24. Adrian

Chapter 24

Adrian

A s much as I wanted to get her back home, I didn't want to touch the Darkwater building with a ten-foot pole at that moment.

"Are you warm enough?" I asked, clutching her hand in mine as we walked along Fulton Street. I'd asked Oliver to wait at the corner of Church Street in case David tried to insist that we ride separately, but I just didn't want to go back there. I wanted to be out and about with her, I wanted the fresh air, wanted to feel what it was like to be around her in public without hiding away in my apartment. And as the lights dazzled off One World Trade Center at the end of the road, it only solidified how much I wanted to stay out here. "We could grab food. I know it's late, but…"

She huffed a chuckle, her breath fogging in front of her lips. "I'm warm enough. We can do whatever as long as it's out of eyeshot of Dad's floor."

"Dear God, yeah, as far away from your father as possible," I laughed. I pulled her closer to me, her shoulder brushing against my upper arm. "Feels like we're sneaking around like teenagers."

The stress from Stone & Co hung over me like a fucking storm cloud, but with her this close and this touchable , it felt more like I had an umbrella, like I wasn't drowning under the weight of whatever would come of this. Andrew wanted to take it to the board—he'd outright said it to me before I left, said that he would follow through on his threat. And in complete honesty, for the first time, I was genuinely worried.

There was a chance he could sway them after this. I was the one who had pulled the plug, and he was betting on using that to prove I couldn't do my job, I was sure. But there was no other choice to be made there. If the board wanted to pull me out of my position, I would have to let it happen.

But I felt like I could handle that with her by my side. And that, more than anything, was the most unnerving thing of all.

We wandered through the streets of downtown Manhattan together, the harsh wind dying down as they cut through the buildings. The cold wasn't anywhere near as punishing as it was higher up, but the chill still soaked into us, enough to have her teeth chattering and her fingers freezing against mine. I shoved our joined hands into my pocket.

"We can go back to my place," I offered, slowing as we made our way through Tribeca. Up ahead, a bagel cart with its lights still on sat on the edge of the sidewalk, and a little sign next to it read, Best Hot Chocolate In The World! I didn't believe it for a second, but it would do the trick. "Or…"

"Don't tell me you genuinely believe that's the best hot chocolate in the world," Ava laughed.

I popped my mouth open in an O as I pulled her toward it, stepping in front of her and walking backward. "You don't think they're lying, do you?"

She tried to hold back the adorable, stupid little grin sprouting across her cheeks. "Adrian."

" Ava ."

The pink that had cropped up on her nose from the cold spread outward, darkening her cheeks dramatically and making her freckles stand out even more.

"What? Do you like it when I say your name?"

She breathed out a laugh. "I do. But I like it even more when you say it like that."

"Like what?" I teased.

She gave me a knowing glare, unable to keep her smile tucked away any longer. "Breathy," she said, her voice lowering. "Sounds like you're moaning it."

"Oh, like this?" I grinned, pulling her closer as I stopped just short of the bagel stand. I leaned down, bringing my lips against the shell of her ear. " Ava ."

I cupped the side of her face, feeling the little shiver she did in response. "You can't just…"

" Ava, " I said again, forcing my breath to catch at the very end of it, putting just a little more emphasis on her name.

She cackled with awareness of me. Her head tipped back, her auburn hair shining in the light from the street, and my fucking God, she was beautiful. Paint-stained and makeup-less and not a fucking care in the world, she looked like something straight from the goddamn heavens, distracting enough to make Orpheus turn to look and magnetic enough to tempt Icarus.

Everything about her was just… everything .

"That one was bad," she laughed. "You can't convincingly moan on command."

It didn't matter that it was a thinly veiled, joking insult, just as it didn't matter that she was twenty years my junior or David's daughter or a light in the dark that I'd desperately wanted to ignore, just as it didn't matter what had happened today or what could happen tomorrow. "I don't care," I said.

I kissed her, and she sunk into me, her hands resting gently on the sides of my neck. I hadn't felt like this with anyone in years, and even then, there was always a stiffness to it, a hesitance that I couldn't quite break through. Even with Jan.

It was terrifying, and yet, it was okay.

"Can I be honest for a moment?" I breathed, keeping her lips not an inch from mine as we huddled in the vague warmth that emanated from the bagel cart. I dragged my thumb across her cheek, feeling the little shift she did as she nodded. "I want this. For real."

