From the moment the door of his home swung open and he stood there in his crisp, white button-up and neatly pressed slacks, fingers fiddling precisely with the latch of his antique Rolex as he stared me down, I knew this was the worst possible idea imaginable.
The small amount of land didn’t seem to be an issue for him — the home, if I could even call such an insane building a home, seemed to be built vertically. It took advantage of its space on the hillside overlooking Presidio Park and the Golden Gate Bridge, with nearly every side consisting of windows or balconies that unmistakably drew my thoughts back to Vegas. But I’d forced myself not to hesitate as I’d climbed the carved stone steps up to the gate, pressed the buttons of the keypad with the code he’d given me, and slinked through the hedgerow up to his front door.
“You changed?” I asked. It was as if I had nothing better to say, as if I hadn’t spent the entire drive over here combing through conversation after conversation we could have. In fairness, I’d struggled to keep myself from imagining each of them ending with his hands on me, so none were truly usable. But it was an easy enough icebreaker, especially when I hadn’t bothered to change out of my work clothes — just a plain black pair of slacks and a light gray button-up.
His gaze lingered on me as he stepped aside, letting me pass over the threshold and enter into the extravagant space. “I’d hardly call removing my jacket and tie for comfort’s sake changing.”
I swallowed over the knot in my throat as I took in the entryway that led into an intensely modern living room. Polished, pristine hardwood lined the large space that took up almost half of the entire ground floor of the house. On the far wall, floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view over the veranda and the idea of privacy in the heart of a bustling city. Dark grey painted walls and heavy artwork lined the space, with a mounted, massive television on one side and a sofa set that looked like it had come out of my fucking dreams.
I knew he was rich. Owning a company like Blackwood’s would of course come with its perks, but this was… more than I imagined. And this was only half of the ground floor.
“You’re quiet.”
I followed him through the home, my heels clicking uncomfortably loudly, until we rounded a corner into one of the largest domestic kitchens I’d ever seen. “I just… I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting this,” I breathed.
He stepped behind the island and plucked two small, crystalline glasses out of the black cabinetry before placing them in front of his array of bottles on the shiny black countertop. Black, black, black. The entire kitchen was dark, save for the under-cabinet lighting, light gray backsplash, and metal hanging lights. Even the high-top chairs that lined the breakfast bar were dark, and somehow with the hardwood floors, it didn’t look bad. It looked sleek, and my God, it looked expensive.
As he placed a circular chunk of ice in each glass, I knew that what he was doing was a bad idea — for both of us.
“What were you expecting, Olivia?” he asked, glancing over one shoulder as he poured an amber liquid over the ice. “A hovel?”
I didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know how to comprehend how someone lived in a space this lavish. It felt like I was sitting in the back row of the movie theater that was my mind, watching all of this through a screen instead of actively piloting myself. If I had any control here, I wouldn’t have come in the first place.
He rounded the counter, each hand holding a glass. His rings glinted off the overhead lights as he held one out for me. “I get that it can be a little overwhelming,” he said, his hardened features unchanging despite the softness of his voice. “This should help.”
The ice clinked as I stared at it, hesitation eating away at me. I shouldn’t drink. I knew what could happen if I did — what had already happened between us. But some part of me bent to him so easily, and I found myself reaching for it, taking the sweating glass in my palm, and holding it like a vice.
I couldn’t bring myself to sip it, though.
The silence was deafening as we stood there, no more than three or four feet apart, my heart pounding as little droplets of condensation coated my fingers. Somehow, the man in front of me, towering over me, all muscle and money and nearly twice my age, was my legal husband. How the fuck had it come to this? How had I let any of this happen? I was better than this, better than drinking myself into oblivion, better than walking down an aisle in a hastily built chapel with Elvis and Damien at one end and a cheap photographer and me at the other, better than standing in his home with just the two of us and tempting fate.
“Paperwork,” I choked. “You said you needed to go over some paperwork with me.”
He nodded as he sipped at his glass. From the scent alone, I was pretty sure it was whiskey, something far fancier than whatever he’d been buying for us back in Nevada. “I need your signature on a consent form. My lawyer, Ethan, will be filing on our behalf, and you need to sign off for him to do so.”
I paused.
My signature.
He just needs my fucking signature.
