There are times in this life when you know you’re standing at a crossroads. It’s so obvious that a choice splits your fate in two.
Left is one world.
Right is another.
I’m standing here at one of those points. A fork in the path.
On one side is Vincent Akopov. A winking, bloodstained, secretive, snarling, furious enigma of a man. He will never give me all of him and I should be terrified if he ever tries, because “all of him” means being discarded like used-up trash at best and executed on some godforsaken sidewalk at worst.
On the other side, though, is… what?
Nothing. More of the same bleak emptiness I’ve lived for so long. For twenty-seven years, I’ve drowned in it. I’ve longed so badly for someone to sweep me out of the dull, dreary grayness of my loneliness.
He came and offered me that.
So in the end, the choice isn’t a choice at all.
When Vince bends down to kiss me, I let him.
No, I don’t just let him.
I kiss Vincent Akopov back like I’m drowning and his mouth contains the last sip of oxygen on earth.
His response is as immediate as it is brutal. He crushes me against him, one hand fisted in my hair, the other gripping my hip with enough force to bruise.
I hope it does. I want a souvenir of the moment I chose the wrong path willingly. I want a memento of the only sin that ever mattered.
There’s no gentleness here. No romance. It’s a fucking collision that’s been scripted and building and brewing and heating. Two comets rocketing toward one another, on an irreversible course since the moment I walked in on him fucking his secretary, since he looked me in the eye and winked.
You’re next, that wink seemed to say. You’re mine.
And now, at last, I am.
He walks me backward until my legs hit the couch, and then we’re falling, his weight pinning me down, his hands already shoving up my borrowed sweater. My body arches into his touch, desperate for more.
“I hate that you’re making me need this,” I gasp against his mouth.
He bites my lower lip hard enough to make me cry out. “No, you don’t. You hate that you’ve always needed it.”
He’s right. That’s the worst part. Five years of watching him from afar, of building elaborate fantasies around a man who didn’t know I existed—all of it leading to this moment where I’m writhing beneath him on my secondhand couch like some desperate, touch-starved animal.
Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what I am.
His mouth moves to my neck, teeth scraping over my pulse point. I dig my nails into his shoulders. I’m trying to ground myself against the onslaught of sensation. But it’s impossible. He’s everywhere—his scent, his touch, his weight pressing me into the cushions.
I’m drowning in him.
“If you’re unsure—”
“No! No,” I breathe, and it feels like jumping off a cliff. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He grunts.
Then he shreds my sweater off my body.
His gaze rakes over my torso, lingering on the simple cotton bra that suddenly seems pathetically inadequate. I fight the urge to cover myself, to hide from the intensity of his scrutiny.
“Look at you,” he says, voice thick with want. “So fucking perfect.”
The praise burns through me. It ignites places that have been cold for far, far too long.
I reach for him, needing to feel his skin against mine, but he catches my wrists and pins them above my head with one strong hand.
“Not yet,” he commands. “I’ve waited five years to have you beneath me like this. I’m going to take my time.”
Five years? The confusing words barely register through the haze of desire. He’s known about me that long?
But then his free hand is skimming down my chest, tracing the curve of my breast through cotton, and rational thought evaporates.
“You’ve been driving me insane,” he growls, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of my leggings. “Prancing around my office in those tight little skirts, looking at me with those fuck-me eyes while pretending to be so innocent.”
His hand slides lower, finding the slick heat between my thighs. I bend off the couch with a strangled cry.
“So wet already,” he murmurs, sounding pleased and predatory. “Tell me who this is for.”
I press my lips together, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
His fingers still. “Tell me. Tell me who this fucking pussy belongs to, Rowan—or I’ll torture you with what could be until you do.”
“You,” I rasp, hating how easily he bends me to his will. “It’s for you.”
His smile is vicious, victorious. “That’s a good girl.”
And then he’s stripping away my leggings, my underwear, baring me completely to his gaze.
He releases my wrists to remove his own clothes, and I take my turn to drink in the sight of him.
It’s more than I could’ve imagined, and God knows I tried. He’s hard planes and sculpted muscle, marked with scars that tell stories I’m not ready to hear. His cock springs free, thick and heavy. My mouth waters at the sight.
I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want him in this moment.
It terrifies me.
I can’t breathe when he looks at me like this. He’s cataloging every inch of my exposed skin. Like he’s deciding which parts to devour first.
Vince lowers himself between my thighs. There’s no hesitation, no fumbling. This man knows exactly what he wants and how to take it.
“Spread wider for me,” he commands, his breath hot against my inner thigh. “Let me see all of you.”
I comply because I’ve lost the ability to do anything else.
The first swipe of his tongue makes me cry out. It’s too much. No—it’s not enough. It’s everything I’ve dreamed of for five years and somehow infinitely more devastating than I imagined, all at the same time.
“Look at me,” he growls against my flesh. “I want to see your face when I ruin you.”
I force my eyes open, meeting his ice-blue gaze as he flattens his tongue against my clit.
The eye contact makes it filthier somehow. More intimate. More dangerous.
“That’s it,” he praises, sliding two fingers inside me one knuckle at a time. “So fucking tight. You’re going to need a lot of preparation to take all of me.”
My walls clench around his fingers at his words, drawing a dark chuckle from him.
“You like that idea, don’t you?” He curls his fingers in a come-hither motion that has me mewling. “You like knowing my cock is going to stretch this virgin pussy to its limits.”
