Chapter 9: : Chapter 8

For all the disdain I tried to muster toward Célian, I couldn’t stop my legs from carrying me down to the fifteenth floor.

Overeager, reckless, and in serious need of intervention. That’s what I was.

Besides, he said ten minutes. I’d darted straight to the elevator, not even giving it a second thought. Phoenix—who’d given me a ride to the gala but cut his stay short because he was a recovering alcoholic and didn’t like to be around booze—was nice, but he didn’t make my heart clench and stutter like a lovesick puppy. He was funny and charming, but everything about us felt casual and overfamiliar. His voice felt like feathers on my skin. When Célian talked, it was like he squeezed the back of my neck, like a predator. And as much as I hated that Célian was staking his claim on me, Mathias was, indeed, a level of creepy more fitting behind bars than behind a network president’s desk.

He’d commented about how pretty I looked tonight, which was fine, but then proceeded to tell me about the champagne suite of the hotel, which was not fine. Of course I’d refrained from letting him know his son had already shown me around it, managing to defile me in six different spots inside said suite.

The fifteenth level was a private floor. In the elevator index, it was described as the Art Room. When I got to the floor, I swiped the card against the digital screen and watched a green light blink back at me. The door slid open. I stepped out into the room, my heels hitting the marble floor. The breath knocked out of my chest.

The vast, open room was full of replicas of famous sculptures—life-sized models of by Auguste Rodin, and by Alexander Antioch, and the Elgin Marbles. Then, in the center, Michelangelo’s stood staring at me, imperial and almost patronizing, a towering more than six feet of sheer maleness—much smaller than the original, but just as striking.

My legs shook at the mesmerizing beauty and violence dripping from the sculptures. One thing they all had in common—they were stark naked, unapologetically erotic. The room had no chairs. No couches. Nowhere to do anything other than stand and admire the beauty in front of you. I briefly wondered whose idea this room was, but I didn’t have to think about it. Not really. I already knew.

The man who was as beautiful as a painting, as ruthless as art, as hard as marble.

I sauntered across the room, my hand brushing over the broad, carved chests and mouths slacking open in pleasure. The room smelled clean, cold, and of chipped stone. It was dimly lit, and mostly dark blue.

I thought about Dad, about the experimental treatment our new insurance company had offered him this week, about the hope in his eyes when he’d broken the news to me and the faith in my heart, its seed blooming into something I was afraid was going to grow beyond my control. Everything was moving too fast and yet not fast enough since I’d joined LBC.

“I’m scared.” I crouched down and stared at a marble woman sitting in a bath, fingering herself. She wouldn’t spill my secret in anyone’s ears. She would listen. Maybe she would even understand. Her face was defiant. Fearless. She wasn’t ashamed of what she was doing.

“My life is in shambles, and my father is dying. All the things I want seem unachievable, so far away. Is your heart lonely too?” I whispered, caressing her cheek.

I’d come to this room to be with Célian, but Célian wasn’t mine to be with. If I told the Jude of three months ago what I was about to do, she would punch me in the tit, because an engagement was an engagement. The word’s definition meant he was committed to someone else.

Then I remembered the way he’d looked at her up at the gala, like she’d killed his dreams.

And the way she’d clung to him, like she knew and didn’t care.

“Yes,” a dark, masculine voice whispered behind me, and I twisted around to take him in. Célian stood at the elevator’s door, a shoulder leaning against the frame, playing with the electronic card between his fingers. “That’s why we do what we do. Why we can’t stop this.”

He took confident steps into the room, each of them making my heart swell a little more, until there was a monster in my chest, hungry for his touch. The look on his face alone engorged my clit. I squeezed my thighs together, my underwear damp between them.

“Whose idea was this room?”

“Mine.”

“Why?”

“Because I like beautiful, lifeless things.” His finger hovered over my face, making minimal contact with a lock of my hair and moving it behind my ear. “They can’t talk back. They can’t screw you over. They can’t fuck your future.”

“Is this where you take all your one-night stands?”

His slight smirk made my chest hurt.

“If you were a -night stand, you wouldn’t be here. And no, I don’t make a habit of fucking women against these replicas. They’re worth over 300k apiece, and hard to come by. Pick a favorite,” he ordered—not asked—gesturing to the vast room.

