LOGINThree years ago, Alicia Brown walked away from the only man who had ever made her feel undone. After a reckless one-night stand with a powerful stranger, she slipped out of his hotel suite, convinced that disappearing was the only way to protect her heart. No names or contact information were exchanged—only a connection so consuming it frightened her. She never imagined fate would bring her back to him. Until she steps into her best friend’s home for the holidays… and comes face-to-face with Rhys Connell. Her best friend’s father. The same man who gave her the most unforgettable night of her life. Wealthy. Controlled. Devastatingly composed. Rhys is a widowed billionaire with a reputation for discipline and emotional restraint, a man who would do anything to protect his daughter. The moment their eyes meet, the past ignites. He remembers the girl who trembled beneath his touch, the girl who vanished without a trace. And the only woman who has haunted him for three years. Now she is under his roof, laughing beside his daughter, and staying in the same house with him. Wanting her once was a secret. Wanting her now is betrayal. But Rhys has never been a man who forgets what belongs to him. And Alicia is about to learn that walking away from him once does not mean she was ever truly free.
View MoreTrigger Warning: This novel contains mature themes, explicit sex scenes, and depictions of grief, trauma, and abduction. It is intended for adult readers. So, please read with care.
DEDICATION To my girls who dream too big, love too hard, and refuse to apologize for it. This one is for you—the ones who believe in passion, healing, and happily ever afters, even when the world tries to convince you otherwise. Keep dreaming. Keep loving. You deserve it. PROLOGUE Three Years Ago His mouth was already on mine the second the suite door slammed shut, he kissed me so hard like he had been starving since we met downstairs for dinner. I gasped into the kiss, my fingers clawing at his tux jacket. He tasted like whiskey and sin, but smelled so good, like expensive cologne and raw male hunger. One big hand fisted my hair at the nape, yanking my head back so he could devour my throat, his teeth scraping, and sucking hard enough to bruise. “Been watching these lips all night,” he growled against my pulse. “Imagining them wrapped around my cock.” Before I could answer, he spun me, and shoved me face-first against the wall. My palms slapped the cool plaster, and his body caged me from behind. His broad chest to my back, and his thick thigh wedging between mine, forcing my legs wider. He hiked my dress up, and shoved my panties aside. Then plunged one finger straight into me without warning, curling deep, stroking that spot that made my vision white out. “Fuck—already dripping,” he rasped, pumping slow then fast, his thumb grinding my clit in tight circles. “This greedy little cunt knew exactly who it wanted tonight.” I moaned, loud and shameless, rocking my hips back onto his hand. He added a second finger, stretching me, scissoring, and preparing my pussy. My thighs trembled from the intensity of the pleasure. “Cum on my fingers first,” he ordered, voice gravel-rough. “Show me how bad you need it.” He bit the spot below my earlobe, and pinched my clit slightly. Sending jolts of pleasure up my spine. I came almost instantly, throwing my head back, my cry was muffled against my own arm, and my pussy walls pulsing around his fingers in violent spasms. He kept fucking me through it with his hand until I was shaking, whimpering, and dripping down his wrist. Then he pulled out, spun me again, and dropped to his knees. He pulled my panties down slowly, like I was some expensive gift he was unboxing, sniffed it deeply and kept it in the pocket of his tux. He lifted one of my legs on his shoulder, and placed his mouth on me before I could catch my breath, his tongue flat and broad, lapping up every drop, then focusing on my clit with vicious suction. His teeth grazed just enough to sting, then he slid two fingers back inside, curling relentlessly. His free hand gripped my ass, spreading me wider so he could bury his face deeper. I threaded my fingers through his dark hair, holding on as another orgasm built too fast. “Oh god—please—” He sucked harder, and his finger pumped faster. I came again, screaming shamelessly this time, my thighs clamping around his head, gushing against his tongue while he drank me down like he was dying of thirst. He stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes black with lust. “I want to fuck you so hard you’ll never forget.” He said, his voice barely above a whisper as he pulled me towards the massive bed. I stumbled backward on shaky legs. He shedded his clothes as he went towards the waiting bed—jacket, shirt, belt snapping free, pants and boxers kicked aside. His cock sprang out—thick, veined, flushed dark, and leaking at the tip. My mouth watered at the sight. He caught me around the waist, tossed me onto the king sized bed like I weighed nothing. Crawled over me, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand, then reached for the condoms on the drawer beside his bed. He ripped one open, and my pussy clenched in excitement of what was about to go down. He rolled it up his length with one hand, still holding my wrists above my head with the other. And guided his cock to my entrance, rubbing the head through my soaked folds, teasing me and coating himself in my natural lubricant. “Beg for it,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “Please,” I whimpered, lifting my hips. “Please fuck me.” “Say my name.” “I don’t know your name.” He let out a dark chuckle. “You will. But tonight you call me Daddy.” The word ignited something filthy inside me. “Please, Daddy—fuck me.” He slammed home in one ruthless thrust, burying every inch until his hips met mine. I cried out—half pain, half pleasure—at the stretch, the fullness. He didn’t give me time to adjust, he just started fucking me hard, and deep, with punishing strokes that slapped my skin on his skin, making the bed creak under us. “Look at me,” he snarled, releasing my wrists to grip my jaw, forcing my eyes to his. “Watch who’s owning this pussy.” I did, his grey eyes locked on mine as he pounded into me, his thumb found my clit