Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 14

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Chapter 014

DOMINIC

Seeing the expression on Celeste’s face when I called out her lab and her name from that podium was worth every single penny I had spent arranging the entire evening.

The shock. The confusion. The slow dawning realization moving across her features like a sunrise. I had watched it play out from the stage and felt something shift in my chest that I was not ready to name.

I pushed the feeling aside.

Of course I had known Julian would be here. It was normal for men of his status to be invited to a party like this. The who’s who of the country’s elite, all gathered in one ballroom to drink champagne and pretend they liked each other. Julian Fisher moved in these circles.

What I had not counted on was Seraphine showing up on Julian’s arm.

But it made everything perfect.

Celeste did not know yet. She did not know that Julian had opened a new lab for Seraphine, funded it with twelve million dollars of his own money, and made her break off from Helix.

She would know soon enough.

As for Seraphine, I already knew her next moves before she made them. I had been married to her long enough to understand exactly how she thought. She was a gold digger of exceptional discipline, and now that she knew who I was, she would pivot. She would drop Julian like a stone. She would come running back to me with her eyes full of tears and her mouth full of apologies and her hands full of every excuse she had ever rehearsed.

She would be too late.

But right now, standing in the glass room with the party still glittering on the other side of the translucent walls, I had other priorities.

I had Celeste pressed against the glass, her palms flat against the cool surface. My cock was buried deep inside her wet heat, and I was fucking her with a rhythm that was hard and relentless and completely consuming.

I drove into her again, deeper, and she cried out, her hips pressing back against me.

The question came uninvited, the way it always did when I let my guard down for even a moment.

Would I be able to part from her when the time came?

It was a ridiculous question. Whatever we were doing was ephemeral. She did not let me forget that. The game we had agreed to play had an expiration date built into its very foundation. We would mess with Julian and Seraphine, and then we would go our separate ways. Back to our lives. Back to whatever came after

That was the plan.

I pushed the question aside and reached around, finding her clit, swollen and slick. I rubbed it in tight circles while I thrust into her from behind, feeling her start to shake, feeling her breath dissolve into broken gasps.

She came with a scream, her body convulsing around my cock, her release running down her thighs and over my hand.

I followed a moment later, spilling into her with a groan I buried against her shoulder, my eyes closing, my grip on her hips tightening past the point of gentleness.

We stayed like that for a long moment. Both of us panting. The glass cool against her flushed skin. The party still moving on the other side of the wall, oblivious.

After, I lifted her into my arms.

She was warm and limp against my chest, her head resting against my shoulder, her breathing beginning to slow.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her voice drowsy and satisfied.

I walked toward the door in the corner of the room. Before I pushed it open, I took one last look at the transparent wall. Julian was still moving through the crowd below, his head turning left and right, pushing past people, searching for someone who was no longer in the ballroom.

He would be searching for a while.

I scoffed and pushed the door open and carried her inside.

She gasped.

The walk-in closet was larger than most bedrooms I had owned, lined floor to ceiling with racks of clothes and shelves of shoes, all arranged under soft warm lighting. I set her down gently and she stood there, naked and beautiful, turning slowly to take in the space, her mouth open.

“How did you do all this?” she asked.

“Like I told you before,” I said. “This is my hotel. This entire floor was designed specifically for me. The room has a kitchen, a bathroom, a full living area. Everything a house could have. And there is another exit on the far side that leads outside without having to go through the crowd.” I paused. “Or your husband.”

She just stood there staring at me.

“Why are you staring?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly “You are full of surprises.” She turned back to the racks, her fingers brushing the fabric of a garment, moving along the line of them with the careful attention of a woman who appreciated quality “But why do you have so many women’s clothes?”

I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “They are all for you. From the same designer who made the red dress.”

She pulled out a royal blue pantsuit, held it up, checked the label. Then she reached for another piece. Then another. Her fingers moved to a price tag on a simple silk blouse and she turned her face away sharply.

“Ten million dollars,” she said. The words came out barely audible. “For one blouse.”

I said nothing.

She turned back to look at me. “Chairman of Veil Holdings, huh.”

“Something like that.”

She walked closer. Stopped inches away. Her eyes searched mine with that particular directness she had, the quality that had caught my attention the very first time I looked at her properly.

“Why did you invest so much money in my lab?”

I reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers stayed a moment longer than necessary against her jaw. “Do not think too much about it. We are playing a game, are we not?” I held her gaze. “Julian invested twelve million dollars and opened a new laboratory for Seraphine. He made her break away from Helix. From you and Pat. He funded the whole thing and paid for everything she needed, quietly, so no one would ask questions.” I let that settle. “I simply returned the favor.”

She stared at me.

The silence stretched.

“Julian did that for Seraphine,” she said. Not a question. The flat tone of a woman watching a picture she had already been suspicious of finally come into full focus.

I nodded.

She smiled. It was a bitter thing, that smile. Wounded underneath and trying hard not to show it. The smile of a woman who had suspected the worst and had just been handed confirmation and was choosing not to fall apart in front of me.

I respected that.

“Why am I even surprised,” she said quietly. She looked away for a moment, toward the racks of clothes, seeing nothing. Then she looked back at me. “Thank you for opening my eyes, Dominic.”

I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close. Her body was warm against mine, soft and yielding in the way it only was after we had been together. “If you really want to thank me, spend tonight with me

She looked up at me, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Are you asking me not to go home tonight? When my husband is out there desperately searching for me?”

