Page 30 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Kieran

S he tasted like toothpaste and cold coffee.

I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her flush against me, every inch of her fitting like she was made for my hands.

We just stood there, in the kitchen, not moving.

The city was waking up around us—honking, sirens, the neighbor’s radio leaking through the walls—but here, it was just her, just me, and the click of inevitability that had been building since we were kids.

She tilted her head back and I kissed down the line of her throat, catching the pulse at her jaw with my lips.

She made a sound—low, almost lost—and I felt it everywhere.

I slid my hand up under her t-shirt, tracing the line of her spine, vertebrae by vertebrae, counting them out like beads on a rosary.

The shirt bunched up above her hips and I hooked my thumbs in the waistband of her jeans, just holding her there, not pulling, just making sure she couldn't drift away.

She tensed, half a sigh. “We can’t,” she whispered, lips brushing my ear. “I have to be at the courthouse in forty minutes. If we do, I’ll never make it.”

I grinned. “I can get you off in ten. Five, if you want.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“Oh, yeah. I can already smell how wet you are.”

She laughed, but her hands were already sliding up under my arms, palms hot on my skin. “Now you’re just making promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“Promises are all I have,” I said, and took her wrist, walking her backwards until she hit the table.

The window was right there, less than a foot away—overlooking the alley, laundry lines, someone else’s kitchen lit up across the way.

The city was a spectator, all the evidence of morning stacked up around us, but I didn’t care.

I pressed in, nudging her knees apart so I could step between them.

She was in shorts, and I loved her in shorts—loved how strong her thighs looked, how she never gave an inch.

I ran my hands up her ribs, under the shirt, feeling her heart hammering like it was about to break through her chest. “You’re obsessed,” she said, voice soft, almost reverent.

“Of course I’m obsessed. You’re you.”

I kissed her, slow at first, letting her taste linger, then harder, like I’d never learned to pace myself. She opened for me, hesitated, then really opened—tongue, teeth, her whole body arching into mine like she was starving for it.

She locked her hands behind my neck, holding me in place, like she could force every piece of herself into me and take every part of me in return.

I got her shorts off and her up on the table, rough but careful, rough but careful, a rhythm that only made sense for us.

She was hot and slick and ready, and all I had to do was slip my hand inside her, rub slow circles, and watch her eyes for the moment she’d let herself get lost.

She wanted to get lost. Bad. Every muscle in her leg braced against the edge, every turn of her neck fighting to keep the moan inside. I pressed my thumb harder, curled two fingers in, and she latched onto my wrist, half to protest, half to make sure I couldn’t stop.

“Do you want me to make you come with my hand?” I asked.

She looked at me, glassy, wild. “Yes,” she said, barely a whisper. Then, again, full force: “Yes.”

I fucked her with my hand and kissed her at the same time, so when she came—shuddering and desperate and angry—it was right into my mouth, like she wanted to swallow the world whole.

Her cunt spasmed around my fingers, nearly knocked the fight out of me, but I held her through it, thumb steady even after she went limp and collapsed onto my shoulder, hair falling in a veil over her face.

I let her float there, the aftershocks running through her lips and jaw and everywhere, and for a minute it was just us, nothing else.

She straightened up, eyes half-lidded. She was about to say something, but instead wiped a streak of wetness from her cheek and started laughing. “You fucking—” she began, but let it die out. “You really do have a god complex.”

“Wait until you find out what I can do with my dick.”

She shot me a look. “That is not a selling point, Callahan.”

“You’re right,” I said, and pulled her closer. “It’s a public service. I’m very generous.”

“You’re charitable.”

“That’s what all the girls say.”

“Stop talking about other girls right now.”

I laughed.

She didn’t stop me. She pressed her heel into my thigh, locking my hips between her knees, and let me take her right there, cold wood and all.

I had to hold the back of her neck or I would have lost my balance; she had to keep a palm braced to the edge of the table or she would have gone with me.

The way she met every thrust told me everything: she wasn’t looking for bliss or comfort or a ghost of romance, just proof she was alive, that there was more blood in her than in anyone who’d ever tried to drain her dry.