Her breath caught, and unfocused eyes searched mine as she pulled back enough to look up at me. It hit me, then, what I'd said, what it meant, what I'd admitted—and for once, it didn't make me panic. I was just… calm . "You don't mean a bagel, right?" she whispered.

I snorted. "No, I don't mean a fucking bagel, Ava. I mean you , and the thing I've been trying so desperately to avoid."

"I thought you didn't want that," she said. Her throat moved on a swallow, and that little shiver was back, her lower lip bouncing ever so slightly. "You said you didn't want that."

"I didn't think I did," I admitted. "But then there was you."

"But Lucas…"

"I'm willing to figure that out." The wind kicked up, her hair blowing forward into both of our faces. I fought to push it back behind her ears. "Are you?"

Her mouth popped open, closed, open, closed, open. I couldn't help but hyper-focus on how little the risk of her presence in my life scared me—my only worry was that she would say no, that she wouldn't feel ready to explore something real with me, consequences be damned. I would find a way to be okay with it if that were the case. I'd buried heartbreak before, and I could do it again.

It might just take me another two years.

"I am. I want that," she said, her voice so soft it was nearly lost in the noise of the city. "I just don't know what to do about my dad."

Relief washed over me, but if I was honest, it felt like a wash of her , like the air in my lungs was her, like she'd personally lifted the weight from my shoulders, like she alone held the earth in her hands and kept it afloat. It was absurd, it was psychotic, even, that she'd forced a one-eighty from me by being nothing but a breath of fresh air. And I didn't want to lose that feeling.

"We'll have to tell him," I said. I pressed a kiss against her cheek, letting myself linger. "If he can handle what happened today, then he can handle this. Hopefully."

"He'll lose his mind."

"I know."

"If we do that, we have to do it right," she said, but her teeth were chattering harder, and the chill was sinking in despite the little bubble of heat we'd found and the warmth I was trying to give her.

I tucked her into my shoulder with one hand around the back of her neck. "We'll figure out the best way to do it. And I'll shoulder the consequences of it."

The sliver of warmth I found in my pocket as I grabbed my phone out wasn't enough to shake the bitter cold that was overwhelming both of us. I shot a quick text to Oliver with a link to our location, and in the spare few minutes I had left before the car would whisk us away to privacy, I ordered Ava the best hot chocolate in the world.

————

The thought process was simple: with Ava staying the night again, I'd inevitably wake up at my usual time, and if she wanted me to stay in bed with her, I could at least get started on damage control from the canceled event while she slept. But that meant I needed files and my spare hard drive from my office on the forty-fourth floor.

Get in, get out, take her home, and bury the last of my stresses by being with her, touching her. Andrew and Michael had long since taken their work home with them, and with no one left in there, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows to waltz through the office blocks and the private wing with David Riley's daughter.

And it didn't.

We made it all the way to my private office before she'd tempted me enough that I broke.

Half-dressed and with bare breasts pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window, she shuddered and sputtered a moan as I sank fully inside of her from behind, her knees resting on a single filing cabinet I'd kicked the contents off of. With one hand between her thighs and the other around the front of her throat, I pulled her upper body back toward me.

Heavy-lidded eyes looked up at me upside down, her mouth parted. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Just like a fucking painting.

Half of me wanted to get into Shibari just so I could tie her up beautifully and hang her in a goddamn museum. But the other half, the half that had control and thought mostly logically, wanted to keep her entirely for myself.

I lost my mind with her, in her, and she took all of it, warped it, made it her own. The way she grinned up at me as if she were the devil herself with my hand gripping the sides of her throat, the way she gasped my name as I harshly squeezed her nipples between my fingers, the way her body responded to absolute filth that I couldn't keep myself from saying —all of it was too much, too tempting, too grounding, too perfect, wrapped up nice and neat in a pretty little package that fit me so well in so many ways.

"You've ruined me for anyone else," I rasped, my teeth playing with the soft flesh of her earlobe. Pleasure knotted in my gut as she tightened around me, her little, raspy moan the only reply.

I'd known what I was doing when I had told her that I wanted this. I'd known what I'd been admitting to—that I saw a pathway to falling harder than I'd wanted to with anyone, that I'd end up somewhere I'd told her over and over I couldn't handle. The words weren't all there to explain how I felt but I showed her in the ways I could muster at this point, in the ways I touched her.

And for now, that would have to do.