Chapter 7: Hands and Eyes
The burgundy gown was a weapon. Bethany knew it the moment she saw it on the rack—a column of heavy silk that would feel like cool water against the skin, with a neckline that plunged to a daring point and a back that was merely two elegant straps. The color wasn’t just red; it was the deep, wine-stain shade Damien had always said reminded him of her mouth after she’d been drinking Cabernet. He’d called it his color. Wearing it now was an act of defiance so intimate it felt like a declaration of war.
At six-fifteen, a meticulously wrapped box from a boutique she knew Damien owned arrived at her office. She left it unopened on her receptionist’s desk. “Donate it,” she said, not breaking stride.
Her driver pulled up to the Conti building at seven fifty-eight. The structure was a needle of glass and steel, Piero Conti’s monument to his own new-money ascendancy. Bethany smoothed the burgundy silk over her hips, checked her reflection in the darkened window. She looked regal, untouchable, and utterly in command. The green dress Damien had commanded would have made her look like his possession. This made her look like a queen who might, just might, allow a consort for the evening.
She saw him before he saw her. He was standing near a colossal ice sculpture, talking to a man with a nervous laugh. Damien was in a tuxedo that cost more than most cars, his posture the easy, predatory slump of a man who owned every room he entered. Then his gaze swept the entrance, locked onto her, and his entire body went still.
The conversation died. The man with him followed his stare, eyebrows raised. Damien’s expression didn’t change, but she saw the tick in his jaw, the slow, deliberate blink. He excused himself with a murmured word and began cutting through the crowd toward her. The people seemed to part for him without being asked.
He stopped a foot away, his eyes doing a slow, burning crawl from the hem of her gown up to her face. The silence between them was louder than the jazz quartet.
“You’re late,” he said, his voice a low, pleasant rumble that didn’t match the inferno in his eyes.
“Fashionably,” she replied, accepting a flute of champagne from a passing server. “I see you found the ice. Charming.”
“The dress isn’t green.”
“Astute observation.” She took a sip, letting her eyes drift over the crowd. “Burgundy suited my mood better. It’s the color of a good merlot, don’t you think? Or a blood stain.”
He stepped closer, invading her space. The heat of him, the familiar scent of his cologne and something darker underneath, wrapped around her. “You’re trying to punish me.”
“I’m dressing myself, Damien. A novel concept, I know.” She finally looked directly at him, meeting that furious green gaze. “Are you going to introduce me to our host, or are we just going to stand here so you can sulk?”
For a second, she thought he might snap. He might grab her arm, pull her into some dark antechamber, and try to reassert his will through sheer physical force. Part of her wanted him to try. The fight would be glorious.
Instead, a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. It was the smile he used right before he broke someone’s business or their knees. “By all means.” He offered his arm, a gesture that looked courtly but felt like a manacle. “Let’s go make you some money.”
The evening became a razor’s edge dance. She was fluidity and sharp wit, charming Conti—a rotund man with eyes like a bored shark—talking tariffs and shipping lanes with an expertise that made him lean in. Damien played the role of the supportive, vaguely dangerous partner, his hand a permanent, burning brand on the small of her bare back. Every time she made a point that landed, his thumb would stroke a tiny, possessive circle on her spine.
He was marking his territory. And she was letting him, because every stroke fed the coiled, hungry thing inside her that his morning dismissal had awakened.
During a lull, Conti drifted away to greet another guest. Damien leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “You’re playing a dangerous game, wearing that. Every man in this room has imagined his hands on you in the last hour. I can see it in their eyes.”
“Including you?” she murmured, not looking at him.
“I don’t have to imagine. I remember.” His breath was hot. “I remember exactly how you taste. How you sound when you come. I remember that little hitch in your breath right before you beg.”
A shudder, involuntary and deep, went through her. She covered it with a sip of champagne. “Memory is a poor substitute.”
“Is it?” His hand slid lower, just a fraction, his fingers dipping below the waistline of her gown. The contact was electric, illicit. “Let’s test that theory. The penthouse elevator is behind the orchid display. Meet me there in sixty seconds. Or don’t. Prove you’re still just talking.”
He removed his hand, smiled politely at an approaching couple, and melted into the crowd.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was the precipice. To follow him was to surrender to the chaos he represented. To stay was to admit she was afraid of it—and of herself.
She counted to fifty in her head, made pleasant excuses, and walked, unhurried, toward the orchids.
The private elevator was a gilt cage. He was already inside, holding the door. She stepped in. The door slid shut, sealing them in a thick, silent intimacy. He didn’t press a button. The elevator didn’t move.
“You came,” he said, leaning against the mirrored wall.
“I’m curious to see your theory disproven.”
He laughed, a short, dark sound. Then he was on her. There was no gentle prelude, no soft kiss. His mouth captured hers in a consuming, brutal kiss, all teeth and demand. She bit his lower lip in retaliation, and he growled, his hands gripping her hips, slamming her back into the other wall. The impact jarred through her.
