“I do,” she said, her voice dropping from a shout into a fierce, ragged whisper.
“And you should stop.”
Claude didn’t move, but his eyes locked onto hers with sharp, dangerous focus.
“Stop what?”
“Stop secretly trying so hard to look after me!” she snapped, her eyes shining with a volatile mix of alcohol and frustration.
“Stop sending cars when I’m leaving a club.
Stop paying off private lounges to keep my name out of the press when things get out of hand.
Stop fixing things behind my back so my family doesn’t hear about it!”
She took a sharp, unsteady breath, her hands trembling slightly where they hung at her sides.
“It’s a nuisance,” she spat, though her voice cracked on the last word, betraying the terrifying truth underneath, his quiet, relentless protection was ruining her defense.
It was easy to hate a ruthless corporate heir.
It was impossible to hate a man who quietly shielded her from the world without ever asking for credit.
“It’s annoying.
Everyone notices, Claude.
Everyone!”
Claude stared down at her, his usual unflappable composure completely shattered by the raw, vulnerability bleeding through her anger.
“Marceline—” he began, stepping closer, his hands coming up in a rare, desperate attempt to reason with her.
“You’re drunk.
You’re upset, and we should talk about this in the morning when you’re—”
“I told you,” she rasped, her eyes blazing as she grabbed the lapels of his open jacket, “to shut up.”
She pulled him down and crashed her mouth against his.
The shock of her lips against his lasted for barely half a heartbeat before Claude’s instincts entirely betrayed him.
His hands instinctively caught her waist, pulling her flush against him as he kissed her back—deep, breathless, and utterly starved.
For a few reckless, intoxicating seconds, the hotel room ceased to exist.
Then sanity slapped him across the face.
Gasping for air, Claude managed to break the kiss, pulling back just an inch, his knuckles white where they gripped her hips.
His chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, his slate-blue eyes wide with a sudden, suffocating wave of dread.
Mon Dieu, he thought, his pulse hammering in his throat.
This is bad.
This is catastrophically bad.
She already hated him.
She hated his name, his family, his face, and the ground he walked on.
If she woke up tomorrow remembering that she had initiated this while thoroughly soaked in champagne, her pride would demand his head on a spike.
She wouldn’t just despise him—she would make it her life’s mission to ruin him.
“Marceline,” he breathed, his voice gravelly and trembling as he tried to put an inch of space between them.
“Listen to me.
You’re drunk.
You’re—”
“I told you,” she rasped, her eyes dark, glassy, and wildly defiant, “to shut up!”
Before he could take another breath, she launched herself at him again, her mouth crashing into his with a fierce, reckless force that cut off his warning.
She didn’t give him room to negotiate.
She drove him backward step by step, her hands tangled in his shirt, her body pressing relentlessly into his until the back of his knees hit the edge of the mattress.
Claude lost his balance, tumbling backward onto the heavy duvet.
Before he could even attempt to sit up, Marceline climbed right over him.
She hitched her obsidian dress up her thighs and straddled his hips, pinning him to the bed.
Her dark hair spilled over her bare shoulders, her cheeks flushed high, her chest heaving as she stared down at him like a storm waiting to break.
Claude lay beneath her, his hands hovering over her waist, completely caught between the terrifying realization of how wrong this was—and the exquisite, ruinous heat of her sitting on his lap.
“Marceline—” he tried one last, desperate time, his voice a strained whisper.
She pinned his wrists to the mattress, leaned down until her lips brushed the shell of his ear, and whispered with pure, unadulterated venom, “One more word, Auclair, and I’ll bite you.”
“Ah, merde,” Claude swore under his breath—a low, filthy French curse that no one in an Auclair boardroom had ever heard him utter.
His control snapped like dry glass.
His hands tore away from the mattress and locked tightly onto her waist, pulling her down impossibly close as he surrendered, turning the kiss into something consuming, wild, and devastatingly absolute.
