Page 19 of The Payment

“Easy, love.”He gentled her undulating body with a firm hand on her stomach.“We’re not chasing a rabbit.”

“Maybe you’re not,” she said in a snippy voice that invited a deep chuckle to crawl from his chest.“No more foreplay, Jarek.I’ve had enough of your Valentine’s courtship.Fuck me, now.”

“Hm, such eloquence,” he chuckled as he reluctantly pulled his face away and crawled up her body.“Is this what you want, little dove?”he purred as he obliged her request with a gentle nudge as he leaned forward to enter her eager body with his swollen knob.Tatiana moaned and arched eagerly back against him.

“Yes.Deeper!”she cried as she undulated against him.

“Not so fast, dear wife.”Jared flexed his hardness just inside her slit.“Nothing in life comes for free...so, if you want my cock deeper, beg me for it,” he growled in a dark voice as he pushed in another inch before twitching his shaft again.“Hmm, seems I was mistaken.Shall I pull out and leave you dry?”

“You are such a fucking bastard.”

“That I am,” he readily agreed.“Still not hearing you beg, though.”

“Fuck me, Jared.Please, I’m begging you.”

“That’s more like it...just like a dutiful wife should.”With wild abandonment, he fisted his hand in her hair, yanked her head back, and quickly checked himself to first enter her slowly.His gaze locked with hers as the intimacy of the moment threatened to steal his breath.He began to move, their bodies finding a rhythm that was theirs alone.Each thrust, each retreat, was a dance of give and take, a conversation of bodies that went beyond words.

“More.I need more,” Tatiana hissed as she sucked in jagged gasps of air.

Jarek didn’t need a second invitation and powered into her.The master bedroom resonated with the sound of slapping flesh as Jarek roughly pillaged her, slowly forcing her closer to the edge.

“You feel so fucking good, wife.”With a groan, he pressed his face into the nape of her neck.Grinding his hips against her, he pumped in and out with long strokes.“I’ll never get tired of this feeling,” he moaned as he felt his steely length slide against her silky walls.Tatiana pushed back, submerged in waves of euphoria that rocked her into surrender.

Tatiana clung to him.He winced as her nails scored his back while she wrapped her legs around his waist, forcing him deeper.He built the rhythm slowly in a dance of give and take.Each time she arched beneath him, each whimper and sigh stripped away another layer of his defenses.The darkness inside him transformed into a desperate need not just to possess her body but to claim something deeper.

Holding on to his control, he kept her dangling on the edge until he felt the silky walls tightening around him.Reaching between them, his fingers curled around her clit, toggling the swollen nub ruthlessly until she cried out.

“Come!I’m coming!”

“Then come for me, little dove,” he purred in her ear as he pounded her mercilessly while pinching her clit, pushing her over the edge.

“Jarek!”she cried his name softly, almost reverently.

For the first time in twenty years, a woman’s response threatened to undo him completely.The moonlight caught tears on her lashes, and he kissed them away, tasting their salt.Whether they were tears of pleasure or something deeper, he didn’t know.He didn’t want to know.This vulnerability between them was dangerous enough.

“Oh, sweet fuck,” she wailed as her body convulsed around him, spasming so hard that she dragged him along, and his own release crashed over him like a tidal wave.For a moment, the world condensed to just this—her body trembling against his with her breath hot against his neck and their hearts thundering in sync.

Afterward, she curled into his side with her usual sharp edges softened by satisfaction.Tracing lazy patterns on her back, he felt the slight tremors that still ran through her body.The silence between them felt different.It was charged with unspoken truths neither was ready to face.

“This changes nothing,” she murmured, but the words lacked conviction.

He tightened his arms around her.“Of course not.”

But as her breathing evened out in sleep, Jarek confronted an uncomfortable reality.Something had changed—not in their circumstances but in him.The woman in his arms was supposed to be a means to an end, a calculated move in a larger game.Instead, she was becoming...essential.

Watching her sleep, Jarek memorized the peaceful expression that replaced her usual guarded look.The sapphire pendant still gleamed at her throat as a reminder of the moment her walls had first cracked.His fingers ghosted over it.He froze as she shifted slightly.

An unfamiliar darkness stirred inside him.The urge to control, to dominate, and to never let her go.But entangled with it was a foreign and frightening realization—of a man with the desire to protect and to cherish.More than that, to be deserving of the trust she had shown him tonight.

He wasn’t fooled.Dawn would bring back her anger, her resistance, and definitely hatred.She would rebuild her walls, perhaps higher than before.But for now, he allowed himself this moment of peace, this dangerous softening of his own carefully constructed barriers.

He pressed a kiss to her temple, breathing in her scent.Five years suddenly seemed both too long and not long enough.Too long to maintain the distance he needed, not long enough to unravel the complex woman in his arms.

As sleep finally claimed him, one thought lingered.In trying to trap her, he might have ensnared himself instead.

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