Page 37 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)

His shirt comes off, and I spread my palms against his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him. I trace the ridges of his abdomen, the sharp cut of his hipbones, the trail of dark hair that disappears beneath his jeans.

"Chanel." My name sounds like prayer on his lips. His hands move to the buttons of my blouse, hesitating. "Are you sure?"

The question cuts through the haze of desire—a splash of cold reality. I should say no. Should remember the professional exile, the betrayal, the fundamental fracture that still exists beneath this momentary connection.

But my body has its own memory. Its own truth. Its own hunger that four years of denial hasn't diminished. "Yes."

One word. Permission. Surrender. Choice.

Even as part of me hates myself for this weakness, for wanting him despite everything. For proving all over again that my body knows no loyalty to the boundaries my mind tries to establish where he's concerned.

His fingers make quick work of the buttons, exposing the black lace beneath. His eyes darken at the sight, thumb tracing the edge of the cup where it meets my skin.

"You're so beautiful," he murmurs, bending to press his lips to the valley between my breasts. "I've missed you. Every day."

The confession breaks something loose in me—some dam of emotion I've kept carefully contained. I pull him back up to my mouth, kissing him with everything I can't say aloud. The anger. The hurt. The longing that never faded, just transmuted into something I could survive.

He responds in kind, his kiss turning deeper, hungrier. His hands sliding beneath me to unclasp my bra, peeling the fabric away to expose me fully to his gaze, his touch, his mouth.

When his lips close around my nipple, I gasp, arching into the contact. His tongue circles the sensitive peak, teeth grazing just enough to send sharp pleasure down my spine. His hand finds my other breast, kneading, teasing, remembering exactly how I like to be touched.

I reach between us for the button of his jeans, needing more. Needing everything. He lifts his hips to help me push the denim down, and then he's naked against me. Hard Hot. Perfect.

"Bedroom," he murmurs against my throat. "I want to taste you."

The words send liquid heat pooling between my thighs. He lifts me again, carrying me down the hallway to my room, laying me on the bed with a gentleness that contrasts with the hunger in his eyes.

He makes quick work of my remaining clothes, peeling them away until I'm bare beneath him.

His gaze travels over my body like physical touch, lingering on the changes time has wrought—the slight softening of my stomach, the faint stretch marks on my hips from carrying our son, the new definition in my arms from years of gym sessions used to exhaust myself into dreamless sleep.

"Still perfect," he says, voice rough with emotion. "Still mine."

I should correct him. Should remind him that I stopped being his the day he lied to me. Should hold that line of separation between us.

Instead, I reach for him, pulling him down to me. Skin against skin, heat against heat.

His mouth finds mine again as his hand slides between my thighs, fingers tracing the wetness there with reverent precision. I gasp against his lips as he circles my clit, remembering exactly how to touch me, exactly how to make me come undone.

"Jakob," I breathe—half plea, half surrender.

He moves down my body, trailing kisses over my throat, my breasts, my stomach. His shoulders push my thighs wider as he settles between them, his breath hot against my most sensitive flesh.

The first touch of his tongue nearly undoes me. I allowed myself this vulnerability, this surrender to pleasure not entirely under my control.

He licks into me with the confidence of a man who knows my body, knows what makes me arch and gasp and tremble. His hands grip my hips, holding me steady as his tongue works magic, circling my clit before dipping lower, tasting me, devouring me.

I thread my fingers through his hair—not guiding, just needing the connection—as pressure builds low in my belly. He moans against me, the vibration sending shockwaves through my nerves.

"Don't stop," I whisper, the words a confession I can't hold back.

He responds by sliding one finger inside me, then another—curling them forward to find the spot that makes stars explode behind my eyelids. His mouth never leaves my clit, sucking gently as his fingers pump in a rhythm designed to unravel me completely.

The orgasm crashes through me without warning, my body arching off the bed, a cry escaping my throat that I muffle against my arm. Wave after wave of pleasure. Jakob working me through it, drawing it out until I'm trembling, oversensitive, gasping.

He kisses his way back up my body, gathering me against him as the aftershocks ripple through me. His hardness presses against my thigh—a reminder of unfinished business.

I reach between us, wrapping my fingers around him, feeling the velvet hardness, the proof of his desire. He groans against my neck, hips pushing into my touch.

"I need you," he murmurs, and the rawness in his voice undoes something in me.

"Then take me."

He shifts above me, aligning our bodies with practiced ease. The first press of him against my entrance makes us both gasp. He pauses, eyes finding mine in the darkness, asking without words.

I answer by lifting my hips, taking him deeper. His groan vibrates through me as he pushes fully inside, filling me. Completing me in a way I've tried to forget.

We find our rhythm immediately, muscle memory guiding us. His hips rolling into mine, my legs wrapping around his waist to take him deeper. Each thrust slow, deliberate, like he's trying to memorize the feeling. Like he's afraid this might be the last time.

With each movement, fragments of the past flash behind my eyes—our wedding night, lazy Sunday mornings, the night Jaden was conceived. The pleasure of the present tangled with the pain of what we lost, what we threw away, what was taken from us.

"Look at me," he whispers, and I open eyes I didn't realize I'd closed.

The vulnerability in his gaze catches me off guard. No masks, no walls, just Jakob—the man I married, the man I left, the man who's still embedded in my heart despite everything.