“Seriously?” I asked, a hint of irritation creeping into my voice. I set the untouched whiskey on the counter beside me. “You just need one signature?”
“Is that a problem?”
“We could have done this in the office,” I gulped, stepping back from him. “With other people present. With your lawyer present.”
“I thought you wanted this done as quickly as possible.” The little smirk he gave me as he took a sip of whiskey told me he knew exactly what he was doing here — he knew he was tempting me. Tempting us. “Sign it tonight and Ethan can file it first thing in the morning.”
The way he looked at me as if he could swallow me whole made my throat close in. “I could have signed it the moment I got to work. I didn’t have to come here. This… this could have been handled—”
“What?” The sides of his eyes crinkled as his smirk grew wider. “Don’t trust yourself around me, Olivia?”
My mouth went dry. Of course I didn’t trust myself around him, not after the catastrophe of the business trip. But I also didn’t trust him around me. Clearly, the man had no boundaries when it came to getting what he wanted from a woman, and my walls around it were nothing more than a challenge for him.
And God dammit, I hated that I found that exciting.
“We just… we shouldn’t…” I started, jutting my chin out, “…be alone together. I can’t be alone with—”
“Why?” He swallowed a few more sips before placing his mostly empty glass beside mine. One step and he was closer, sending my pulse racing. “Why can’t you be alone with me?”
I stepped back instead. “You know why.”
Again, he closed in, and again, I moved back. “Perhaps I do,” he grinned. “But I want you to say it.”
My back hit the wall as he took another step, crowding me, towering over me, giving me nowhere to go but sideways — but even that was eliminated when his hands pressed into the wall on either side of my head.
Rum, vanilla, and crushed almonds invaded my senses, and God fucking dammit, all I could think about was the way his chest looked beneath the shirt he was wearing and how sexy it had been when it was hanging limply off his shoulders. A knot formed at the back of my throat from just thinking about it.
“Damien, please,” I croaked. I couldn’t do this, couldn’t stay here, couldn’t be swarmed by him like this and expect myself to make it out the other side intact. There wasn’t a chance in hell. I needed to leave, needed to slink out of his hold, but my body had a mind of its own around him and didn’t want to react to the cues I was feeding it. My feet stayed planted. My fingers twitched toward him. My mind fucking warred.
“What exactly are you asking me for?” he purred, dipping his chin so his eyes were level with mine. “You look like you’re halfway between kicking me or touching me between my legs.”
Great. So it was obvious.
“If you don’t want this, all you have to do is say.”
I knew that. In my bones, I knew it. But I couldn’t bring myself to form the words, couldn’t even lodge them in my mouth in preparation, and even deeper than my bones, I knew I didn’t want to say them. “I can’t trust myself around you,” I breathed, trying to dig into myself for the confidence I was lacking.
One hand dipped out of view before coming up under my chin, forcing me to look up at him as he gripped onto it. “Do you need to?” he asked, dragging his thumb across my lower lip and pulling it down. A shiver went down my spine as a heavy twisting took root in my lower stomach, warming the space between my thighs. “I am your husband, after all—”
“Not for long.” The words came out muffled from the disruption to my lips, but something shone in his eyes nonetheless. Finally, a drop of confidence. His pupils expanded and his mouth parted, those fucking crows feet deepening as he grinned.
“You’re mouthy when you’re feeling bold,” he rasped, his thumb pressing against my clenched teeth as a challenge. His ability to make me melt with a single touch made my blood run cold. The temptation to open my teeth was maddening — I wanted to do it for him again, wanted to wrap my lips and tongue around him and feel the scrape of his ring against my incisors. Fuck, I wanted to do everything he’d done to me in Vegas. I wanted to feel as alive as he’d made me feel that night. But I also wanted to bite him, wanted to tell him to fuck off, wanted to not want him. “There’s more you want to say. I can see it in the way you look at me. Do it.”
His knee pressed against mine, and for a second, I fought it. I didn’t let him through. But without even increasing the pressure, my body shifted for him, letting him invade my space. Say it. Say what you feel. “I think you’re an asshole,” I breathed, the venom I’d intended to lace the words with falling flat. “I think you’re desperate to win me over because of what I won’t give you, and I can tell.”
