Chapter 57: Private Territory

Lucas didn’t pretend to misunderstand her.

"Okay," he said.

That was all. Victoria looked at him for a second longer, as if she had expected an argument or a joke, and when neither came, something in her shoulders eased.

She picked up her coat from the back of the chair and walked to the elevator without another word.

The ride down to the executive garage was silent. She stood near the steel wall with the coat folded over one arm. Her hair, pinned so precisely that morning, had come loose in a few strands along her jaw. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t move away either.

The guard at the garage gate nodded as they passed. Her driver was already waiting beside a black sedan with the rear door open, as if this were any other night.

Maybe for him it was.

The car moved through wet streets, neon smeared across the windows. Victoria leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. For a while Lucas thought she might have fallen asleep.

"Camilla," she said, without opening them.

"What about her?"

"You’re going to call her."

"I told her I would."

"I know. I heard." Her eyes opened and found him in the dark. "I’m not asking you to lie to her. I’m asking whether you’re going to."

"No."

She studied him, then nodded once, slowly, the way she nodded at a number that checked out.

"Good," she said. "I’ve had enough liars for one year."

Her phone buzzed in her lap. She glanced at the screen, and he saw the name of her board chair before she turned it face down on her knee.

"You should answer that," he said.

"I answered him at five, and at five-thirty, and at six-fifteen." She didn’t pick it up. "He wants to know whether he should be worried. I told him no. If I call him again tonight, he’ll decide I’m the one who’s worried."

"Are you?"

She considered the question honestly, which he liked.

"Tomorrow I will be," she said. "Tomorrow there will be auditors and lawyers and a very long board call, and someone will ask me how I missed Nathan for two years." She looked out at the river as the car turned onto the embankment. "Tonight I’m not doing any of it."

Her building stood on the river, a narrow tower of dark glass. The private elevator opened straight into her foyer.

It was not what he had pictured. He had expected something loud, a showroom for a woman who liked to win. Instead it was quiet. Pale wood floors. One long gray sofa. A wall of glass looking out over the black water and the lights strung along the bridge. No photographs anywhere. A single book face down on the arm of the sofa, its spine cracked.

Victoria stepped out of her heels by the bench in the foyer and left them where they fell.

He’d never seen her leave anything where it fell.

She turned on one lamp and walked to the sideboard, where a crystal decanter waited.

"Drink?"

"No," Lucas said. "And I don’t think you want one either."

Her hand stopped an inch from the decanter. She looked at it, then let her arm drop.

"You’re right," she said. "I’d only be using it to slow down." She turned to face him. "I don’t like losing control, Lucas."

"You didn’t lose it today."

"I sat in a room while my own lawyer laughed at me."

"And then you had him arrested and rewrote the front page." He stopped a few feet from her. "That’s not losing control. That’s what keeping it costs."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Everyone in that building tonight will go home and tell someone what happened," she said. "Their wives. Their husbands. Their friends." She glanced at the dark glass. "I came home to this."

"You came home with me."

"Yes." A small, dry smile. "I’m aware of that."

She crossed the last few feet between them and stood close enough that he could smell the rain still in her hair.

"Last time, you stopped me," she said. "On my own desk."

"He was fifty feet away."

"He isn’t now."

"No," Lucas said. "He isn’t."

"So I’m going to ask you once," Victoria said, and her voice was low and very steady. "Do you want this? Not the job, not the favor, not whatever you think I need. This."

"Yes," he said. "I’ve wanted it since Halcyon."

She took hold of his lapels and kissed him.

It wasn’t the frantic kiss from the office. It was slow and deliberate, like she had decided exactly what she wanted and intended to take her time with it. Lucas slid his arms around her waist and pulled her against him, and she made a small sound in the back of her throat that he felt more than heard.

A soft chime sounded at the edge of his awareness.

[Erogenous Mapping Activated.]

[Target: Victoria Sterling.]

[Primary Tension Zone: Base of the neck and shoulders. Secondary Sensitivity Zones: Lower back, inner thighs.]

[Target Receptivity: Very High. Residual Guardedness: Present.]

Guarded even now.

Of course she was.

He drew his mouth away from hers and down along her jaw to her neck. His thumb found the knot of tension at the base of her skull and pressed, slow and firm.

Victoria’s breath went out of her all at once. Her forehead dropped against his shoulder.

"How do you keep doing that," she said into his shirt.

"You carry everything right here." He kept the pressure steady. "All day."

"Don’t analyze me."

"Then stop making it so obvious."

She laughed, a short, startled sound he had never heard from her, and lifted her head to kiss him again, harder this time.

Her fingers went to his shirt buttons. She undid three, then stopped, as if remembering herself, and pushed him a step back toward the hallway instead.

