Chapter 1: Thorns and Silk
The scent of roses was so thick it felt like walking through warm, perfumed syrup. Jessa trailed her fingers along the trellis where crimson blooms sprawled against the white wood, a detail she’d approved herself for the Welcome Dinner. Everything was perfect. The golden-hour light, the delicate china on linen-draped tables farther up the lawn, the string quartet tuning softly. Everything was exactly as she’d planned.
Except for him.
Florian leaned against a stone sundial, one hand in the pocket of his tailored suit, the other holding a whiskey glass. He was listening to his fiancée, Elise, discuss vineyard yields with a supplier. He nodded at the right moments, his smile polished and neutral.
But his eyes, dark and restless, kept finding Jessa.
She felt it like a physical touch, a brush of heat against her skin. She turned, pretending to adjust a place card, letting the last of the sun catch the gold in her hair. A small, reckless spark lit in her chest. This was the most dangerous game she played, and the high was better than any bungee jump or midnight drive.
“Darling, you’re shivering,” Elise said, placing a concerned hand on Florian’s arm. “I told you it would get cool.”
“I’m fine,” Florian said, his voice a low rumble.
“Nonsense. I’ve got a pashmina in my bag in the library. I’ll just pop and get it.”
“Elise, really, it’s not—”
But she was already striding away, her sensible heels crunching on the gravel path. The supplier drifted toward the bar.
Suddenly, the labyrinth of thorns and petals held only the two of them. The clock tower chimed once, a single, heavy note hanging in the air.
Jessa didn’t hesitate. She closed the ten paces between them in five. The professional planner veneer melted away, replaced by the woman who craved the cliff’s edge.
“Finally,” she whispered, the word a warm breath against his ear. Her hand slipped from his wrist up to his bicep, feeling the tense muscle beneath the fine wool.
He turned his head, his stubbled jaw grazing her temple. “Jess. This is insane. Anyone could—”
“See?” She finished, pulling back just enough to look at him. Her green eyes were bright with challenge. “Let them.”
She held his gaze, her fingers finding the hidden zipper at the side of her sleek, navy dress. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet garden. A slow, deliberate rasp of metal.
She shrugged one shoulder, then the other. The fabric slid over her skin like water and pooled at her feet in a dark puddle on the dew-kissed cobblestones.
She stood before him, the dying sun gilding one bare curve of her hip, casting the rest in dramatic shadow. The cool evening air pebbled her skin, a stark contrast to the heat flooding her veins. She wasn’t wearing a thing underneath.
Florian’s glass clicked as he set it, unsteadily, on the sundial. His polished composure shattered. A raw, hungry sound escaped him. “God. You are…”
“What?” she dared him, chin lifted.
His answer was his hands, large and warm, spanning her waist, thumbs stroking the delicate hollows just above her hips. He pulled her against him, her back to his front, his mouth finding the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder. He didn’t kiss her. He inhaled, deeply, as if trying to memorize her scent beneath the roses.
“You are going to ruin me,” he muttered into her skin, his voice thick.
“Too late.” She arched against him, a shameless, perfect fit. Reaching back, she tangled her fingers in his dark hair. “You think about this all day, too? In your boring meetings? While you’re talking to investors?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think about?”
His hands slid upward, possessive. “This. How you look right now. How you sound.”
From the manor, a door slammed. They both froze, a statue of tangled limbs and forbidden need. Laughter filtered from the terrace, a world away.
Jessa felt Florian’s heart hammer against her spine. His grip tightened for a second, then he was moving, spinning her gently, guiding her backward into the deep shadow of a towering, bloom-heavy arch. Thorns snagged at her, but he shielded her, his body her cover.
“We can’t here,” he breathed, but he was kissing her throat, her collarbone.
“We already are.” She fumbled with his belt, her fingers deft and impatient. The thrill was a live wire in her stomach. This was it—the planning, the secrecy, the sublime risk of getting caught. It was the only thing that made her feel utterly, completely awake.
He captured her wrists, pinning them gently against the rough wood of the trellis above her head. “Why do you do this?” His question was sudden, his eyes searching hers in the dim light. “Why the constant dare?”
She smiled, a flash of white. “Why do you stay?”
He had no answer. He never did. He just kissed her, deep and consuming, a tacit surrender. When he released her wrists, his hands didn’t go where she expected. Instead, they framed her face, his touch unnervingly tender. He kissed her more slowly now, exploring, as if he had all the time in the world, as if the clock tower hadn't just chimed again.
The distant crunch of gravel on the main path was their only warning.
They broke apart, hearts thundering a synchronized drumbeat of panic. Jessa slid down to scoop up her dress, clutching it to her chest. Florian turned, swiftly adjusting his clothes, his profile a mask of sharp angles and conflicted lust.
It was only a groundsman, whistling, pushing a cart of folded tables toward the barn. He didn’t glance into the garden.
The sound of the cart’s wheels faded, replaced by the frantic rhythm of their breathing in the leafy enclosure. For a long moment, neither moved.
“Close one,” he chuckled, the sound strained.
Jessa laughed, a low, shaky release of tension. The fear melted, replaced by a fresh, sharper wave of desire. The adrenaline of almost being seen was a drug, and she wanted another hit. She dropped her dress back to the floor, a deliberate, defiant gesture. The navy silk whispered against the stone.
“Just be on the lookout,” she said, her voice all command and hunger.
She stepped into him, her hands going to his belt. He was still partially hard, the outline unmistakable against his trousers. She made quick work of the buckle, the button, the zipper. The metal teeth gave way with a hushed sigh. She shoved the fine fabric down over his hips, and his cock sprang free, thick and already fully erect in the cool air.
