Flames pov
"Look who's here…" His voice cut through the silence, low and smooth, laced with amusement.
I spun around.
My breath hitched.
He stood in the doorway like a sin. Lean muscle. Dark eyes that tracked me with a lethal sort of pleasure.
White sweatpants clung low on his hips, threateningly below his navel. Shirtless, barefoot, and no underwear. The silhouette under the attire was unmistakable. Daring. A defiant, arrogant showing that gave me a skipped heart.
I tried not to look.
I fucking tried, but I couldn't.
What the fuck is this, Ash ?" I sounded harsher than I had meant. "The card. This. invitation?" My eyes slid down once more, refusing, to the indelible proof of him—his dick lining easily in the taut fabric.
He didn't move. Didn't try to hide it. Just leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, that arrogant defiance radiating off him like he owned the universe."
His chest rose and fell, slow, deliberate.
"You came," he said, voice rough, like he'd been waiting for me. Smirking. That nonsense smile.
I gritted my teeth, my anger flaring, but I couldn't conceal the tension in my body.
"Don't flatter yourself," I snapped, holding up the card like a weapon. "You laid a trail, and curiosity brought me here."
He saw. The crack. The flicker in my gaze. A hunting light glowed in his eyes.
"Eyes up, Don," he whispered, voice dropping low, a command buried beneath the easy tone.
I tried to keep my gaze on his face. Tried to ignore how my heart hammered in my chest, the heat rising between my thighs. But fuck, it was hard.
I stood there for a moment, looking at him. Every muscle in my body screamed to me to spin around and leave. But no. That wasn't going to be happening. Not today. Not today with this.
"I don't have time for your games," I said to him, every word planned out. My voice, measured—controlled.
Ash stood in the doorway, his grin never faltering. "You sure about that? Because the last time I checked, you were quite specific about how much you didn't want me anywhere near you."
"'Things change.'" I did not allow him to get in a word edgewise. "I'm here on business. You've had your orders. I expect to have you back to work tomorrow. And if you aren't there, you're fired. And you'll never set foot to work in this city again."
His eyes narrowed with something—maybe amusement, maybe interest—but he had no word to say for what felt like hours. Just stood looking at me, as though gauging me.
I held my ground, refusing to let any hint of weakness seep through. He needed to understand this wasn't personal. It was business.
"You don't get to make the rules here," he finally snarled, shifting off the doorframe, his voice low, a challenge.
"No," I said sharply, voice steady, "I make them. And you're going to follow them, or you're out."
I wasn't here to accomplish anything other than make sure he knew who bossed him around. That was the game. No time for anything else. No space for doubt.
I turned on my heel, heading for the door. "Tomorrow, Ash . Don't keep me waiting."
---
The china on my skin felt cold, a pathetic effort at extinguishing the fire raging in my cunt between my legs. My knees were jammed in my stomach, a fetal configuration of raw, unadulterated feeling. The water did nothing to calm the frantic beat pulsating in my goddamn cunt.
Control. It used to be my fucking religion. once upon a time. A gentle brush, the measured swipe of my fingers – and they were pliant. Mine. Power. Having the goddamn power was the thing all the time.
Now? Now it seemed like a dam that burst, all spilling, exposed. One goddamn look at him – the cocky tilt of his head, the reckless droop of those sweatpants around his gigantic thighs, the unmistakable goddamn shape of his dick – and my barriers, so cautiously constructed, just flew away like sand.
Ash.
The sound of his name was a riptide, dragging me down in ways no foe, no danger, ever could. And so much I hate it.
They branded it: sex addict. A neat little clinical term to justify away the ugly, inconsiderate reality. It was not the act anymore. It was the scratching, gnawing hunger. The naked ache that ripped up my throat when he was in spitting distance. And now… now the hunger has grown into something degrading, something pathetic.
My fingers twitched, hung in mid-air. The memory of that brazen fucking parade in the doorway of his house, the arrogant jamming of his dick beneath the smooth fabric, seared behind my eyelashes. My thighs drew tight against each other by the force of habit, my goddamn cunt damp with a shamefaced wanting.
Shit. This was not how it was going to work. Sex was supposed to be my weapon, not this slavering, needy wanting.
I clamped my eyes shut tight, the image imprinted on my mind. The way the pitiful light had reflected on the stitching of his pants, the subtle shift as he'd moved. a raw, unmistakable fuck-you squarely at my most tender holes. My gasp caught, an unnatural sound.
I shouldn't.
I shouldn't fucking do this.
This was weakness personified. This was giving him a victory without so much as a single goddamn bullet being fired.
But the memory was a live wire thrust directly into my core, sparking a wildfire in my veins. My fingers snuck bet knob between my legs, the slick heat already there, a disgusting proof of the hold he suddenly had over me without so much as laying a goddamn hand on me. I bit hard on my lip, a muffled sob tearing through me.
Fucking Ash.
The friction started slow, probing, my already moist cunt throbbing with a raw, desperate ache. My thumb found my swollen clit, the tender little nub already rigid and pulsating. It was fueled by nothing so much as a goddamn memory, a lightning-bright flash of fucking. But fire built with frightening rapidity, equal to the hellfire he'd kindled with nothing more than his arrogant example.
Each stroke was a futile, desperate attempt to purge him out of my system, to get some semblance of control back, but it just made the knot in my stomach twist tighter and tighter.
I gasped and sputtered, at the sight of his cold, smug face, that fucking knowing smile, burned behind my eyes.
Goddamn it, I wanted to rip his goddamn heart out. I should hate him with every part of my body. But all I could feel was this base, animal hunger, this degrading, stomach-turning surrender to the grasp he had on my fucking holes.
The pleasure crashed into me, rough and sick, a raw awareness of my own damn vulnerability. My fingers searched inside my slippery, puffy pussy, the wet skin giving easily beneath my touch as I circled my thumb around my throbbing clit. A frantic, desperate rhythm built, echoing the mad beat pounding in my ears, the tension building harder and harder in my belly, deep inside that insistent, throbbing opening.
Goddamn him. Goddamn this fucking feeling. Goddamn my own pathetic, undeniable weakness.
And then the release ripped through me, a shuddering, violent wave that left me trembling and slick, my pussy spasming around my fingers, the image of him still burned into the back of my eyelids. Shame, raw and corrosive, washed over me, colder than the goddamn porcelain beneath me.
I'd gone there seeking some goddamn relief, but all I'd done was fan the fucking embers.
And Ash?
He was probably somewhere right now, completely oblivious to the filthy, degrading strength he had, the strength to reduce me to this trembling, starving wreck, my most exposed places aching and open.
Fucking asshole. Fuck him. Fuck me.
The air stuck to my skin, like shame hadt urned to sweat. I lay there, back on the cold, legs still apart, pussy still twitching with aftershocks.