Chapter 7: The boardroom hums with corporate tension as Zariah disarms Matthew's veiled accusations with razor-sharp precision, all while struggling to maintain composure under Dayne's illicit touch.
The boardroom’s LED lights were a sterile substitute for firelight. Zariah’s voice was calm, precise, as she detailed demographic penetration strategies, but her entire awareness was narrowed to the slow, deliberate ascent of Dayne’s hand beneath the polished table. His fingers, warm and sure, pushed past the hem of her skirt, tracing the lace edge of her thigh-highs. Matthew Vance leaned forward, his eyes darting between her composed face and Dayne’s impassive one. “The numbers are robust,” Matthew said, his tone slick with false congeniality. “Yet the timeline feels aggressive for a market this cautious.” Dayne’s index finger slid under the lace, finding bare skin, and he pressed a deliberate circle into her inner thigh. “Aggression is precisely what’s required,” Dayne countered, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the table. Zariah felt the faint, claiming scratch of his nail, a secret reminder of the marks hidden beneath her blouse. Her phone buzzed in her clutch on the floor, the vibration muted against the carpet. It buzzed again, insistent. “If you’ll excuse me for one moment,” she said, her smile flawless as she extracted her leg from Dayne’s touch and stood. In the hall’s echoing silence, her sister’s voice was a frightened tremor. “He told everyone at Sunday dinner you left him for Moretti. Is it true?” The air conditioning hummed, suddenly arctic. Zariah watched through the glass wall as Dayne stared back at her, his emerald gaze burning through the partition. “No, ” she whispered,”it’s much more complicated than that!” the word a liberation and a weapon. She ended the call and re-entered the room, the click of her heels final. “My apologies,” she said, resuming her seat, her knee brushing Dayne’s. His hand returned immediately, higher, bolder, his fingertips brushing the damp silk between her legs. “We were discussing actionable timelines,” Matthew said, his smile not reaching his eyes. “I believe we’re done here,” Dayne stated, not looking away from Zariah. He stood, the movement abrupt, and guided her from the room with a palm burning into the small of her back.
The elevator doors slid shut, sealing them in a tomb of polished brass and quiet. He didn’t speak, just pinned her against the wall, his mouth crashing down on hers in a furious, silent claim. His hands were everywhere, rucking up her tailored skirt, tearing at the silk of her underwear. “The call,” he growled against her lips, his breath hot. “Who?”
“My sister,” she panted, her head thudding back against the mirror. “Robert told them. He knows.” Dayne’s eyes darkened, a storm brewing in their green depths. He bit her neck, not hard enough to mark for others to see, but enough to make her gasp. “Let him know,” he snarled, his voice low and vicious. His fingers dug into her hips, yanking her against the hard ridge of his erection straining against his suit pants. The elevator chimed, signaling their private floor.
He dragged her down the empty corridor, fumbling with the keycard to his suite. The door hissed open and slammed shut. In the stark, modern living room, he turned her to face the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. “Watch,” he commanded, his voice rough in her ear as he pushed her blazer from her shoulders. He unzipped her skirt, letting it pool at her feet, and shoved her panties down her thighs. His own belt buckle clattered to the floor.
HE FUCKS HER.
He drove into her from behind without preamble, a single, brutal thrust that punched the air from her lungs. “Christ, you’re still so tight,” he groaned, his hands clasping her hips, holding her still for his relentless pace. Each slam of his pelvis was a punctuation to his anger, a physical rebuttal to every lie Robert had spread. She cried out, her palms slick against the cool glass as he pounded into her dripping cunt, the wet, obscene sound of their coupling loud in the sterile room. “This,” he grunted, pulling her hair to arch her back, “this is what he lost.” His thrusts grew ragged, his control shredding. “You’re mine, Zee. Say it.”
“Yours,” she sobbed, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “Always yours.” He fucked her harder, his balls slapping against her, his release coiling tight. With a final, deep grind, he came, his hot come flooding her, a possessive claim he made with a guttural cry against her sweat-damp skin.
He remained inside her, his breath harsh against her shoulder, his come still leaking from her onto his thighs. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold and white beyond the glass. He splayed his hands on her stomach, over the flat plane where his release was warm within her. “One day you’re going to carry my baby, Zee.”
She froze, every muscle locking. The words weren’t a question; they were a certainty that slammed into a vault of pain she’d sealed years ago. He felt it instantly, the life draining from her body beneath his hands. “Shit, no, Zee, I didn’t—,” he said, pulling out and turning her, his face etched with panic. “I don’t want you to feel forced. If you don’t want kids, I respect it. Jesus, forget I said it.”
“Shut up blabbing,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You know I want children. Two boys. One girl. We talked about it on your parents’ porch.” A sob hitched in her chest. “What you said… it triggered me.” She looked down at his hand, still on her belly. “I remember when I was pregnant before.” “Close to two months.” The story regarding her earlier confession, tore out of her, raw and ugly. “He came home smelling like perfume, and I was upset, and he was drunk.” She swallowed, the memory a physical taste of copper and grief. “It was a bad fight. He kicked me. Right here.” She placed her own hand over his, pressing down. “I bled later that night. It was so much blood , Dayne. He called a doctor he knew, someone discreet.” Her eyes were dry and infinitely weary. “No one ever knew I was pregnant. So no one knew I lost it.”