“Yes,” I gasp. Shame and desire are tangling together in my chest until I can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.
He adds a third finger, the stretch burning in the most delicious way. “Tell me how long you’ve wanted this. Tell me how many times you’ve touched yourself thinking about me.”
The demand snakes around my throat like a noose. This is humiliation. This is surrender.
This is everything I’ve ever wanted.
“Every night,” I confess, the words tearing from me. “For years. I’d—oh, God—I’d imagine your hands instead of mine.”
He rewards my confession by sucking my clit between his lips, fingers still working inside me.
“And what did I do to you in these fantasies? Did I make you beg? Did I fuck you until you couldn’t remember your own name?”
“Both,” I moan, hips rocking against his face. “Everything. Anything you wanted.”
He pulls back just enough to say, “That’s what’s happening now, Rowan. Everything. Anything I want.” Then he’s back, tongue circling my clit while his fingers stretch me wider.
I feel the tension building low in my belly, that familiar tightening that signals I’m close.
But I’ve never felt it this intensely before. Never had it consume me so completely.
“Vince, I’m going to—”
“Not yet.” He slows his movements, denying me release. “Not until you admit what this really is.”
I whimper, desperate and confused. “What do you mean?”
His eyes lock with mine, fingers still buried inside me. “This isn’t just about sex. This is about ownership. Tell me who owns this pussy now.”
“You do,” I whisper.
“Louder.”
“You. You own me.”
He plunges his fingers deeper. “And what happens when I claim what’s mine?”
“I take it. All of it. However you give it to me.”
He smiles against my inner thigh. It’s the smile of a man who’s won.
“Good girl. Now, you can come for me.”
His mouth returns to my clit with renewed intensity, fingers fucking into me at a pace that borders on painful.
The combination is too much.
I shatter.
My orgasm rips through me like a hurricane, tearing down walls I’ve spent years building. I’m vaguely aware that I’m screaming his name, that my thighs are clamping around his head, that my body is convulsing beneath the onslaught of pleasure.
But mostly, I’m aware of him watching me.
Drinking in every second of my undoing.
Memorizing the way I look when I’m completely at his mercy.
When I’m almost done twitching with aftershocks, he pulls out of me. The absence makes me whimper.
He crawls up my body, his erection pressing against my oversensitive core. “Was it worth the wait, Ms. St. Clair?”
“Yes,” I breathe without thinking. “It’s worth everything.”
He grins. His lips are streaked with my juices and his eyes are burning coals. “You haven’t even tasted the true worth yet.”
I can’t stop my answering moan.
“Protection?” he asks, voice strained with the effort of control.
I reach for the drawer in my coffee table, extracting a condom that’s been there too long, waiting for a man who never measured up to the fantasy in my head.
The exact same fantasy who’s now kneeling between my thighs, rolling latex down his length.
He positions himself at my entrance, the blunt head of his cock pressing against my core. Our eyes lock. Something passes between us—an acknowledgment that, whatever happens next, there’s no going back.
“Tell me one more time,” he says, his voice barely recognizable. “Tell me you want this. I want to make sure you—”
“I want this.” The words come easily now. I want to give him every single thing he could ever ask of me. Take me from any angle, destroy me, give me or take me or hurl me out of the fucking window if that’s what he craves. “I want you.”
He nods. “So be it.”
Then he pushes inside in one brutal thrust, and I scream—from pain, from pleasure, from the overwhelming fullness of finally having him inside me after years of desperate wanting.
He stills, allowing me to adjust to his size, his forehead pressed against mine.
For one heartbeat, two, we stay suspended in this moment of connection.
Then he begins to move, and the world erupts around us.
There’s nothing gentle about the way he fucks me. He pins me down, one hand gripping my thigh to spread me wider, the other tangled in my hair, forcing me to maintain eye contact as he splits me apart.
“Is this what you wanted?” he demands, voice raw. “To be fucked by a monster?”
“Yes,” I gasp, beyond pride, beyond shame. “God, yes.”
His rhythm falters at my honesty, something vulnerable flashing across his features before the mask slams back into place.
He hooks my leg over his shoulder, driving deeper, hitting a spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
“Say my name,” he commands. “I want to hear it when you come.”
The pressure builds inside me, a tidal wave gathering force. I’m balanced on the knife’s edge of pleasure.
I can’t take it.
I can’t—
I can’t—
“Vince,” I whisper, then louder as he drives into me harder, faster. “Vince!”
My release crashes through me with such violence that it feels like dying. My body convulses around him, pulse after pulse of ecstasy tearing sounds from my throat I didn’t know I could make.
He follows me over the edge with a guttural groan, his body going rigid against mine, his face transformed by pleasure into something almost beautiful.
For a moment afterward, we lie together, sweat-slicked and panting, the anger and wrongness that fueled us temporarily sated.
His weight crushes me into the cushions, but I don’t care. I want to be crushed by him, consumed, obliterated.
Because in this moment of perfect annihilation, I don’t have to think about what comes next.
I don’t have to face the truth that I’ve just fucked my boss.
That I’ve just fucked a killer.
That I’ve just fucked a man who’s already promised to someone else.
I don’t have to face the truth that I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now, lying beneath the most dangerous man I’ve ever known.
A man who’s watching me with eyes that have gone cold and calculating again, the iron of the ruthless businessman sliding back into place even as he’s still inside me.
“We need to talk,” he says.
And just like that, reality comes crashing back.
Along with the sickening realization of what I’ve done.