"Bedroom," she said. It came out like an instruction.

He let her lead.

Her bedroom was as spare as the rest. A wide low bed, gray sheets, the same wall of glass looking out at the river through sheer curtains. The light from the bridge laid a faint silver wash across everything.

She turned at the foot of the bed and started on the buttons of her silk blouse herself, quick and businesslike, still running the room.

Lucas covered her hands with his.

"Let me," he said.

She held his eyes for a long second. Then she let her hands fall to her sides.

He undid the buttons one at a time, unhurried. When the blouse slid off her shoulders, he kissed the place where her neck met her collarbone, then the curve of her shoulder, then lower. Her skin was warm and flushing pink under his mouth. Underneath she wore simple black lace, nothing staged about it, and somehow that undid him more than anything she could have planned.

He found the zip of her skirt. It fell. She stepped out of it.

"You’re still dressed," she said, a little breathless.

"I’m getting there."

He shrugged off his jacket and shirt and let her pull his belt free. Then he eased her back until she sat on the edge of the bed, and knelt in front of her.

The overlay glowed faint and blue at the edge of his vision. He didn’t need it much anymore. Her body was telling him everything: the hitch in her breathing when his mouth moved along her inner thigh, the way her hand slid into his hair and held on.

He unhooked her bra and drew it away. Her breasts were full and soft in his palms, and when his thumb brushed over a tightened nipple, she arched toward him with a low, shaky sound.

"Lie back," he said.

For a second, he saw the old reflex in her eyes. The need to be the one who decided.

Then she lay back on the gray sheets and let him.

He drew the lace down over her hips and kissed his way up the inside of her thigh until she was trembling. When he finally put his mouth on her, slow and patient, she cursed softly at the ceiling and her hips came up off the bed. He held her there with one hand flat on her stomach and took his time, following every change in her breathing, easing off when she got close, bringing her back up again.

[Target Arousal: Approaching Peak.]

[Guardedness: Dissolving.]

"Lucas." Her fingers twisted in the sheets. "Lucas, I swear to God, if you stop again..."

He didn’t stop.

She came with her back arched and her thigh pressed hard against his shoulder, a long, broken sound torn out of her that she didn’t try to hide.

When he rose over her, she pulled him down by the back of his neck and kissed him, tasting herself on his mouth and not caring.

"Now," she said against his lips. It wasn’t a command anymore. It was a request.

He pushed into her slowly, all the way, and they both stopped breathing for a moment.

She was hot and tight around him, and she wrapped her legs around his hips to keep him there. He began to move, slow and deep, watching her face. The polished composure she wore into every boardroom was gone. What was left was flushed and open and entirely honest: her lips parted, her eyes on his, her nails dragging lightly down his back every time he drove deeper.

"Don’t hold back," she whispered. "Not with me."

So he didn’t.

He found the angle the overlay had marked and stayed on it, harder now, and she met every stroke, her heels pressing into the backs of his thighs. Her breath broke into short, helpless sounds against his shoulder. When she came the second time, she clenched around him so tightly that he followed her over a moment later, buried deep inside her, her name rough in his throat.

For a long time neither of them moved.

The rain kept tapping at the glass.

Victoria lay with her head on his chest and one arm across his stomach. Her breathing had slowed. Her hair was a mess across his shoulder, and she didn’t seem to care about that either.

"You’re thinking," she murmured.

"So are you."

"I’m thinking that I haven’t let anyone into this apartment in four years." She didn’t lift her head. "Don’t make a thing of it."

"I won’t."

"You will. Just not out loud."

He smiled into the dark.

After a while she spoke again, quieter.

"When the reporter called back, she asked me who found it. The fraud. Who put it together." Her fingers traced an idle line along his ribs. "I said my team did."

"That’s true."

"It’s a little true." She tipped her head back to look at him. "You know what I mean."

"I know," Lucas said. "Your team is fine with me."

She held his gaze, and for a moment he thought she would push. Then she settled back against him.

"Eventually," she said, "I’m going to want to know how you see the things you see."

"Eventually," he agreed.

Not tonight.

[Target: Victoria Sterling.]

[Relationship Status Updated: Intimate Partner.]

[The target has lowered her defenses by her own choice.]

[Reward: 200 AP.]

[Current AP Balance: 700.]

On the nightstand, Victoria’s phone lit up face down, a thin line of white glowing around its edges. It buzzed once against the wood, then again.

Lucas glanced at it.

Victoria didn’t. She tightened her arm around his waist and settled closer.

"Leave it," she said, her voice already heavy with sleep. "Whoever it is can wait until morning."

The phone went dark.

Thirty seconds later, it lit up again.