He withdraws gently, his body leaving hers with a soft, wet sound that makes her shiver. The sudden absence is a shock, a cold rush of air against her sensitized skin. For a long moment, he just looks at her, his chest rising and falling in ragged unison with hers against the wall. Then, without a word, he bends, one arm sliding behind her knees, the other cradling her back, and lifts her.
The walk to the bedroom is a silent procession. He carries her as if she’s something fragile, not the woman he just took against a wall with punishing force. Her head rests against his shoulder, her nose buried in the scent of sandalwood and sweat and sex. She doesn’t look at the suite they pass through; she watches the tight line of his jaw, the faint pulse hammering in his throat. He lays her on the cool, dark sheets of the massive bed, her ruined dress rucking up around her hips.
Instead of leaving, or joining her, he kneels beside the bed. The dim light from the ensuite bathroom cuts across the planes of his face, leaving his eyes in shadow. But as he looks at her, his ice-blue gaze traces the line of her cheek, the swell of her bottom lip, the flutter of her pulse. And she sees it. Not calculation. Not victory. A raw, bewildered fear that mirrors the chaotic storm inside her own chest.
His hand reaches out, his fingers trembling almost imperceptibly before they brush a strand of damp hair from her forehead. The touch is unbearably gentle. It’s the touch of someone who has never touched gently before and doesn’t know what to do next.
“That wasn’t in the contract,” Lila whispers, her voice hoarse.
Adrian’s gaze drops to her mouth. He doesn’t answer. He just keeps looking at her, as if she’s a equation he can no longer solve.
He kisses her.
Soft. A brush of his mouth against hers, tentative and searching. Nothing like the claiming fury against the wall. This is something else. A question. His lips are warm, slightly parted, and they tremble against her own. He tastes of salt and her, and the gentleness of it is more devastating than any force. Lila goes utterly still, her breath catching in her throat, every nerve ending she thought was spent suddenly singing again.
He doesn’t pull away. He rests his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. The hand that isn’t braced on the mattress comes up to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking the line of her cheekbone. “Don’t,” he whispers, the word raw and cracked open. A warning. A plea. She doesn’t know what he’s telling her not to do—don’t speak, don’t move, don’t make this real.
“Adrian,” she breathes, and his name feels different in her mouth now. A key turning in a lock.
He shudders, a full-body tremor that she feels through the palm she didn’t realize she’d laid against his chest. His heart hammers under her hand, a wild, frantic rhythm that betrays the calm of his kiss. He opens his eyes. The ice-blue is gone, replaced by a storm-gray, wide and unguarded. The bewildered fear is still there, but beneath it, something hotter. A desperate recognition.
“This is a problem,” he says, his voice low and wrecked. He says it like a diagnosis. Like a death sentence.
Lila kisses him back. Soft. An answer to his question, a surrender to the thing he just named a problem. Her lips move against his, tentative at first, then deeper, drinking in the taste of salt and shattered control. She doesn’t think. She feels. The cool silk under her bare shoulders, the heat of his skin under her palm, the tremble in his jaw as he lets out a quiet, shattered sound against her mouth.
He breaks the kiss but doesn’t pull away. He rests his forehead against hers again, his eyes closed, his breathing a ragged counterpoint to the hum of the air conditioner. His thumb still strokes her cheekbone, but the motion is slower now, hypnotic. “Lila,” he breathes, and her name is a confession he never meant to make.
“I know,” she whispers back, because she does. She knows this is the problem. The contract is ash. The performance is over. All that’s left is this: his frantic heartbeat under her hand, the damp warmth between her thighs, the terrifying, open vulnerability in his storm-gray eyes when he finally looks at her.
His gaze drops to her mouth, swollen from his kisses, then travels down the line of her throat, over the exposed slope of her breast where her dress is torn. A muscle jumps in his jaw. His hand leaves her face, his fingers trailing down her neck, over her collarbone, until his palm comes to rest, hot and heavy, over her heart. He can feel it pounding. A mirror to his own.
“This changes nothing,” he says, the words rough, but the wrecked softness in his voice betrays him. His thumb brushes the upper curve of her breast, a slow, absent circle that makes her breath catch. “The game still has to be played.”
“What game?” she asks, her voice barely there.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lowers his head, his lips brushing the spot where his thumb just was. The kiss is feather-light, a brand. He inhales there, against her skin, as if memorizing her scent. When he speaks, his mouth moves against her. “The one where I ruin you,” he whispers, and it sounds like a promise, and it sounds like a prayer.