Page 49 of Bloody Lace

But I also can’t stay there with her another moment longer. I need space, and I need to get my head on straight, because it’s clear that being around Evelyn has messed me up in more ways than one.

I’ve never lost control with a woman before. I’ve always been the oneincontrol, in every facet of my life, but Evelyn undid that in a matter of minutes.

I head to my office, because that’s the only place I can think of to go where I can get some privacy. Even my father won’t barge into my office, and if I’m lucky, he won’t even realize I’m home. I need to sort through the way Evelyn made me feel.

My desire for her is out of control. She’s beautiful, yes, but there’s plenty of beautiful women in the world. Plenty of beautiful women inNew York. And I could have any of them, at a snap of my fingers. I’ve always been able to.

It’s something else. It’s more than her looks, even though the sight of her bent over my desk, tousled and wrecked from her punishment and my fucking, was enough to drive me out of my mind every time I think of it. Just a flicker of the memory has my cock twitching again, eager to repeat the experience.

It’s her stubbornness. Her tenacity. Her inability to watch her mouth, even though she shouldn’t be brave enough to talk to me the way she does. It’s the way she can be charming, despite her shyness. The way she doesn’t back down from a challenge—not even from me.

I’ve never known a woman like her. I’ve never known a woman who didn’t care about who I was, or how much power I had, or how many zeroes there are in the balances of my bank accounts. Evelyn doesn’t give a shit about any of that. And she doesn’t seem to give a shit about me, either, which is more intoxicating than it should be.

Maybe I just haven’t been challenged enough, recently. Even the Crows don’t feel like a challenge—I have no doubt I can put an end to Barca’s upstart ideas as soon as I’ve managed to gather more information. My men are mailing pieces of his messenger back to him, a lesson that I hope he pays attention to, although I’m not hopeful. In my experience, men like him don’t stop until they’re put down.

But I’m happy to do that, too. I just want more information before I silence him for good.

I didn’t expect my marriage to be such a distraction, though. I intended to make the deal with her, fulfill my part, and hers would be fulfilled simply by saying her vows, living in my penthouse, and showing up on my arm when necessary. It should have been easy. The easiest part of all of this.

But it’s not. Not only because Evelyn insists on being defiant, or because she insists on ignoring the truth of the danger she’sin, but because now I’m torn between my relentless desire for her, and how I know she feels.

After what happened between us, there’s little doubt in my mind that I could engineer another encounter between us. That if I pressed, she’d give in. Her body reacts to mine, and her desire for me is every bit as easily flammable as mine is for her. If I played her the way I know I can, she’d give in to me again.

But all I can think of now is the misty look in her eyes as she stared me down in my office, the way she glared at me, the way she flung words that actually hurt when they struck. No one has been able to say anything to me that’s hurt me in a long time. But she was right about a lot of what she said.

I shouldn’t have come in her without a condom. It was risky, and reckless, even if, as far as I’m aware, it’s nearly impossible to get a woman pregnant after one mistake. A pregnancy would throw a wrench in our deal, because while I still intend to let Evelyn go once the terms are complete, her carrying my child would change everything.

It would have to.

She was right about more than that, too.I wouldn’t have wanted our first time to be like that. Now this is it. That was our first time.

I’m surprised to find that I regret it, too. Not the fact that I finally know what she feels like around me, or that I’ve learned the way she sounds when she comes—the relief of knowing those things, of having some small edge of my desire slaked, is indescribable. But I regret that the first time I was with Evelyn, that was how it played out.

Which is another problem. I’ve never given a shit about things like that before. I’ve never even thought about sex with someone new as a ‘first time’, because usually the first time is also the last. I’ve had a handful of women over the years who I’ve slept with more than once, usually because they were fuckingfirecrackers in bed, but now even those memories are dimmed compared to what it was like to be inside Evelyn.

This feels different, whether I like it or not. What happened earlier was my first time with mywife, and even though it’s not a real marriage, even though it shouldn’t fucking matter, I regret it all the same.

I’ve never fucked a woman without a condom before. I’ve never been so overcome with lust that I couldn’t stop long enough to get one. That moment, thrusting inside Evelyn, was the first time I’ve felt the exquisite pleasure of a woman’s tight, velvet heat wrapped around me with nothing but skin. Without the barrier of latex between her wet flesh and mine. Evelyn was the first. She was the first I’ve ever come inside without that barrier. The first woman who I’ve ever filled with my cum, who I’ve had the pleasure of seeing it drip out of her, pearling against her swollen flesh as I looked at her, wrecked by my cock and thoroughly fucked.

I swallow hard, reaching down to adjust my now-hard length.It doesn’t matter,I tell myself firmly, trying to push the thought out of my head. First time or not, it was meaningless. It was sex—exceptionally good sex, but just sex all the same. And while I’d be more than happy to continue enjoying it for as long as our marriage lasts, Evelyn made it clear before I put the ring on her finger that sex was off the table.

I broke that part of our agreement. She’d be well within her rights to ask for a divorce now, and considering my breach of our contract, she could probably walk away with enough of my money to fund the shop all on her own. She might not know that, but I’d bet her friend Dahlia, with her family’s political connections, does. I just have to hope that Evelyn doesn’t tell her what happened between us, or I’m going to be in for a world of entirely new problems, all because I couldn’t control my dick.

Once in my office, I try to focus on work, on real estate deals and contracts for shipping and checking over the records for the club profits, but I can’t pay attention to any of it for long. My thoughts keep drifting back to Evelyn, to what happened between us earlier, to worrying that my men aren’t doing a good enough job of keeping her where she’s supposed to be. There needs to be a reckoning for that, too, and I pick up my phone, calling Vik.

“Yeah, boss.”

“I want to know the names of every single man on security duty this morning. I want to know who was working when Evelyn managed to leave the building alone. And I want to talk to Gus tomorrow. First thing.”

“You got it.”

I don’t know what I’m actually going to do about it. A show of force would make them think twice about letting Evelyn out of their sight again, but I can’t take pieces off of or kill half my security guards, and that’s not the kind of man I am, anyway. I’m brutal when necessary, but I don’t like hurting the men who are supposed to be loyal to me, no matter how furious I am with them. It breeds fear, not respect, and that’s the way my father has run things. I want to be different from him.

Sighing, I get up, glancing back at my phone as I reach for my coat and prepare to head home. Evelyn hasn’t texted me, and I’m not in the slightest bit surprised. Gus has, reassuring me that he’s done his rounds and Evelyn has remained in the penthouse, and I feel a little of the tension in my chest loosen. She’s safe, at least, and that matters to me far more than it should.

When I walk back inside my home, the main floor is dark, smelling faintly of Asian food—making me feel a wave of relief at knowing Evelyn ate, at least—and utterly quiet except for the sounds of the city that filter inside. I take off my coat and hang it up, lingering downstairs for a moment before I go up to thebedroom. Evelyn’s dog is nowhere to be seen, and I narrow my eyes, wondering if it’s going to jump out at any moment and try to bite me. I can’t imagine that it doesn’t know how irritated I am to have a pet here.

The upstairs is silent, too. I open the bedroom door slowly, and I see the shape of Evelyn’s body under the covers in bed, still and quiet. Her dog is lying on the floor by her side of the bed, and it lifts its head as I walk in, letting out a low growl.

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