Page 56 of Claimed By the Boss
The penthouse is dark when we walk in. He doesn’t turn on the lights.
I’m the one who turns to face him first.
“You didn’t answer me,” I say.
“I know.”
“Why not?”
He looks at me in the dim light coming through the windows, the city laid out behind him in its endless indifferent glitter, fifty-three floors of distance between us and everyone in it. Something in his face has the rawness of a man who has spent the entire drive home arguing with himself in silence and finally, decisively, lost.
“Because I don’t know how to say it without it meaning more than I’m ready for it to mean,” he says.
I didn’t expect that. Of everything he could have said, every deflection or half truth I had braced myself for, I didn’t expect honesty about the dishonesty itself. I didn’t expect him to hand me the shape of the thing without giving me the thing.
“Try,” I say.
He doesn’t try. Not with words.
He closes the distance between us instead, his hand finding my jaw the way it has before, except this time there’s nothing careful about it, nothing deliberate or measured the way it usually is. This is a man who has been holding something back for two months, maybe longer, and has just run out of room to keep holding it.
I don’t pull away.
I’ve been asking myself for weeks why I don’t pull away, why some part of me stopped wanting to the moment he told me the truth about Gregor in this same kitchen, and I still don’t have an answer that satisfies the version of me that signed a contract without reading it and has spent every day since trying to undo that mistake. The version of me that should know better than to let a man who built a cage around her also be the only person who has ever fully shown up.
Maybe I don’t need an answer tonight.
His mouth finds mine before either of us decides anything else, before either of us can talk ourselves back into the careful distance we’ve been keeping for three months. It isn’t soft. It isn’t the slow, deliberate thing from the night he told me everything in this kitchen. This is the question from the car, unanswered and unbearable, turning into something neither of us can put into words.
His mouth finds mine before either of us can think better of it.
The kiss is urgent and deep, almost rough. There’s nothing careful in the way Zane kisses me now. His hand grips my jawfirmly as his tongue slides against mine, tasting like the whiskey he drank at Orlov’s house.
I kiss him back just as hard, my fingers curling into the front of his suit jacket. All the words we didn’t say in the car pour into this moment. The question I asked. The answer he wouldn’t give. Everything we’ve been circling for months crashes together right here in the dark penthouse.
He makes a low, rough sound in his throat and walks me backward, never breaking the kiss. My back hits the wall near the entrance, and I gasp into his mouth. His body presses against mine, solid and warm through his suit. I can feel how hard he already is.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my lips, voice low and strained. “Tell me right now if you don’t want this.”
I don’t tell him to stop. Instead, I pull him closer and bite his bottom lip. “I want you.”
Zane groans and kisses me harder. His hands slide down my sides and grip my hips, pulling me against him.
We move together, stumbling a few steps deeper into the living room. The only light comes from the city glittering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It casts everything in cool silver and deep shadow.
He shrugs off his suit jacket without looking, letting it drop to the floor. I attack the knot of his tie, loosening it until he yanks it over his head. My fingers work on the buttons of his dress shirt as he finds the zipper at the back of my evening dress.
The sound of the zipper sliding down is loud in the quiet penthouse. Cool air hits my skin as he peels the dress down mybody. It pools at my feet, and I step out of it, left in nothing but my heels and lace underwear.
Zane pulls back just enough to look at me. His breathing is heavy, chest rising and falling. His eyes move slowly over my body in the dim city light.
“Fuck, Celine,” he says, voice rough with want. “Look at you.”
He kisses me again, deep and hungry, then trails his mouth down my neck. He sucks hard at the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, hard enough that I know it will leave a mark. I moan and tilt my head to give him better access.
His hands cup my breasts, thumbs brushing over my nipples until they tighten. I arch into his touch, my own hands pushing his shirt open so I can feel the heat of his bare chest.
He walks me backward until my back presses against the cool glass of the massive window. The city sprawls fifty-three floors below us, endless lights twinkling in the dark. Zane drops to his knees in front of me, still wearing his unbuttoned dress shirt and suit pants. He looks up at me, eyes dark and intense.
