Chapter 8: Adrian doesn't even pause when Eleanor bursts in - he deepens the kiss and squeezes Jamie's hard length possessively, his other hand sliding down to cup Jamie's ass as he murmurs against his lips 'Show her how real we are' before biting Jamie's neck hard enough to leave a mark.
The click of the penthouse door latch was the only sound for a full three seconds after Eleanor Vance left. It echoed in the marble foyer like a condemnation.
Jamie shoved Adrian’s hand away and stumbled back, fumbling to tuck himself back into his jeans, his face a mask of humiliation and rage. The warmth of Adrian’s hand on him felt like a brand now, a claiming that had been for an audience.
“What the fuck was that?” Jamie’s voice was low, shaking.
Adrian straightened his suit jacket, a cold mask sliding back into place. The calculated performer who had just put on that show was still in control. “Damage control. She needed to see proof.”
“Proof?” Jamie let out a disbelieving laugh. “You groped me like I was a fucking prop. In front of her. After everything that happened in the elevator… you just used that.”
“It worked.” Adrian’s tone was flat. He turned toward the living area, his shoulders tight. “She won’t be back.”
“That’s not the point!” Jamie followed him, his boots silent on the polished stone. The vast, sterile space of the penthouse felt like a gilded cage. “The point is you didn’t even look at me. You looked at her. The whole time. I was just… a tool in your hand.”
Adrian reached the wet bar and poured two fingers of whiskey, downing it in one go. The liquid fire didn’t thaw the ice in his gut. “It had to be convincing. You think a tender kiss would have sold it? She needed to see possession. She needed to see me forget she was even there.”
“But you didn’t forget.” Jamie was right behind him now. “You were performing. And I felt it. It was different.”
Adrian slammed the glass down. “It had to be!”
“Why? Because real is too messy? Too dangerous?” Jamie’s voice cracked. “The elevator was real. This was… a transaction.”
Spinning around, Adrian finally met his eyes. The icy control shattered, revealing the raw, panicked edge beneath. “You want real? Fine. You think I enjoyed that? Knowing she was watching? Knowing I was reducing the one thing in my life that isn’t a fucking calculation to a… a piece of evidence?”
He stepped into Jamie’s space, his voice dropping to a raw whisper. “She can have the show. She can own the show. But what happens in this penthouse… that’s mine. And I decide what’s real.”
The possessive fury in his words was a live wire. Jamie didn’t back down. The hurt in his brown eyes was molten now, mixing with a defiant heat. “You don’t get to decide that alone.”
He closed the last inch between them and kissed Adrian.
It wasn’t the performance for Eleanor. This was all fight and teeth and desperate, angry need. Jamie’s hands grabbed fistfuls of Adrian’s tailored shirt, yanking him closer. Adrian groaned into the kiss, a sound of surrender and fury, his own hands coming up to cup Jamie’s face, holding him there as if he might vanish.
They stumbled through the living room, a tangle of limbs and sharp breaths, knocking against a low sofa. Adrian broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “Here. You want real? Right here. Where she stood.”
He pushed Jamie down onto the back of the deep, modern sofa, so he was half-sitting, half-sprawled. Adrian went to his knees on the expensive rug, his fingers making quick, rough work of Jamie’s jeans button and zipper.
“Adrian—” Jamie’s protest was half-hearted, swallowed by a sharp gasp as Adrian pulled his cock free. It was already hard, flushed and leaking.
“No performance,” Adrian growled, his breath hot against the shaft. He didn’t tease. He took Jamie in his mouth, deep, his tongue pressing hard against the sensitive underside.
Jamie cried out, his head falling back, hands scrabbling at Adrian’s perfectly styled hair, ruining it. “Fuck… yes…”
Adrian serviced him with a brutal, focused intensity. He sucked hard, using his tongue and throat in a relentless rhythm that had Jamie’s hips pumping up off the sofa, his curses a broken litany. It was rough, almost punishing, a deliberate contrast to the staged groping at the wall. This was claiming, too, but a claiming born of a need to erase, to overwrite the memory of Eleanor’s sly gaze with something true and blinding.
