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“Volkov,” Evelina calls my name, following after me.

“I need to work,” I say.

“You’ve been working it for weeks,” she says, coming around the desk so I can’t pretend she’s not there. “Alone for most of that.”

“I need to find the name.”

“I know,” she says. “That’s not my point.”

I pace the length of the office, to the window, to the door, back to the window, my hands useless at my sides. The room’s too small. Everything’s too small tonight.

“Declan knows something we don’t,” I say. “Whoever sent him that message is playing a hand I can’t see, and I’ve got a string of numbers I can’t crack and a room full of kings who are three bad days from killing each other. I can’t stop what I can’t see coming.” My jaw tightens until it aches. “I need something to aim at, and there’s nothing.”

She’s watching me from the corner of the desk, arms at her sides, not jumping in. Just letting me run out of road.

“You know what this feels like?” I say. “I’ve been spinning for months, and I’m no closer to the name than I was on that warehouse floor with Lavro bleeding out under my hands. I move, I find the target, I put it down, that’s what I do, that’s all I do, and right now I’ve got nothing to aim at, and it’s eating me alive. I feel fucking useless.”

“You’re not useless,” she says.

“You don’t know that.”

“The shell routing came from you,” she says, no give in it. “Adrianos walked into that meeting tonight because you warned him. Lorenzo held that room together because you handed him something real to stand on. Three things, one night, and you’re standing here calling yourself useless.”

I stop moving.

“I know how it feels,” she says, quieter. “Weeks with a drive I couldn’t crack, a plan held together with spite, and your name in my mouth not knowing if walking through your gate would save me or get me killed.” She holds my gaze straight. “I’ve been the smartest person in the room and still come up empty. I know exactly what that is.”

She crosses the room and takes my hand, both of hers wrapped around my knuckles, and pulls once. Just enough. I go with it because her hands are warm and I’ve been running on fumes.

She brings her hands up to my face, her palms cool against my jaw, her thumbs at my cheekbones. She tilts my face down to hers and kisses me. Soft at the front of it, no demand underneath. It’s all her this time, her choosing it, and that’s different from every other time, and I feel it behind my sternum like a fist unclenching.

My hands find her waist. I pull her in, and she comes without a fight, her fingers sliding into my hair, and I kiss her back because I’ve got nothing else to give tonight and this is everything I have left.

I take her jacket off, and she untucks my shirt. She pushes my shirt off my shoulders and puts her hands on my chest, holding them there a second, then spreads her fingers and drags them down over my ribs.

I reach around and unzip her dress, ease it down off her shoulders, and she steps out of it without glancing away from me. I run my hands up from her hips, over her waist and ribs, and feel the heat of her skin under my palms. I get to her breasts and cup them, my thumbs brushing over her nipples, and watch her chin tip up. They’re already hard, her skin flushing pink from her chest up her throat, and I roll them slow, watching her press into my hands while her brain’s still three steps behind her body.

I walk her back toward the couch, my mouth on her throat on the way, her pulse jumping hard against my lips. She tips her head to the side, and I drag my mouth down to her collarbone, her shoulder, back up to the soft spot below her ear, and her fingers curl tight into my shoulder, her breath hitching sharp. I work my way down, and when I get my mouth on her breast, she arches hard, a sound punching out of her she didn’t plan on making.

I take my time. I suck her nipple slow, my tongue circling, and her hips shift forward against nothing, chasing contact that isn’t there yet. Her hands go into my hair. I switch sides, and her grip tightens enough to pull, and I go harder for it, sucking until the sounds coming out of her are lower and rougher than anything she came in with.

I get her underwear off and put my mouth on her, and her whole body goes rigid. I hold her thighs open with my forearms and go slow, broad strokes, relearning the details. Last time we were on our sides in the dark, her back to my chest, her hand on the headboard, everything quiet. Before that she rode me hard on the bed during the argument, furious and focused, taking what she wanted with her nails in my shoulders. This is neither of those. I’ve got nowhere to be, and she can feel it.

I find her clit and work it with the tip of my tongue, tight circles, and her hips roll up against my forearms, her pussy grinding toward my mouth. I ease back just enough to make her reach for it. She swears, two words that would horrify the woman who walked into my compound in a charcoal suit. I give it back. I push two fingers inside her, feel her clench hot and slick around them, and when I curl them forward and suck her clit at the same time, she comes fully off the cushions.

She comes fast, her pussy gripping my fingers in hard pulses, her thighs clamping against my head, a sound cracking out of her that hits every wall in the office and she doesn’t give a damn. I work her through all of it, every pulse, keeping the pressure until she’s pulling my hair hard enough to make my eyes water and her thighs have gone loose and are shaking.

I sit up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and look at her. Flat on her back, chest heaving, thighs still open, wet, and trembling. The flush runs all the way up her throat to her jaw.

I pull her upright by the hand and sit back against the cushions, bringing her with me. She swings a knee over my lap and goes straight for my pants, getting the belt and the button and pushing everything down my thighs in seconds. She wraps her hand around my cock and strokes me once, firm, base to tip, her thumb pressing hard over the head, and my jaw locks shut. She does it again, her eyes on my face, reading exactly what it does to me.

“I know what you like,” she says.

“I know you do,” I say. “Keep going.”

She strokes me four more times, her thumb dragging over the head on every upstroke, feeling me pulse in her grip. Then she lifts herself up on her knees, lines me up with her own hand, and sinks down.

An inch at a time, her nails finding my shoulders as she takes me in. I keep my hands loose on her hips and watch her face, because her face when she does this is something I’d do a lot of damage to keep seeing. Eyes half-closed, lips pressed together, chest rising on a long breath as she seats herself all the way. She’s soaking, and I slide home despite how tight she grips me, and when I bottom out, she exhales one long breath that goes all the way down to her toes.