Page 5 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Kieran

I realized I should have probably discussed the trip before I took her and her daughter to a little cabin that was so remote most people missed the turn off.

But this was about survival, not comfort, and every fiber of me remembered why the second I caught the sound of her breathing in the next room.

The salt of her skin, the heat radiating off her body—Christ, if it was just up to me, I’d have bent her over the kitchen sink and fucked her again until she forgot her own name.

But I knew better. I knew to stretch it out longer, to wait until she was asking, no, begging for me.

That was the Callahan way, if not by genetics then by practice—play the long game, don’t tip your hand.

It was how my brother found his way into nearly every strategic position in the city and how I’d managed to survive this long without choosing a side.

I’d once told Ruby that I could be patient longer than anybody she’d ever met, and she’d believed me even as she wanted to prove me wrong.

Now I wondered if she might actually try.

And it was also what had made me very, very good in bed. I waited. I listened. And all I wanted to hear was the sound of Ruby Marquez coming for me over, and over, and over again, until she forgot every reason she was supposed to hate me.

She was standing in the shower alcove now, barefoot, blouse hanging open, hair a riot from my hands.

I memorized her like a map, in case she folded in on herself when reality came tumbling back.

“You couldn’t have picked a hideout with, I don’t know, better amenities?

” she called, but she was already grinning around the edges.

“The amenities here are good. The electricity used to just flicker in and out a decade ago. It was a whole thing.”

I leaned in the doorway, watching her do a little inventory—bath gels, off-brand shampoo, four scratchy towels stacked like a dare. She wouldn’t say it, but I could tell she liked the redundancy.

“Let me guess, no hot water?” she said.

“There’s hot water.” I made a show of checking the fixtures. “Tristan is cheap, not a monster.”

“Thought this was your house too.”

“It is,” I replied. “I tend to have to get away less.”

Some untamed part of me wanted to pin her to the tile and fuck her until she begged, but the bigger part—the one that knew what it was to lose—waited.

Ruby stepped into the glass, spun the lever to full, and shot me a look that said come in after me if you dare.

I did. I never wanted her gently. I wanted her like oxygen.

The woman I’d stolen was already inside the glass, spinning the lever to full and then daring me with a look to come in after her. I wanted her, but I’d never wanted anything gently.

I had never wanted her gently. I wanted her desperately. I wanted her incessantly.

I wanted her more than I wanted air.

I peeled off my shirt and nudged the door open.

Steam billowed out, thick and heavy, laced with the scent of her sweat and some Aldi rose body wash she’d found.

The glass fogged over, blurring out every imperfection, every regret, every year we’d spent apart.

None of that mattered now. I stepped in behind her, and her hands landed at my waist, hesitant for once.

For a second, there was nothing but sound—sheets of water ricocheting off synthetic stone, a hiss like static, the hammer of her pulse so close I could smell it, the citrusy ghost of her shampoo. Then, her breath, rabbit-quick, hitching as I pressed against her from behind.

She kept her head up, spine straight, like she was bracing for impact. I bunched her hair up in a fist, pulled her back so she would straighten her neck. “This is exactly how I want you,” I said. “Wet and exhausted and so fucking horny you can’t even fucking talk. Do you hate me now, Ruby?”

“Yes,” she said between gritted teeth.

I slid my fingers down toward her pussy, just skimming the line between slick and swollen. The sound she made was something on the edge of a sob, so it made me slow down, careful, testing for anything raw. She wasn’t going to break. She never broke.

It always made me weirdly proud of her.

I wedged her up against the wall until her cheek met the cold tile and her legs splayed obedient, opened like she wanted to be defeated and also to deny that she’d ever need it. The violence was all angle, all torque; I didn’t want to hurt her, only to fill the space left by people who’d tried.

Right now there was just Ruby, bent at the hips, water running down from her hair and following the ridges of her shoulder blades to the valley of her spine.

“Are you ready for me to fuck you, Rubes?”

She gave a defiant laugh, coughing as the mist choked it off. “What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one,” I said, guiding her open with my thigh, palm flat on her lower back.

She let me, and so I did—not rushed, not like the kids we used to be, but with the certainty of every mile we’d logged between hate and forgiveness.

I pressed in slow, feeling her clench around me before I was halfway there. God, she was so tight and wet and perfect.

She gasped, and I waited. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she spat over her shoulder. “Don’t act like this is the first time.”

“Sometimes I need to remember how not to break things,” I said, not a joke.

I kept my fist in her hair, now streaming in wet black ropes down her back. I moved slow, letting her adjust, letting her want it.

She angled her hips. “God, you’re so fucking cautious. Just—”

So I did.

I fucked her hard, held her until her knees buckled and her hands scrabbled for purchase between the tiles, until the sound of my name ricocheted off the shower walls.

The noise was obscene—the showerhead rattling, water everywhere—but I didn’t care.

I wanted her to remember this, to hate me for how much she liked it.

“Kieran, fuck—”

“Is that what you like?” I growled, leaning in so my mouth was at her ear. “You like it when I fuck you so hard you can’t think? When I fill you up?”

She couldn’t answer, not in words, but her body said everything—fingers clawing at the tile, half-choked moans bouncing around the stall.

I slid my hand up to her jaw, biting the ridge behind her ear, then cupped her breast, pinching her nipple until she moaned and ground back against me, her ass flexing so hard I nearly lost it.

Somewhere in the mess of water and skin, the old grudge match came back—the game to see who could outlast, who could draw first blood.

I twisted her, one hand at her sternum, arching her back to my chest, the other circling down to where we met.