Spit dripped down Adrian’s chin. He pulled off with a wet pop, stroking Jamie with a tight, twisted fist. “You see her now?” he rasped, looking up.
“No. Only you.” Jamie’s chest was heaving.
“Good.”
Adrian surged up, kissing Jamie again, letting him taste himself on Adrian’s tongue. He manhandled Jamie off the sofa back, turning him, bending him over the wide arm so his chest was pressed into the cushions, his ass in the air, jeans and briefs pushed down to his thighs. The city lights sprawled beyond the window, indifferent witnesses.
There was no preparation, no gentle coaxing. Adrian spit into his palm, slicked himself, and positioned his cock at Jamie’s entrance. He pushed in with a single, sustained, brutal thrust, burying himself in the tight, hot clutch of Jamie’s body.
Jamie shouted, the sound muffled by velvet. His fingers clawed at the cushion. It was too much, too fast, a glorious, burning stretch.
“This,” Adrian gritted out, pulling back and slamming home again, making the heavy furniture skid an inch on the floor, “is what’s mine. Not what she saw. This. The way you take me when it’s just us. The fucking sounds you make.”
He set a merciless pace, each drive aimed deep, the slap of skin a harsh percussion in the silent penthouse. He leaned over Jamie’s back, one arm banded around his chest, holding him up, his mouth against the flushed skin of his neck. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“You,” Jamie gasped, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “Always you, you bastard.”
The raw admission, the surrender in the curse, undid Adrian’s last shred of control. He fucked into Jamie with abandon, losing all rhythm, driven by a dizzying cocktail of fear, possessiveness, and a love he still couldn’t name. The world narrowed to the searing heat of Jamie’s body, the scent of their sweat, the broken, pleasured cries Jamie was choking into the cushion.
He felt Jamie’s muscles begin to flutter and tighten around him, the telltale sign. He snaked a hand underneath, finding Jamie’s neglected cock, stroking it in time with his thrusts.
“Come for me, Jamie,” he commanded, his voice ragged. “Paint this fucking floor. Show me it’s real.”
Jamie shattered. His orgysm ripped through him with a silent, arched-back intensity, his release spurting over Adrian’s hand and onto the pristine rug beneath them. The violent clenching of his body pulled Adrian over the edge moments later. He buried himself to the root, hips stuttering as he emptied himself deep inside with a raw, guttural groan, his forehead pressed between Jamie’s shoulder blades.
They collapsed together over the arm of the sofa, a mess of spent limbs and damp skin, Adrian’s weight half-pinning Jamie down. The only sounds were their ragged breaths slowly subsiding, and the distant sirens of the city thirty floors below.
After a long while, Adrian softened and slipped out. He didn’t move to clean up. He just rested there, his nose in Jamie’s hair, breathing him in.
Jamie spoke first, his voice hoarse. “The rug is ruined.”
“I’ll buy another.”
“You’ll have to. It’s evidence.” There was a trace of worn-out humor in the words.
Adrian finally pushed himself up. He looked at the splatter on the cream-colored wool, at their tangled state, at Jamie’s flushed, sated face turned toward him. A strange, quiet ache settled in his chest, displacing the panic.
He helped Jamie up, steadied him as he pulled his pants back on. They stood there in the wreckage of the living room, the confrontation with Eleanor feeling like a distant, insignificant dream.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian said, the words unfamiliar and rough in his mouth. “For using you like that at the door.”
Jamie studied him, then slowly nodded. “Just don’t make a habit of it.”
He turned and walked, naked from the waist up, toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He paused at the threshold. “Are you coming?”
Adrian looked from the stained rug to Jamie’s retreating back. For the first time in a decade, he had no plan, no calculation. Just a simple, terrifying question.
“Yes,” he said, and followed.