Page 141 of A Vicious Love

A man who could run Harlan, dismantle rivals, frighten investors, and arrange bodies to disappear before lunch. But could not tell one woman he cared without making it sound like a threat.

My hand went to my belt.

I stood in the dark, unfastened my trousers, and wrapped my hand around my cock. The first stroke hit hard because I had been half-hard since the gallery clip. I closed my eyes.

She was there immediately.

Mine.

In my bed this time, black hair spread across my sheets, eyes wide, mouth soft and bruised from kissing me.

Just Sienna.

I climbed over her in my head, slow enough that she could see me coming. My mouth found her throat first because I had become obsessed with it. The fragile line of her neck. The way her pulse jumped there when she was nervous. The way she tilted her head.

I kissed down to her chest.

In the fantasy, she was naked beneath me. I sucked one nipple into my mouth.

Her back arched. My hand tightened around my cock. I groaned into the empty penthouse.

“Be good for daddy,” I muttered.

Everything stopped.

My hand.

The fantasy.

The word sat in the dark between me and the window.

Daddy.

Oh fuck.

No.

No, that was not casual.

Other men used the word like a kink. A dirty little thing said in hotel rooms and forgotten by morning.

For Crows, that word had devotional weight.

It was not father, or some soft domestic bullshit.

It was claim, shelter, discipline, worship, and obedience turned intimate. The word a woman used when she trusted a Crow man to be powerful without being careless. It meant she could call and he would come. His hand would protect before it punished. It was pure uttered devotion, given to her alone.

Emmie used it with Marcel. Because he had earned the right to hear it.

Sienna had never called me that. She could barely take my hand anymore.

My cock throbbed in my fist. Because apparently shame had no power over want when Sienna was involved. I stood there breathing hard, staring at my own reflection in the glass.

“You have a fucking problem,” I told myself.

My reflection did not argue.

Then my mind betrayed me again.