He leaned in closer, his lips brushing against the curve of my ear. “You think I’m desperate?” he whispered. A chill shook me, forcing a little gasp from my mouth, and he took his opportunity. His thumb slid between my teeth, pressing down firmly on my tongue and dragging along it. “Would you not call grinding on my cock in the middle of a bar desperate?”
My breath caught. He remembered that.
“Would you not say that throwing yourself at me on the balcony of the Mandalay Bay is desperate?”
He took my earlobe between his teeth, biting down and sending a little shockwave of pain through my body before releasing it. His leg came in closer, pressing between my upper thighs, and oh my God, why was I letting this happen? Why can’t I stop myself?
“Do you think marrying me to feel good about wanting to fuck me wasn’t desperate?”
My pulse pounded in my ears. He wasn’t wrong, and I fucking hated it. It was desperate — desperate and stupid, desperate and needy, desperate and debauched. He hadn’t been the sole player in that game. We’d danced that foolish dance together that night, and although I’d avoided him, we’d been doing it since.
His thumb retreated and smeared my saliva across the side of my cheek.
“Fuck you,” I whispered, not a single bit of bite in the words.
His nose brushed against mine, his lips just a breath from my mouth. “If you’re going to call me desperate, princess, then you better be fucking honest with yourself. You wanted it. You want it.”
“I can’t,” I croaked.
“You fucking can.”
His mouth met mine before I could breathe in, and fuck, it was just like it had been at the bar, just like it had been all night in Vegas. His kiss was messy and hungry, his tongue berating mine and coating it with the taste of his whiskey. I didn’t fight him.
Hands grasped my cheeks, his fingers splaying across my skin. “You can,” he said again, his words muffled against my lips.
My throat closed in, my chest pounding.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe I could be honest with myself.
Breath stuttering, I let my fingers think for me. They reached for his shirt, up to the split in the fabric where his chest poked through, and fumbled with the buttons. One popped, and then another, and he hummed his approval against my mouth.
Fuck.
This wasn’t what I should have been doing.
I should have been signing my name on a piece of paper.
I should have been walking out the door.
I should have been halfway home.
I should have been lying to myself.
Something raw and aching blossomed in my chest as I threw an arm around his neck, cementing him to me as I returned the fervor of his kiss. I pulled harder at the line of buttons on his shirt, my extremities shaking as I tried to pop another out of its hole, but his hand came down swiftly on top of mine. He tugged with one quick motion, and the sound of little mother-of-pearl buttons cascading across the tile floor filled the massive space.
I wanted him. God fucking dammit, I wanted him, wanted this, wanted to stop waiting.
“There you are,” he said, the words almost guttural as they rumbled his chest. His shirt hung open, the ends tucked into his slacks, and I pulled the tails free. “Didn’t even need a drink.”
My hand flushed against his collarbones, I dragged it down along his pecs, over the solid ripples of each ab. I broke from the kiss and looked between us at his exposed flesh. I hadn’t had the chance to fully take him in when I was drunk out of my skull, and looking at him now, all muscle and tanned skin and the slightest tuft of peppered chest hair, was enough to make my head swim more than it already was.
His lips trailed to my neck, and I found myself reluctantly tearing my gaze from his chest and tilting my head back, giving him further access. Nimble, steady hands worked carefully at the buttons of my blouse, his lips trailing in their wake and moving down across my collarbones. He popped each one open, his ringed fingers brushing against the bare skin of my chest and stomach.
“Look at me,” he ordered, lifting himself to his full height. Bright blue eyes met mine, but his pupils were wide enough that I could barely see a sliver of the intoxicating color. “The moment you say stop, we stop. Do you understand?”
The knot in my throat tightened as his free hand traced the edges of my lips and trailed down, down over my chin, down the slope of my neck. His fingers curled around my throat, caging me — he didn’t apply an ounce of pressure, but the presence alone was enough to send my pulse to new levels. He could squeeze. He could cut off my oxygen. He was big enough to fucking kill me if he wanted. From the look in his eyes, I could tell it wasn’t a threat. It was an offer.
“Do you understand?” he asked again, his fingers tightening just the smallest bit, not enough to hurt me in the slightest.
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Good girl.” His free hand loosened my shirt from where it was still tucked in around my waist, freeing the thin material. My breath caught as his fingers dragged across my stomach, wrapped around the buckle of my belt, and began their removal. “You like this, don’t you?”
