Chapter 7: Wakey Wakey
Seraphina woke to the particular silence of an unfamiliar room. It was a hollow, expectant quiet, broken only by the distant, rhythmic thump of a dryer from somewhere else in the building. For a disorienting moment, the plush grey expanse of the ceiling meant nothing. Then memory returned, not in a flood, but in a sharp, specific cascade: the feel of his hands in her hair under the shower spray, the solid weight of his arm across her waist as she drifted off, the deep, even sound of his breathing in the dark.
He was gone.
The space beside her in the bed was empty, the sheets cool. A familiar, cold stone of disappointment settled in her stomach. It was an old feeling, one she’d trained herself to expect. The morning-after evaporation. The polite fiction of shared moments disintegrating in the hard light of day. She was trash set out on a Sunday curb, after all.
She sat up, the sheet pooling around her hips. The room was neat, spartan, washed in the pale, directionless light of a overcast morning filtering through the large industrial windows. Her eyes scanned for her clothes, her bag, any sign of her presence. Nothing.
Then she saw it.
Draped neatly over the arm of a nearby chair was a shirt. A simple, well-worn heather-grey cotton shirt, obviously his. It looked massive. Beside it on the floor, arranged with a peculiar kind of care, was a pair of thick, woolen socks. Not just left out, but placed.
She stared at the arrangement for a full minute, the cold stone in her gut warming, then dissolving entirely. It wasn’t an abandonment. It was a roadmap.
A slow smile touched her lips. “What a gentleman,” she murmured to the empty room, her voice raspy with sleep.
She pushed back the covers and stood, her body protesting with a symphony of pleasant aches. She picked up the shirt, bringing it to her face. It smelled faintly of him—clean cotton, a hint of soap, and underneath, that essential, musky scent that was just Beau. She slipped it on. The fabric fell to mid-thigh, the sleeves engulfing her hands. She rolled them back, the action feeling oddly domestic. The socks were comically large. She shuffled to the bedroom door, the wool soft against the cool hardwood floor.
When she opened the door, the smell hit her.
Butter, browning. The sharp, salty tang of cheese melting. The rich, dark scent of freshly ground coffee. And underneath it all, the earthy fragrance of chopped chives.
Her stomach growled, a loud, undeniable sound in the quiet apartment.
She followed the aromas down the short hallway, her oversized socks whispering on the floor. The main living space opened before her, and there he was.
Beau stood at the steel kitchen island, his back to her. He was dressed in low-slung sweatpants and nothing else, the muscles of his back and shoulders moving with easy, focused grace as he wielded a spatula. Morning light glazed his sun-kissed skin. His dark hair was damp, curling slightly at the nape of his neck. A radio tuned to a low-volume jazz station provided a soft, syncopated backdrop.
He hadn’t heard her. She leaned against the doorframe, watching. This was a different view of him. Not the charming strategist, not the relentless pleasure dom, but a man in his own space, making breakfast. It was disarmingly normal.
The omelet in the pan folded with a practiced flick of his wrist. He slid it onto a plate already arranged with buttered toast. Only then did he turn, as if sensing her gaze.
His eyes met hers across the room. For a beat, they just looked. He took in the sight of her drowning in his clothes, her hair a spectacular mess of strawberry-gold tangles around her shoulders. A slow, warm smile spread across his face, the one that crinkled the corners of his blue eyes. It wasn’t triumphant. It was… pleased.
“Morning,” he said, his voice morning-rough. “Coffee’s just done. Milk’s in the fridge if you want it.”
“Black is fine,” she said, pushing off the doorframe and padding towards the island. She hoisted herself onto a stool, the shirt riding up her thighs.
He poured a mug of black coffee and set it before her, then placed the plate with the omelet in front of the stool beside her. He retrieved his own plate and came to sit, not across from her, but next to her, close enough that their knees brushed under the island.
She sipped the coffee. It was perfect—bitter, strong, bracing. She took a bite of the omelet. Fluffy, perfectly salted, studded with melting cheese and the fresh, oniony punch of chives.
“Chives from the window box,” she stated, not asking.
He nodded, chewing. “Told you.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the clink of cutlery on plates and the soft jazz. It wasn’t awkward. It was a shared, animal comfort. Fueling bodies that had been thoroughly run to ground.
“I checked my email,” he said finally, setting his fork down. “Abernathy’s assistant sent a blanket delay notice. ‘Network security audit.’ Bought the whole department two days.”
She smirked, shaking her head. “Big words. IT-related. You’re a cliché.”
“An effective one.” He leaned back, studying her. “How do you feel?”
The question was direct, devoid of patronizing concern. It was a request for a status report.