"I love you," he says, the words falling between us like stones in still water. "I never stopped."

I don't tense. Because I know he loves me, that love was never our problem—now I know. Trust was. Control was.

What surprises me is my response—the way my body tightens around him, the way my heart races, not with panic but with recognition. With truth I'm not ready to voice but can't deny.

I pull him closer instead, kissing him deeply as our bodies move together, building toward something that feels like absolution. Like resurrection. Like the answer to a question I've been asking for four years.

His movements grow more urgent, less controlled. I meet each thrust with equal hunger, feeling another climax building. This one deeper, more complete.

"Come with me," he murmurs against my lips, his hand sliding between us to circle my clit.

The dual sensation pushes me over the edge, and I come with his name on my lips, walls pulsing around him. He follows immediately, burying himself deep inside me with a groan that sounds like surrender. Like coming home.

We lay tangled together in the aftermath, his weight comforting rather than crushing, his breath warm against my neck. Neither of us speaks, afraid to break whatever spell has wrapped around us. Afraid to reintroduce the complications that exist outside this bed.

Reality waits beyond these walls—professional exile, Megan's threats, four years of broken trust. Questions without answers. Wounds still bleeding beneath temporary bandages.

Eventually, he shifts, rolling to his side and drawing me against him.

His hand traces idle patterns on my bare shoulder, touch reverent.

In the dim light filtering through the curtains, I study his profile—the sharp jaw, the slight furrow between his brows, the mouth that still knows exactly how to unravel me.

"This doesn't fix anything," I say finally, voice soft in the darkness.

"I know." His lips press against my temple. "But it's a start."

I don't answer. Can't. Because despite everything—the hurt, the betrayal, the years of silence—something has shifted. Some door has opened that I thought permanently sealed.

But this moment of connection, this physical surrender, feels like standing at the edge of a cliff. One wrong step and I'll fall all over again. One moment of misplaced trust and I'll shatter more completely than before.

I ease carefully from his embrace, sliding to the edge of the bed.

The hardwood is cool beneath my feet as I stand, wrapping myself in the silk robe that hangs on my closet door.

At the window, I push aside the curtain, looking out at the city glittering beyond—a constellation of lights, of lives intersecting and diverging in patterns too complex to map.

Behind me, I hear him stir. The sheets rustle as he sits up, watching me.

"Chanel." My name in his mouth still carries weight I don't want to feel.

"You should go." The words come out steady, despite the tremor I feel in my chest.

Silence stretches between us, weighted with all the things we've said and left unsaid. All the ways we've hurt each other. All the ways we still could.

"Is that what you want?" His voice gives nothing away—no hurt, no anger, just a question that feels like a cliff edge.

I turn to face him, the man I've spent four years trying to forget. The man whose body still fits against mine like it was sculpted for that purpose alone. The man who left me once to protect me, who might do so again if he deemed it necessary.

"What I want," I say carefully, "isn't always what I need."

He stands, moonlight tracing the contours of his body as he reaches for his clothes. I watch him dress with the same methodical precision he applies to everything—each movement controlled, deliberate. When he's finished, he looks at me, eyes searching mine for something I'm not sure I can give.

"Jakob." His name feels like a stone in my throat. "I need to tell you something."

He waits, perfectly still, the way he always goes motionless when preparing to absorb impact.

"I love you." The words I've held back for four years finally escape. "I never stopped."

Something shifts in his expression—hope, perhaps. He takes a step toward me.

"But I can't do this again." My voice catches, betraying the control I'm fighting to maintain. "I can't give pieces of myself to someone who might decide tomorrow that silence is safer than truth."

He opens his mouth to speak, to counter, to persuade—I know him, know the strategies already forming behind those eyes.

"Please." The word stops him mid-step. "Just go."

For a moment, I think he might fight. Might deploy the carefully crafted arguments he's used to win boardrooms and bend markets to his will.

Instead, he nods once. Acceptance. Surrender. Retreat.

At the bedroom door, he pauses, looking back at me framed against the window. The city lights behind me like distant stars.

"I'll see you tomorrow." Not a question. Not a request. A simple statement of fact. "The White Glove Pivot doesn't wait for personal complications."

Professional distance. The mask sliding back into place. The careful walls rebuilding between us.

"Of course." I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the summer night. "Nine o'clock. My office."

He leaves without another word. I listen to his footsteps down the hall, the quiet click of the front door, the silence that follows like a physical presence filling the space he's vacated.

Only then do I allow myself to sink to the floor, back against the wall, knees pulled to my chest. Only then do I let the trembling overtake me—the aftershocks of desire colliding with self-preservation.

For four years, I've built walls to keep him out. Constructed a fortress of silence and distance. Told myself it was protection. Survival.

But sitting here in the darkness, his scent still on my skin, I finally admit the truth I've denied for so long: the fortress I built isn't safety but prison. The walls I erected to keep him out have only succeeded in keeping me locked within.

And now, having tasted freedom in his arms, I've sent him away. Chosen solitude over risk. Chosen control over surrender.

Because some lessons cut too deep to unlearn. Some wounds reopen too easily to risk the knife again.

I love him. God help me, I love him.

But love has never been our problem. Trust has.

And without trust, love is just another form of beautiful destruction.