Chapter 1

PROLOGUE.

He pushed inside me slowly.

Devastatingly slow, like he had something to prove about patience, or maybe he just wanted to feel every inch of it, wanted to watch my face while my body stretched around him and accepted what it had no business accepting from my boss and fiancé's best friend.

I gripped the edge of the counter and tried to breathe.

"Look at me."

I'd been looking at his throat because it was safer there. But his hand came up and curved around my jaw, redirecting my focus, his thumb pressing lightly beneath my chin until my eyes found his.

They were so dark right now they were almost not grey at all.

He pushed in the rest of the way and held there, buried completely, and I watched his jaw tighten.

His forehead dropped forward until it rested against mine.

Neither of us spoke.

His breath was unsteady. I felt it against my mouth, shallow and effortful, and I realized with a small shock that his hands were trembling — barely, almost nothing, but I felt it where they gripped my hips, this fine continuous shiver running through him, and it undid me more than anything else.

Jeremy Kellason did not shake. He was the man who stood in his doorway with his cock in his hand and didn't flinch when I caught him. He was the man who wrapped his hand around my throat and held my pulse like he owned it.

He. Was. Shaking.

"Jeremy—"

"Shhh..." His forehead pressed harder against mine. "Don't say anything."

He pulled out halfway and pushed back in. Still slow, with his eyes on mine the entire time, holding the contact like it was the whole point and the sex was almost secondary — to making me look at him while it happened, to refusing me the mercy of looking away.

I tried to look away.

"Eyes on me." He said very quietly. "Please. Keep your eyes on me, Nadia." He said through gritted teeth.

He begged.

Jeremy Kellason was begging.

Why?

His words did something to me... Something that I didn't have a name for, but it made me want to do whatever this man wanted for as long as I could. He sounded so broken. So needy. So hollowed out.

So, I looked.

God help me, I looked.

When it was all over, he didn't put me down immediately.

He stood there holding me against the wall, still inside me, both of us breathing like we'd run somewhere far away from where we were supposed to be.

His lips moved against my temple as he whispered.

"I wish this was all real."

Before I could ask what he meant, he carefully dropped me on my feet.

"Get dressed. It's almost eight."

HOW IT ALL STARTED.

***

NADIA.

“Your mother’s treatment is secure. As long as we don’t create unnecessary complications.” Liam's words filtered through the screen.

My smile faltered, but I put it back on before he could notice, then loosened the knot of my towel. "There'll be no complications. Not when we are barely two months away from tying the knot." I forced a soft giggle, but was only met with his usual silence and distraction.

"Good."

He wasn't even looking at me, despite standing almost naked in front of the screen. He sat on the other end of the video call in a hotel robe with his head bent over his phone, and his thumb moving across the screen like I was the interruption here.

I let the towel fall to the floor anyway. I stood there and waited for him to notice the body he hadn't touched in two months.

"Liam. When are you coming back?" I lowered myself to the edge of the bed. "It's been so long. I miss you."

"I'm busy, Nadia. I'll see you next week."

Same reply I got the previous week. But how much longer will I continue like this? I have needs—physical ones. Emotional ones. And Liam was rarely available to meet them.

"At least look at me." My fingers curled into the bedsheet beneath me. "Please."

His eyes flicked up, flat. "Didn't you say you had an all-night board meeting? You're going to be late. Get dressed."

I opened my mouth to push...

"Babe! Your bath's ready!"

I heard a woman's voice from Liam's end, and I went still.

For one second, everything inside me stopped moving.

My brows narrowed. "Who was that?" I asked immediately, snapping out of whatever wishful-dreamy state I was in. My pulse climbed into my throat. "Why does she sound like Virony?"

Liam finally looked at me, and it was irritation, not guilt, that crossed his face. That was the part that disarmed me every time. "You're being paranoid again."

"Liam—"

"It's the cleaner."

“She called you babe.”

“She called me sir.” His voice hardened. “You heard what you wanted to hear.”

My stomach twisted. “Liam—”

He set the phone down, scoffing. "And, Virony? Christ, listen to yourself. What exactly do you think I'm doing with your best friend? Isn't she off visiting her sick mother?"

He sounded like my suspicion was the ugliest thing he had ever had to deal with.

He was right, though. Virony had left town over a month ago.

But the voice... I could swear I knew it.

Heat crawled up my neck. "I... you're right. I'm sorry. I just..."

“You just what?” His mouth tightened. “You’re naked on camera five minutes before a meeting, trying to start a fight because you’re insecure?”

Humiliation was eating away my suspicion.

"How can this even work if you don't trust me?" His tone shifted, sounding wounded and disappointed.

"I know... I could swear..."

"Don't make this harder than it has to be." His jaw tightened. "I've got a call. Dress for your meeting."

The screen went black before I could answer. No goodbye. No ‘I miss you, too.’ Just my own face staring back from the dark glass.

I sat there, naked, humiliated, and burning with enough shame to carry me through the rest of the year.

I sat there a moment too long, and suddenly, something in me went reckless.

I picked up my phone, angled it, and took some pictures...

Legs spread, spine curved, fingers trailing where his mouth should have been.

I took a second picture with my back arched, thighs parted, and one hand grazing my inner thigh.

I took one with my lip caught between my teeth, my eyes half-closed, and my fingers twisted in my own hair like I was already coming undone.

The last one was messier and more desperate—a video.

It was the kind of video you don't send unless you're starving to be wanted.

Two fingers buried inside my dripping heat, while my thumb circled the exact spot where I needed his tongue on. I half-buried my face in the pillow like I was biting back a sound.

