Page 4 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

He didn’t push. Didn’t go for the kiss. He just stood there with me, his chin resting in my hair, his chest solid under my cheek, his heartbeat slow and sure—like he could wait forever if I needed him to. And somehow, that was worse. That was what made me ache. That was what made me want.

For so long I’d braced against him—for Rosie, for myself, for the life I thought I was protecting. But what if it could be as simple as this: his warmth sinking into me, the quiet tick of the house around us, the promise that for now, we were safe. That I could have this.

His hand slid to my chin, tilting my face up, his thumb grazing my jaw like he’d been dying to touch me there.

“You know I want you, sweetheart,” he said, voice a low growl. “Now…what do you want?”

“I want you, too,” I said.

“Be specific.”

“I want you to kiss me.”

That was all I had to say; his lips were on mine, pressing hard, hard, hard against me, his tongue insistent in my mouth, his breath short.

God, he was such an incredible kisser. The thought of pushing him away occurred to me for one brief, meaningless, second.

I let myself go slack against him, equal parts permission and capitulation.

His hands banded tighter at my hips, his mouth moving with increasing urgency, and my body answered in ways that made all my objections feel theoretical.

The counter edge bit at my lower back as he crowded up against me, consuming both the air between us and any last chance of plausible deniability.

But my hands were already in his hair, pulling him deeper, as if the only possible conclusion to this disaster was oblivion in the form of Kieran Callahan. His mouth was the same as I remembered—hungry, precise, oddly tender at its most merciless.

He hoisted me onto the cold countertop and, for a moment, I tasted nothing but the ache of us and how inevitable it felt.

The part of me that was always seven steps ahead warned that this was a mistake.

That Rosie could walk in at any moment. That my actual, legal husband would eventually be expecting a phone call, and that I was again—always—becoming the kind of woman I had prosecuted back in my twenties: impulsive, weak, pathologically hungry for the thing that was worst for her.

But it didn’t matter. His hands slid up under my sweater, cold knuckles grazing my spine, slow and sure until he found the bare, shivering skin at the small of my back. He traced it—careful now, slow enough to let the panic ebb.

“Bet you only make these kinds of noises for me, huh?” he said, voice low, rough, so goddamn sure of himself. “Think I could still get you wet just touching you here? Used to have you begging for it, Rubes.”

“You have a very high opinion of yourself,” I managed.

“Yes. But I’m also right.”

He kissed me again. This time, he slowly kissed down toward the hollow of my neck, where he could feel my pulse, then pressed his lips to it as if he meant to drink something out of my throat.

If he said anything else I wouldn’t have heard.

My head craned back, and Kieran—goddamn him—smiled into the topography of my skin, his stubble biting enough to remind me that this moment had weight.

I shuddered and wrapped my legs around his hips. His hands slid up under my sweater, slow but greedy, flattening over my ribs like he needed to feel all of me. His thumbs settled just beneath the curve of bone, holding me there, breath caught between us.

“Fuck,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, starving. “I’ll never get over how beautiful you are. I can’t wait to be inside you.”

He didn’t say it like a line. He said it like a truth too big to hold back, like hunger so basic there wasn’t room for bullshit. And in that second, it wasn’t him I wanted so much as permission to want anything at all.

“I can’t ever get over you,” he added, voice dropping rougher, like the admission scraped at him. “It’s embarrassing, really.”

He grabbed my sweater, yanked it up and off, my shirt with it, his hands urgent now. His mouth was on me before I could catch my breath—hot, open, moving down toward my bra like he meant to worship and ruin me at once.

I heard the click of the clasp before the cold air touched my skin.

He was rougher now, but not in a way that frightened me; it was the way I remembered him, urgent but deliberate, like when we were young and the world hadn’t started hunting us for sport.

I pulled him in by the collar, kissing him with a violence that matched the panic in my bloodstream.

My heartbeat fluttered in my ears, and my hands found a way under his shirt, spanning the broad, familiar planes of his back.

He tipped me back, a palm behind my head, devouring my mouth.

The edge of the counter dug into my tailbone; I didn’t care.

I wanted to resist, to say something sharp, but he was kissing along my jaw, sucking the spot just below my ear, making my resentments irrelevant.

