Page 21 of His to Claim (The Owner’s Club #2)

Graham

I don’t realize I’m still shaking until the driver opens the door and the night slips out of the restaurant with us—heat, perfume, the faint clink of glass that trails after her like a ribbon.

Delilah slides into the backseat first, and I follow, too close, both of us breathing like we left something unfinished on the linen tablecloth.

“Up,” I tell the driver, and the privacy partition hums into place. The city becomes a smear of chrome and light, a pulse beyond glass. Inside, it’s just us. Leather, shadow, the ghost of her perfume, and the taste of her dignity I took under the table still burning my tongue.

She looks at me like a dare. I look back like an answer.

“Seatbelt,” I say, because I need to say something that isn’t a confession.

She clicks it obediently, then ruins the illusion of obedience with the way she crawls across the console to straddle my thigh for a second, mouth grazing my jaw, breath warm.

The scrape of her teeth is a promise and an apology at once.

“I’m not done with you,” she murmurs.

“You’re not,” I agree, fingers sliding into her hair, angling her face up so I can see her eyes. They’re glossy with triumph and something softer that only shows up when she’s not guarding the door to it. “Color.”

“Green,” she whispers, and the word vibrates against my thumb. “Bright.”

We don’t bother with neatness. The car surges forward, and we surge with it.

I press her down until her cheek rests against my thigh, my palm a steady weight on the back of her head.

Not forcing. Guiding. Possession fitted to protection, the only way I know how to hold her without breaking either of us.

Her hand settles on my stomach, just under the line of buttons, fingers splaying like she’s testing how far she can climb into my control and still own it.

I’m already hard, and the fact that she knows it turns my spine into a live wire.

She nuzzles once, playful, then opens for me with a patience that knocks breath from my chest. Warmth.

Pressure. A slow seal of her mouth down my cock that makes every muscle lock.

I feel the first wet pull like a fuse being lit low in my body.

“Easy,” I manage. “We have time.”

She hums around me in agreement that feels like defiance. The sound vibrates straight through my hips. My hand tightens in her hair, then eases because I promised myself I’d let her set the pace, that I’d earn the right to ask for more.

Outside, a light turns us red, then green.

Inside, she works me like she’s learned me already.

Slow stroke. A swirl of tongue that drags along the underside and makes my vision white at the edges.

She pulls back with a wet breath, then takes me again, deeper, and the messy sound it makes is obscene and perfect.

“Look at me.”

She tips her chin, eyes up from my lap. Heat, mischief, affection I don’t deserve yet. The view nearly ruins me. I stroke my thumb across her cheekbone, then along her jaw, feeling the slide and the strength she’s giving me.

“I’m going to say too much,” I admit, voice low.

She squeezes my thigh, a little command to go on.

“Dinner was a performance.” I can hear the city in the tires, the hush of rain starting. “This is the truth. You put your hand on my knee and I forgot the names of everyone at the table. You laughed and I felt territorial like a teenager. Now you’re here and I?—”

She answers by sinking down, slow as a promise. My head falls back to the leather as my control frays. I breathe her name like a prayer I didn’t think I’d ever say.

“Sophia.”

Her rhythm builds in increments. Take. Ease.

Take more. A careful drag of teeth that isn’t a bite and still manages to light every nerve I own.

My hand guides because I can’t help it, then stops because she doesn’t need help.

Spit slicks her lips; she doesn’t care. I do, far too much.

Possessive heat climbs and I press my palm to her crown like a benediction.

“Good girl,” slips out, and she rewards me with a deep, unhurried pull that steals sound from my lungs. She pauses when my breath hitches, checks me with a glance, then resumes with a sated little smile like she just added a secret to the list she keeps about me.

I throb in her mouth and the car feels smaller, warmer. Windows fog. The privacy glass becomes a mirror of shadows, and in it I watch my own hand shaking as I tuck a curl behind her ear. I want to push. I want to beg. I settle for honesty.

“You’re… ruining my composure,” I say, laughing once because it’s either that or pray. “And I haven’t had any in years.”

She breaks away just long enough to say, “I like you uncollected,” then sinks back down, slower, wetter, satisfied with the way I groan and fail to hide it.

Heat tightens low. I warn her because I respect her, because consent lives in the small things. “Sophia. I’m close.”

She nods without lifting, fingers spreading on my stomach to hold me down when my hips want to chase. Gentle, firm, absolute. It undoes me more than the pleasure.

I come apart with a low, helpless sound I’ve never given anyone.

She stays with me, steady through the pulse and the aftershocks, and only then does she lift, breathing hard, eyes bright, lips wet and swollen with the proof of what we just did.

A quick swipe of her thumb at the corner of her mouth.

A wicked grin that somehow feels like trust.

“Come here,” I say, voice ruined.

She pushes up and I pull her across me, tuck her under my chin. Her heartbeat taps fast against my chest; mine answers. I kiss her hairline, then the soft place near her temple, and it hits me how easy this could be if I don’t overthink it.

“You’re dangerous,” I tell her.

“For you,” she says, smug and soft.

“For me,” I agree, and I mean it like a blessing.

We lie there as the car slips through green lights. The partition hums. The city keeps glittering like it doesn’t know how to stop. I lace our fingers over my ribs, thumb brushing the faint welt from her bracelet where I held her hand under the table hours ago.

“Stay tonight,” I say without strategy.

She smiles into my throat. “Ask me nicely, Ellsworth.”

“Please stay,” I say, kissing the word into her hair. “Let me feed you something indecent at midnight and make coffee at an hour that insults God.”

She laughs, low and pleased. “Since you asked so nicely. No. Please take me home.”

“Fuck, you’re killing me,” I say to her.

“I know,” she says and I can feel her grin. She settles her head back on my thigh like it belongs there. I lay my palm over the crown of her head and watch the city go by, content to be held captive by the mess we just made and the quiet after.