I resumed my stroll among the marble statues, feeling his eyes burning a hole in my back, seeing through my dress and skin and bones, devouring me from the inside. I studied every sculpture carefully, like there was a wrong and right answer, before finally gesturing at .

I turned around to face Célian.

He , running his callused fingers over his jawline. “You can do better.”

“What’s more beautiful than Michelangelo’s ?” I challenged.

“Not many things. Which makes it very cliché. The first nude statue made in the Renaissance and the one sculpture every eejit knows. The Beatles aren’t your favorite band, right, ?”

“No,” I scoffed. “Too mainstream. Actually…” I licked my lips, snorting out a laugh. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I didn’t mind showing Célian my weirdness. For all the bad things he was, he never judged me. “I always thought David’s penis was disproportionately small. And, um…soft.”

“The original one is attached to a seventeen-foot-tall sculpture. Pretty sure you still couldn’t fit it in your smart mouth. Think harder, Humphry.”

I resumed my walk around the room. He was right. I needed to push myself harder, to pay attention and not just go with the flow. Wasn’t that what a good newsperson did? I stopped at a statue of a man sitting on a throne made of a beast standing on all fours. He was naked, sheathed by a toga over his privates, staring up to the sky. He looked like a gladiator, wounded and taut and muscled. I didn’t know this piece, but it spoke to me.

He was obviously in pain, yet his face was fierce with defiance.

He was completely unknown to me, yet his battle so familiar.

“

.” Célian spoke into my ear, and I shuddered with pleasure. I felt his body close to mine, yet he didn’t touch me. “By an anonymous artist. Special shipment from Italy. A spur of the moment purchase, but I liked the pain in his eyes. So very intimate, don’t you think?”

Of course I did. Happiness was something you were eager to share. It was pain you wanted to keep private.

“Why did I have to choose?” I asked, still staring at the statue.

“There’s a camera in the right-hand corner of this room, just behind my back. I could take you to the presidential suite and fuck you to oblivion and back, but I’d much rather do it somewhere I can send the message home to Mathias.”

“And the message is?” I turned around to face him.

“That you’re .”

“Yours I am not.” That was a lie I wished I could believe, about a man I wished I could forget. My body responded to him in a way I’d never experienced before.

I belonged to him, and he belonged to someone else. What did that make me?

The circumstances were pure semantics. Sins wrapped in sugar so I could swallow them more easily.

Célian cupped my cheek. “Yes,” he whispered. “You are. You’re so far gone you can’t even see me sharing a drink with my cousin without losing your shit.”

“You’re someone else’s,” I said.

He shook his head. “No one’s.”

“And Lily…?”

“Haven’t touched her in over a year.”

His words cut the rope of anxiety wrapped around my throat, and I felt like I could breathe again.

“Not going to, either. I have no plans of fucking anyone but you, but I would stay away from Lily even if she was the last proud owner of a pussy on planet Earth. I don’t do cheaters, and she is one.”

“Oh?”

“With my father.” He paused, studying my reaction, and I tried hard not to throw up in my mouth. “Shortly after…” His jaw snapped shut as if he was swallowing down nausea himself. “Never mind. Point is, this is not for you to worry about. She knows it, too,” he explained, his calm and poise returning.

I licked my lips, staring at his. A few months ago, the girl who’d been with Milton would have told him she wanted everything. That she it, too, and screw the empire he was trying to build on lies and revenge. But right now, standing in front of him, trying to make it in this cruel, real world, chase debt, and look after my father, something was better than nothing—especially something that came from him.

We were both drowning, and when we were together, it felt like I was coming up for air.

“And she knows you’re not faithful?” I stressed.

“There’s nothing to be faithful to. It’s not a relationship. We live apart. We sleep apart. We live our lives—apart.”

“I’m not an exhibitionist.” My eyes traveled to the red-dotted camera above our heads.

He advanced toward me, cupping my cheek and brushing his lips against mine erotically. My stomach twisted and dropped, like I was falling.

“Neither am I.” He pulled my lower lip between his straight teeth, tugging hard before releasing it slowly, prolonging the sweet, delicious pain. “But I’m willing to make an exception to make sure the message hits home. Wrap your arms around ’s neck.”