“This fucking dress,” he snarled against her mouth, his fingers fumbling with the delicate strap at her shoulder. He couldn’t find a zipper. With a sound of pure frustration, he grabbed the deep V of the neckline and wrenched. The costly silk tore with a obscene, ripping sigh.
Cool air hit her breasts, followed instantly by the scorching heat of his mouth on her nipple. He sucked hard, relentlessly, his hand clamping over her other breast, kneading roughly. She cried out, her head thudding back against the mirror, her fingers tunneling into his hair to pull him closer, not to push him away.
“You wanted a reaction,” he muttered, switching his attention to her other breast, his tongue lashing the taut peak. “You wanted me to lose my goddamn mind. Congrats, Beth. Mission fucking accomplished.”
He released her breast, his hands dropping to the hem of her ruined gown. He hauled it up her thighs, the silk bunching around her waist. His fingers hooked into the sides of her lace thong and tore them apart with a single, brutal jerk. The shreds of fabric fell to the floor.
“Damien—” His name was a gasp.
“Tell me to stop.” His eyes were wild, pupils blown black with need. He was unbuckling his own trousers, his movements hurried, feral. “Say the word and I stop.”
She said nothing. She just watched him, her chest heaving, her lips swollen.
He freed himself, thick and fully erect, and she felt a visceral throb of answering need between her own legs. He didn’t tease. He didn’t prepare her. He hooked one of her legs over his arm, hoisting her up, and drove into her in one deep, punishing stroke.
The cry that left her throat was raw, stripped of all pretense. She was exquisitely tight, the sudden, shocking fullness a burning ache that bordered on pain. He didn’t let her adjust. He began to move, hard, deep pistons of his hips that slid her up the mirrored wall with every thrust. The glass was cold against her bare back, a stark contrast to the furnace of his body pinning her.
“This,” he grunted, his face buried in her neck, “this is what you wanted. To see how far you could push me. To see me fucking lose it.” He thrust harder, deeper, hitting a place that made her vision spark. “Well, look. Look at us.”
Her eyes flew open. In the mirror beside them, she saw the reflection: her gown torn open, her breasts exposed and flush, her leg hooked over his arm, her body canted to take his relentless penetration. His tuxedo jacket was still on, grotesquely formal above the violent, primal joining of their bodies. His expression was one of agonized rapture, of a man being simultaneously destroyed and remade.
The sight of it, the raw obscenity, unraveled her. Her control shattered. A sob ripped from her throat as the pleasure crested, acute and terrifying in its intensity. She came, clenching around him in violent, pulsing waves, her nails scoring down the back of his jacket.
Her climax triggered his. With a final, grinding thrust that seated him to the hilt, he groaned, a ragged, broken sound against her skin. She felt the hot pulse of his release inside her, the intimate, claiming warmth that spread through her core.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths, fogging the cool mirror. He slowly lowered her, her body sliding down his until her feet, unsteady, touched the floor. He stayed buried inside her for a second longer, his forehead pressed to hers.
The elevator suddenly hummed to life, beginning a smooth ascent—someone had called it from another floor. Reality rushed back in.
He pulled out of her, turning away to quickly put himself to rights. She trembled, holding the torn edges of her gown together over her breasts. Her body felt used, gloriously ravaged, humming with spent energy. She looked at the shreds of her thong on the floor, at the slick mess between her thighs she could feel beginning to trickle down.
The elevator dinged, a polite sound that belied what had just happened. The doors opened on a empty hallway.
He turned back to her. His face was a mask again, but his eyes were still dark, still storm-wracked. He shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it over her shoulders, covering the ruined dress. The gesture was strangely tender, at odds with the violence of their coupling.
“Conti will be waiting in the smoking lounge,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The contract is yours. He was sold before the first course. This…” He gestured between them, at the wreckage. “This was just for us.”
He straightened his bow tie in the mirror, a man reassembling his armor. She wrapped the jacket, warm from his body and smelling intensely of him, tighter around herself.
“I’ll have my driver take you home,” he said, not looking at her.
“You’re not coming?”
He finally met her gaze in the reflection. “If I come with you right now, Beth, I won’t let you out of that bed for a week. And you have a company to run.” He reached out, his thumb wiping a smudge of her lipstick from the corner of her mouth. A surprisingly gentle touch. “The game’s changed. You proved your point. You can make me insane.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Now I get to prove mine. That you like me this way.”
He stepped out of the elevator, leaving her standing there in his jacket, surrounded by the scent of sex and shattered silk, the doors beginning to close on his retreating back.
She didn’t call after him. She just stood there, feeling the ache in her muscles, the tender throb between her legs, the unfamiliar weight of his jacket on her shoulders. He was right. The game had changed. And for the first time in ten years, she had no idea what her next move should be.