Chapter 2: The Gallery Goad
The polished concrete floors of Elias’s gallery echoed with the sterile chatter of the art crowd. Margot stood near a twisting bronze sculpture that looked, to her, like a contorted digestive system, sipping lukewarm champagne. She was bored. Deeply, profoundly bored. Leo was across the room, a silent, efficient shadow in a black apron, replenishing trays of delicate canapés for people who smelled like money and verbena.
Her brother Elias caught her eye from near a large abstract painting, raising his glass with a faint, knowing smirk. He’d asked Leo to cater as a personal favor, and Margot knew it was partly so she’d have someone to glare at across the room. She stuck her tongue out at him, then let her gaze wander.
It landed on the sculptor, a man named Jonas with forearms dusted with clay and a smile that was all white, even teeth. He was holding court, explaining the "primal dialogue between material and void." Margot finished her champagne in one gulp and drifted over.
"So," she said, sliding into the periphery of his circle. "Is the void paying well these days?"
Jonas turned, his eyes lighting up with interest. She was playing a part she knew well: the clever, slightly caustic woman who might be impressed by a man who talked about tensile strength. She laughed at his jokes, leaned in just a fraction too close to examine a chip on his thumb, and let her hazel eyes spark with a challenge that had nothing to do with art. It was a performance, and she felt every second of it. She felt Leo watching. A hot, delicious thrill shot up her spine.
She was telling Jonas about the absurdity of her hedgehog client when a familiar, calm presence materialized at her elbow.
"Sorry to interrupt," Leo said, his voice a low hum that vibrated right through her. He wasn't sorry. His hand settled on the small of her back, a claim so casual and absolute it made her breath hitch. "Elias needs a hand in the back. Family thing."
"Can't it wait?" she said, injecting a playful whine into her voice, just to see his jaw tighten a fraction.
"It can't." His fingers pressed subtly into her spine, steering her away from the sculptor’s disappointed smile. He guided her, politely but inexorably, past murmuring guests, through a door marked ‘Private,’ and into the labyrinthine back area.
The noise of the gallery faded, replaced by the hum of a dust collector and the rich, sharp scent of cut oak. They moved past stacks of lumber, half-built shelves, Elias’s domain of order and creation.
"Elias doesn't need—" she began, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"He doesn't." Leo cut her off. He pushed open the door to a deep storage room, crowded with offcuts and tools, and pulled her inside. The door clicked shut, muffling the world. A single high window let in a bar of dusty light, illuminating floating motes.
He turned her to face him. His calm was sheet metal over a furnace. "What was that?"
"What was what?" She lifted her chin, the thrill mixing with a spike of real defiance.
"You, putting on a show." He took a step closer. She stepped back, her shoulders hitting the cool, rough surface of a stack of pine boards. "Flirting with someone who probably thinks 'primal void' is a pickup line."
"I was being sociable. You were working." She waved a hand dismissively. "Besides, it's a free country."
"Is that what you wanted?" Another step. His body was close now, blocking the light, enveloping her in his heat and the scent of rosemary and sea salt from the kitchen. "His attention?"
She swallowed. "Maybe I just wanted yours."
"You have it. You've always had it." He said it like stating a simple fact, like the grain in the wood. "But you wanted to fight for it. To make me prove it." His hand came up, his thumb brushing over the pulse in her throat. It was racing. "That's a dangerous game, Margot."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Aren't you?" His gaze dropped to her lips. "You should be. Not of me hurting you. Never that. But of what I’ll do when you push me too far."
He kissed her then, and it was nothing like the kissed they’d shared in her studio. This was punishment and possession. His mouth was hard, demanding, his tongue sweeping in to claim hers. She kissed him back with a fury, nails digging into the hard muscle of his arms. She bit his lower lip, a sharp, sudden act of rebellion.
He pulled back, a dark eyebrow raised. A faint, dangerous smile touched his mouth. "Okay, Red."
In one swift, brutal motion, he spun her around to face the lumber. The rough wood scratched the backs of her hands as he placed them flat against it. He kicked her feet wider apart. She heard the rustle of fabric, the slide of his zipper, and then his hands were on her hips, yanking her black cocktail dress up around her waist. He tore her flimsy underwear aside, the sound of ripping lace loud in the small room.
He didn’t tease. He didn’t prepare her. He just guided himself to her entrance and pushed in, hard and deep, seating himself in one relentless thrust.
The cry that left her was raw, choked with surprise and intense friction. She was wet—the tension, the fight had seen to that—but he was huge, stretching her painfully, wonderfully full.
"Quiet," he growled in her ear, his front pressed against her back. One hand clamped over her mouth, his palm salty and strong. The other anchored on her hip, fingers digging in. "You want to play a game where everyone can hear? Let's play."
He began to move, a hard, driving rhythm that jarred her against the wood with every snap of his hips. The stack of lumber shuddered. The sound of their bodies meeting, skin slapping against skin, was obscenely loud in the confined space. Beyond the door, the muffled hum of the gallery continued, a cocktail laugh floating through the wall like a ghost.
The hand over her mouth stifled her moans, turning them into desperate, humid vibrations against his palm. She was completely at his mercy, utterly exposed, the contrast between the public chatter yards away and this raw, private taking making her dizzy. She felt filthy. Used. Perfect.
"You like that?" he rasped, his breath hot on her neck. "You like being fucked like this, where your brother’s guests could walk in? Where anyone could hear how wet you are for me?"
She nodded frantically, her world narrowing to the delicious burn of his penetration, the rough wood beneath her palms, the iron grip of his hand.
"Could he fuck you like this?" Leo demanded, pistoning into her harder, deeper. "That sculptor. Could he make you come just from the sound of his voice? Would he know you need to be held down to feel safe enough to fall apart?"
Tears of overwhelm pricked her eyes. He saw it. He always saw it. The need beneath the provocation. His words shattered her last defenses as surely as his hips shattered her composure.
"You’re mine," he stated, the words a low, possessive creed against her skin. "Every goddamn frustrating, brilliant, beautiful inch of you. And you’re going to come on my cock right now to prove it."
The command, the sheer undeniable truth of it, tipped her over the edge. A silent, seismic orgasm tore through her, her body convulsing around him, a series of tight, fluttering clenches that milked a guttural groan from his throat. He pushed her through it, his thrusts becoming ragged, losing their rhythm, until he buried himself to the hilt with a final, shuddering drive, spilling hot and deep inside her.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant laugh of a stranger. Slowly, carefully, he withdrew. His hand left her mouth, coming to rest gently on her shoulder. He smoothed her dress down over her trembling thighs.
She turned, her back against the lumber, her legs barely holding her. He was tucking himself away, his own breathing still uneven. Sawdust clung to the sweat on his forehead.
He looked at her, really looked, his eyes searching her flushed face, her swollen lips, the tear-tracks through her mascara. He cupped her cheek, his thumb wiping away the black smudge. His anger was gone, replaced by that bottomless, unsettling tenderness.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
She nodded, unable to speak. She leaned into his hand.
“I’ll clean up in here,” he said, his gaze taking in the disturbed dust, the obvious evidence of their presence. “Go to the bathroom. Splash some water on your face. I’ll tell Elias you got a migraine from the sculptural void.”
A weak laugh bubbled out of her. He smiled, a real one, that softened the lines around his eyes.
As she turned to slip out the door, his voice stopped her, quiet but firm. “Margot.”
She glanced back.
“Next time you’re bored,” he said, holding her gaze. “Come find me. Don’t make me drag him into a back room, too.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. And as she walked back into the glittering noise of the gallery, her body still throbbing with him, the world felt sharp and clear and entirely his.