I blinked up at him in confusion, the warring in my mind beginning to calm. He squeezed his fingers a little more before relaxing them, giving me the context of his question, and it was as if every other thought in my mind that didn’t surround what I wanted him to do to me ceased. The part of me that had been screaming to run and keep myself away from him just… disappeared. I should have been frightened, but instead, the space between my thighs was aching. There was a comfort, a corrupted hunger, in letting myself be vulnerable here. “Yeah,” I croaked.
“Thank fuck,” he rasped. He held me to the wall, and with one quick motion at the back of my slacks, he pulled down sharply, tugging them and my underwear over the swell of my ass and partway down my thighs. “Because you look so fucking pretty with my hand around your throat.”
My cheeks heated as I kicked off my heels, dropping myself a couple of inches and giving up just that little bit of leverage. A moment later and my slacks and underwear were abandoned on the floor, and he was hoisting me up, up, up — forcing my legs around his waist and my pussy against his bare lower stomach. He took the weight of me, releasing my neck to hold me instead.
He kissed me, and I let myself sink into it, let myself close my eyes and turn off the outside world. I could feel his steps beneath me, felt it as we climbed up the stairs, his hands too focused on my skin and the latch of my bra to care about the handrail. I could barely focus on my surroundings — the dark gray walls of the staircase faded into dark gray walls of a hallway that faded into a wider space with more and more windows, the low light of twilight filling the room.
I only realized we were in a bedroom when my back met an intensely comfortable mattress and the softest sheets I’d ever felt.
I wasn’t sure where my shirt had gone. I wasn’t sure where my bra had gone. I was entirely bare beneath him, the two sides of his shirt hanging limply as he towered over me at the edge of the bed, his suit trousers still in place.
Until he fisted the buckle of his belt.
I could barely remember what his cock looked like. I’d seen it back in Vegas, held it, stroked it the same way I’d seen it done in porn, but I’d been so close to blacking out that the memory was blurry. I’d imagined it since, tried to piece together the memories to form an idea of it while I touched myself in the shower, but the moment his slacks unzipped and he pulled them down, I knew that my mind hadn’t done justice to whatever hid beneath the raging bulge in his boxers.
“You’re fucking dripping,” he rasped, his eyes locked between my thighs. “I haven’t even touched you yet and you’re ruining my sheets.”
His button-up fell over his shoulders and he abandoned it beneath him. My mouth went dry as my cheeks heated, and I tried to lift my rear. “I-I’m sorry—”
Large, ring-covered hands grabbed at my hips and shoved me back down into the plush sheets, making me lose my breath. “I wasn’t complaining, princess.”
He leaned over me, holding me in place with his hands, the soft light of twilight glinting off his watch as his lips pressed against the inner side of my knee. The fabric of his boxers shifted, his cock twitching, and with every kiss he planted against my skin growing closer and closer to the dripping space between my thighs, I couldn’t help but want to reach out to him. I wanted to touch it again, wanted to see it without the warped haze of alcohol tainting my memory.
Who the fuck was I around him?
The second his tongue slid across my clit and his contented grunt filled the air, my mind went blank. Autopilot took over, and it didn’t care about who I was, my morals, or pleasing my parents.
He feasted on me, every glide of his tongue feeling like Goddamn heaven, and I couldn’t help myself. I fisted the sheets, writhed, moved my body in ways that felt right against his lips. Using my toes, I crept my foot up to the hem of his boxers, desperately trying to push it down. I wanted more. Fuck, I wanted it all.
One hand came to rest on the waistline of them just beside my foot, and the other snaked its way across my skin until his fingers pressed against my opening.
I shifted my hips forward.
His answering chuckle vibrated against my clit, and that in combination with what I could only assume were two fingers sliding inside of me, made me lose it.
My head tipped back, and through squinted eyes, I could barely make out the shape of an ornate headboard at the top of the bed, and—
Oh, God.
Oh, fuck.
It was a fucking mirror.
Outlined in dark stained wood, it reflected everything. Even over the mound of pillows, I could see myself laid out like a damn starfish, completely bare, one foot on his hip and one knee up, my hands fisting the sheets. I could see his face between my legs, could see his fingers start to tug on the waistband of his boxers. I could see them slip down his legs.
