LOGINCHAPTER TWO
Alex's Pov
I stepped inside, and Damien closed the door behind me with a soft click that felt impossibly loud. The suite was all floor-to-ceiling windows and modern luxury, but I barely registered any of it. My entire focus was on the man standing too close, looking at me like I was a puzzle he needed to solve.
"Three months," he said quietly. "I told you things I've never told anyone."
"So did I." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "What now?"
"Now we stop pretending this is just online anymore." He set his phone down on the entrance table, never breaking eye contact. "I need to know if what we have translates here. In person. Without screens between us."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then we go back to professional colleagues on Monday and never speak of this again." His hand slid to the back of my neck, warm and possessive. "But I don't think that's going to happen. Do you?"
I should have said yes. Should have taken the exit he was offering. Instead, I closed the distance between us and kissed him.
The moment our lips met, everything ignited. This wasn't tentative or uncertain, this was three months of tension finally breaking free. Damien made a sound low in his throat and pulled me harder against him, his other hand gripping my hip. I'd imagined this, fantasized about it during our late-night conversations, but reality was so much better.
He tasted like expensive whiskey and desperation. His tongue swept into my mouth, claiming and demanding, and I gave as good as I got. My hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing more.
"Alex." He broke the kiss, breathing hard. "Are you sure about this? Once we cross this line…."
"I crossed the line three months ago." I pulled him back down. "Stop thinking and kiss me."
He did, walking me backward until my legs hit the sofa. We fell onto it together, his weight pressing me into the cushions in the best way. His hands were everywhere, sliding under my shirt, tracing the muscles of my stomach, making me arch into his touch.
I yanked at his shirt buttons, clumsy with need. He pulled back just enough to strip it off completely, and I drank in the sight of him. Damien Cross, always so controlled at work, was looking at me with raw hunger in his eyes.
"You have no idea how many times I've thought about this," he said roughly, his fingers working at my belt. "How many nights I touched myself thinking about you."
"Show me." I lifted my hips so he could pull my jeans down. "Show me what you wanted to do."
He groaned and yanked my pants off completely, then pressed hot kisses down my chest, my stomach, lower. When his mouth closed around me through my boxers, I nearly came apart right there.
"Damien…fuck…."
He pulled my boxers down and took me in his mouth properly, and coherent thought became impossible. His tongue was wicked, his mouth hot and perfect, and I grabbed at the sofa cushions to keep from thrusting up too hard. He took me deeper, hollowing his cheeks, and I couldn't hold back the sounds spilling from my lips.
"Wait…..stop…." I pulled at his shoulders. "I'm too close."
He released me with a wet sound, his lips swollen and eyes dark. "I want to taste you."
"Next time." I pulled him up and kissed him hard, tasting myself on his tongue. "Right now I need you inside me."
His control snapped. He stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes while I did the same, and then we were both naked, pressed together skin-to-skin. He was beautiful, all lean muscle and power barely contained.
"Bedroom," he said, but I shook my head.
"Here. Now. I've waited long enough."
He reached for his discarded pants and pulled out his wallet, retrieving a condom and lube. Smart man, coming prepared. He slicked his fingers and pressed one inside me, watching my face as I adjusted to the intrusion.
"More," I demanded, rocking back against his hand.
He added another finger, stretching me, finding that spot that made me see stars. I was writhing beneath him, begging without shame, and he looked like he was barely holding on to his composure.
"Please," I gasped. "Damien, please…."
He rolled on the condom and positioned himself, his eyes locked on mine. "Tell me you want this."
"I want this. I want you. Please….."
He pushed inside slowly, and we both groaned at the sensation. He was big, stretching me perfectly, filling me completely. He paused when he was fully seated, giving me time to adjust, his forehead pressed against mine.
"You feel incredible," he breathed.
"Move," I urged, wrapping my legs around his waist.
He did, pulling out and thrusting back in, setting a rhythm that had me clawing at his back. Every thrust hit exactly right, building pleasure that coiled tighter and tighter in my gut. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
"Touch yourself," he commanded. "I want to feel you come around me."
I reached between us and stroked myself in time with his thrusts. It only took a few pulls before I was there, falling over the edge with his name on my lips. He followed moments later, his rhythm stuttering as he found his own release.
We stayed like that for a long moment, both breathing hard, sweat cooling on our skin.
Finally, Damien pulled out carefully and disposed of the condom. When he came back, he pulled me against his chest, and we lay tangled together on the sofa.
"So,"
I said eventually. "What happens Monday morning when I walk into your office?”