She considered it. Her muscles ached. There was a tender spot on her hip from the carpet, a faint constellation of marks on her inner thigh. Her mind felt scoured clean, quiet. “Functional,” she decided. “Sore. Hungry.” She gestured with her fork at the empty plate. “Less hungry now.”
“Good.”
Another silence, but this one thrummed with everything unsaid. The challenge was still there, a live wire between them. He wasn’t hers. She wasn’t his. The office, the shattered control, the four ruthless orgasms—they were a stalemate, not a surrender.
He reached out, not for her, but for her hand where it rested on the cool steel countertop. He turned it over, palm up. His thumb traced a slow, idle circle on her wrist, over the delicate blue veins. The touch was casual, possessive, grounding.
“I have a conference call at eleven,” she said, her voice steady despite the shiver his touch sent up her arm.
“I’ve got to be across town by one,” he responded, his thumb not stopping its circuit. “Site survey for a new agri-tech client.”
“Of course you do.”
He smiled again, a different one this time. It held a spark of the previous night’s dare. “We could be late.”
She pulled her hand back slowly, picking up her coffee mug. She took a long, deliberate sip, watching him over the rim. The consultant was reassembling herself, piece by polished piece. “Tempting,” she said, her tone cooling a degree. “But my time is billable. And I don’t give discounts for repeat performances.”
He laughed, a rich, unfettered sound that filled the kitchen. He stood, taking both their plates. “Fair enough, Ms. Moreau.”
She stayed on the stool, finishing her coffee as he moved to the sink. She watched the muscles shift in his back as he rinsed the dishes. The domesticity was a trap, a beautiful, soft trap. She set the mug down with a definitive click.
“I should go,” she said, sliding off the stool. “I need my own clothes. My own toothbrush.”
He turned, leaning against the sink, wiping his hands on a towel. He didn’t try to stop her. He just nodded. “I’ll drive you back to your car.”
“I can call a ride.”
“I’ll drive you,” he repeated, his tone leaving no room for debate. It wasn’t controlling. It was a matter of fact. A courtesy from one combatant to another.
Twenty minutes later, she was dressed in her rumpled, yesterday’s power suit, feeling both absurd and armoured. He wore jeans and a simple dark henley, the picture of unassuming ease. The ride to her office building was quiet, but the silence was no longer heavy. It was charged, but with a new kind of potential.
He pulled up next to her gunmetal sedan in the now-busy parking garage. She unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Seraphina,” he said, before she could open the door.
She looked at him.
He didn’t have a grand line. No sweeping declaration. He just held out a simple black ballpoint pen—not the one from her desk, but its identical twin.
“You might need this,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “For your big-worded report.”
She took the pen. Their fingers brushed. A current, clean and sharp.
“Don’t get used to making me omelets, Montgomery,” she said, her own smile sharpening.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Moreau,” he replied, his blue eyes holding hers. “Unless you ask nicely.”
She got out of his truck, not looking back. As she slid into the driver’s seat of her own car, she placed the new pen carefully in the center console. She started the engine, the familiar purr a return to her own world. Her phone, now charged, buzzed on the passenger seat. Work emails. Messages.
And one new text, from an unknown number.
The chives could use a bigger box.
A slow, undeniable smile spread across her face. She didn’t save the number. She didn’t need to. She typed a single response, her thumbs tapping swiftly on the glass.
Then get a bigger box. And lose the conference call. My place. 8 PM. Don’t be late.
She put the car in gear and pulled out into the streaming morning traffic, the ghost of his touch still on her wrist, the challenge already reforming, harder and brighter than before.
The workday was a flat, monochrome thing. Seraphina moved through it with automatic precision, her body present in her ergonomic chair while her nerves still thrummed to a different frequency. The structured silence of her condo that evening was a relief. She showered, scrubbing away the office, but avoided her own closet. The heather-grey cotton shirt, freshly washed and folded on her bed, felt like the only logical choice. It was strategy. It was a reminder. It was comfortable.
She was leaning against her kitchen island, swirling water in a glass, when the intercom buzzed at 8:32. She let it buzz three times before pressing the button. “Yes?”
“It’s your farmer’s market delivery,” his voice crackled through, dry as dust.
She released the door.
A minute later, a soft knock. She opened it. Beau stood in the hallway, a silhouette against the warm wall sconces. He’d changed into dark jeans and a charcoal button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His eyes, that impossible blue, tracked from her face down the loose drape of the shirt to her bare legs, then back up. His gaze was a physical caress, slower and more assessing than the night before.
“You’re late,” she said, not moving from the doorway.
He stepped forward, forcing her to give ground or be walked into. She yielded, and he entered, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. The space of her foyer suddenly seemed minuscule, filled with his presence, the cool night air clinging to his clothes.