His eyes met mine in the reflection, and I swear, his lips tipped up into a smirk.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed, letting myself look down my body at him instead of the mirror. I could feel my release already beginning to build, and the moment another two fingers slipped inside of me and the burn of the stretch mixed with the pleasure of his tongue, I was damn sure he’d throw me over the cliff far too soon. “Damien.”
His head obscured what the mirror didn’t. I couldn’t see his cock, couldn’t see what his hand was doing, and I found myself caught between what I wanted to watch — his mouth on me or his hand in the mirror. But before I could commit to either, his lips broke from me, his fingers curling inside as he licked his damp lips.
And I could see him.
Even in the low light, it was enough to send me spiraling.
It wasn’t the length that had me catching my breath. No, it was the width, the girth of him, that shook me a little more than I’d imagined. I’d seen similar sizes to him before online, but right now, in this fucking room where his fingers were buried inside of me and both of us knew damn well where this could lead, I hadn’t imagined something that looked like it could tear me in two.
But the memory from the bathroom in the bar became clearer now. This was what I couldn’t wrap my fingers all the way around. His free hand wrapped around the base of it, making the veins bulge even more than they already did. The swollen, deep red tip leaked and dripped onto the edge of the bed as he lifted himself to his full height.
I salivated. Any hesitation I still harbored reared its head briefly before fizzling away.
“Please.”
His thumb grazed against my clit briefly, making my spine twitch. “Well, that’s a welcome change,” he chuckled. “I’m not the one begging this time.”
I didn’t care if it brought me back down to the level he’d been on that night. I wanted him. God fucking dammit, I wanted him, and he wasn’t giving it to me, and I could barely think through the pleasure that wasn’t quite enough to get me to that edge anymore. I haphazardly reached for him, brushing the tips of my fingers along the underside of his tip, and the sound he made as he sucked in air through his teeth only made me want it more.
But I wasn’t expecting the hesitation from him. “We don’t have to.”
His fingers began to retreat, and I grabbed for his forearm, keeping him in place. I almost couldn’t believe the words that came from my mouth, couldn’t believe that I could be the one to speak them. “I want to. Please.”
His answering grunt as he climbed onto the bed was the confirmation I was desperately seeking. He reached across me and I let his fingers retreat, the emptiness that followed feeling wrong on too many levels, and watched as he pulled open the bedside drawer.
“What are you doing?”
“Lube,” he said, plucking out a glass bottle with a pump top.
“But I’m… uh, wet.”
He situated himself between my raised legs, sitting on his knees, and deposited three pumps worth of the clear liquid into his palm before chucking the glass bottle onto the sheets. “Doesn’t matter.” He smeared it across his length before coating my entrance. I twitched again as his fingers dipped inside of me once, twice, and a third time for good measure. “Do you have toys this size?”
I gulped as I glanced back down at his cock. “No.”
“Then it might hurt a little. And as much as you’d like to believe I’m an asshole,” he started, withdrawing his fingers, “I’d rather keep that pain to a minimum.”
The tip of him slid across my clit, and oh God, he was warm. Every toy I’d ever used was cold, rigid, and lifeless in comparison to the way his cock felt against me.
He slipped it lower.
And lower.
It caught against the bottom of my entrance, his mouth parting on a little grunt, and it was as if reality came screeching back in.
Don’t.
Stop.
You’ll regret this.
You hardly know him.
You’re only married on paper.
My chest rose and fell erratically as we both hesitated. He didn’t move a muscle, and all I could do was bring my gaze up to his, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I’d find the confidence in him that I was suddenly lacking.
Every hard line that made up his facial features had softened.
“You can say no,” he offered.
I gulped. I didn’t want to say no. I didn’t want to keep fighting the side of myself that thought I needed to hold myself back. I was twenty-four, for God’s sake.
And, technically, he was my husband.
I reached up to him, wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down closer to me. For a moment, we stayed there, breathing the same air, looking for confirmation that evaded us both. He held my gaze, and in the steadiness of the silence, both unmoving and searching for answers in the other, I could feel myself breaking down again, could feel each wall I’d hastily assembled crumbling.
“Please,” I breathed.
It was everything we’d been waiting for.
