Chapter 65: See Through
The mood in the mudroom was funereal. Damien’s men moved like ghosts, stripping off tactical vests and muddy jackets, their earlier swagger dissolved in the humid air. No one spoke above a whisper. The clatter of gear on the stone floor was too loud.
Luca stood at the sink, scrubbing his hands under scalding water, the knuckles white. He hadn’t vomited, not like the younger kid, Ricci, who’d stumbled outside the moment the truck engine cut. But Luca’s face had a pale, stretched quality. He caught Beth’s reflection in the window as she toed off her boots. He didn’t turn. Just gave a slight, almost imperceptible dip of his chin. It wasn’t the deference given to a boss’s woman. It was the acknowledgment given to a power source itself. Terrible and absolute.
Beth felt the weight of every glance. The silence was a thick blanket, smothering the usual post-op chatter. She walked through it, her spine straight, feeling their eyes on her back like cold points of light. This was the reckoning. Not from the law, but from the witnesses. This was the part she could never control.
Damien followed her up the grand staircase, his presence a familiar heat at her back. The house felt cavernous, the only sound their footsteps on polished wood, then the soft sigh of carpet. She entered the master suite, the sanctuary of cream linen and modern art, and it felt like a lie.
She went straight to the en-suite, turning the shower on full. Steam began to billow, fogging the mirrors.
“Your men are scared of me,” she said, not looking at him as she unclipped her earrings, placed them on the marble with a precise click.
“They’re not scared.” His voice was low, gravelly from dust and tension. “They’re recalculating.”
“It’s the same thing.” She pulled the sweater over her head, then worked the button of her trousers. The clothes smelled of swamp and a faint, coppery tang. She let them fall to the floor, a heap of contaminated fabric. “They see it now. What you married. What you divorced.”
She stepped into the shower, the near-scalding water a welcome punishment. It sluiced over her hair, her shoulders, trying to strip the morning from her skin. She heard him undress, the rustle of fabric, the clink of a belt buckle. Then the glass door opened and he was there, crowding into the large space, the water cascading over both of them.
He didn’t touch her at first. Just let the water run over his face, his dark hair plastered to his skull. “Look at me, Beth.”
She turned her face into the spray, refusing.
His hand caught her jaw, firm but not rough, turning her head toward him. Water streamed over their faces. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes. His gaze was like a physical touch, searching, intense. He saw the mud on her neck, the faint tremor in her lower lip she couldn’t suppress. He saw the woman who commanded monsters.
“You think I’m looking at you differently,” he said, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth.
“Aren’t you?”
He shook his head, a slow, deliberate movement. “I’m seeing you clearly for the first time in years. That girl in New York, the one I married… she was a beautiful mask. This?” He let his gaze travel over her, from her eyes to her throat, over her breasts, down her body. “This is the fucking masterpiece.”
A shuddering breath escaped her. The confession she hadn’t meant to make tumbled out, raw and quiet under the drumming water. “I ran from this, Damien. From the ranch, from what my family does. From the part of me that knows how to… to dispose of things. I went to the city to be clean. To be soft.” She laughed, a brittle, broken sound. “And you… you were the most dangerous thing I could find there. I traded one darkness for another.”
“And you hated me for it,” he said, understanding dawning. “You hated me because I was a mirror. I showed you what you already were.”
She nodded, water or tears mixing on her cheeks. “And now you’ve seen it all. The whole brutal fucking truth.”
His mouth came down on hers then, not with tenderness, but with a claiming, desperate hunger. It was a clash of teeth and tongue, a battle for air in the steam. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her hands fisting in his wet hair, pulling him closer, needing to erase the distance, the judgment, the fear.
He spun her, pressing her front against the cool tile. His body covered hers, hard and unyielding. His mouth found the juncture of her neck and shoulder, biting, sucking, marking her as his. “I don’t want you soft,” he growled into her skin, his hands sliding over her slick hips. “I want you ruthless. I want you exactly as you are.”
One hand slid around her front, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thigh, hiking her leg up. He was rock-hard, his cock pressing against the cleft of her ass. He didn’t ask. He didn’t tease. The time for that was gone, incinerated in the desert, consumed in the swamp.
He reached between her legs, his fingers finding her wet and ready—a slick, hot truth of its own. A rough groan tore from his throat. “Fuck, Beth. Soaked for me. Even after all that.”
“Because of all that,” she panted, pushing back against him.
He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head nudging, then pushing insistently. He entered her in one deep, relentless stroke, filling her completely, stretching her. A sharp cry was ripped from her lungs, muffled by the tile. It was a shock of perfect, brutal fullness.
He held himself there, buried to the hilt, both of them trembling. “This,” he hissed, his lips against her ear. “This is the only thing that’s ever made sense. You and me. In the dark. In the dirt. In the goddamn blood.”
Then he began to move. There was no gentle rhythm. It was a hard, driving pace, each thrust slamming her into the wall, the force echoed by the slap of wet skin. The steam around them thickened with the sounds: his guttural curses, her choked moans, the relentless, wet piston of their joining.
His hand snaked around her hip again, fingers finding her clit. He rubbed tight, rough circles, the pressure immediate and almost too much. Pleasure coiled, tight and fierce, low in her belly.
“You’re a queen, Beth,” he rasped, his breath hot on her neck. “A vicious, beautiful queen. And I’m the only bastard who isn’t afraid to kneel for you. Who isn’t afraid to fuck you like this.”
His words unspooled her. The coil snapped. Her orgasm roared through her, violent and convulsing, clamping around him in rhythmic pulses that pulled a ragged shout from his chest. He drove into her twice more, deep, grinding strokes, and she felt him come, his release hot inside her, his body shuddering against hers.
They stayed like that for long moments, braced against the wall, the water slowly cooling. Their breathing slowly evened. The world, for a moment, was reduced to the pound of hearts and the drip of the showerhead.
He finally pulled out, gently. Turned her around. Cradled her face. His eyes were dark, stripped bare.
“Don’t you ever hide from me again,” he said, his voice raw. “Not the business. Not the brilliance. And not the brutality. It’s all mine. It’s always been mine.”
She looked up at him, stripped clean herself. The fear was gone, burned away in the fever of his possession. What was left was a terrifying, exhilarating certainty.
Downstairs, in the quiet study, the stolen ledger waited on her desk. A map to a different kind of war. But up here, in the steam and the aftermath, a different treaty had been forged. Not in whispers, but in sweat and salt and brutal, honest truth.