I'd never done this before — never been the woman who did this — but my instincts said this might be the right move.

My hands shook as I selected three. Then four. Then one more because maybe I was done begging to be noticed gently.

I typed the caption: "I need your mouth on me."

Let him be too busy for that.

My phone buzzed just before I could press send.

JEREMY KELLASON: Meeting room. Now. You’re already two minutes late.

“Oh, God.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. Eight words and no punctuation he didn't choose on purpose.

I could see his face already — that cold, unmoving way he looked at me, like I was a line item that had disappointed him. My whole body went cold with the kind of fear only he could put in me.

Jeremy Kellason. My boss. Liam's best friend. The only man who terrified me more than losing my mother's treatment.

I shot to my feet, snatched the towel off the floor, and hit send with a shaky thumb before tossing the phone onto the bed.

I'd deal with Liam's reaction later.

Right now, I had to face the man who hated me.

***

I made it to the executive meeting room in six minutes.

That was not impressive. That was a death sentence.

By the time I slipped into the room, every head at the long table turned. Only one didn't.

Jeremy Kellason.

He sat at the head, a pen turning slow circles between his fingers.

“You’re late.” He finally looked up.

Heat crawled up my neck. “I'm sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“No,” he said, still watching me. “It won’t.” His deep grey eyes threatened to take me apart with the intensity of his stare.

I'd spent eighteen months trying to learn how to be in a room with this man, and I still hadn't managed it.

I swallowed and took the nearest empty chair, even though my assigned seat was closer to him. I could feel his gaze following me across the room, and it made my skin prickle beneath the blouse I had buttoned wrong twice before giving up.

The meeting continued.

At least, I think it did.

But every time I lifted my eyes, he was looking at me.

At one point, his gaze dropped to my mouth, then to my hands, and at another point, his eyes moved lower, so briefly I almost convinced myself I imagined it. And still my face went hot, the heat crawling down my throat and pooling somewhere beneath my ribs.

I pressed my knees together under the table and stared at my own untouched notepad like it might save me.

I tried to tell myself he was angry because I was late.

That was all.

Jeremy hated lateness. He hated disorder. He hated excuses. He hated me most days, if I was being honest.

But tonight felt different.

Tonight, he looked at me like he knew what I looked like without the blouse I had buttoned in a panic. It felt like I had done something daring... Something stupid... Something he had already decided how to punish.

My fingers tightened around my pen until the plastic bit into my palm.

Christ...

I took in a shuddering breath.

By the time the meeting ended, my nerves were raw.

Everyone filed out of the room.

Jeremy slowly stood, buttoned his jacket with one unhurried hand, and let his eyes find mine one last time across the clearing table.

He held it a beat too long before walking away.

Twenty minutes later, inside the small suite they had assigned me for the night, I reached into my bag for my phone when my fingers brushed leather.

I frowned and pulled out a black folder, and my pulse stopped instantly.

JEREMY KELLASON. PRIVATE EXECUTIVE REVIEW.

For a second, I could only stare at it.

Then panic hit.

“Oh, no.”

If anyone found this with me, I was finished. Jeremy would not care that it was an accident. He would look at me with those grey eyes and turn one mistake into a disciplinary file before I could breathe.

I grabbed the folder and stood up immediately.

His office was empty when I got there.

So was his assistant’s desk.

The executive floor had gone very quiet. I checked the time on my phone.

1:03 a.m.

Jeremy’s private suite was at the end of the corridor.

Everyone knew he used it on nights like this.

No one went there unless they were summoned, and I couldn't even tell if returning these files was enough reason for me to go there in the first place.

My hand tightened around the folder.

This was stupid.

No, this was worse than stupid. This was the kind of decision people made right before their lives split open and refused to go back together.

I stood in the empty corridor and did the math.

I could leave it on his assistant's desk. But if it sat there till morning, anyone could open it — and Jeremy would want to know how a private review folder had wandered out of his sight and into the hands of a random person.

No. Better to return it myself.

In and out. That was the whole plan. Knock, hand it over, leave. If he opened the door himself, even better — I wouldn't have to step inside at all. I'd pass it to him in the gap of the doorway, apologize, and be gone before his eyes could do that thing they did.

Thirty seconds. A minute at most.

I could survive a minute.

I exhaled slowly, even though my lungs did not seem interested in helping me, and forced my feet to move. By the time I reached the end of the corridor, my mouth had gone dry.

I lifted my hand to knock, but the door drifted inward under my knuckles.

I froze.

It was already open, just resting against the latch, unlatched. A thin seam of low light spilled through the gap.

“Mr. Kellason?” I called softly.

No answer.

A smart woman would have turned around and left the folder with his assistant in the morning. A sane woman would have decided that no file, no matter how confidential, was worth walking into Jeremy Kellason’s private space after one in the morning.

Apparently, I was neither.

I pushed the door with two fingers.

The living area of his suite was bigger than my entire apartment, all dark glass, low lights, black leather, and a view of the city that made the world below look small and breakable.

Everything was neat, perfect, controlled, and cold.

Exactly like him.

I stepped inside, holding the folder against my chest.

“Mr. Kellason?”

Still nothing.

Then my eyes moved to the table near the sitting area, and I stopped abruptly.

The blood drained out of my face so fast I thought I might faint.

My fingers went numb around the folder.

For a second, the breath I'd been holding turned to glass in my throat. Heat and ice traded places under my skin.

Because there, in the soft light of Jeremy Kellason's private suite, was something I was never, ever meant to see.