And I loved her for that—all drive, all fire, all stubborn will to keep going.

It didn’t last long.

She tensed, a glittering resistance before the break, and then she squeezed so hard I almost came with her.

Her mouth went slack, then shut, then slack again as I worked her through, and when I finished she just shuddered and dropped back onto her elbows, legs still locked around me.

She didn’t speak for thirty seconds, and I counted every one.

“I told you,” I said, after I’d eased out, still hard but not in a hurry. “Five minutes.”

“I should probably make you come too. It’s only polite.”

“You are very polite,” I said.

She was. She dropped to her knees, bare and unbothered by the cold tile, and sucked me in with a kind of practiced ferocity that made all the blood loss from yesterday seem like a warm-up.

She didn’t blink. She kept her eyes on mine, making it impossible not to feel every humiliation and every hope.

When I came, it was messy and unchoreographed, and she swallowed it all, then smirked up at me as I held the back of her head.

She stood, found a paper towel, wiped her mouth. “Now I really do have to go to work,” she breathed. “I need to check in with my chief. I’ve still got three memos to sign and a press team begging for soundbites.”

“I thought you were off until the swearing-in.”

“I’m never off, Kieran. Not when I’m taking the oath tomorrow with half the city watching—and definitely not when someone’s trying to kill me.”

She disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the shower come on—quick, efficient, all business.

Five minutes later, she emerged in a towel, hair slicked back, eyes sharp again.

She didn’t say anything when she passed me, just grabbed her clothes from the chair and dressed fast: black slacks, a charcoal turtleneck, the kind of coat that looked expensive even when it wasn’t trying to. Lipstick, but no eye makeup. War paint.

She clipped on her watch, shoved her phone in her bag, and paused. “You don’t want to come with me, do you?”

“Not inside. But I’ll do the blocks, the perimeter, everything you won’t see or don’t want to.” I was half-joking, half-serious, but when I turned, she was looking at me weird, almost tender, like she’d missed a joke and was worried it was actually a compliment.

“Fine. Just don’t let anyone see you loitering outside the courthouse or I’ll have to come up with a story for the TV cameras.”

“Does it ever get old, saving face?” I asked.

She looked at her own reflection in the microwave door, the faint scar at her hairline catching the sunrise. “No,” she said. “If it ever did, I’d be dead.” She grabbed her purse and came right up into my space. “You gonna try and stop me?”

“No. But if you die, I’m crashing your funeral. Cheap suit, loud tie, ruined mascara. I’ll make a scene.”

She smirked, then reached up and thumbed the sweat off my jaw. “That’s the plan,” she whispered, and left.

She didn’t slam the door.

The second she was gone, the house felt hollow.

I grabbed the mug off the table, rinsed it, and found myself staring out the window, like if I glared at the street hard enough, it might keep the world from burning down for ten more minutes.

I dialed Tristan—one ring. No answer, but he called back within a minute.

“She’s walking into it,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ve got four of my best on her, plus two plainclothes inside the courthouse. She’s not going to get touched.”

“And if someone tries?”

“That’s the point, innit? Once we see the face that tries it, we cut off the hand that sent them.”

I made a noise, guttural. Tristan always loved the logic of violence, even when it made him sound like a monster.

“You need anything?” he asked.

“Yeah. I want my family safe. Ruby and Rosie. Can you do that?”

Tristan exhaled, a sharp sound in the silence. “I’ll do it.” He meant it. No warmth in his voice, but somehow it sounded more like love than anything else we’d ever managed. “But you know what happens if this doesn’t end soon, yeah?”

“We’ll cross that bridge.” I stared out the window, watching a garbage truck reverse—loud as a gunshot, two pigeons scattering from the sidewalk in perfect sync. “Has it always been this bad?” I asked.

“You mean the city? Or us?”

“Either.”

He made a thin, tight laugh, the kind you hear at funerals. “I think you finally see the city the way it is,” he said. “Welcome, little brother.”

Then he hung up, and I was alone with the echo, the empty kitchen, the ghost of Ruby’s breath in my shirt.