“That’s my shirt,” he said, his voice low. He wasn’t asking. He held out his hands. In one, a plastic pack containing two bottles of blue Gatorade. In the other, a bottle of expensive Barolo, her favorite, the one she’d mentioned in passing months ago over a client dinner he’d silently attended.
She took both, her fingers brushing his. The Gatorade was cold and slick with condensation. “Hydration and inebriation. Covering all the bases, Montgomery?”
“Recovery and relaxation,” he corrected, following her as she walked toward the open-plan living room. “A balanced approach.” His tone was mild, but his eyes were cataloguing her space—the clean lines, the abstract art, the floor-to-ceiling windows offering a glittering grid of the city. “Your view is better.”
“It costs more,” she said, setting the bottles on a quartz countertop. She turned, leaning back against it, crossing her arms over the soft cotton covering her chest. “So. You got the text.”
“I got the text.” He stopped a few feet away, not crowding her, just occupying the center of the room. “Lost the conference call. Bought a bigger box for the chives.” He paused, his head tilting slightly. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“It looks better on you.” He took one final step, closing the distance. He didn’t touch her. He just looked down, his proximity making the air between them hum. “But I’m going to need it back.”
Her pulse jumped, a betraying hammer against her ribs. “Is that why you came?”
“No.” His hand came up then, not to grab, but to slowly, deliberately, begin undoing the buttons of the shirt starting from the top. His knuckles grazed her sternum. “I came because you told me to. The shirt is just a bonus.”
His fingers worked slowly, each undone button a whispered concession. The cotton parted, revealing the pale, untouched skin of her collarbone, the shadowed valley between her breasts. Her breathing hitched, the only sign the composed consultant was still in the room.
She watched his face, the focused intensity in his blue eyes as he looked at what he was uncovering. This was different from the office’s frantic tear. This was deliberate reclamation. When the last button was free, he didn’t push the fabric from her shoulders. He simply smoothed his hands inside, his palms hot and rough against the cool skin of her waist.
She shivered.
His thumbs brushed the lower curve of her ribs. “See?” he murmured, his voice a low vibration. “Bonus.”
Her hands came up, not to stop him, but to grasp the sides of his button-down. The fine cotton was soft under her fingers. She pulled him closer, until their foreheads nearly touched. The scent of him—outdoor air and clean sweat—filled her space, overlaying her own perfumed environment.
“So you do know how to take orders,” she said, her voice full of sultry defiance as she unbuttoned Beau’s jeans. Her fingers were deft, popping the button, dragging the zipper down in one slow, grating purr. “Here I was thinking about the hassle of training you.” Her knuckles brushed against the hard, hot line of him straining against his boxer briefs. “Turns out under all that muscle… lays a good boy awaiting his mistress’s approval.”
He laughed, a dark, humorless sound that was more acknowledgment than amusement. He took her waist in his grip, his fingers pressing into the softness above her hips, anchoring her. “I don’t take well to orders.” He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Unless you plan on signing my paychecks.”
Her own words, thrown back at her. The words that had started this in her glass-walled office. Coming from him now, in the dim light of her condo, they sounded different. They sounded darker. Hungrier.
A fresh, sharp thrill cut through her. This was the echo she’d craved.
“You invited me here and accepted,” he continued, his mouth tracing the line of her jaw. One hand left her waist to push the unbuttoned shirt from her shoulders. It pooled at her elbows, a grey puddle of cotton trapping her arms loosely. “I will get my shirt back.” His teeth scraped the tendon in her neck, not biting, just testing. “Even if I have to remove it with my teeth.”
The threat was a promise. It sparked a fire low in her belly.
She shoved at his chest, breaking his hold just enough to twist in his arms. She turned her back to him, looking over her shoulder. The shirt hung from her elbows, baring her back completely. “Then stop talking and collect your property,” she challenged, her voice steady even as her heart battered her ribs.
For a suspended second, there was only the sound of their breathing. Then his hands were on her, not gentle. He gripped the crumpled cotton at her elbows and yanked, hard. The shirt peeled down her arms, the fabric catching for a desperate moment on her wrists before she shook it free. It fell to the floor.
She was bare now, exposed in the middle of her living room. The city lights painted her skin in streaks of gold and shadow.
The city lights painted her skin in streaks of gold and shadow.
He stood behind her, utterly still. The only movement was the slow clench of his hands at his sides. Her back was a long, elegant slope, the notches of her spine leading down to the pronounced curve of her hips. The view was a deliberate provocation, an architectural study in defiance.
“Damn.”
