise is forming, physical evidence of my stupidity.

Like I needed a reminder of that.

“What have you done, Rowan?” I whisper to myself.

The silence offers no answers.

I drag myself to the shower and crank the water as hot as I can stand. I scrub at my skin until it’s raw, as if I could wash away the memory of his hands on me. His mouth. His words.

Tell me who owns this pussy now.

You do.

God, I actually said that. I actually let those words come out of my mouth.

I can’t decide what burns hotter: the shame or the water.

I rest my forehead against the tile wall, letting the spray pound against my shoulders. What was I thinking? He’s my boss. He’s a criminal. He killed a man in front of me.

And just in case I decided I was suddenly fine with all of that…

He’s also supposed to marry someone else.

But even as hot, liquid shame washes over me, I can’t deny the truth: It was the best sex of my life. The only sex of my life that actually felt like it mattered.

Like I mattered.

No wonder people destroy their lives for this feeling.

I step out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel that’s old enough to be closer to tissue paper than anything properly absorbent. My reflection in the steam-clouded mirror is a stranger to me. I trace all the things that weren’t there yesterday: the cut on my cheek, the bruise on my collarbone, the fingerprints on my hips.

Souvenirs of the night I lost my mind.

My phone buzzes on the counter. A text from Vince.

Car will pick you up in 30 minutes. Business as usual.

Business as usual. As if nothing happened. As if he didn’t ruin me on my own couch last night.

What a fucking joke that is.

Part of me is relieved. Maybe we can pretend it never happened. If we agree on that, then I can walk into that office and be nothing more than his assistant again.

The other part of me is utterly and completely devastated.

“Professional,” I say to my reflection. “You can do professional.”

Spoiler: I cannot do professional.

I’m a crumbling ruin from the second I step foot on Akopov property. The office feels different today. Or is it just that I’m the one who’s different?

Diane doesn’t even deign to nod in greeting as I pass her desk. Does she know? Can she tell just by looking at me what happened? Am I drowning in a cloud of eau de pathetic?

“He’s in a meeting,” she says before I can even say hello, eyeing me warily over her reading glasses. “Should be done by ten.”

I mumble something that approximates “thank you,” settle at my desk, and do my best to focus on the mountain of emails that accumulated during my absence.

Work. Safe, predictable, boring-as-hell work. I can lose myself in this. The number my brain, the better.

I deliberately avoid looking at Vince’s closed door.

By lunchtime, I’ve managed to clear most of the backlog. I’ve also successfully avoided any direct contact with Vince, timing my bathroom breaks for when he’s in meetings, keeping my eyes glued to my computer when he passes my desk.

Then Natalie calls, demanding details about where I’ve been for the past two days.

“Family emergency,” I lie. “Mom needed me.”

“You could have texted,” she scolds. “I was worried sick!”