I blinked at him, disoriented, but did as I was told, first lowering myself to sit on ’s lap. I felt the statue’s stone chest behind me as I carefully clasped my arms around his neck. From this position, it looked like he was gazing down at my rack.

Célian lowered himself to his knees and drank my little moan of excitement hungrily with another kiss, this time tonguing my mouth, fighting his way through the walls of it, and claiming every growl and moan that sat there dormant, waiting for him to unleash it.

“I’m going to wreck you,” he hissed, shoving his palm into my sweetheart neckline and cupping one of my tits. He took the nipple out and sucked it savagely before moving away and blowing cold air on it. I arched against , feeling his cold marble toga digging into my butt. It was hotter than sin, but Jesus, it was weird.

Célian’s hand found the zipper behind my back and began to roll it down, his eyes hard on mine. I whimpered at how commanding he looked when he did that. Because my dress was strapless, the minute I arched my back it slid down and pooled at my feet like a pale winter lake, with little to no effort from him.

I was completely naked, save for my soaked white cotton panties and my Chucks. He lowered himself to my nipples and began kissing and biting them, keeping me sandwiched between him and the statue and drinking his attention thirstily. Every time I tried to touch him, he plastered my hands back to the statue. I was put on a pedestal, to be seen and admired by his father.

To be devoured by Célian.

Only him.

Only ever him.

I tried to rub myself against him, but that resulted in him moving away. He continued to tongue me, all the way down to my stomach, screwing his tongue into my navel and groaning, his nose paving its way down to my panties. He used his teeth to lower my underwear to my knees and stared at me for a few seconds, burying his nose in my slit and taking a lungful of air, breathing it in.

I nearly burst out of my skin, every nerve in my body dancing to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“This pussy is mine no less than it is yours.” He kissed the slit, flicking his tongue over it and teasing my clit. “Spread them wide, Chucks.”

I didn’t have to be asked twice. I threw one leg over each of the statue’s thighs, spreading myself so wide my inner thighs burned. Célian licked me crack to slit before plunging deeper. Every once in a while, he brushed his thumb or forefinger against my leaking center and pressed it between my butt cheeks, wetting the area. I’d never done so with anyone else, but there was something about Célian that made me want to be a little submissive. In the newsroom, we were at war, but in private, our main battle was trying to keep our clothes on.

He teased my backside with his fingers, playing, poking, while eating me out, and I exploded from within like fireworks, moaning his name so loud my ears rang. I let go of ’s neck, sliding down to the floor, my thighs still shaking from the climax ripping through me. Célian straddled me at the sculpture’s feet, still fully clothed, and unzipped his dress pants.

“I’ll ask again,” he growled. “Are you on the pill?”

“I am,” I whimpered, clawing at his suit as an excuse to touch him and opening my legs as far as I could with him pinning me to the floor.

“Good, because I want to fuck your pussy and then come inside your mouth. And this time, you won’t be swallowing it. You’ll be tasting and enjoying every second of it until I’ve had enough. Understood?”

I nodded. His first bareback thrust into me made my eyes roll in their sockets. He was so hard, his cock so velvety and hot, I thought I was going to die from the intense pleasure. I dripped against his cock and on the granite floor, and the more I moaned, the more intense his movements became. Rougher. Deeper. Faster. Like he was punishing me for wanting to screw me so badly.

I think we were both alarmed by the strength of our attraction to one another. I wanted to keep my job at all costs, and he didn’t need the complication of anyone finding out, not to mention tying himself to an affair while he was engaged.

Was that what we had now? An affair? I knew if I started labeling it, I would fall off the orgasmic cloud I was riding.

He throbbed inside me, hitting my G-spot again and again and again, his hand snaking toward my ass and now fully toying with it. In. Out. In. Out.

“Breaking you in slowly for next time.” He kissed the side of my face, almost romantically, and I nearly laughed.

“How do you know I haven’t done that before?”

He somehow managed to throw me a patronizing look, even mid-sex, thrusting into me so punishingly now that I grazed his butt with my fingernails, tears of pleasure pooling in the corners of my eyes.