The word slipped from his mouth before his mind could stop it. He didn’t just look at her, his eyes devoured her. Seraphina could see it. She turned her head just enough to catch the raw hunger stripping the charm from his face in the window’s reflection. A smile, small and victorious, touched her lips.
She turned around slowly, facing him fully for a heartbeat. Then she bent over, not in a hurry, to pick up the discarded shirt from the floor. The movement showcased the full, perfect curve of her ass, the dimples at the base of her spine, and the gleaming wetness that peeked through her inner thighs. She straightened up just as slowly, holding the crumpled grey cotton between them like a flag.
“Oops.” Her voice was a cocktail of false innocence and pure venom. “Looks like you dropped this.” She brought the shirt to her face, inhaling deeply with closed eyes in a parody of his earlier gesture. When her eyes opened, the green in them was luminous. “Finders keepers, I guess.”
She tossed it over her shoulder. It landed softly on the back of her sofa.
Beau didn’t move for three full seconds. The cognitive dissonance was seismic. The Harvard-educated strategist analyzed the move, the sheer audacity of the counter-claim. The pleasure dom felt the challenge like a spike of adrenaline straight to his core. The farm boy just saw a magnificent, taunting creature he needed to break to saddle.
All three identities aligned on a single objective.
He closed the distance in two silent strides. His hands didn’t go to her breasts or her hips. They framed her face, his palms against her jaw, his fingers tunneling into the roots of her hair. It wasn’t a kiss he initiated; it was a collision. His mouth crashed down on hers, a claim of ownership over the lie she’d just told.
She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her teeth scraping his lower lip. Her own hands were not idle. They shoved the unbuttoned halves of his shirt apart, her nails scoring ten parallel lines of fire down the hard plane of his chest. He grunted into her mouth, the pain a bright, clarifying signal.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “Keepers?” he growled, the word rough against her swollen lips. His grip in her hair tightened, just to the edge of pain, tilting her head back. “You don’t keep anything. I let you borrow it.”
“Is that what you let me do last night?” she gasped, her body arching against the restraint. “Let me borrow your control? Felt like a forfeit.”
His smile was all teeth. “That was a negotiation.” One hand left her face, skated down the frantic pulse in her throat, over the peak of her breast where her nipple tightened under his passing touch, down the quivering line of her abdomen. “This is repossession.”
His fingers dipped between her legs. He found her soaked, hot, and already clenching around nothing. A low, approving sound vibrated in his chest. “You’re always so ready. All that talk, and your body’s already speaking my language.”
He withdrew his touch abruptly.
She made a sharp, bitten-off sound of protest. It was the most honest thing she’d uttered since he arrived.
“On your knees,” he said, the command quiet, absolute. He didn’t push her down. He simply released her hair and took a single step back, his gaze holding hers, waiting.
The air crackled. This was the ledge. The office had been mutual destruction. The morning had been a careful truce. This was a direct order in her territory. Her blue-green eyes burned with a war she was already losing inside herself. She wanted to defy him. She wanted to win.
She wanted what came next more.
Her gaze never leaving his, she sank down. The polished hardwood was cool and unyielding against her knees. The city’s geometric glow haloed his form from behind. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable, a king before a supplicant who’d forgotten how to beg.
He undid his belt with a sharp, metallic rasp. The button of his jeans was already open, the zipper down. He pushed the denim and his briefs just low enough to free himself. He was thick and fully hard, the vein along the length prominent in the low light.
“You want to be a keeper?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft. He brushed the head of his cock against her lips. They were slick from their kiss. “Prove you can handle what’s yours.”
The challenge was a钥匙. It unlocked her. Her hand came up to circle the base of him, her grip firm. She took him into her mouth, not with submission, but with a studious, devastating greed. She used her tongue, the flat of it along the underside, the tip tracing the sensitive ridge. She hollowed her cheeks, taking him deeper, then pulled back to swirl around the head. Her other hand cupped him below, her thumb pressing in a slow, circular rhythm.
His breath hitched. His hand returned to her hair, not to guide, but to feel the motion. To anchor himself. “Eyes on me,” he managed, the words strained.
She obeyed, looking up through her lashes. The visual of her, on her knees, his shirt a trophy on her sofa, her mouth working him with ruthless expertise, was an almost incapacitating feedback loop. He could see her cataloguing his reactions—the flutter of his abdomen, the tightening of his jaw, the way his pupils swallowed the blue of his irises.
He let her set the pace for a long, torturous minute. Let her believe she was conducting this symphony. Then he shifted the rhythm. “Enough,” he breathed, pulling himself from her mouth with a soft, wet sound.
She was panting, her lips glistening. A line of spit connected her to him for a second before breaking.