Dayne’s face went utterly blank, a terrifying stillness settling over his features. Then he turned and drove his fist into the wall with a sickening crunch of drywall and bone. “Cazzo! Porca puttana, stronzo demente!” The guttural curses ripped through the room, each one a sharp, violent knife of sound. He swore until his voice broke. When he faced her again, his knuckles were bleeding and his eyes were shattered glass. “I am sorry you had to experience that,” he said, the words scraped raw from his throat. He gathered her into his arms, his touch infinitely gentle now, cradling her against the hammering of his heart. “He even ensures you that no man like Robert will ever see heaven.”
He lowered them both to the floor, the city’s cold light washing over them. There were no more words. He kissed the tears from her cheeks, his lips moving to her mouth with a slow, devastating hunger. This was different. He peeled away her ruined blouse and his own torn shirt, skin meeting skin in a silent pact. He entered her again on the hard floor, but it was a slow, deep claiming, each measured thrust a vow against the memory of violence. “This is where you are safe,” he murmured into her mouth, his hips rolling in a deep, cradle-like rhythm. “This is where you are loved.” She clenched around him, a soft, broken cry escaping her as the pleasure built not from fury, but from a profound, dismantling relief. He watched her come, his name a prayer on her lips, before following her into the quiet.
They lay tangled on the hard floor, the city's neon glow painting slow arcs across their sweat-slicked skin. His breath warmed her temple, each exhale a steady anchor in the quiet aftermath. "Zee," he murmured, his voice roughened by use and emotion.
He shifted just enough to cup her face, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone. "Listen to me." The weight in his tone pulled her gaze up to his, where the emerald intensity had softened into something unbearably clear.
"When we have our children," he began, each word deliberate, "they won't ever have to deal with the mob shit we endured." Her breath caught, a sharp intake that echoed in the stillness. "I promise you that," he continued, his eyes not wavering. "They'll witness a loving home with two parents who cherish each other, and in turn, them."
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "And once this bullshit with Matthew and Robert settles, I'm moving us far away from all of it." The promises hung between them, solid and real as the floor beneath them. A lifetime of guarded pragmatism threatened to rise up, to question the feasibility, but the raw conviction in his eyes dismantled it.
She thought of the remote cabin, the firelight, and how his touch had erased years of fear. "You mean that?" she whispered, her voice small against his chest. "I've never meant anything more." His hand slid down to her stomach, resting over the place where his come still warmed her inside. "This will be a place of safety, not scars."
The memory of blood on bathroom tiles, that lonely, secret grief, threatened to surface, but his touch pushed it back. "I believe you," she said, and the words felt like stepping off a cliff into freefall. He kissed her then, deep and slow, a seal on the vow.
When they broke apart, he grinned, a sudden, wicked flash in the dim light. "Now, about making that promise a reality..." His hand moved lower, fingers skating through the wetness between her thighs, and she gasped, arching into his touch as the quiet shattered into a new, hungry tension.
His fingers pushed deeper into her slick heat, drawing a ragged moan from her throat. "I need to be inside you again, Zee," Dayne growled, his voice thick with desire as he nipped at her lower lip. He rolled her beneath him, the cool floor a stark contrast to his burning skin, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him close.
"Then fuck me, Dayne," she demanded, her nails scoring his back. He entered her in one swift, deep stroke, filling her completely, and their rhythm built quickly into a frantic pounding of hips and shared, gasping breaths. "You feel so goddamn good," he muttered, his thrusts becoming uneven and desperate, each slam hitting that perfect, swollen spot inside her.
She clutched his shoulders, her climax crashing over her with a sharp cry that echoed off the glass, and he followed, spilling into her with a hoarse shout, his body shuddering against hers. The following weeks passed in a blur of stolen moments and quiet planning, a tentative peace settling over them like thin ice. Dayne's business demanded a trip to Europe for a few days, and he reluctantly arranged for his most trusted guard, Leo, to oversee Zariah's security and monitor the penthouse.
"Listen to Leo," Dayne instructed, his lips brushing her forehead at the airport, his emerald eyes shadowed with worry. The penthouse felt too large without him, the silence pressing in on that random Thursday night as she paced the sleek living room. Her phone buzzed on the marble countertop, an unknown number flashing on the screen, and she answered with a curt hello.
Robert's voice, artificially casual, slithered into her ear. "Zariah, honey, how's the whorehouse?" he asked, the old nickname a vile poison. "What do you want?" she snapped, her blood turning to ice, every muscle locking. "I just thought you'd like to know," he drawled, the pretence dropping like a mask, "I have your dago boyfriend."
She froze, the phone slipping in her suddenly numb fingers, the world narrowing to his smug silence. "Prove it," she whispered, the words scraping her throat raw, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. A rustling sound echoed down the line, then Dayne's voice, strained and distant: "Zee, don't—" before the call ended in dead silence.
The dead silence after the line went dead was a physical void, sucking the air from the room. Her body moved before her mind could process, legs carrying her to the intercom, fingers jabbing the button for the security suite. “Leo,” she breathed, the word trembling with pure panic when he answered. “Robert has Dayne. He called me. I heard Dayne’s voice.”
There was a beat of static-filled silence on the other end. “Alright, don’t move,” Leo’s voice came through, eerily calm. “I’m coming up.” He arrived in less than a minute, his expression unreadable as he listened to her fractured retelling. He simply nodded, pulling out his own phone. “He’s not going to like this, but he’ll get over it.”
“Who are you calling?” she demanded, her voice climbing. He met her gaze, his thumb hovering over the screen. “Mr. Moretti. His father.” The world tilted. She’d never met the man,formally anyway, only in passing, and only saw him during family dealings, she only knew the shadow his legacy cast. Leo put the phone to his ear, his first words in rapid, sharp Italian she couldn’t follow.