로그인Chapter 5: The Night the Six Months Stopped Being a SentenceThe foundation fight nearly killed the grant.By the end of the week the developer was on speakerphone, the geotech team was sending increasingly terse emails, and the site crew had started placing bets on which of us would walk first. Julian and I spent three days locked in the container office redesigning the eastern footings while the old argument—sentiment versus over-engineering—played out in every redline. We kept the days clean. We did not touch. We barely looked at each other longer than the drawings required.At night the house was a different story.We stopped pretending the ache was something we could schedule. Some nights it was against the wall in the entryway before dinner. Some nights it was in his bed with the windows open and the Atlantic loud enough to cover the sounds. Once it was in the site office itself after the crew had gone, drawings shoved aside, my back against the desk, Julian’s hand over my mouth
Chapter 4: The Day the Drawings Weren’t EnoughThe site office was a converted shipping container with two desks, one coffee machine, and barely enough room to hate each other properly.We spent the morning in it.Julian went through the structural package with the same clinical precision he had once used to dismantle my work in public. Every time he leaned over the drawings his shoulder brushed mine. Every time he reached across me for a pencil the scent of him—salt, clean skin, the faint trace of whatever soap he used—hit the back of my throat. My cock stayed at a low, humiliating half-mast for three straight hours. I kept my eyes on the plans and my jaw locked and told myself the terms were holding.They weren’t.By mid-afternoon a real problem landed. The geotech report showed unexpected soft soil under the eastern foundation line. The fix would cost time and money the grant didn’t have. Julian wanted to redesign the footings. I wanted to adjust the building footprint instead. The
Chapter 3: The Night the Terms ChangedI lasted forty minutes.Long enough to unpack, long enough to stand under a cold shower that did nothing, long enough to stare at myself in the mirror and try to resurrect the version of me that only hated Julian Voss. It didn’t work. My cock stayed stubbornly interested every time I replayed the way he had looked at me on the stairs.I pulled on clean jeans and a T-shirt and went down.Julian was in the living room, a single lamp throwing warm light across the worn furniture. He had changed into black sweatpants and a soft gray shirt, the sleeves pushed up again. A tumbler of something amber sat on the low table. He looked up when I entered, pale gray eyes steady, and the air in the room tightened.“You came,” he said.“You told me to decide.”“I did.” He nodded at the opposite end of the couch. “Sit.”I sat. The distance between us felt deliberate and insufficient at the same time. Julian studied me for a long moment, the same precise attention
Chapter 2: The House That Made It RealThe lighthouse keeper’s house sat on a narrow spit of land with the Atlantic on three sides and a single wind-scoured road connecting it to the mainland.I arrived late Monday afternoon in a rental car that already smelled of salt. The project site stretched behind the dunes—foundations marked out, temporary fencing, a couple of site trailers. The house itself was older than the drawings suggested: weathered cedar, white trim gone soft gray from the weather, two stories of rooms that had clearly been updated just enough to be livable and not one bit more.Julian’s black SUV was already in the gravel drive.I sat in the car for a full minute with the engine off, telling myself I could still turn around, break the contract, and eat the professional consequences. The thought lasted until I remembered the size of the grant and the silence that had followed my last public failure. I got out, grabbed my duffel, and walked up the steps.The front door w
Chapter 1: The Clause That Ruined EverythingI should have walked out the second I saw his name on the contract.The developer’s office sat on the forty-first floor, all glass and quiet money. I had spent three years clawing my way back from the public failure Julian Voss had handed me. Two years ago he had stood on a conference stage and methodically dismantled my coastal housing proposal in front of every major firm in the region. He had called it “sentiment dressed up as design.” The recording still lived online. My career had nearly died with it.Now the same firm that once ghosted my emails was offering me the lead on the largest waterfront redevelopment in the state.There was only one condition.I had to co-lead it with him.Julian sat across the polished table like he had been carved into the chair. Same sharp jaw, same dark hair pushed back from his forehead, same pale gray eyes that had watched me fail in front of a packed auditorium. He wore a black shirt with the sleeves r
Chapter 4: The Morning the Weather Finally Cleared I woke up hard. Kane’s arm was still locked around my waist, his chest against my back, the heat of him seeping into my skin. Rain still tapped the window, lighter now, the storm finally starting to break. My cock ached against the sheets, the memory of him inside me the night before still vivid enough that the slightest shift of his hips made me push back into him without thinking. He was already awake. “Morning,” he murmured against the back of my neck, voice rough with sleep. One hand slid down my stomach and wrapped around my cock like it belonged there. The first stroke dragged a low sound out of my throat. “Still aching.” “Yes.” “Good.” He stroked me slowly, deliberately, while his mouth traced the line of my shoulder. “Weather report came in an hour ago. Ceiling’s lifting. We can be in the air by fourteen hundred if we preflight clean. That gives us most of the morning.” I turned in his arms until we were face to face.
Chapter 1: Caught in the Dark I never thought I would see my stepbrother like this. The house was supposed to be empty. Mom and Dad had left for their anniversary weekend, and I had planned to spend the night buried in my books, finally getting some peace from Damien’s constant noise. Hockey prac
Chapter 1: Caught in the ActThe bass from Jordan’s speakers thumped through the walls as I slipped out of his room, heart hammering like a damn traitor. The party downstairs was still raging—cheap beer, shitty EDM, and too many people crammed into his parents’ living room. But I wasn’t going back
Chapter 4: Shadows and Surrender The crack outside the cabin window jolted me awake before dawn, my body still sore and marked from Damien’s relentless claiming the night before. I lay tangled in the heavy blankets, his arm draped possessively over my waist, his breath warm against my neck. For a
Chapter 3: Cabin Fever The family cabin loomed ahead like a trap wrapped in pine trees and fresh snow. Mom and Dad had insisted on the weekend getaway to bond us all together, but they bailed at the last minute with some excuse about a work emergency back in the city. Convenient. Or maybe suspicio







