Chapter 117: Late Nightcap
The deep, honeyed dark of the Texas night was absolute. Damien woke to it, the silence so complete it rang in his ears. Beth was a warm weight against his side, one arm thrown across his chest, her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder. Her breathing was even, deep. In sleep, the sharp planes of her face softened, the calculating CEO and the vengeful ghost both momentarily at peace.
He watched the faint rise and fall of her back, outlined by the sliver of moonlight cutting through a gap in the drapes. This was it. This quiet, tangled trust was what he’d fought a decade of war and consolidation for. The sight of her, truly resting, felt like a miracle he didn’t deserve.
Carefully, he extricated himself, sliding from the warmth of the sheets. The polished oak floor was cool under his bare feet. He padded to the bathroom, flicked on the light, and drank straight from the tap, the water chilling his throat. His reflection in the mirror looked tired. The ink on his chest and arms, a chronicle of loyalty and violence, seemed darker in the low light. The green eyes that could make captains piss themselves looked… uncertain.
He was leaving in seventy-two hours. Back to New York, to the cold granite of his office, to the endless calculations of power and retribution. The commute would be hell. Jets, timelines, vulnerabilities. Every second away from her was a second some other hungry bastard could try to wedge in.
A rustle of sheets. He saw her in the mirror’s reflection first, leaning against the doorframe, naked, her hair a magnificent chaos. She watched him watch her.
“Your thinking is loud,” she murmured, voice thick with sleep.
He turned off the tap, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Just getting water.”
“Bullshit.” She pushed off the frame and walked to him, her movements a liquid glide. She didn’t face him. Instead, she pressed her front against his back, her breasts warm against his spine, her lips finding the space between his shoulder blades. She kissed a trail upward, over old knife scars and newer bullet grazes, to the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Her hands slid around his waist, palms flat against his stomach.
“You’re worried about the commute,” she said into his skin, not a question.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. His hands came up to cover hers. “It’s not sustainable. I’ll be split. Vulnerable here, distracted there.”
She nipped at his earlobe. “So we adapt. It’ll be like any other marriage, Damien. Just a little more… bloody.” Her tone was light, almost amused. “Hubby makes a mess. The wife cleans it up. The tools are just different. More blood, fewer harsh words.”
He turned in her arms, forcing her to look up at him. “I don’t want you cleaning up my messes. Not the old ones, not the new ones.”
“Then stop making messes I have to hide,” she countered, her green eyes clear and sharp even in the dim light. “Or better yet, let me in on the ground floor. I’m not your housekeeper. I’m your partner.” She rose on her toes, her lips brushing the line of his jaw, then his neck, then his Adam’s apple. The sensation was a lightning strike to his groin. “I’ll come to you. Next time. Once I’ve got everything here locked down. The leadership transition is smooth, but it needs my fingerprints permanently baked into the clay. Then I’m on a plane.”
Her mouth was on his, a slow, drugging kiss that tasted of sleep and promise. She was coaxing him, not just back to bed, but back from the ledge of his own thoughts. Her hands slid down, over his hips, fingernails scraping lightly. He was already hard for her, achingly so.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. “My men. In New York. They’ll talk. They’ll see you coming back into the fold as a weakness. A distraction.”
A spark of pure, icy fire lit in her eyes. It was the look she got right before eviscerating a competitor in a board meeting. “Fuck them, stronzi,” she said, the Italian curse rolling off her tongue with a surprising, gutteral fluency. “They didn’t seem to care who you fucked in the ten years after me. Why does it matter if the Lady of the House is back in her rightful fucking seat?”
He froze. A slow, disbelieving smile spread across his face. It was the first Italian word he’d ever heard from her, back when they were just kids, and she’d overheard an insult from one of his distant cousins. She’d repeated it later, perfectly accented, asking what it meant. He’d told her, and she’d filed it away. Now, she wielded it like a stiletto.
The sound that escaped him was half laugh, half groan. He cupped her face. “Say that again.”
