Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 60711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
So this was what it felt like.
So this was what she’d been missing.
So this was why people ruined their lives for it.
Through it all, his hand kept moving. Slower now. Gentler. Drawing out every last tremor, every last aftershock, until she was wrung dry and trembling in his arms.
And then she collapsed.
Just...folded against his chest like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Her cheek pressed to the expensive wool of his suit. Her breath came in ragged, broken gasps. Her heart hammered so hard she was sure he could feel it against his chest.
Her body was heavy.
So heavy.
Like every bone had turned to honey.
Her brain was fuzzy.
Wrapped in cotton.
Unable to form a single coherent thought beyond...his name.
Paul. Paul. Paul.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there, boneless and floating, listening to the steady thump of his heart beneath her ear. His hand had stilled between her thighs but hadn’t moved away, and she was too dazed to feel embarrassed about that.
Too dazed to feel anything except...
Grateful?
Terrified?
Ruined?
And then his hand was at her chin.
Tipping her face up.
Forcing her to look at him.
She blinked at him through the haze, still trying to remember how to breathe.
And the expression on his face—
It stole what was left of her breath.
He was looking at her like he wanted to kill her.
Or worship her.
Like she had ruined something inside him, and he hadn’t decided yet whether to thank her or destroy her for it.
“Whatever Joyce promised you.”
His voice was rough.
Stripped raw in a way she’d never heard from him.
Like she wasn’t the only one who had been undone.
“I’ll pay ten times more.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. Her brain was still floating somewhere outside her body, and the words didn’t make sense.
“But in return—”
His thumb brushed her lower lip.
Still swollen from his kisses.
Still trembling.
Through the window, she could see iron gates beginning to open. A mansion beyond them, sprawling and magnificent, nothing like any home she’d ever known.
The gates parted, and the limo rolled forward.
“For as long as she’s away—”
He was bringing her to his home.
“I want you to be with me like you’re in love with me.”
Chapter Four
NINE FIFTEEN.
Paul stared at the contract on his desk without seeing a single word.
She should be here by now.
The December morning had frosted the floor-to-ceiling windows of his corner office, and beyond them, San Antonio sprawled in miniature—highways threading between clusters of buildings, the River Walk a dark ribbon cutting through downtown, and somewhere out there, past the city limits, the gates of Tranquil Acres.
Where she was.
Without him.
Joyce’s flight to Monte Carlo had departed at six this morning. He knew because he’d made it his business to know. Which meant the girl had been alone in that mansion for over three hours now, and any moment, his receptionist would buzz to announce—
Nothing.
The intercom stayed silent.
Paul turned his attention back to the contract. Mitropoulos Tech was acquiring a struggling biotech firm, and the deal required his full concentration. Hundreds of jobs hung in the balance. Millions of dollars. The kind of stakes that usually sharpened his mind to a razor’s edge.
He read the same paragraph four times.
Fuck.
But he still had no idea what it said.
His coffee had gone cold in its cup. He hadn’t touched the breakfast his assistant had left on the credenza—some arrangement of eggs and fruit that probably cost more than most people’s weekly groceries. Outside his window, a plane cut a white line across the winter-pale sky, heading somewhere warm, somewhere that wasn’t here.
Somewhere that wasn’t this desk, this office, this excruciating silence.
Ten forty-five.
He’d moved to the conference room for a meeting with his legal team. Six attorneys sat around the polished mahogany table, their tablets and legal pads arranged with military precision, debating liability clauses and indemnification language. Paul contributed nothing.
His phone sat face-up beside his coffee.
No messages.
No calls.
He hadn’t given her his number, he realized. A deliberate choice at the time—he’d wanted her to come to him, to seek him out, to prove that she wanted this as much as he did.
Now it felt like a tactical error, with him handing her all the power while keeping none for himself.
“Mr. Mitropoulos?”
He looked up to find six pairs of eyes watching him expectantly. Harrison, his lead counsel, had paused mid-sentence, pen hovering over a yellow legal pad covered in neat handwriting.
“Your thoughts on the non-compete provision?”
He didn’t have any.
“Table it,” he said. “We’ll revisit tomorrow.”
The attorneys exchanged glances but knew better than to argue. They gathered their materials in that particular way people moved when they sensed a storm brewing—quickly, quietly, without drawing attention. The door clicked shut behind the last of them, and Paul was alone again.
Alone with the silence.
Alone with the phone that refused to light up.
Alone with the memory of her face when she’d shattered in his arms, that soft broken cry that had nearly undone him entirely.