I clung to him, half from need, half from the hope that if I let him steady me, I wouldn’t break apart.

“You smell so damn good,” he said, voice gone all gravel. “You always did.”

“You smell like you broke into a bar just to sleep there.” I tried to laugh, but it shuddered out of me, uneven.

He grinned against my breastbone, teeth just grazing enough to raise a line of goosebumps. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

His hands drifted down, unbuttoning my jeans with a deft, quick hand before slipping his hand inside and pressing two fingers exactly where my hunger pulsed. I bit down on his shoulder to keep a moan from tearing out of me.

“We can’t,” I said, breath hitching, “Rosie’s—”

“You told me she’s out. I need this. You need this.”

His fingers worked slow, perfect circles, pulling me apart a little more with each one, until I couldn’t remember what the argument even was.

He kissed me again, and for a minute I let myself believe him.

I let him tip me back onto the counter, my hands on his belt, dragging him closer like I couldn’t stand one more second without him.

His zipper scraped my thigh, jeans shoved the rest of the way down, his mouth everywhere, hands everywhere, like he meant to burn this moment into both of us.

And then he was there—inside, hot, thick, all that panic and hunger crashing into one deep, shuddering thrust. My whole body clenched around him, the world narrowing to this. To him. To now.

He stilled for a moment and that was when it almost broke me—the care in it. The insistence on checking my face, my readiness, even now, even with the past years between us like so many bombed bridges.

I wanted to laugh, or scream, or touch his face just to make sure it was real, but all I could do was fit my arms around his shoulders, lock my ankles and close my eyes. The kitchen hummed a low, hard bass beneath us: fridge, furnace, the white-noise of snow attacking the glass.

He pressed in, slow, grinding, deep enough to steal my breath. The counter edge felt like the edge of the world, and I was already falling.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his head tipping back, eyes dark and wrecked. “You feel so good. So fucking good. I could stay inside you forever.”

He braced, both hands flat on the counter, as if he might need the extra leverage to keep himself from coming before he'd really started. I ran my nails up his shoulder blades, arched harder, and tried to breathe. If there was a world beyond that moment—the threat, our daughter’s dreams roiling upstairs, the sum of all we were running from—it could go ahead and wait.

For now, the world was hips and breath, a friction so thunderous it drowned out every danger but this, the danger of wanting him again, of ever having let him go.

He started to move—slow, deep, filling me until I clenched around him, until the ache turned to need. Each thrust pinned me to the counter, hard and sure. I spread my knees wider, greedy for all of him.

His hands gripped my ass, dragging me closer, his hips driving into mine, fast and unyielding. Sweat slid down his temple. His breath shook against my skin.

“Fuck yes. Stay with me, Ruby. Stay here—” It sounded like begging, and maybe it was, but it also sounded like a man who’d spent too long in the habit of not asking for anything, taking what he wanted.

Right now…right now, I was that thing. “Come on, Ruby, come for me. Come on my cock, sweetheart. Show me you’re mine, show me, fuck… ”

And I gave it to him. I let him have it, let him take all of me, let myself fall, greedy for it, hungry for him.

For two, three, five minutes, I was nobody’s hostage.

I was a body, I was wet heat, I was just a woman hungry for her own survival.

The orgasm found me so abruptly that I nearly drew blood biting down on Kieran’s shoulder.

Kieran buried his face in my neck as I spasmed around him, grinding even deeper into my body.

“Fuck, Ruby—so tight, so perfect—God, I’m gonna come—take it, sweetheart, take all of it. That’s it. All mine. All…fucking…mine.”

He pulsed hard inside me, shuddering, and for a second we hung there, glued together by heat and chaos, by want and ruin. Just two people, nothing left but each other, nothing left but this.

After, we stayed braced, tangled, until I let out a little whine of protest against the counter getting cold. He lifted me up, held me for a moment, and set me gently onto two feet. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Let’s go take a shower.”

I wanted to protest. To tell him that this was insane, that this wasn’t a getaway, that he had kidnapped me and my daughter and he had take us back to Boston right fucking now.

But I did no such thing.

When he held out his hand, I took it. We climbed the stairs together.

And the whole way up, all I could think about was the next time he’d be inside me.