“Stronzi,” she repeated, the ‘z’ sharp and wicked. “All of them. You answer to me. They answer to you. The chain is simple. Now,” she pushed him backward, out of the bathroom, toward the vast bed, “stop thinking about them, and start remembering who you belong to.”
He let her guide him down onto the mattress. She followed, straddling his hips, her knees pinning his thighs. The moonlight carved her into a sculpture of pale skin and dark shadow. She was all confidence now, the woman who ruled empires, leaning over him.
“My turn,” she whispered, and her voice was pure Bell, the girl who took what she wanted.
She kissed down his chest, her tongue tracing the intricate lines of a tattoo over his heart. Lower. Her hair feathered across his stomach. He fisted his hands in the sheets, a king reduced to a supplicant by the path of her mouth.
When she took the length of him into her mouth, it was with a blunt, claiming heat that made his back arch off the bed. She didn’t tease. She worked him with a ruthless, expert rhythm, one hand gripping the base of his cock, the other cupping his balls, applying a pressure that was just shy of painful. The wet, obscene sounds filled the quiet room. He looked down, watched her head bob, her eyes closed in concentration, then flicking open to meet his gaze. She held it as she deep-throated him, taking him to the hilt until her nose pressed into his skin.
“Christ, Beth… fuck…” The curses were torn from him.
She pulled off with a slick pop, her lips swollen and gleaming. “You taste like you’re mine,” she said, raw and simple.
Then she rose above him, positioned him at her entrance, and sank down in one slow, inexorable drop. They both cried out. She was still slick from their earlier fucking, but so tight, her inner muscles clenching and fluttering as she took him in to the root. She braced her hands on his chest, threw her head back, and began to move.
This wasn’t the frantic pace of the wall. This was a ruthless, rolling grind, a claiming. She controlled every inch, every angle. He could only watch, transfixed, as she rode him, her body a breathtaking arc above him.
“This,” she panted, driving down hard, “is what they’ll never have. This is what you come home to. This cunt. This heart. This fucking brain.”
He gripped her hips, fingers digging in, helping her find a deeper rhythm. The slap of skin on skin, the wet sound of their joining, was primal. He could feel the coil of his orgasm, a live wire in his gut, but he held it back, mesmerized by her unraveling.
Her breaths became ragged chants. “Don’t you… forget it… don’t you dare…”
He thrust up to meet her, snapping his hips off the bed. “Never. I could never.”
Her climax hit her silently at first, a seismic locking of her entire body. Then a broken, gasping sob ripped from her throat as she convulsed around him, milking him, pulling his own release from him with a violent, untamed force. He came with a shout, spilling into her, his vision whiting out at the edges, the sensation so intense it bordered on agony.
She collapsed forward onto his chest, a boneless weight, their sweat-slick skin sealing together. Their hearts hammered against each other, a frantic, synced drumbeat slowly easing into a heavy, languid thud.
A long time later, she stirred, drawing a nonsensical pattern in the hair on his chest. “I’ll paint the guest room in New York,” she said, her voice muffled. “That cold gray makes it look like a morgue.”
The absurd domesticity of it, after the animal intensity, made a choked laugh bubble in his chest. He kissed the top of her head. “Paint it whatever color you want.”
“Blood red might be thematic,” she mused, and he could hear the smirk in her voice.
He held her tighter. The fear of the commute, the disapproval of his men, the logistical nightmares—they were still there, lurking in the shadows of the room. But they were outnumbered now. He had her promise. He had her language on his tongue. He had the feel of her, ruling him in the dark.
The dawn would come, and with it, the slow, inevitable countdown to his departure. But she had drawn a line in the sand, not with a threat, but with a possession. He was hers. His world, however bloody, would have to make space for that fact.
As her breathing evened out into sleep once more, he stared at the ceiling, a plan already crystallizing in the strategic part of his mind. He would go to New York. He would deal with the stronzi. And he would prepare for the hurricane that was Bethany Montgomery-Rossi to make landfall on his shores. It wouldn't be a retreat. It would be a conquest.
Outside, the first hint of pewter light brushed the eastern hills. The ranch, for now, was still.