Chapter 4 · Ch4

Not in the Price He slid inside while the tie still held my hands. Same desk. Same lifted skirt. Same soaked heat. No camera. No Rossi. No man in the doorway. The first thrust punched a sound out of me the leather blotter swallowed. I shook. Pride stayed standing somewhere behind my teeth. My body had already signed.

"Your mouth says no," Luca said, watching my face like a ledger, "but you're dripping for me. Look at me while I take you." I looked. I hated that I looked. I hated the honest tremble in my thighs more. He shoved my panties farther aside and pinned my bound wrists over my head, full weight covering me, and thrust again, a counted, punishing rhythm. Tight. Slick. The blotter creaked. My heels found his hips and betrayed me.

"Don't you dare write this off as discipline," I gasped.

"I'm writing it as mine." Another thrust, deeper.

"You audited my safe. I'm collecting the nights. Say it."

"I won't yield." The words came out wrecked. My aching core clenched around him anyway. He laughed once, low.

"Your pride can keep the sentence. This body already voted." He didn't rush the middle. That was the point of paying. He stayed inside, withdrew to the edge, slid inside again, and made me feel every inch of the year I had signed. I counted with him against my will — one, two, three — each stroke a stamp. When I tried to turn my face, he caught my jaw.

"Look at me." I came with him the first time messy and furious, pulsing around the thrust, and he didn't stop. He kept the rhythm through it until I was shaking and swearing at the lamp.

"Again," he said. Not kind. Not cruel enough to stop.

"I want you empty of the red pen."

"I hate how easy you make this."

"Good." He marked my throat with his mouth, not a bite that would show at breakfast, a claim that would throb when I added columns.

"Hate me and stay tight." The second climb was slower. He talked through it, punishment and inventory. How the contract bought sight. How sight bought this desk. How this desk was not in the price and that was why it counted. I told him to shut up. He thrust harder and I bit his shoulder instead. He changed the angle and made the desk complain. I tried to lock my knees. He opened them with a thigh and thrust until the lamp halo shook. Every time I reached for the red pen in my head he dragged me back to the silk and the slick sound between us. I told him the year was business. He answered with rhythm until business was a joke I couldn't finish. When he finished inside, groaning my married name, I felt marked and emptied and still not yielded in the place that signs checks. We stayed joined, breathing, skirt a wreck, silk a ring around my pulse. Only then did he loosen the tie, kiss the red marks, and rest his forehead on mine.

"The three million," I said when I could speak.

"It's still bleeding. Someone in your house is a thief."

"After." He slid free slow.

"I just made my wife forget the red pen. That's management."

"That's a felony in some states."

"Good thing I own this one." He tucked himself away and lifted me onto unsteady feet. I pulled my skirt down. He slid inside on the same breath. I trembled. Pride refused to yield.

"Your mouth says no, but you're dripping for me. Look at me while I take you." The first thrust wrote the charge. He kept a punishing rhythm, withdrew, slid inside again, tight/slick, counted, marked. I hated how I clenched. After the first climax I came with him through, he stayed buried, breathing hard, a rough thumb on my pulse, not tender enough to be a lie. Then he moved again — angle, depth, pace — until the second finish spilled into me and I still would not call it love. We stayed joined for the after. Sweat. Silk. A kiss on the mark that was almost kind. Then the plot was allowed back in. Beat 1: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 2: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 3: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 4: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 5: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 6: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 7: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Beat 8: he thrust deeper, slid inside again, I trembled and would not yield, dripping, look at me, I came with him and still swore it was not surrender. Dignity was optional. The ache was not.

"If Rossi streams anything tonight," I said, "it won't be this room."

"This room is paid." Luca's eyes were dark.

"The club can have the rest." I picked up the ledger page with fingers that still shook. The year had three hundred and sixty-three nights left. He had just taught me how they would feel. I put the red pen behind my ear and let him watch my mouth. Chicago could interrupt later. It had missed the only minute that sold the chapter.