She grabbed it, her fingers not quite meeting around the girth. He hissed, his head falling back against the trellis with a soft thud. She started jerking him, her grip firm and knowing, her thumb smearing the bead of moisture that had gathered at the tip. She watched his face, enthralled by every flinch, every suppressed groan.
“Someone could still come,” he managed, but his hips gave a shallow, involuntary thrust into her fist.
“I know.” She tightened her grip on the upstroke, relishing the way his whole body tensed. “That’s the point, Florian. You don’t get to have safe and clean. You get me. And this is what I am.”
She dropped to her knees on the cobblestones. The dampness immediately seeped through, a chill that contrasted violently with the heat radiating from him. She didn’t take her eyes off his as she leaned forward, her breath ghosting over the swollen head of his cock. She saw the war in his eyes—propriety, caution, his entire ordered world screaming at him to stop her—being incinerated by pure, undiluted need.
“Jessa…” It was a warning that begged for its own violation.
She opened her mouth and took him in, not slowly, but with a deep, claiming swallow that made his knees buckle. He slapped a hand flat against the wood beside her head to steady himself. She worked him with her mouth, a filthy, wet rhythm, her tongue pressing hard along the sensitive vein underneath. She used her hands, too, cupping and squeezing his balls, applying just enough pressure to make him gasp.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word torn from him. His fingers tangled in her blonde hair, not guiding, just holding on, as if she were the only solid thing in a spinning world.
She could taste him, clean skin and salt and the faint, bitter tang of his excitement. She lost herself in the mechanics of it, in the power of reducing a man like him to a trembling, pleading animal. She hummed around him, and the vibration ripped a choked curse from his throat. His grip in her hair tightened.
“Stop. I’m going to—not like this.”
She pulled off with a slick, obscene pop. Her lips were swollen, her chin wet. She looked up at him, a devil on her knees. “Like what? You want to come in my mouth? Do it. Or do you want to fuck me right here where anyone could walk by and see the great Florian Vaughn, engaged man of the year, pounding his wedding planner into the roses?”
He yanked her up by her arms, his control snapping. He turned her, bending her forward over a low stone bench nestled into the arch. The mossy surface was cold and gritty against her stomach. He kicked her legs wider with his foot, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
“You want it to be dangerous?” he growled, his voice raw at her ear. “Fine. Let’s be dangerous.”
He didn’t enter her slowly. He shoved into her with one brutal, deep stroke. She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the garden. She was wet, ready, but he was huge, and the angle was desperate, perfect. He set a punishing pace immediately, each thrust jarring her forward on the rough stone. The bench rattled. Petals from the roses above them shuddered loose and drifted down like crimson snow.
This was what she craved. The obliteration of thought. The raw, physical truth of it. The slick, brutal sound of their joining, louder than the rustling leaves. He fucked her like he hated her, like he wanted to break the spell she had over him, driving into her with a focused, furious intensity.
“Is this what you want?” he gritted out, his breath hot on her neck. “This? You want to be my dirty secret?”
“Yes!” she gasped, pushing back against him, meeting every drive. “God, yes. Harder.”
He obliged, his hands moving from her hips to splay across her back, pinning her down. The ownership in the gesture sent a new bolt of lightning through her. She was close, so close, the coil in her abdomen winding tight with each deep, grinding thrust.
“Tell me you think about this,” she demanded, her voice ragged. “Tell me you think about my mouth, my pussy, when you’re sitting across from her at breakfast.”
He faltered for a second, a missed beat. Then he drove into her, deeper, if possible. “All the time. I think about it all the fucking time.”
It was the confession that tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm ripped through her, silent but violent, a seismic contraction that made her dig her nails into the stone. She clenched around him, milking him, and with a final, shuddering thrust and a guttural groan he buried himself deep inside her and followed, his release hot and pulsing.
For a minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the distant quartet, the faint call of a bird. The world came back in fragments. The smell of sex and roses, crushed and heavy. The chill of the evening air on their sweat-slicked skin. The painful clarity of what they’d just done.
He slumped over her, his weight a comforting pressure. His lips brushed her shoulder, not a kiss, just a touch. He stayed there, inside her, for a long moment. It was this, the lingering, that was more intimate than any act. It was the part he wasn’t supposed to do.
Finally, he pulled out. The sudden emptiness was a shock. He righted his clothes with quick, efficient movements, not looking at her. She slowly pushed herself up from the bench, her body feeling used and glorious. She retrieved her dress and stepped into it, pulling it up her body. The silk felt alien now, a costume she had to put back on.
When she turned, he was watching her, his expression unreadable in the twilight. The rogue was gone, replaced by the businessman, but his hair was mussed from her hands, his mouth was soft, and his eyes held a storm.
“The library,” he said, his voice quiet. “It’s empty. The doors lock from the inside.”
She finished zipping her dress. “What about the pashmina?”
“She won’t find it. It’s in a different bag. She’ll give up and come back here.” He stepped closer, reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. The tenderness of the gesture was more disorienting than the sex. “I want to see you in the light. I want to take my time.”
The statement hung between them, loaded and perilous. It wasn’t just about another quick, adrenaline-fueled fuck. It was a request. A dangerous step towards something else.
Jessa’s heart hammered, but not from fear of discovery. From the look in his eyes. She’d wanted the game, the thrill. She hadn’t planned on the quiet moments, the whispered confessions, the wanting.