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“Two kinds.” He delivers another kiss. “Because I was also going to say, I’m happy to give you the first interview about Sage’s move to Emerald after we make the announcement. Would that please you?”

It would, but something in his manner tells me he was going to offer that anyway and is framing it as a “gift” to distract me from what’s really going on.

I didn’t say so a few minutes ago—playing ignorant is an advantage with overheard secrets—but he wasn’t speaking Portuguese on that call.

It was French, and I recognized three things: les droits de l’homme , human rights; scandale international , international scandal; and Aristide , the first name of the CEO of Emerald’s biggest sponsor, PlatiNumeric.

He’s trailing hot kisses down my neck and across my shoulder, and when he pauses to look at my face again, some hint of my frustration that he’s lying must show, despite how turned on I’m getting.

His smile is full of mischief. “You want to remain cross with me, hmm?” He caresses me from waist to hip, catching the hem of my short nightie at the bottom and sweeping it up, his touch whispering along my skin.

“Because…” One finger hooks into the strap of my panties.

“That day in Santorini you were quite angry. And that anger…” He drags the lacy strap down.

“Was a dash of salt to your palate. Something you can’t wait to taste again. ”

I shiver deliciously as the fabric of my underwear glides over the curve of my bottom, stopping halfway down. My nipples are tight and tingling, and it demands all my will to remain still as a statue, eyes cool, imperious, letting him try to thaw me.

“You asked me to tame you that night,” he says an inch from my lips, flicking the straps of my chemise off my shoulders. “Do you enjoy behaving like an ill-tempered little wildcat sometimes so you can be subdued?”

“Maybe. Ohhh…”

As Klaus strips the bodice of my nightie down and cups my breasts, taking a nipple into his mouth and rolling it with his tongue, my animosity burns away like a flash of steam from ice thrown onto a griddle.

He releases the nipple and kisses his way back up to my mouth, claiming my lips with intensity, stroking my tongue, impressing a bold bite to my lower lip that makes me whimper with both the sting and the knee-weakening hunger. As he pulls away, I lean toward him, following his mouth.

“It’s a lot of work, being such a good girl,” he murmurs, hypnotic.

“How many times have you called me an enigma, reproached me for being evasive? Yet you”—he turns me around to face the counter, and I lean on my forearms with a gasp—“hide your deepest nature from the world. So polite, forgiving, accommodating.” Drawing my hair aside, he kisses the nape of my neck. “ So biddable ,” he whispers.

He pushes my panties down with torturous slowness, and I’m already so wet that I can feel how the fabric peels away.

I moan, and an eager twitch shivers inside me.

I’m aching to feel him, and madder at myself for needing him like this than I am at him for lying about the phone call.

Why can’t I resist his touch, his scent, the timbre of his voice?

“Biddable? Me?” I ask as his hands glide over my bottom, dipping between my legs to tease me from behind. I duck my knees and move my hips to one side, playfully dodging his caress.

He gives me a little swat, then braces my hips in his big hands. “Wicked tease.”

“Do that again,” I urge, my tone a longing sigh. He delivers another two, and the intimacy of his warm hand against my skin lights me up inside. “A little harder…”

“I know what you need,” he growls. His leg moves between mine, and he nudges my thighs apart. “Wider,” he directs. “Open for me.”

I comply, waiting to hear the rasp of his zipper lowering, and am shocked pleasantly breathless when he lands a sharp smack against my pussy. A burst of lustful electricity shoots down my thighs. “Oh God!”

“Yes?”

His voice borders on smug, and I want to be annoyed about it. But I’m eager to feel his hand again. My clit is wide awake, throbbing with need.

“Please, more—”

I barely have the words out when his flattened hand smacks again, twice, three times. I’m taut with anticipation, breathing hard, my hips angling to give him better access.

“ Fuck…” I moan. Surprised at myself for cursing, I open my eyes wide, then squeeze them shut again.

Klaus chuckles, and finally I hear the welcome sound of his zipper. “There’s my lewd girl. Such unchaste words.”