A few more plunges, and the orgasm climbed up from my toes to the rest of my body like an earthquake. I screamed, this time enjoying a slow, sensational feeling of warm honey coating my entire body as the climax washed through me.

“Close,” he panted, picking up his speed. A minute later, he pulled out of me and shoved his dick into my mouth, making me taste myself in a way I never had before. I was sweet and musky—not bad…but too familiar. His warm, thick cum came in spurts inside my mouth, and my eyes fluttered shut with pleasure again.

“Taste me this time,” he ordered. I did. I let his cum sit on my tongue, tasting its earthy, salty tang. I smiled, my mouth full of him. He smiled back, and he was so heartbreakingly beautiful, for a short moment, it occurred to me I might never recover from this guy, no matter what my mom had told me.

“Now swallow.”

I did.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered.

I did that, too, feeling oddly comfortable with being bossed around.

“Atta girl.”

We put our clothes on silently. A part of me was still delirious at what we’d done together, and another part wanted to throttle myself for letting him do this to me when he had a fiancée upstairs. And…

. God. Had I actually allowed him to record everything? How stupid was I?

Very stupid when it came to his penis, apparently.

“Célian?” I asked as I retied my Chucks. Swan white this time.

He turned around and pinned me with his gaze.

“No one can know about this.” I pointed at the camera.

He nodded. “We’ll go down to the second floor and destroy it so you can sleep tonight.”

Confusion must have colored my face, because he pressed his knuckles to his lips, stifling one of the dazzling smiles he refused to share with the world.

“You’re not usually agreeable,” I noted as we walked toward the elevator, our steps and voices echoing around the mostly empty room.

“Neither are you. That’s why I wanted to see how far you’d go for this. Turns out…” He grabbed my waist and yanked me under the crook of his arm. “You’d go pretty far to be fucked by me. I tell my father that if he messes with you again, he is in for hell on Earth. But I would never let anyone see your tits and cunt.”

“This is going to end badly,” I murmured, not even sure if he could hear me.

We slid into the elevator, and he pushed the second floor button, smirking. “But we will have one hell of a ride.”

I’d never believed in miracles.

My experience with life had been that it was pragmatic, uncontrollable, and unpredictable—with a royal introduction to all three when I’d caught my father with our maid’s mouth wrapped around his dick when I was only five years old.

He’d told me they were playing, and I’d believed him. Moreover, it looked like a pretty fun game, too—I touching my penis, loved being tickled, and combining the two seemed like the kind of idea to land you a Nobel Prize—so of course I ran it by Maman. Needless to say, Maman was not impressed with the way my father conducted his spontaneous playdates with the help.

The maid was fired, my parents had a huge fight, and from that point forward, I can’t remember a time when we were a happy family.

Or just happy.

Or just a family.

For all the shit both of them had been through together, for all the affairs and infidelities and fighting through lawyers and stooping so low they made me wonder just how bad, exactly, humans could be, they hadn’t gotten a divorce until last year.

My father, however, had never loved me. His disdain was fundamentally present in the way he looked at me, the way he sneered, and the way he deliberately avoided anything I liked or that mattered to me. He thought, in some fucked-up way, that I was responsible for the slow and unstoppable breakdown of his marriage. Which only went to show how little responsibility he took when it came to his problems.

That’s why I had very little faith in this thing called life. If something went right, it was probably because it was taking a turn on its way to go seriously wrong. Give it time, and it would happen. Life was about putting out fires, or, if you worked in a newsroom, about starting them.

Which worked well for me. My personal experience with people was lackluster. So I didn’t mind screwing them over if they did something bad that deserved to be publicly discussed.

Anyway, like I said, I’d never believed in miracles, and that’s why I knew there was a reason Lily had left the gala before Jude and I got back to the terrace. Unfortunately for all parties involved, I didn’t have it in me to care enough to check. Lily was part of my plan, sure, but my plan was already in motion. I would deal with her little tantrum later, remind her about my parents’ chateau in Nice—the one she wanted to renovate and live in during the summers so badly. I’d buy her another ticket to the Maldives to vacation with her friends, soothe her the way she was used to being soothed—with pretty shiny things and negative attention.

!

