Page 218 of Fractured Allegiance
Her body clenches tight around me, her pretty mouth letting out a strangled cry.
I give her ass a smack, then I thrust harder, faster, and relentlessly. The desk rattles beneath us, her nails scraping the surface. Every stroke feels like I’m carving myself into her, claiming her in a way no one can take.
The darkness of it all consumes me—the possession, the danger, the way she'd let me burn everything for her. She shatters first, her orgasm ripping through her like a storm, walls pulsing around my cock, soaking us both as she screams my name.
Her body tightens, the grip drags me over the edge. I thrust faster, chasing my own climax, I slam one final time, deep and brutal, spilling inside her with a hoarse groan, my body shuddering against hers, every muscle taut, every nerve lit.
We collapse together, my chest to her back, still buried inside as we pant, sweat-slicked and spent. The room reeks of sex and surrender, that dangerous edge lingering.
And I whisper the truth that seals us: "I'd burn the Bureau to the ground for you if it came to it."
We stay pressed together for a long moment, her body trembling against mine, my pulse still hammering in my chest. When I finally ease out of her, I turn her gently in my arms. Her cheeks are flushed, hair tangled, lips swollen from my kisses.
She doesn’t push me away. She just looks at me, eyes focused but softened by something I can’t name.
I brush a hand over her cheek. “Come on,” I murmur. “Shower.”
She lets me lead her.
The water runs hot, steaming the small bathroom, fogging the mirror. I pin her against the tiled wall and kiss her again, slower this time, washing the salt and sweat from her skin with my palms. She doesn’t fight it. She lets me hold her, lets me scrub the night from both of us until there’s nothing left but warmth and exhaustion.
When we’re done, we dry off with thin towels that smell faintly of starch. We stumble back into the room, naked and spent. I pull the sheet over us, tangle our bodies together in the dark.
For once, there’s no fire left to burn. Just the weight of her head against my chest, her arm draped across me like she’s claiming space even in sleep.
My eyes stay open longer than hers. Long enough to hear her breathing steady, long enough to feel the ache in my chest shifting into something close to peace.
When I finally drift, it’s with her pressed against me, my arm tight around her waist, a dangerous promise still whispering in the back of my mind.
If anyone comes for her again, they’ll have to go through me first.
Chapter 25 – Lydia - The Ghosts We Loved
I wake to weight.
Not chains. Not guards. Not the walls of Drazen’s penthouse pressing in. This is softer, warmer. A body. An arm cinched around my waist like he thought if he let go, I’d vanish.
Silas.
The memory of last night smolders in my chest before I even open my eyes. His hands on me. His mouth. The way I let myself unravel against him when I swore I’d never need a man to breathe. I shift, and the sheet slips against my skin, reminding me I’m bare underneath. My pulse spikes at the thought of Elias somewhere down the hall while I’m lying here naked, wrapped in a Bureau agent’s hold.
I glance back. Silas is still asleep, for the first time in a while if the bags under his eyes are anything to go by. His jaw is shadowed with stubble, lips parted just enough that I can almost imagine him soft, human. He doesn’t look like a man who kills for a living. He looks like the version of him I can never trust: the same one who makes me forget cages exist.
I should pull away. Slide from under his arm, take the sheet, put distance between us before he opens those eyes and ruins me again.
Instead, I stay.
Because my body remembers what my mind doesn’t want to admit: I wanted him long before last night. And I hate how badly I still want him now, even knowing what he is. Bureau. The leash I never saw coming.
My gaze drifts across the room. Elias’s safehouse is cleaner than anything I’ve stayed in for months. Sparse furniture, dark wood floors, a single rug beneath the bed. The curtains aredrawn, but pale light bleeds through the edges, catching on the dust in the air. It’s too still. Too quiet. A place designed for vanishing, not living.
I feel Silas’s fingers twitch against my hip like his body knows I’m awake even if his eyes don’t. The touch brands me, reminding me I’m not free. Not from Drazen. Not from Elias. And definitely not from the man curled around me now.
I push his arm off, careful not to wake him, and slide out of bed. The floor is cold against my bare feet. I drag his shirt from the chair, slip it over my head. It hangs loose on me, the hem brushing my thighs, and that alone makes me want to curse. Even his clothes feel like a claim.
At the dresser, I find a cracked mirror. My reflection is pale, hair tangled, lips still swollen. I look like a woman who’s been ruined and remade in the same night. My fingers touch my mouth, and I almost laugh. Drazen warned me only yesterday that men get stupid around me. He wasn’t wrong. But the crueler truth is that I get stupid around Silas.
A floorboard creaks outside the door. My spine stiffens. For a second, I forgot I'm out of the penthouse, but when the knock comes, it’s taut, controlled. Elias.