He moves my legs together so I’m not as low to the floor, then slides his cock between them, his hands stealing around me, holding my breasts, warm and firm.

He churns his hips, rocking back and forth against me between my legs, outside of me.

I try tilting my hips to angle him for entry, and he pinches my nipples.

“No,” he says firmly. “You’ll come for me like this before I fill you. You keep asking to be tamed, kleine Hexe. I’ll oblige and make you so weak you can’t stand.”

Waves of pleasure rise as he plows against me. The wetness as we move together is so abundant, my thighs are getting soaked. One of his hands digs into my left hip as the other teases my nipple, herding me toward climax.

Through the pre-orgasmic haze, I insist, “I’m not as weak as you think…”

“I’ll only make your knees weak—never your spirit, my little conqueror,” he says. His jaw is tight; I can hear it in his voice as he tries to hold back.

I undulate my hips and let myself moan, knowing how it inflames him. I want to make him finish first… deny him, control him, break him .

The memory flickers up, the Mata Hari quip Nefeli made: Shag the dear boy into exhaustion and go through his pockets for secrets .

Admittedly, she claimed that wasn’t what she meant… but right now it sounds like a great idea. He lied to me. Maybe I’ll wear him out and put this mystery to rest once and for all, sneak out of the bedroom while he’s sleeping and go through his briefcase.

Nefeli referred to him as “putty in my hands,” but Klaus has always been more like a fistful of sand: conforming to the shape I want for a moment, but as soon as I remove the pressure, slipping through my fingers. My vexation at his power over me is nearly as intense as my arousal.

Why shouldn’t I try fighting fire with fire, if deception is his game?

Despite the vengeful thoughts in my mind, my traitorous body is lost in a delirium of desire. I’ve instinctively hit a rhythm, moaning, panting, thrusting back against him as his slick, steely heat rubs me just right.

Like a river tide lapping at the shore, he pushes me onward, until the warning glimmer shows through the cracks in my will, breaking deep in me.

Sudden, blinding fireworks of orgasm follow.

I’m leaning nearly face down against the counter, and as I come hard, one arm shoots out sideways, and I dimly hear the clatter of a container of bar tools as I launch it to the floor.

He slows his movement and stops, gripping my hips like he’s at the edge of his limit. A sound comes from his throat, a helpless groan mixed with a laugh of triumph. “Ich mochte Dich betteln horen,” he grits out. “Beg me for what you need.”

I straighten, swiping back the piles of hair tangled over my face, and turn around. My legs are, as promised, trembling. “Beg you?” I shoot back with a haughty smile. “Am I your servant?”

He captures my face in both hands and kisses me hard. “No, Talia. I’m yours . I’ve belonged to you since the moment you took a drink of my cognac. You left your bloodred imprint on my glass, my heart, my life.”

He lifts me, and I wrap my legs around him. Digging my fingers into his shoulders, I work my hips into position. The head of his cock is pressed against my entrance, and I move against him in a sinuous, taunting dance before I sink down, gradually taking every magnificent inch, watching his face.

The silver-flecked dark hair at his temples is dewy with the sweat of our urgency.

His lips are parted, and as he tips his head back for a moment as if overwhelmed, the white ridge of his teeth captures my attention.

There’s something so vulnerable and real about every part of our bodies as we’re entwined like this.

My worries and resistance evaporate. I’m viscerally here , watching the tenderness of his mouth, connected to him, wrapped in him.

Clamping his shoulder with one hand and wringing his hair with the other, I kiss him like I’m feral, like my heart is breaking, like I want to live inside him the way he’s in me.

The sound in his throat is a plea. He takes a dozen steps, heading for the bedroom, before he stops and presses me to the wall of the passageway from the living room. The wood paneling at my back is cool and hard, but somehow I welcome the rhythmic jolt against my spine as he pounds into me.

Our feverish mouths take and take, both of us selfish, starved. The wooden floor creaks in staccato protest as Klaus surges against me hard. His panting is almost a growl—stern, combative—as if every sharp exhale is commanding me to reveal more of myself, to let him in deeper.