After all, not long ago I’d caught my fiancée on all fours, taking my father’s cock in her mouth in his office while he caressed her bare, fake-tanned ass—much like the maid had all those years ago.

It hadn’t been coincidental, and I knew it. My father was a sick prick, and he’d figured I remembered the day he’d buried his family six feet under—not only by cheating on my mother, but also by deciding it was my fault for ratting him out. He made me feel like I was fundamentally defective. So I became what he treated me as: a world-class jerk.

I’d clucked my tongue, ignoring the entire scene playing before me with pure nonchalance, like my father had been sitting at his desk and Lily was typing away on her desktop as a part of that bullshit internship she’d wanted to take for half a second to impress me and prove she was worthy of inheriting Newsflash Corp.

I’d walked into his office with purpose—he’d invited me there, so he knew I’d catch him—and of course, I couldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing me hurt, so I poured myself a glass of scotch. I took a seat across the room on a brown leather settee and sipped quietly, watching the view from his window.

Lily had finally the audacity to tuck her shirt into her skirt, roll the latter down her bare thighs and wipe her lips, running like a headless chicken across the room. She’d reached out, about to throw herself at me.

I’d sipped my drink, crossing my legs.

She’d halted in place, collapsing onto the carpeted floor. My father had chuckled, taking his time to zip himself up. I remembered thinking no son should see his father’s penis at that age, unless it was because he needed to give him a bath because he was too sick to do it himself.

he’d finally greeted.

I’d smiled, thinking, .

he’d said.

But his tone had been kind, apologetic—like he’d been pleading Lily’s case. Bastard.

I’d answered him in French.

After Jude and I reached the second floor and destroyed the video, we went back to the terrace shared another drink with our colleagues, blissfully ignoring each other—another thing about her that made my dick happy. She wasn’t clingy or needy or even particularly interested in claiming me or my attention. She did her own thing. Like me, she simply had needs that needed to be met. Call me a saint, but I was happy to take one (or six) for the team.

When it was time to go home, most people shared an Uber, others opted to walk, and many just cabbed it and saved the receipts for expense purposes. I didn’t want Jude to take the subway back home this late, but I didn’t want to offer her a ride, either. It wasn’t worth the aftermath of endless gossip and possible false assumptions on her end. I barely looked my staff in the face, let alone offered them a ride. This led me to resort to asking a rather pathetic favor of Kate, who, for an unknown reason, had decided to get here in a car.

“First things first, thanks for the pussy breath.” She took a pull of her beer and a step away from me.

“Figured you’d appreciate it,” I deadpanned, unblinking. “You need to give Judith a ride.”

“We live in NoHo. She lives in Brooklyn,” she stated matter-of-factly, as if logic had any place in my decision.

I couldn’t care less if she lived on the moon, and the way I unclasped her fingers from her drink, downed it, and discarded it in the trash communicated that perfectly to her. Kate shook her head, poking my chest. “Fine. But you should really dump the lollipop in a wig.”

“The lollipop in a wig has a pedigree and a ten-percent share of my company.”

Besides, Lily was hardly a factor. Even if I were officially single, I still wouldn’t openly court an employee. Not that I wanted to court Judith.

“Funny, I didn’t peg you for a man who’d allow someone to have him by the balls.”

“I wouldn’t allow Lily to suck them, let alone hold them,” I quipped. “My tolerating her is strictly business.”

“Then you’re a very bad businessman, because she has leverage over you.”

Shooing Kate away with a wave, I got back to entertaining my investors and colleagues, but not before ordering her to never mention her favor for me to Jude. The feisty little didn’t do weakness or vulnerability, which made breaking her in bed so much more fun.

A few minutes later I watched them make their way to the exit and tossed my head back, knocking down another drink. I realized I hadn’t thought of Camille the entire evening.

A sharp pain sliced through my gut, and I let it bleed agony, because I deserved it.

Because I was a bastard, and everyone knew it.

Camille.

Maman.

Mathias.

Lily.

Jude.

Kate.

And anyone who’d ever worked with me.

knew that, our juices still smeared on his gladiator boot.

Even the silent walls of the art room knew, and the security tape we’d stomped on and hidden in the bottom of the security room’s trash.