I smiled. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

She held my gaze for a beat. Then she smiled back, slow and deliberate. “Deal.”

“Good. Come on. Let us shower together.”

The bathroom was all glass and steam. I turned on the water, adjusted the temperature until it ran hot enough to fill the space with warmth, and held out my hand to her.

She took it and stepped in.

The water came down over both of us from the rainfall heads above. It plastered her hair to her scalp and ran in rivulets down her breasts and stomach and thighs. She looked up at me with water streaming down her face, and I kissed her before I had finished deciding to.

The kiss was deep and hungry. She kissed me back with the same intensity, her hands sliding up my chest, her fingers threading through my wet hair. We stood there for a long moment, mouths locked together, water pouring over both of us, until neither of us had any breath left.

I pulled back. I held her chin and tilted her face up to meet my eyes.

“I just cannot get enough of you,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment, panting, her lips swollen and red. “Me neither.”

I kissed her again, softer this time. Then I smiled against her mouth. “Let us get serious.”

I reached for the body wash and squeezed a generous amount into my palm. The lather was thick and fragrant, sandalwood and something clean underneath it. I spread it across her shoulders, her collarbone, the slope of her breasts. She shivered even in the heat of the water.

I worked the lather down her body slowly, over her stomach, her hips, the curve of her waist, the full round of her ass. My fingers slid between her thighs, washing her gently, and she let out a soft sound and leaned into me. I turned her around and worked the lather across her back, her shoulder blades, the small of it, the backs of her thighs, every inch of her with the same deliberate patience.

Then she took the bottle from my hand.

She squirted lather into her palm and reached for my chest. Her hands moved slowly, spreading the foam across my pectorals, down my stomach, along the lines of my abdomen. She washed my arms, my shoulders. Then she dropped to her knees on the wet tile and worked the lather down my legs, her fingers careful and thorough.

I watched her.

She looked up at me from the floor of the shower, water streaming down her face, a playful expression at the corner of her mouth. Then she gathered a generous handful of foam and wrapped her soapy fingers around my cock, which had gone hard again the moment she knelt.

I groaned

She stroked slowly. Methodically. With a careful thoroughness that was entirely unnecessary and completely devastating.

“Are you trying to torture me?” I asked. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

She laughed. Bright and genuine, echoing off the tile. “I am just being thorough.”

I pulled her to her feet and turned the water to rinse us both. The foam slid from our bodies in white rivulets and disappeared down the drain. I cupped her face and kissed her once more under the spray, tasting nothing but clean warm skin.

When we stepped out, I wrapped a towel around her first. I dried her shoulders, her arms, the length of her legs. She took the second towel and dried me in return, patient and unhurried, patting the fabric against my chest and back.

I handed her a robe. Thick, white, soft enough to disappear into. She belted it at her waist and looked at herself in the mirror for a moment, and the expression on her face was one I had not seen on her before. Something easy. Something unburdened.

I put on a robe of my own.

“Now,” I said. “Dinner.”

The fridge was fully stocked with meals the hotel kitchen had prepared in advance. I selected two plates, microwaved them, and set them on the small dining table.

She sat across from me in the white robe, her hair still damp, her face relaxed and open, and I barely

tasted the food.

Our phones rang throughout the meal.

We both ignored them.

When Pat’s name appeared on Celeste’s screen she finally answered, briefly. She told her she would be at Helix first thing in the morning. I could hear Pat’s excitement through the phone from across the table, high and ecstatic. Celeste was smiling when she hung up, a genuine smile, the kind that reached her eyes.

Then we talked.

She told me about her childhood. Loving parents who had been present in the way that mattered, who had shown up to things and remembered things and made her feel like she was the center of the world. An older brother who had looked out for her the way older brothers were supposed to. A happy, ordinary life

I listened.

Then she asked about mine, and I told her.

Loving parents Killed when I was a teenager by people who wanted what my father had built and were willing to take it by force. The years I had spent in hiding afterward, moving carefully, trusting almost no one, learning the business from the shadows because stepping into the light meant giving my enemies a target. The reason I had never shown my face as chairman, not for years, not until I had identified every threat and neutralized it, not until I was certain the people who had destroyed my family could no longer reach me.

She listened without interrupting. Without the uncomfortable sympathy that most people offered when they heard a story like this, the tilted head and the lowered eyes and the I am so sorry that felt like a door closing.

She just listened. And when I finished she nodded slowly.

“That makes sense,” she said. “All of it.”

We sat in silence for a while after that. A comfortable silence. The kind that did not need to be filled.

After a while I noticed her eyes growing heavy, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to her.

“Come to bed,” I said.

I took her hand and led her to the bedroom. The sheets were cool and crisp. She slid in and curled toward me as I lay beside her, and I pulled her close, her back against my chest, my arm around her waist.

She was asleep in minutes.

I lay awake longer than I intended to, listening to her breathe, feeling the steady rhythm of her heartbeat against my arm.

I did not think about the question that had surfaced in the glass room. I did not examine the thing that happened in my chest when she smiled. I did not consider what it meant that I had told her about my parents, something I had not told anyone in years.

I did not think about any of it.

I just lay there in the dark and listened to her breathe and eventually I slept too.

When I woke in the morning she was already up.

The smell of coffee reached me before I opened my eyes. I sat up and found her standing at the small kitchen counter in the royal blue pantsuit from the closet, the jacket tailored perfectly to her frame, the color making her skin glow. She looked polished and professional and completely devastating, and my body responded immediately and without apology.