again, and he started rubbing, pinching and flicking it fast. Another orgasm crashed over me—my walls fluttering, and milking him. He groaned, his pace faltering for a second before he sped up. “Gonna fill you up,” he rasped. “Gonna pump you so full you’ll fucking leak me for days.” “Yes—please—Daddy—” He buried himself deep, his hips grinding against mine, and came with a guttural roar, his hard cock twitching relentlessly in my pussy. I wrapped my legs around his ass, holding him there. He stayed seated inside me, and I felt him begin to soften a little while still twitching. He pulled out, slid the condom of his cock, tied it and disposed of it. Then he rolled on a new one. He flipped me onto my stomach, yanked my hips up, and entered me again from behind, the position made him even more deeper, as I was literally feeling him in my cervix. He wrapped his hand in my hair, pulling my head back so he could whisper filth in my ear while he fucked me slow and deep this time. “Perfect little slut… taking Daddy’s cock so well… gonna ruin you for every other man…” He spanked my ass—sharp, stinging slaps that made me clench around him harder. Then he reached under to pinch my nipples, and rolled my clit. I came again, screaming into the sheets, my body shaking. He came soon after, pumping his loads into the condom. “Oh fuck sunshine—fucking take my loads in your fucking cunt—“ I clenched around him, “yes—yes—I fucking love it, just like that.” Later, in the shower, he fucked me again, with him pressing me to the tiles, taking me slow from behind, water cascading over us, one hand around my throat just tight enough to make my head spin, and the other between my legs until I came one last time on his cock. By dawn I was wrecked, sore, and I had hickeys blooming on my breasts, his fingerprints on my hips and thighs, and his scent all over me. I was utterly claimed. He slept deeply, his face softer in repose, lashes dark against his sharp cheekbones. I watched him for one long minute, my heart pounding with something dangerously close to regret already. Then I gathered my ruined dress, slipped into the hallway, and disappeared into the morning light. No names or numbers exchanged. Just the ache between my legs and the certainty that I’d just been ruined for anyone else.Rhys’s POVI stepped back into the ballroom with Alicia beside me, the private lounge and the unfinished sentence already feeling like they belonged to a different hour. The East Coast investors were waiting near the far windows, their expressions polite but expectant. Hayes caught my eye from across the room and gave a small, apologetic nod. He had tried to hold them off, but it had not been enough.I performed the required version of myself for the next twenty minutes. Handshakes. Measured answers about expansion timelines and risk tolerance. The kind of conversation that had once felt natural and now sat against my skin like a suit that no longer fit the way it used to. Alicia remained close without clinging, her presence a quiet constant at the edge of my awareness. Every time I glanced at her I felt the weight of the words I had not managed to say.There is something I’ve been wanting to tell you.The sentence kept turning over in my mind while I nodded at appropriate intervals
Alicia’s POVI saw the change in him before anyone else did.One moment Rhys was steady beside me in the soft gold light of the ballroom, the composed version of himself that belonged to rooms like this, with his shoulders set, voice even, the quiet authority that made people adjust their posture when he looked at them. The next moment something in his face locked, it was small, almost nothing. A stillness that settled behind his eyes and stayed there even as he continued answering the woman who had spoken to him.I didn’t know what she had said. I only knew the way the air around him shifted, the way his hand at the small of my back went briefly heavier before it relaxed again into the careful public touch he had maintained all evening. Whatever the words had been, they had reached a place he usually kept sealed.I did not ask in front of the room.We finished the necessary conversations. We smiled where smiling was required. We moved through the last orbit of investors and polite i
Rhys’s POVWe arrived the way I had planned it, close enough in time that I never lost track of her, and separate enough that no one standing near the entrance would immediately connect the black car that brought me with the one that had dropped her ten minutes later. The Langford’s ballroom already hummed with the low, noise of people who measured their worth in invitations and the length of time it took a waiter to notice an empty glass. I saw her the moment she stepped through the inner doors.The champagne silk moved with her like it had been waiting for her body and no one else’s. She paused just inside the threshold, one hand resting lightly against the small clutch Clara had chosen, eyes taking in the room with the careful attention of someone who had learned early to read spaces before fully entering them. For a fraction of a second she looked younger than her twenty-five years. Then she drew a quiet breath, squared her shoulders, and walked forward.People noticed, I felt i
Alicia’s POVI said yes on a Tuesday afternoon, sitting on the edge of my dorm bed with my phone pressed to my ear and Mirabel’s laughter floating in from the hallway.The word left my mouth before I had fully decided I meant it. Rhys had been quiet on the other end of the line after asking the question for the second time. Not pressuring, just waiting. That was somehow worse than if he had tried to convince me. The silence left room for every fear I had been carrying since the night he first mentioned the gala—cameras, questions, the possibility of someone recognizing me as more than a polite guest on the arm of a man who was never supposed to look at me the way he did.“Yes,” I said again, softer this time, as if repeating it would make the decision feel less like stepping off a ledge. “I’ll go.”His breath shifted on the other end of the line. Relief, maybe. Or something closer to gratitude.“Thank you,” he said. I spent the next two days trying not to think about it. Moving from
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