Page 3 of The Boss
When she finally sagged, he pressed a last kiss against the soft, over-sensitized place that made her gasp and then stripped. Naked, he climbed her body in a prowl. He kissed her with his mouth slick from her and didn’t apologize for how filthy it was. She kissed him back like she loved theruin.
“Condom,” he said against her lips, already reaching into the bedside drawer, hoping against fucking hope. Success came in the form of a crinkled wrapper.
She caught his wrist. “Yes.” A tiny nod, pupils blown wide. “Yes.”
He tore the foil, sheathed himself, and then he was at her entrance, the blunt, aching head of him stroking through slick heat. He watched her face when he pushed in, watched her lips part, watched her lashes flutter, watched her take him inch by inch until her nails dug crescents into his shoulders.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She did, and he bottomed out. Fully inside. Nothing between them but breath. His control shuddered. She was tight around him, impossibly hot, her body grasping for him like it recognized something.
He didn’t start gentle. He started true, long, deep strokes that made the headboard kiss the wall and the city glitter like applause. He wrapped her wrist in his hand and pinned it above her head, held the other to the mattress by her hip, rode her through pleasure that built and doubled back and built again. She met each thrust with her hips, hair wild on the pillow, mouth wet and open to every sound he took fromher.
“Harder,” she breathed. “I can take it.”
He gave it. He pulled out and flipped her onto her stomach with a roughness that made her gasp and then sank back intoher from behind, one hand locking over the back of her neck—not choking, just possession, just heat—his other hand sliding under to find her again. He stroked her where she was swollen and slick and thrust into her until the slap of skin was a drumbeat and his name was a litany. When she came this time she did it with her teeth sunk into the sheet, hips jerking, hands fisting uselessly at the fabric. He followed, cursing against her shoulder, pulsing deep, holding her tight to take every inch of what he couldn’t holdback.
They collapsed sideways. For a while the only sound was the uneven saw of breath and the muffled shout of a siren far below. The city kept its own counsel. He slid his palm over her spine and she shivered under it. He liked that, liked the faint, involuntary tremor, liked the quiet after the storm they’d made with their bodies.
She drifted first. He watched her for too long. Watched the tension bleed out of her face, watched her mouth soften into sleep, watched a strand of hair fall across her cheek. He should have stood up right then and put a wall back between himself and the kind of trouble that made men do stupid things. Instead, he smoothed the hair back with careful fingers and let something he didn’t name loosen in his chest.
Heat fluttered under his skin. Not a burn. Abreath.
He slept.
When he woke, it was still night, but the bed wascold.
A distant lamp bled a pale square on the floor. The sheet beside him lay smooth, barely creased, like a club housekeeper had already been through with invisible hands. Her perfume, or his memory of it, clung stubbornly to the pillow. The bathroom door stood open on quiet tile. The closet had never held herdress. Emerald silk was gone. So was the woman who had worn it like adare.
Leif rolled onto his back and stared at the dark ceiling for a single heartbeat, the flat line of his mouth the only sign the world had tilted. Then he sat up and planted his feet on the floor.
No note. No number. No name but the one he didn’t believe.
He stood and crossed to the window. The city looked different somehow, less a jeweled promise, more a beast with a thousand teeth. His reflection looked back at him: bare, bruised by a night he should’ve controlled and hadn’t. Asudden, savage sting lanced his palm. He lifted his hand as ink-dark lines burned up from the heel, resolving into a lion’s head—new, impossible. For a heartbeat he simply stared, breath gone, horror cold as the night.
“What the fuck?!” he rasped into the glass.
The acrid reek of scorched skin hit the cold suite air as ink-dark lines continued to crawl, biting deeper. He scraped his thumb over the mark; it didn’t smear. It pulsed—alive. Not ink. Aclaim. An impossible claim.
His stomach punched hollow. He’d taken “Mary” with his hands, his mouth. Let her under his skin. And now he carried the Dante Brand.
The thought landed like a blow. Branded into a family he’d held at arm’s length his entire life. He needed answers to this horror of horrors. How. Why. Who.
Cade would know how it happened. Elise would know why. He needed solutions before the reaction became permanent. Not in the morning. Not when it was convenient. Right. Fucking.Now.
He dressed fast—shirt, slacks, cuffs half-done. He swept the suite in a single, ruthless pass—bathroom cabinet, trash bin, nightstand, the chair where his jacket had landed last night. Nothing else gave a hint to Mary’s identity. No hairpins. No threads. No trace of her. He was already moving.
Steel hummed around him as the elevator slid down—mirrored walls, his reflection, the throb in his palm. Mary had walked out. Clean. Quiet. Like he’d never happened at all. Men in his world left, or they died when they didn’t. Women left, or they were taken. No one left Leif Severin.
His mouth curved, not a smile. “All right, Mary,” he said softly. “Run.” Bizarrely, the Brand warmed as if in agreement.
He palmed his phone and called his sister, Elise. She didn’t answer. Of course not. It was the middle of the night. He considered his options for finding Mary. With this Brand suddenly appearing, finding her had gained greater urgency.
He would pull security footage if he needed to. He would cash in a favor. No matter what it took, he’d peel the city back, street by street, until it gave him what he wanted. He stared down at the lion Brand on his palm. He would be civilized about it—until he wasn’t.
He stepped from the elevator, aplan already assembling in clean, cold pieces. The camera by the service stairwell. The house manager’s memory. The door logs. The porter who thought he understood discretion. He’d start with the club. Then he’d work outward. He had patience when he wanted something. And he wanted this like hunger.
Because there was a thing that happened to him last night that he was not interested in forgiving. Not her body—that he’d take again, for hours, for days, until he had mapped every nerveand memorized every sound. Not her mouth—that was still swollen after their night together. Not even the way she had met him without fear, which was rare enough to make men foolish.