Alex's POVThe document was twelve pages long and I read all of it standing in a diner booth at eleven o'clock at night with fluorescent lights humming above my head and Robert Haines watching my face from across the table and Damien so still beside me that I kept checking his breathing to confirm he was still present in his body.By page four I understood why Richard Sterling had spent thirty years making sure nobody went near that vault.By page eight I understood why he had been so desperate to remove Damien from leadership. Not because Damien was a liability. Because Damien was a threat. Specifically, because Damien was the kind of meticulous, thorough, uncompromising person who would eventually audit everything and find what was buried and Richard had known that from the moment Damien took over and started correcting his father's mistakes one by one.By page twelve I was sitting down because my legs had stopped cooperating."He owns part of the company," I said."Forty-one percen
Alex's POVThere is a specific kind of tiredness that goes so deep it loops back around and becomes something that feels almost like calm. I was in that place. I had been running on adrenaline and urgency for four straight hours and now, standing in the marble lobby of Cross Industries at ten thirty at night, looking at a security guard who had just said the name Robert Haines, I felt the calm of someone who has simply run out of capacity to be shocked and has arrived somewhere on the other side of it.Damien hadn't moved.That told me everything about how significant this was. Damien Cross processed things fast. He was almost never the last person in a room to arrive at the next step. But he was standing beside me in the lobby with his hand still over mine and he had gone completely still the way a building goes still right before something structural happens to it."Trevor's father," I said quietly."Yes.""Did you know he was in New York.""I didn't know he existed in any practical
Damien's POVI watched Alex read those four words and I watched the color leave his face the way it leaves a room when someone turns off the light, all at once and completely, and I understood in that moment that whatever Richard Sterling had done tonight, whatever moves he had made, this one was different. This one wasn't about the company or the board or the evidence or even about me. This one was about a sixty-three year old woman who had spent twenty years being quiet because she had no other choice, and Richard had just decided that her silence was still his to control.Alex called her before I could say anything. He was already standing, already moving toward the window the way he did when he needed to think and move at the same time, and I stayed where I was because there are moments when the most useful thing you can do for someone is hold the room steady while they handle the thing that needs handling.She picked up immediately."Mom." His voice was controlled in the way that
Damien's POVI have been surprised exactly four times in my professional life. The first was when my father told me the company was failing. The second was when Trevor sold our story to a journalist. The third was when I opened a hotel room door and found Alex Carter standing on the other side of it. And now this. A photograph of Sophie Chen standing beside Richard Sterling in what was clearly a hotel room, four years ago, both of them dressed like they'd just come from an event, close enough that the distance between them told its own story before I'd read a single word.I stared at that photograph for a long time. Longer than was useful. My brain kept trying to reject what my eyes were giving it because Sophie Chen was the person I trusted most in this company after Marcus. Sophie had been the one to get ahead of Farrow. Sophie had authenticated the drive. Sophie had built the entire case that had just removed Richard from this boardroom. She had been the architecture of everything
Alex's POVThere are moments in your life when the ground shifts so completely that you stop feeling like yourself for a second. Like you've stepped outside your own body and you're watching from somewhere slightly above, looking down at the person who just heard the most impossible thing and trying to understand why they're still standing.James.My brother James. The one who called to check on me. The one who asked if I was being smart. The one who had sat across from me at our mother's kitchen table every Thanksgiving for thirty-two years and who I had trusted so completely and so automatically that I had never once thought to question it. James who was a lawyer. James was supposed to understand what loyalty meant because he'd built his entire career on the concept of it.James had called Richard Sterling's people himself.I put the phone down on the boardroom table very carefully, the way you handle something when you're afraid of what you'll do if you're not careful, and I looked
Alex's POVMarcus picked up before the phone had even finished its first ring, which told me he'd been waiting for us to call, which told me he already knew something we didn't."Tell me what you have," Damien said. He had the phone between us so I could hear, and we were still standing in the boardroom because neither of us had moved toward the door yet. The photograph of me and Trevor was still on the table. The chairs were still pushed at wrong angles from people leaving in a hurry. The room looked like the aftermath of something, because it was."Richard made two calls when he left," Marcus said. His voice had the specific flatness it got when he was delivering information he didn't want to deliver. "The first was to his attorney. That one we expected." A pause that lasted just long enough to make my stomach tighten. "The second was to a man named Gerald Pitt. He's a senior editor at the National Financial Register."Damien went very still beside me."The Register ran the story ab