The sharp sensation of my entrance stretching hit me first. My mouth parted with a gasp, but he covered it with his lips, kissing me as he slowly began to slide in inch by aching inch. I tried my best to relax, but oh my God, he was girthy, and the sting made it hard to focus, made it hard to want this.
He paused, halfway in and halfway out, as if he could tell how it felt. As if he knew his own destruction.
One hand slid across my skin, down the center of my stomach, and dipped between my thighs. A simple touch, just his fingers grazing across my clit, made a world of difference in my level of anxiety. The pleasure made the pain fade enough, and my muscles relaxed.
“That’s it,” he mumbled against my lips, sliding himself in just a little further. “Good fucking girl.”
The sensation as he bottomed out and held himself there was unlike anything I’d felt before. I’d never been so full, so whole, so innately satisfied. We paused again as he gave me time to grow accustomed to it, but I wasn’t sure I ever could entirely. I understood, now, why he’d been so drunkenly desperate that night in Vegas.
But I understood even more the second he began to move.
I was convinced I’d lost my mind before, convinced I’d gone blank and had nothing but a deep want left in my head when he’d started touching me. I’d thought it again when he’d removed his boxers, when I’d touched him without being under the influence. But this — this wasn’t on the same level. There was nothing left. No worries, no concern over who I was or what I wanted, no hesitation or fear or self-consciousness.
I thought it was meant to hurt the entirety of your first time. But dear God, I was so, so wrong.
My fingernails dug into his skin as his mouth broke from mine, a sound I’d never heard myself make dragging from my throat. He took his time, moving slowly, letting me feel every inch of him as he pulled himself nearly all the way out before sinking back in as far as he could. But I needed more.
“More,” I begged, the word coming out whimpered, broken, needy.
His pupils blew so wide I couldn’t see a hint of blue in the darkening room. But he gave me what I asked for.
In an instant, we were moving, his cock slipping out of me as he turned me onto my front. Large hands grabbed at my hips, lifting them up, forcing me onto my knees with my face buried in the sheets, his legs between mine. For a split second, I felt so intensely exposed, but then he was sliding back in, hitting me at entirely new angles I’d never felt before from any toy.
“Oh my God.”
“Touch yourself,” he ordered, and memories flickered in my mind from when he’d said the same thing to me on the private balcony of the Mandalay Bay. I followed his instructions, letting my hand slip between my thighs.
My fingers ghosted against the topside of his cock as I swirled them over my aching clit, and something in him snapped.
His onslaught began.
He fucked me almost punishingly, every strike of his hips setting off little wildfires in my veins. His nails dug into the skin of my ass, little bursts of pain heightening every pleasurable sensation and doubling it, tripling it, coaxing more moans and sobs from my lips.
But it was when he reached forward, grabbing a fistful of my hair and tugging back to lift my head, that I lost my mind, too. “Watch,” he rasped.
Straight ahead of me, I could see us both in the mirror.
I could see the look of pure satisfaction and pleasure on his face, the way his muscles contorted with every drive of his hips, the wreck that I was turning into beneath him. Makeup smeared and mouth parted, I could watch myself, the way my face looked when I moaned, the way my body molded to him, the way my breasts pressed into the mattress. The way my lips moved as I whined his name.
But more than any of that, I could see the way he saw me, the way he looked at me with a mixture of pride and greed, the way that I turned him on by just existing.
My release hit me out of nowhere.
Every part of me broke, my body shaking as wave after crashing wave of ecstasy invaded my system. It was too much of everything at once, and my fingers stilled, his hips stuttering, my muscles contracting and releasing around him. It was better than any orgasm he’d given me in Vegas, and those had been better than any I’d given myself. I could barely focus on our reflection, but I found him, found the way he watched me in awe, found the way he grinned as if he found pleasure in my release.
God, everything made so much sense.
Slowly, achingly, he released my hair and let my head fall back down, his movements choppy, his hands grasping my hips instead. I pushed back into him with every thrust, but I could barely control myself anymore, could barely feel a thing beyond his cock inside of me and his hands on me.
And then he stopped, one last groan coming from him.
Warmth flooded me, heating me inside more than he had before. Damien breathed heavily, his fingers twitching as they moved along my sides and my spine.
“You,” he said hoarsely, “will be the fucking death of me.”
