Chapter 92: Zara’s Lust
Ryan looked at the woman who had thirteen million people worshipping her every move and still kissed him in front of a firing squad of cameras just to prove a point.
He could lie. He could play the optical illusion card again. He could feed her a corporate excuse, string her along, and keep her orbiting him with plausible deniability.
He didn’t break her gaze. His posture remained utterly relaxed, his face a mask of cold, immovable truth.
"She’s my assistant and designer," Ryan said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that carried absolutely zero apology. "But I fuck her occasionally."
The words left Ryan’s mouth and hit the soundproofed air of the luxury suite like a physical blow.
Down below, the muffled roar of twenty thousand Knicks fans shook the concrete pillars of the arena, a deep, rhythmic vibration that bled upward through the floorboards and into the soles of Ryan’s shoes.
Inside the glass box, the silence was absolute.
Zara froze.
Her fingers, which had been loosely tracing the rim of her empty champagne flute, locked tight around the fragile crystal.
The ambient stadium lights strobed across her face, catching the sudden, stark fracture in her manufactured composure.
For a decade, she had been trained to maintain a flawless exterior regardless of the chaos in the room.
But right now, the polished armor of the world’s most desired woman was cracking down the middle.
Ryan didn’t break eye contact.
He didn’t offer a polite laugh to relieve the pressure. He set his bourbon glass down on the mahogany coffee table. The heavy crystal clinked against the wood, loud and final.
"Actually," Ryan continued, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that scraped against the quiet.
He shifted his weight, closing the remaining inches of space between them on the leather sectional. "I say occasionally, but it’s probably more frequent than that. Any time we are alone in my apartment, she begs me to fuck her. She drops to her knees in the middle of the workday just to get her mouth on me. She wants to feel me inside her at all times."
Zara’s chest hitched. A sharp, jagged breath snagged in her throat.
"Is this a joke?" she whispered, the words barely making it past her lips. Her dark eyes darted across his face, searching for the punchline, the sarcasm, the escape hatch. "What are you saying right now?"
Ryan leaned in.
The scent of her perfume — vanilla mixed with the sharp, earthy bite of crushed cedar — filled his lungs. The heat radiating off her skin fought against the aggressive chill of the suite’s air conditioning.
"I told you I deal in reality, Zara," he said softly, his gaze dropping to her mouth, then dragging back up to pin her eyes. "How does that make you feel? Knowing that right now, while I make time for you, there are other women begging me to fuck them? Knowing they swallow every drop and ask for more?"
He watched the physical reaction hit her like a localized earthquake.
A deep, dark flush crept up from the collarbone of her midnight blue slip dress, staining her neck and blooming across her cheeks.
Her thighs, previously tucked gracefully beneath her, shifted, pressing tightly together. The silk of her dress rustled, a frantic, quiet friction against the leather cushions.
Back at the restaurant, when he had diagnosed her kink, she had denied it with frantic indignation.
She had claimed she just wanted a man who didn’t orbit her. But Ryan had seen the truth.
A woman who spent her entire life as the center of the universe didn’t just want a man who ignored her — she wanted a man who was desired by others.
She wanted the visceral, filthy reality of competing for a man who didn’t need her.
She was trying to hide it. She was biting the inside of her cheek, fighting the heavy, pooling wetness gathering between her thighs.
She was failing entirely.
"It’s not just Sophie," Ryan murmured, turning the verbal knife with surgical precision.
Zara’s pupils blew wide, swallowing the dark irises until her eyes looked completely black.
"The venture capitalist who funded my company," Ryan said, his voice dropping into a dark, hypnotic cadence. "A woman who manages hundreds of millions of dollars. A married woman who stares down boardrooms for a living. I took her in her own office. I bound her wrists behind her back with my silk tie and bent her over her own desk, fucking her relentlessly like she was my common whore."
A soft, broken whimper slipped past Zara’s lips.
"She took every inch," Ryan whispered, the memory of Diana’s wrecked, fogged glasses fueling the thick, pulsing heat in his own groin. "She sobbed and shook against the glass while I filled her up, right there in front of the skyline. Because she knew I owned her."
The champagne flute slipped from Zara’s grip, tipping over onto the coffee table with a hollow clatter.
She didn’t reach for it.
Her hands fell to her lap, her fingers curling into the expensive silk of her dress. She was panting now, short, ragged breaths that made her breasts heave against the low neckline.
The sheer, overwhelming depravity of what he was saying was bypassing her brain entirely and wiring straight into her nervous system.
"I didn’t think you’d be like this," she breathed out, her voice trembling. It carried absolutely no conviction. It sounded like a prayer.
"I’m exactly what you want," Ryan corrected.
He didn’t ask for permission. His hand moved, large and warm, clamping firmly onto her bare knee.
Zara jumped at the contact, a visible jolt ripping through her spine, but she didn’t pull away. Ryan let his palm drag slowly upward.
His calloused fingers mapped the smooth, flawless skin of her thigh, pushing the midnight blue silk higher.
The contrast of the freezing air conditioning and the burning heat of her flesh made his own pulse hammer against his ribs.
"Ryan, you can’t," she whispered, her head falling back against the leather couch.
"Can’t I?"
His hand slid higher, brushing the lace edge of her panties. He felt the damp heat radiating through the fabric.
She was soaked.
The beautiful innocent supermodel, dripping wet in a luxury box because he told her about fucking his assistant.
He leaned his weight into her, pinning her against the corner of the sectional.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his lips pressing open-mouthed against the frantically beating pulse point beneath her jaw.
He dragged his teeth lightly across her skin, tasting the salt and the vanilla.
Zara’s hands fluttered up, her manicured fingers pressing weakly against his chest.
"Stop," she gasped, her hips rolling up instinctively, chasing the pressure of his hand on her thigh. "We’re in public... someone will see."
"The glass is tinted," Ryan murmured against her collarbone. "And you don’t want me to stop. You want me to show you exactly why they beg, don’t you?"
His free hand moved up, sliding around her ribs to cup the heavy weight of her breast through the silk.
He squeezed firmly, his thumb rolling over the hardened peak of her nipple.
Zara cried out, a loud, unguarded sound that bounced off the soundproof glass. Her nails dug into his shoulders, anchoring herself to him as her hips rocked blindly against his forearm.
She was completely undone. The polished, media-trained icon was dead. The woman writhing under his hands was raw, desperate, and entirely consumed by a kink she had spent a lifetime not knowing she had.
Ryan pulled back just enough to look at her.
Her lips were parted, shiny with saliva. Her chest heaved, the blue silk bunched up around her waist, exposing the long, flawless stretch of her legs.
He took her wrist. Her bones felt delicate, bird-like in his grip.
He dragged her hand down, pulling it away from his chest, and pressed her palm flat against the front of his dark slacks.
The heavy, rock-hard length of his cock throbbed violently against the zipper, straining against the fabric.
Zara’s breath caught in a sharp, hissing intake of air as the sheer size and heat of him registered against her skin.
"Feel it," Ryan commanded, his voice dark and absolute. He kept his hand over hers, forcing her fingers to curl around the thick, pulsing bulge. "This is what they swallow and choke on. This is what they cry for."
He squeezed her hand around him, grinding his hips up into her palm just once, a sharp, brutal twitch that made her eyes flutter shut.
"And you know what," Ryan growled, his mouth inches from hers, "it’s yours."
Zara’s eyes snapped open. The dark, frantic lust swimming in her irises collided with the terrifying, suffocating reality of what he was offering.
Her fingers tightened around him, her grip surprisingly strong, claiming the heat straining against the wool.
"Mine?" she whispered, the word trembling on her lips like a surrender.