Page 31 of Velvet Chains (The Dark Prince of Boston #2)

He caught me around the waist and turned—flipped me like it cost him nothing—and pressed me chest-first against the wall. One hand braced beside my head. The other dragged down the curve of my ass, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

Then he thrust inside.

I cried out, forehead hitting the wall. He filled me completely, without preamble, without hesitation. Rough and full. Like it was his right.

The floor was cold beneath my feet. The air sharp in my lungs. The whole world narrowed to the friction between us, to the sound of his breath, to the snap of his hips. I tensed around him. Came again.

Still, he didn’t stop.

I wanted him to. I didn’t. I wanted him to ruin me. I wanted him to need me ruined.

When my legs buckled, he caught me again—turned me, pulled me down to the floor with him. And then I was riding him, thighs shaking, hair falling wild into my face. He grabbed my hips, slammed up into me with enough force to knock the breath from my chest.

“Oh my god,” I gasped, curling forward.

He caught me by the throat and pulled me back up. “Look at me,” he growled. “Come for me.”

I did.

And again.

I lost track of how many times. My whole body was tight, flushed, unraveling, and he was right there with me—watching, pushing, devouring every sound I made. Until I came one last time and collapsed forward, boneless, shaking, utterly gone.

And that’s when he let go.

He buried himself deep, growled my name, and came so hard I felt it everywhere.

Then silence.

Only the fire. The storm. And our breathing.

We lay there on the hardwood for a long time, catching our breath. The fire crackled soft and slow. Snow piled against the window, a white wall that made the rest of the world feel distant and unreal.

“Hi,” he said when his breathing slowed. “Are you going to offer me a drink now?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You want wine?”

“Yeah,” he said, like it was the only thing he’d ever wanted. “I want to pretend this is normal. At least for ten minutes.”

I got up, legs a little rubbery, pulled my shirt back on and found a glass, poured it full. I handed it to him. “There. You’re normal.”

He grunted, more animal than man. He stretched, the lines of his tattoo stretching over his abs. He sat on my couch. “See? You can drink from your own glass. Now we’re both normal.”

I sat next to him, close—the way old lovers do, when they still remember how to reach for each other without asking first. The snow fell harder outside, making the city look softer, blurring the hard edges of everything that wasn’t him or me.

He took a long sip. Exhaled slow.

“Can I stay?” he asked, voice almost shy.

I nodded, even though it was the only thing I shouldn’t have done. “It’s too late to go anywhere. Roads are a mess.”

He smiled into his wine glass, then let the smile fade. For a long time we just sat in the quiet. He drained the glass, poured himself another, took smaller sips this time. His thigh brushed mine once, then again, and I let it stay.

It reminded me of nights from another life.

The first time we ever spent the night together, we’d done the same thing—fucked until we were shaking, then curled up like we had nothing to be afraid of. No plan, no label, just breath and heat and the comfort of someone who felt like a bad habit you didn’t want to quit.

We’d sat on the floor of his old apartment, splitting a bottle of stolen wine, eating from a plastic takeout container, pretending we weren’t already in over our heads.

His hand on my knee. My foot tucked beneath his thigh.

I remembered the feel of his stubble rasping against my collarbone as he leaned in to tell me something stupid that made me laugh too loud.

I remembered thinking: This can’t last. But God, I want it to.

Now, years later, we were right back in it. The same rhythm. The same ache. The same pull.

“I used to love this,” I murmured, more to myself than to him.

He glanced at me, brows raised.

“Just this,” I said, waving vaguely at the fire, the wine, the hush between us. “The part after.”

His expression softened. “Me too.”

And for a moment, it was almost enough. Almost like nothing had broken. Almost like the world outside the snowstorm didn’t exist at all.

“Tell me about the meeting,” he said.

I hesitated, but only because part of me wanted to protect him. That part was small now. The rest was pure caution. “It’s after the holidays. She’s going to ask what I know, who I know, why my name turns up on filings from half the city. She’ll probably ask about Mickey Russell.”

“I don’t understand why they were following him in the first place.”

“I don’t think they were, Kieran. I think they were following you.”

He went still.

“They want this to be huge. You’re a Callahan. Massive fucking get. They’ll throw whatever they can at it. They’ll arrest anyone who’s stood within ten feet of you or me if it gives them political capital.”

“And you?”

I exhaled. “She’ll ask about that too.”

He nodded, jaw tensing. I could see him thinking about the implications. About the risk. But he didn’t ask me to back down, and that should’ve scared me more than it did.

“She’s careful,” he said instead. “Darnell. That whole crew. They’re posturing. They want you scared first.”

“They’ve got eyes inside my office,” I said. “I have to assume it’s a matter of time before they—”

“They already know about us,” he said. “But they don’t have us. Not yet.”

I let my head rest against his shoulder, dread settling low and familiar in my chest. “There is no us. There can’t be an us, Kieran.”

He slung his arm around me. “I just came inside you, Rubes. Pretty sure there’s an us.”

“You’re an asshole,” I said, no real bite in my tone. I was feeling at once both weightless and impossibly heavy. My heart should’ve been pounding with anxiety, but instead every muscle in my body was suspended between fire and snow, the peace after a storm.

I must have fallen asleep, at some point, because when I woke it was still dark.

He was gone. I thought, at first, he’d left, but then I saw him standing at the front window, naked but wrapped in my cardigan—which on him barely closed in the front, leaving his arms and most of his chest exposed, pink and ridiculous and beautiful.

I realized I had never seen him like this before: unguarded, unaware of being watched.

He stood there, looking out at the city, hands braced on either side of the window.

The snow had stopped, leaving the street empty and blue and luminous.

For a moment, I saw him not as I had always seen him—dangerous, magnetic, a force of nature—but as someone caught between two worlds, terrified of both.

He noticed me watching and turned, a sheepish, crooked smile on his face. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, indicating my poor stretched-out cardigan. “It’s softer than it looks.”

“It was $1200,” I said.

He laughed. “Ah, so trash. I’ll replace it if I stretch it out.”

Another long pause. Then: “It’s a nice view here. I bet Rosie likes it. She’d like my house better.”

My chest squeezed. “Are you still trying to sell me on this whole united family plan?”

“Is it working?” he asked, with a faint, hopeful smile.

“No,” I said. “And if you care about me at all, you’ll stay away from her.”

He gave me a long, assessing look. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“You really shouldn’t be here, Kieran.”

“Yeah, you keep saying,” he said, turning to look away from me. And he stayed.