The Oblivion

Chapter 14.

Across the sitting room, Kieran was to restless for sleep.

He stood at his window, a crystal glass of something clear and potent in his hand. The city's magical glow below was a smear of color against the night. The message from his mother glowed faintly on his discarded phone. He had not deigned to reply. The humiliation was a clean, surgical cut; he understood its dimensions, calculated the damage, and filed it away. It was manageable.

What was not manageable was the restlessness under his skin.

He could still feel the imprint of her body against his during the dance. The slight, warm weight of her. The unexpected rightness of her laugh vibrating against his chest—a sound so unguarded it had briefly disarmed him. Then the limp, sick weight of her in his arms afterwards. The stark, human mess of it.

He had tried to scrub the evening away in a shower even colder than the last. It hadn't worked. Her scent, a mix of panic, expensive wine, and her own unique essence, seemed woven into the very air of the suite. He'd ordered the entire space to be purified at dawn.

He took a long swallow, the liquor burning a clean path down his throat. It did nothing to dampen the intrusive, graphic thoughts. He imagined her now, in that room. Asleep, perhaps. Or awake, as he was. Was she curled in a ball of humiliation? Or was there, beneath the shame, a spark of something else? The way she had looked at him just before she'd been sick... there had been a wild, defiant glint. It had intrigued him. It angered him.

He hardened against the fine wool of his trousers, a blunt, physiological truth he couldn't ignore. He wanted to see that defiance again. He wanted to strip it away, layer by layer, until he found the core of it. He wanted to reduce her to something simpler: a body reacting to his command, a voice crying out his name without any witty translation, a will that bent to his. The corporate control was a feeble substitute for the darker, more visceral ownership he craved.

He set the glass down with a sharp click. This was untenable. She was a liability. An unpredictable human variable who had already caused a scene, and the smart move was to distance himself. To hand the rest of the negotiations to a subordinate and send her back to the city on the first morning transport.

He turned from the window, his decision made, and found himself walking towards the door that led to the sitting room.

His feet carried him on silent steps across the cold marble of his suite, through the shared living space dimly lit by the eternal city-glow, and to her door. He didn't knock. He placed his palm flat against the dark wood, as if he could feel the reverberations of her presence through it. The suite was tomb-silent. Then, a sound drifted through, a faint, muffled gasp. He stilled, every sense focusing on the barrier between them. It wasn't a sound of distress. It was lower, choked. He leaned in, his forehead nearly touching the cool surface.

A soft, breathy moan slipped through the gap at the door's threshold. His own breath caught in his throat. Another followed, a little louder, swallowed quickly. He knew that sound. The scent hit him a moment later, cutting through the purified air—the faint, musky sweetness of female arousal, unmistakable and entirely hers. His c**k, already half-hard from his earlier anger and unwanted fascination, throbbed painfully against the confines of his trousers.

He heard it then, the quiet, rhythmic, wet sound. The unmistakable slap of skin on skin, of a hand moving between slick folds. She was touching herself. In there. Right now. The image exploded in his mind: Layla, sprawled on that massive bed, her small hand buried between her thighs, her head thrown back, those intelligent eyes glazed with a pleasure she'd stolen for herself. The defiance of it, the raw privacy, was a provocation.

He was rock hard in an instant, a fierce, demanding ache. He stood paralyzed outside her door, a voyeur to her secret. Each stifled cry, each sharp intake of breath, was a lash against his control. His hand, still flat on the door, clenched into a fist. The wood grain bit into his skin. He wanted to rip the door from its hinges. He wanted to loom over her in the dark, see the shock on her face, and replace her frantic fingers with his own. He wanted to make her come again, but on his terms, with his name a scream she couldn't contain.

Her climax was a series of quick, choked gasps, a low, desperate keen that seemed to vibrate through the wood into his palm. It lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity of pure, unobserved surrender. The silence that followed was heavier than before.

Kieran pulled his hand back as if burned. He turned and walked away, each step back to his room a mechanical act of will. His erection was a furious, ignored demand. He closed his own door behind him and stood facing the dark room, his chest heaving. He tried to catalogue it, to break the event into manageable, explainable parts: her indiscretion, his biological response, a temporary lapse. The thoughts scattered like smoke.

His hand moved of its own volition, unbuckling his belt, freeing his aching c**k. He gripped himself, a rough, angry motion, and leaned back against the door, eyes closed, and imagined her. Not the polished, intoxicating negotiator, but what the woman from moments ago would look like: lips parted, skin flushed, lost in her own debauched little secret. He imagined her beneath him, that fire in her eyes banked into something hotter and darker. He pictured her mouth, that mouth that argued Old Fae clauses, wrapped around his c**k. He thought of her tight, wet p***y clenching around him instead of her own fingers, milking him dry.

His strokes were ruthless, a punitive rhythm. He thought of her defiance, her cleverness, her shame, her hidden hunger. He thought of the way she'd looked at him on the dance floor, just before the world tilted. He hadn't taken a woman like this, with such raw, focused aggression, in years. Maybe ever. She wasn't a conquest. She was an infection in his blood.

He came with a silent, violent shudder, his release streaking the dark marble floor, his head thumping back against the door.

The clarity that followed was cold and sharp. He looked down at the mess, at himself. A deep, corrosive anger settled in his bones. Not at her. At himself. His composure, his famed, icy control, had fractured over the sounds of a human woman pleasuring herself in the next room. He cleaned up mechanically, his movements precise and devoid of all emotion. The negotiation with Elmsworth was in nine hours. He needed clarity, not this fever. She was a distraction of the most damaging kind. A distraction he now knew, with a chilling certainty, he wanted to claim in the most fundamental way possible. The knowledge felt like a flaw in his armor, a crack in the foundation of everything he was. It pissed him off beyond measure.