My body in a place of striving that’s beyond the dictate of pleasure, I hear myself gasping out, “I know you, I know you ,” as we buck against each other.

“ My Talia —you know me better than anyone,” he returns in a harsh whisper.

I can feel how close he is. In a fever of greed, I cling to him, begging, “Fill me… don’t leave…”

With a throaty cry he lets go, crushing me against the wood paneling, his body tense. His release shudders inside me, and I dig my heels into him, murmuring nothing and everything, a nonsense of comfort, my half sighs, half kisses gusting against his shoulder.

After a pause to catch his breath, he straightens, lifting me reverently and carrying me to the bed. His left forearm supports my weight, and his free hand caresses my back.

“My God—I don’t know what came over me,” he says. “Did I hurt you?”

Not in the way you think.

I administer a reassuring kiss to his lips. “I’m fine.”

He’s still inside me and carefully withdraws before setting me on the bed. “It was careless lovemaking on my part,” he says, a dart of worry between his brows.

“It was exactly what I wanted too. Don’t be upset.”

He kneels beside the bed, studying my expression, then parts my legs to move closer before guiding me onto my back. “Let me take you where I’d intended to go.” He strokes his hands up the insides of my thighs, then follows the path with his lips. “Are you sore?”

I rise onto my elbows, looking at him kneeling between my legs. “Do you mean my legs? Or… there ?”

“Shy girl.” More kisses on my inner thighs. Grasping me carefully behind the knees, he scoots me closer, and I realize his intention.

“Klaus, wait . Do you want to do, um… that ? Right now, after, y’know…”

He chuckles. “I may be a disciplined person in many ways, but this isn’t one of them.” He presses another kiss to me, closer. “I’m not fastidious.”

With his thumbs, he glides up to the apex of my thighs, strokes my labia, then passes a thumb over my clit, featherlight. I suck in a tiny gasp but angle myself to encourage him.

He swirls two fingers of his other hand in a circuit around my entrance. “You’re the most stunning shade of well-fucked pink.”

A wave of heat goes through me—both bashful and turned on—at his words.

His fingers slip inside me. I’m extravagantly wet, humming with the pleasant ache of energetic sex.

Pushing past my shyness, I ask, “Can you keep your fingers in me but don’t move them while you…

do that? I want to feel you inside me, but I’m a little tender. ”

He smiles. “You can’t imagine how happy I am that you’ve asked.”

He moves my legs over his shoulders and I cock one knee outward to give him better access.

His tongue sweeps over my vigorously worked flesh, testing my reaction.

He gingerly strokes and explores, finding the ideal rhythm and pressure.

My hands drift to my nipples, toying with them as he licks and kisses, mixing in an occasional careful hint of suction on my clit.

I’ve never had anyone go down on me right after sex before, and the sensation is surprising—very different from foreplay.

The fullness of his fingers and the careful ministrations of his lips and tongue quickly conspire to bring on an orgasm so new feeling and unexpected that when the peak hits, I’m sobbing with the intensity.

My thighs tremor, and he strokes up my legs and torso as he climbs onto the bed by my side and pulls me into an all-encompassing embrace. We’re both wordless, exhausted, communicating only through trailing fingertips, snowfall-light kisses, contented sighs.

Just before I drift off, I hear him murmur, “The door will never be locked to you again, Talia.”

The moment is so perfect, I clutch it to myself and carry it with me like a confident traveler as I fall into a catnap.

But when I wake alone sometime later to the sound of a text—shower water hissing in the en suite—a message from Alexander startles me upright.

Alexander: Call me. Big news about prospective GP. They’re pulling out, and my sources say return of payment withheld due to concern it could fund an arms deal. Protests, and a fire at the headquarters of the sponsor Emerald jettisoned. This is massive, Evans.

Alexander: Engineering blueprint intel was definitely a smokescreen. I’m trying to determine who sent it to you, but don’t be afraid to get dirty turning over a few stones yourself in the meantime.

Just then, Klaus’s phone on the bedside table buzzes. I scramble across the big mattress, one eye on the open en suite door, and tap the screen to read the previews of two messages from Phaedra.