She bucked, grinding her clit against my palm, breathing in broken little bursts that sounded like “fuck you” and maybe also “don’t stop.

” She was so close, and I was drunk on it.

“Are you going to cry for me, Ruby?” I asked. “Are you going to come so hard you cry?”

She made a sound, half fury, half surrender. That’s what I wanted—not the fight, but the yield. With her, I always wanted the yield.

Always.

I watched the flush creep up her neck, the same red I’d mapped with my tongue a hundred times before. She braced against the tile and rode me, fucking herself on my cock. I barely had to move; she wanted it so bad she’d do the work herself.

She came, almost silent, but I felt her clench, muscles rigid, fighting not to collapse. Her fingers slipped on the tile. I eased up, shushing her with my breath at her shoulder, holding her steady as she shuddered back, nearly choking on the water.

She stood there a long minute, knees bent, cheek to the tile, sucking air. I pulled out, still hard, like I could go all night.

“Are we finished?” she asked, voice hoarse.

“Not even close.”

She turned, caging her own breasts with damp forearms, glaring like she wanted to slap and kiss me at once. I ran my thumb under her chin, coaxing her face up, and she looked at me with all the open hate and want in the world. It was a look I’d missed. I pressed my lips to her mouth.

She bit me.

It was classic Ruby, even here, even now—her teeth clamping down on my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

I hissed out a breath, ready to snap at her–and then her tongue was there, dragging over the wound she’d left on me.

I darted my tongue out to tangle with hers and she let me inside, just for a blink, then shut it off, drew back, and looked me up and down.

"Romance," she said, deadpan. "I remember this part."

"Don't get sentimental on me, Marquez." I braced a hand on the tile above her head, crowding her so she had nowhere to look but up.

She didn't flinch, just slid her hands from her own shoulders to mine, fingertips tracing the old scar at my collarbone. “What happened here?”

"Are you going to let me fuck you again, or did you want to interrogate me first?"

“What makes you think that’s going to happen again?”

She was testing, always. I knew how to play. So I didn't answer her, just gunned the water a degree hotter, let it steam around us until both our skins blushed out of protest or pleasure—there was never much of a line with us anyway. My hands found her waist, then higher, then back to her ass.

She'd lost weight, put on muscle, or maybe both; she felt nothing like the legal assistant who used to climb me like a trellis and everything like the woman who had walked herself out of every fucking prison anyone had ever tried to build for her.

She was so, so fucking unstoppable. I wanted her so much.

I bent her over again, hands locking her at the hips, and pressed forward just enough to tease, not enter. She arched and twisted to look over her shoulder, eyebrow cocked.

"I'll beg if that's what gets you off," she said, a challenge as raw as any threat.

“You never begged,” I said, or maybe just thought it—because the next second my mouth was at her shoulder, biting, and she was already shivering. Not from cold; not possible, not with the heat bouncing off the glass and our bodies.

I reached between her legs again, more gentle this time, finding her even slicker, and slipped two fingers in, the pad of my thumb tracking up to her clit and circling, just so. She clenched, once, hard, on my hand, then again when I drew it out and replaced it with the head of my cock.

I drove in slow, every inch of her pussy pulling at me, like she was trying to peel the memory of me out of my bones and take it for herself. She groaned, deep, then slammed a palm to the wall.

I fucked her slow. Not lazy, but deliberate, each thrust measured and logged, empirically correct. Her ass was perfect, even now, pink from the heat, and I spanked her hard, watching her jiggle, feeling her clench around me every time I smacked her.

She moaned when my hand made contact again, a line of spit stringing from her teeth as she rocked back hard against me.

Every sound she made poured molten right into my gut.

I ran my palm down the curve of her back, soaking up the heat of her, the honest alchemy of it: mine, if only for these minutes.

“You’re such a sadist,” she snapped, but I could hear the laugh gurgling beneath, and her body didn’t lie. Her body never fucking lied to me, no matter how much she wanted it to.

“I’m whatever you want,” I said. “You know that.”

Then I drove in harder, and she gasped, and the echo of it off the tiles found some animal part of me that wanted to just fuck the defiance out of her and then lick up the evidence after.

She braced her forearms against the wall, breasts flattening with each push, hair dark and sleek like oil crawling down her back.

I fixed one hand at her hip and the other at her throat, and then we were both moving.

I pressed my chest flat to her spine and hooked my hand beneath her jaw, guiding her head back so I could whisper into her ear. “You’re going to come for me again.”

“In your dreams,” she said, but her cunt was already pulsing, her voice going ragged. I wanted her to see stars. To know that every other man was a pale imitation.

“You never could hold out long,” I said, biting her earlobe, and she almost screamed.

I reached around, thumbed her clit, and felt her knees go soft.

She tried to curse at me, but it came out as a gasp.

She came hard—shaking, clenched tight around me—and for a second I thought she might take me with her.

I was right there, holding on by a thread.

Her body gripped me like she never wanted to let me go, milking me, draining me like she could extract all the fight and keep it for herself.

The last thought to pass through my skull before I finished was that if it came to it—if the choice was between Ruby and myself—I’d die in her place every time.

And maybe that was what scared me most.

We slumped together in the scalding rain of the shower, neither one speaking until my hands stilled and her breathing dropped down to a livable level.

“Feel better?” I asked, voice fuzzier than I wanted.

She pressed her face to the tile, then turned to me, cheeks flushed. “No. Fuck you.”

But then she smiled. Not kind. Not sweet. A jagged little thing, full of exhaustion and grit and defiance.

And I loved her so much I could barely breathe.