Signed in Red

Preston’s fingers brushed the light switch beside our pillar.

Before he could flip it, Dominic slid his bare palm from my mouth down to the handle of the silver Elysium case.

"Let me hold onto your crown until ten tomorrow," Dominic breathed against my ear, slipping the case from my fingers and hiding it beneath his charcoal overcoat.

A second later, he stepped out from behind the marble pillar, planting the rubber tip of his black titanium cane right beside Preston’s dress shoe.

Preston yelped, stumbling back against the console table and rattling the mug of chamomile tea.

"Dominic?!" Preston clutched his chest, staring wildly at his older half-brother. "What the hell are you doing lurking upstairs in the dark?"

Dominic angled his broad shoulders in front of the alcove gap, blocking me from view.

"Your housekeeper said you were working late," Dominic replied smoothly, tossing a manila audit folder onto the table. "I came to drop off the quarterly figures, though you sounded... occupied on the speakerphone."

Dominic’s gaze flicked down to Preston’s crooked belt and wrinkled slacks. Heat crept up Preston’s neck.

"I was on a late call with the lab team," Preston lied, yanking his collar straight.

"I’m sure you were," Dominic said, turning toward the stairs with the Elysium case hidden under his coat and my wedding band tucked inside his gloved palm. "Enjoy your tea, little brother. See you in the boardroom at ten."

Preston stood frozen by the study door until Dominic’s footsteps faded downstairs and the heavy front doors shut.

Blowing out a breath, Preston wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve and fished out his phone to call Chloe back.

I stepped out from the shadowed gallery, walked up to the console table, and slapped the stapled divorce agreement down beside the teacup.

Preston jumped again. "Sienna?! Where did you come from? Were you—"

"Downstairs finishing the stabilization run you asked for," I cut in, tapping my fingernail on the bottom page. "Sign it, Preston."

Preston frowned down at the bold heading—DIVORCE AGREEMENT—and the red ink spelling Sienna Cross on the signature line. His gaze snapped to my bare left ring finger.

Panic flashed in his eyes before he masked it with a scoff. Tomorrow morning was the five-hundred-million-dollar Sinclair Global board review; without my biometric clearance and final catalyst ratios, he and Chloe couldn't activate the Elysium presentation.

"A divorce?" Preston snatched the papers, waving them in my face. "Are you crazy? Just because I was locked in my study working tonight instead of celebrating our anniversary?"

"We haven't had a marriage in seven hundred and thirty days," I said evenly. "Sign the last page so we can both move on."

"Not a chance," Preston snapped, shoving the contract into his desk drawer through the open doorway. "Even if you file tomorrow, our marriage carries a mandatory thirty-day cooling-off window. You can’t divorce me without my signature until thirty days are up!"

"Thirty days won't change my mind."

Preston stepped closer, dropping his apologetic act as his voice turned nasty. "Walk out tonight, Sienna, and I’ll auction off the deed to your dead mother’s botanical conservatory before noon tomorrow. You signed that glasshouse over as collateral for my lab expansion two years ago, remember? Without my roof over your head, you’re a broke orphan with nowhere to go. Now get back downstairs, prep my notes for tomorrow, and stop throwing a tantrum!"

I looked at the man I’d sacrificed two years of my life to protect, wondering how I ever mistook his cowardice for pain.

"Do whatever you want with the paperwork, Preston," I said. "Your thirty-day countdown starts tonight."

I turned my back on him and walked down the grand staircase while he shouted my name from the landing.

Pushing open the front doors, I stepped out into the pouring rain. Halfway down the stone driveway toward the iron gates, forty-eight hours without food or sleep—combined with two days of inhaling volatile lab solvents—hit me all at once.

The streetlights blurred into spinning gold halos. My knees buckled on the wet cobblestones just as headlights cut through the downpour.

A black Maybach glided to the curb. The rear door swung open, and a tall figure stepped out into the rain without an umbrella.

Before I hit the pavement, Dominic caught me around the waist, swept me up against his chest, and carried me into the warm leather cabin.

As the door shut out the storm, exhaustion pulled me under against his damp shoulder. I breathed in the dark cedar on his skin, slipping into a scorching dream.

In the dream, my soaked trench coat was gone.

I was stretched across a king bed draped in black silk, my wrists pinned above my head by Dominic’s gloved left hand while his bare right palm slid down my throat and cupped my breast. My skin burned wherever his rough fingers touched. When his thumb brushed my taut nipple, a gasp tore from my throat.

"Two years untouched," Dominic growled against my neck in the dark, his weight pressing me into the mattress. "Look how badly your body begs for a real man, Sienna."

He kissed a hot trail down my ribs and stomach before parting my thighs with his bare hands. When his mouth settled between my legs, my back arched off the pillows. His tongue stroked my swollen clit in a relentless rhythm while two thick, calloused fingers sank deep inside my aching heat, stretching me until I was sobbing his name into the dark.

Right at the edge, he surged back up over me. His belt gave way, and he guided the thick, burning length of his cock to my entrance—driving deep inside me in one powerful stroke that filled every inch of me.

"Dominic—!"

A real, shattering climax ripped through me, bowing my spine off the mattress as my thighs trembled beneath a charcoal silk sheet.

My eyes flew open.

The Maybach was gone. I was lying in a massive king bed inside a dim penthouse overlooking the rain-streaked city skyline, wearing only an oversized black silk dress shirt.

Dominic Sinclair sat right on the edge of the mattress. His jacket was off, the top buttons of his white shirt were undone, and both hands were bare as he rolled my platinum wedding band across his knuckles.

His dark grey eyes dropped to my flushed chest and the damp silk clinging to my thighs. Slowly, he slid his bare palm under the sheet, wrapping his warm fingers around my trembling knee.

"Go on, Sienna," Dominic murmured, leaning down until his mouth hovered an inch from mine. "Tell me if my brother knows it’s my name you moan when you come in your sleep."