Marceline made a soft, triumphant sound against his mouth.
She bit his lower lip hard enough to sting, then soothed the heat of it with her tongue.
Claude growled low in his throat.
His hands locked hard onto her waist, dragging her down against the hard length of him as he kissed her back like a man starving—deep, claiming, reckless.
She moaned into his mouth, grinding down, the obsidian silk of her dress rucked high around her hips.
His fingers dug into the bare skin of her thighs, sliding higher until he found the heat of her, already wet, already aching.
“Putaine—” he growled against her lips, his voice gravel-rough.
“Marceline.”
She yanked at his tie until it came free and tossed it somewhere across the room.
“I told you to shut up, Auclair.”
Claude flipped them in one smooth, powerful motion.
She landed on her back with a soft gasp, her hair spilling across the white sheets.
He loomed over her, eyes dark, chest heaving—the carefully engineered, polite heir nowhere to be found.
Only heat.
Only hunger.
He yanked the zipper of her dress down in one vicious pull.
Silk peeled away.
Black lace followed.
He stripped her with impatient hands until she was bare beneath him, flushed and trembling, champagne still singing in her blood.
His own clothes went next—shirt, trousers—discarded in a careless heap on the carpet.
When he came back over her, skin to skin, she arched up with a broken sound.
Claude caught her wrists, pinning them above her head with a single hand.
His free hand trailed slowly down between her breasts, over the flat of her stomach, and lower.
His fingers tracked a burning trail up her leg, slipping between her thighs to find her already slick through the thin lace of her underwear.
He teased her folds with two fingers, circling, tantalizing, never quite giving her what she was reaching for.
“Look at me,” he ordered, his voice low and commandingly dark.
She did.
Eyes glassy, cheeks flushed, lips swollen.
“You’re drunk,” he whispered, the words almost a caress against her jaw.
“You hate me.
You’ve spent years making that very clear.” His fingers slipped just inside her, shallow and tormenting.
“So tell me, Laurent… do you really want this?”
She tried to roll her hips, chasing more.
He held her ruthlessly still.
“Beg for it.”
Marceline’s laugh was breathless, defiant, and utterly wrecked.
“Go to hell.”
Claude’s mouth curved—sharp, wicked, entirely devoid of his usual corporate polish.
He withdrew his fingers completely, leaning down until his lips brushed the sensitive shell of her ear.
“Beg.”
She glared up at him, her chest rising and falling in harsh gasps.
For one agonizing second, years of stubborn pride warred with pure, unadulterated need.
Then the champagne, the years of suffocating tension, and the heavy, exquisite pressure of him between her thighs broke through her defense.
“Please,” she whispered.
He didn’t move an inch.
“Please what?”
“Fuck me, Claude,” she snarled, the words coming out half a furious demand, half a broken plea.
“Please—”
He let out a short, dark laugh—almost disbelieving—and captured her mouth again.
He kissed her deeper this time, his tongue sliding against hers with an open, starved hunger he’d buried for years.
When he pressed two fingers firm against her center, rubbing slow, deliberate circles, her hips jerked up to meet him.
“Ah—Claude—”
Her sharp intake of breath shattered the last of his composure.
He hooked his thumb into the lace, dragging it aside, and drove himself into her in one deep, relentless, unyielding thrust that drew a breathless scream right out of her throat.
Claude groaned low in his throat, forehead dropping to hers, every muscle locked as he fought not to come apart immediately.
“Merde… you feel—” He cut himself off with another hard thrust.
“So fucking perfect.”
Marceline’s fingernails dug brutally into his bare skin, her head tilting back as the room spun.
There was no boardroom polish here, no immaculate Auclair restraint.
Every stroke was heavy, demanding, and fiercely possessive—a silent answer to every cold glare she had ever thrown him across a crowded ballroom.
She met him motion for motion, her legs wrapping tight around his waist, dragging him closer until there wasn’t an inch of air left between them.