Page 50 of Claimed By the Boss
The pace gradually builds. His thrusts grow harder, deeper. The sound of our bodies meeting fills the room. I wrap my legs tighter around his waist, taking him even deeper.
“Zane… Oh fuck, right there,” I gasp.
He grunts and angles his hips, hitting that perfect spot again and again. “Like that? You want it deeper, baby?”
“Yes,” I moan. “Please.”
He fucks me harder, breathing heavily against my neck. Sweat slicks our skin. I feel another orgasm building fast. My nails dig into his shoulders as I cry out.
“Come for me again,” he growls. “I want to feel this tight cunt squeezing my cock.”
I shatter with a loud scream, clenching hard around him. Zane groans deeply, his rhythm faltering as my orgasm triggers his own. He thrusts deep one final time and comes inside me, pulsing hot and thick. He stays buried deep, grinding slowly against me as he fills me, his breath hot and ragged against my ear.
We stay locked together for a long moment, breathing hard. Then he slowly pulls out and lifts me into his arms.
He carries me through the glass doors onto the wide balcony. The cool night air hits my overheated skin as the city sparkles far below us. He sits on the wide outdoor lounge chair and pulls me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me. His hand strokes slowly down my back in soothing circles.
Neither of us speaks for a while. The kitchen light is still visible in the distance, glowing softly. I rest my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slowly calm down.
I’m still angry. I’m still scared. But right now, wrapped in his arms under the night sky, I let myself feel safe.
20
ZANE
Sorrel doesn’t answerhis Tuesday message.
This is the fact, not a feeling. Every Tuesday for six weeks, my team has sent a routine check to a contact embedded near the Marchetti faction’s mid-level operations, a low-stakes question about shipping schedules that exists mainly to confirm the contact is still active and unbothered. Sorrel answers within the hour every time. He has missed two windows before in six weeks, both of which were explained within a day.
Tuesday, he doesn’t answer. Wednesday morning, he still hasn’t answered.
I notice this because I read the daily intelligence summary the way I read everything, completely, and a missing data point is itself a data point. I flag it. Roman flags it independently twenty minutes later, which tells me it’s significant enough that two people looking at the same information arrived at the same concern without comparing notes.
“Find out why Sorrel went quiet,” I tell him.
He’s back in my office by four.
“Sorrel didn’t go quiet,” Roman says, closing the door behind him. “He got pulled in. The Marchetti faction is conducting an internal review into how they obtained the information about Celine. Sorrel’s name came up because he’s the one who passed it to them.”
I set down the document I’m reading. “From Gregor.”
“From Gregor.” Roman places a folder on my desk. “Confirmed. Three separate threads. The restaurant meeting three weeks ago. A second meeting two weeks after that, at the same location, with the same contact. And a financial transfer eleven days ago that doesn’t match anything on Gregor’s legitimate accounts.”
I open the folder. Read the transaction record. The amount is not large. It doesn’t need to be large. It needs to exist, and it does, dated and traceable and sitting in a numbered account that Gregor has used twice before for things he didn’t want appearing on the books he shows the rest of the council.
“What did he give them?” I say.
“Everything. Her background, the Queens address, Lena’s medical situation, the timeline of the contract.” Roman’s voice doesn’t change register, but he pauses before the next part, which is how I know it matters more than the rest. “And the pregnancy. He gave them the pregnancy two days after the council meeting, when you told them.”
I sit with that for a moment.
Two days. The succession documentation was still being drafted. Alexei’s team hadn’t finished the formal recognition process. The protection I had built for the meeting had not yet taken effect when Gregor handed the most valuable piece of information he had ever held to a rival organization.
“He had two days,” I say. “He used them.”
“Yes.”
I close the folder. “Get him here,” I say. “Now.”
