BABY I LIKE IT RAW

The bass hit the penthouse before the lights did.

Sloane stood in the doorway with a tablet full of bed-styling notes and a vendor tote cutting into her shoulder, and Ol' Dirty Bastard was already in the room—"Ooh Baby I Like It Raw" grinding out of hidden speakers like the suite had a pulse and a mouth. Not lobby jazz. Not the tasteful playlist she had approved for launch week. This was dirty-city, grin-and-filth, the kind of track that made million-dollar furniture feel like it should be shoved against a wall and used.

She almost laughed. Then she saw the bed.

King. Styled wrong. White sheets kicked down the mattress in a wreck. And a man sitting on the edge of it like he owned the air.

Cade Mercer.

Thirty-four. White shirt open at the throat. Watch still on. Bare feet on marble that cost more than her first apartment. He looked up as if he had been waiting for the chorus and for her at the same time.

Two years folded in half.

Same mouth. Same uninvited heat. Same night she had walked out of a different hotel before dawn with his come drying on her inner thighs and a rule already forming in her throat: once. Never the son of the man who had mentored her. Never again.

"You're in my inspection window," she said.

"You're in my room." His voice had not gotten softer. It had gotten lower. "Close the door, Sloane."

ODB kept going. Raw on purpose. No apology in the beat.

She should have left it open. She closed it. The click was louder than the song.

"Launch is in nine days," she said, professional because her mouth needed a job that was not his name. "I need this suite camera-ready. That means you not in the frame. That means this playlist not bleeding through the floor into a press walkthrough."

He stood. Taller than the memory, which was rude of him. The shirt pulled across his chest when he moved. She hated that she noticed. She hated more that her body noticed first.

"I told them not to send you."

"You signed the contract that sent me."

"I signed a company. I didn't sign a repeat."

The word sat between them like a hand on the back of her neck. Repeat. Rule. Ruin.

She set the tote down so her hands would not shake. "Good. We agree. I'll come back when you're gone."

He did not move out of the path to the door. He did not touch her either. That was worse. The almost was already under her dress, already between her legs, already remembering how he had held her open and fucked her like he had been starving for a year.

"Two years," he said. "You still pretend that night was an accident."

"It was a decision. I don't make it twice."

"Say that with the music off."

She reached for the wall panel. He was closer than the panel. Not grabbing. Just there—heat and cedar and the ghost of that first room where they had not talked this much because his mouth had been busy.

"Don't," she said.

"Then don't look at me like you're already remembering the part after the dress."

She looked anyway.

She remembered the dress shoved to her waist. His hands spreading her. The first thrust that punched the air out of her. The way she had come on him so hard she had bitten his shoulder to keep from screaming his father's last name like a curse. She remembered walking out anyway. She remembered liking it raw and punishing herself for liking it.

The song did the rest. Bass in her teeth. Title in her head like a dare she had put on the cover of her own life without meaning to.

"Move," she said.

He moved enough for her to pass, which meant she had to pass him. Shoulder, breath, the faint scrape of cotton. She made it three steps toward the door.

His voice followed, low, almost kind, which was a filthy trick.

"Stay."

She stopped with her hand on the handle. Did not turn.

"I don't do repeats."

Silence. Then the lock motor hummed.

Not his hand. A privacy setting from the tablet on the nightstand. The suite deciding for them the way money always did.

She turned then.

Cade stood by the bed with the song still crawling up the walls, eyes on her mouth like he could already taste the lie she was about to tell.

"Then leave," he said. "Or come here and break your rule where nobody can put it in a lookbook."

Sloane heard her own pulse under ODB. Heard the next ten seconds decide the next hundred chapters.

She dropped the tablet on the chair.

She did not leave.

He met her halfway. No romance speech. His mouth hit hers like he had been holding it for two years and the hold had snapped. She opened for him because her body was a traitor with a good memory. His tongue was hot, sure, a little mean. She fisted his shirt and pulled. He made a sound into her mouth that went straight between her legs.

"This is a mistake," she said against his teeth.

"Then make it louder."

His hands found her ass and lifted. She wrapped her legs around him because the alternative was falling, and falling was already happening. He walked her into the wall first. A picture frame knocked crooked. Her pencil skirt rode up. He shoved it higher with both hands and palmed her through damp underwear like he was checking a fact he already knew.

"Fuck," he muttered. "You walked in wet."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"I'm not. I'm going to ruin the rest of it."

He hooked the panties aside and dragged two fingers through her. Slick. Obvious. She dropped her head back against the wall and hated the sound she made. He watched her face while he pushed those fingers into her, slow enough to be cruel, deep enough that her thighs jumped.

"Cade—"

"There it is." He curled. Found the spot that made her swear. "You still say my name like you're angry at it."

She rocked onto his hand because dignity had left with the lock click. He fingered her against the wall to the bass, thumb on her clit, pace filthy and focused. When she clenched and tried to ride it quiet, he put his mouth on her throat and bit just shy of a mark.

"Don't you dare come yet."

"Then stop."

He did not stop. He dropped to his knees on marble like the penthouse was a church he did not believe in and yanked her underwear down her legs. One heel caught. She kicked it off. He hooked her knee over his shoulder and put his mouth on her without teasing, flat tongue through her slit, then sucking her clit like he had a grudge and a plan.

Sloane's hand slammed into his hair. The tablet on the chair lit with an unread vendor message she would not read. ODB kept preaching raw. Cade ate her like the two years had been a fast. When he pushed his tongue inside her she broke—sharp, shaking, a cry she swallowed too late. He held her hips and licked her through it until her standing leg threatened to go.

He stood, mouth shining, and kissed her so she tasted herself.

"Rule's dead," he said.

"Fuck you."

"That's the idea."

He got his belt open with one hand. She shoved his shirt up because she wanted skin. He lifted her again, carried her the last steps to the wrecked bed, and dropped her on her back. Skirt bunched. Blouse half open because his patience had a limit. He dragged her to the edge of the mattress, freed his cock, and she had one stupid second of looking—thick, hard, already wet at the tip—before he notched against her and pushed in.

The stretch punched a sound out of her. He did not stop at the head. He gave her all of it in one long, claiming thrust that seated him so deep her mouth fell open on nothing.

"Jesus—Cade—"

"Take it." His forehead dropped to hers. He was shaking too, which she filed away like a weapon. "You don't get to walk in here and pretend this isn't still yours."

He fucked her like the song: no pretty build, just raw. Deep strokes that moved the whole mattress. The wet sound of it filled the suite under the bass. She hooked her legs around him and pulled him meaner. He gave her meaner. One hand braced by her head. The other under her ass, tilting her so every thrust dragged her clit against him.

"Look at me."

She did. His eyes were blown dark. This was not a launch-week fuck. This was two years of restraint coming out of him in bruises she would have to hide from a lighting crew.

"Harder," she said, because if she was breaking the rule she would not break it politely.

He swore and gave it to her. The headboard started talking to the wall. She came again with her nails in his back and her voice wrecked, clenching around him so tight he groaned like it hurt. He did not pull out. He fucked her through it until his rhythm broke, buried himself to the hilt, and came inside her with his mouth on her name.

Hot. Pulse after pulse. She felt it and clenched again on purpose, greedy, ruined.

They stayed locked, breathing like they had run. The song faded into the next track. The city kept existing on the other side of glass.

Cade's mouth found her temple. Not tender enough to be forgiven. Tender enough to be dangerous.

"Stay the night."

Sloane stared at the crooked picture frame. Felt him softening inside her, the slow leak of him when he shifted. Felt the old rule trying to sit up and failing.

"This was once," she said. "Again. That's all."

He laughed once against her skin, wrecked and unconvinced.

"Then don't fall asleep in my shirt."

She did not answer.

She also did not get up.

His hand spanned her hip, thumb stroking the wet mess he had left, possessive without asking. Down the hall, an elevator chimed. A voice—male, familiar in a way that would matter later—said her name like a question through the suite door.

"Sloane? Board's early. If Mercer's in there—"

Cade went still inside the afterglow.

Sloane's pulse, which had started to settle, slammed back up.

Julian. On the other side of a lock and a song and a broken rule.

Cade looked down at her, still between her legs, and whispered, "Don't make a sound."

She was still full of him.

She nodded.

The handle tried to turn.