Chapter 2

NADIA.

It was a laptop.

His laptop. Jeremy Kellason's.

I knew it all too well — the matte black case, the faint scratch near the hinge I'd seen a hundred times. It sat open on the low table, with its bright screen emitting a faint light in the dim room.

I saw a photo that could be mistaken for his wallpaper. Only that, it wasn't a wallpaper. It was me...

I was standing by the cafeteria window with a paper cup in my hand, my head slightly turned, and my mouth parted like someone had called my name.

I remembered that blouse. I remembered the headache I had that day because I had skipped breakfast.

But I don't remember anyone taking a picture of me on that day.

No.

No. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I was in the background of something when that photo was taken. Maybe Jeremy had employee files open, and this was normal.

Normal...

Right?

Because every boss kept random cafeteria photos of his junior strategy associate open in his private suite at one in the morning.

I stepped closer before I'd agreed with my brain to do so, the folder still crushed against my chest, and my pulse roaring in my ears.

What the hell?

It was an actual folder marked with my name. Wilson, N. And I scrolled, because I had already stopped being a person who made good choices the second I pushed that door.

The folder opened, and the whole screen was immediately covered with my face - my photos - edge to edge, tiled in neat little squares the way he usually organized everything.

These weren't pictures I'd ever taken, nor were they ones I'd ever posed for, or sent, or knew about.

Pictures of me leaving my apartment building, coat collar up against the rain. Me at the farmers' market on a Sunday, laughing at something off-frame. Me through what had to be a long lens, captured in angles no friend could've caught or distances no accident could explain. Me in profile at my mother's hospital, looking exhausted and totally unaware.

My hands shook so hard the trackpad jumped under my fingers. I kept scrolling. I know I shouldn't have, but, God, I did.

More. Dozens more. Then a hundred. The dates in the corners stretched back months.

I kept thinking there's an explanation. I actually kept thinking there's a reason… a work reason, security, or something. There's a clean reason that'll make me feel stupid in a second...

A small sound escaped me when I saw the ones that stopped my heart. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to take it back.

Dozens of photos of me... Fully, completely naked, the way you only are when you're certain you're alone — stepping out of the shower with my hair dripping down my spine, sprawled on top of the covers on several hot nights, on my knees on the mattress reaching for the lamp, legs mostly open because who closes their legs alone in their own locked room?

"Jesus," I whispered. “This isn’t happening.”

And then, there was the one my eyes snagged on and refused to let go... The one where I had my knees fallen open with one hand between my thighs and the other fisted in my own hair. I was touching myself, my head tipped back against that headboard I was so proud of, with my mouth open.

He had that.

He had a lot more of me coming on a dozen different nights, from a dozen angles.

He had it sorted into a neat little square.

He'd watched me come and saved it.

My knees nearly gave out, but I held onto the table for support.

I had to do something.

I was being stalked by Jeremy Kellason — the one man who hated my entire existence and made me feel like a mistake he was forced to tolerate.

He had been collecting me, photographing me, and watching me.

I wasn't safe.

I had to tell someone.

Police.

That was the first sane thought I’d had since stepping inside.

'Call the police, Nadia.' Very simple. Very adult. Very normal thing to do when you find out your boss apparently has a full-time hobby called 'violating your privacy.'

My thumb hovered over the emergency call button.

Then my brain, traitorous little thing, started talking.

And tell them what?

That I walked into Jeremy Kellason’s private suite at one in the morning? That I had his confidential folder in my hand? That I touched his laptop? That I scrolled?

God.

If anything, I was the one who violated his privacy.

I could already hear Liam’s voice.

'Why were you in his room, Nadia?'

I could already hear Jeremy’s lawyers throwing questions at me that I would not be able to answer.

And the photos.

If those photos were released to the world, no one would start with what he had done.

They would start with what my naked body looked like.

And my mother would die. Not from her illness, but from the scandal, the shame, and from losing the treatment Liam's family paid for.

Jeremy was an important member of the deciding committee that handled my mother's treatment. In fact, he sat at the head of the table, right next to Liam.

Any wrong move from me and it'll mean I killed my mother with my sheer stupidity.

My throat tightened until breathing hurt.

Oh, God.

Liam.

I needed Liam.

My thumb hovered over his name, about to dial his contact, when I heard a sound that stopped me cold.

For one stupid second, I thought maybe Jeremy was hurt and needed help.

Then I heard my name. It dragged out like it had been pulled from somewhere ugly.

“Nadia...”

Every sane bone in my body screamed at me to grab the folder, my phone, my dignity, whatever little pieces of myself were still lying around, walk out, and pretend I had never stepped foot inside this suite.

But I didn't.

Because curiosity is a disease, and I had been infected the moment I saw my own face on his screen.

The sound came again, propelling my legs forward.

The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and the closer I got, the worse that low, broken rhythm of my name, 'Nadia, Nadia,' sounded like a curse he couldn't stop saying.

The slick, obscene rhythm of skin against skin filled the quiet space.

My stomach twisted.

Another sound tore from him, more frustrated than pleasured, like he hated whatever was happening and couldn’t stop doing it anyway.

His breath kept catching. The moans climbed higher, more frantic, and more desperate in a way I'd never once heard from a man who looked like he was always at war with the whole world.

I pushed the door. The room was nearly dark with just one lamp throwing amber across half of him, and the half I could see undid me where I stood.

Jeremy Kellason.

He sat on his couch like a sin no one had taught me to be ashamed of.

Completely naked.

His head was tipped back against the cushion, the long line of his throat working as his fist moved over his thick, flushed cock leaking at the tip, in hard, furious strokes that were almost punishing, like he was angry at himself.

He kept chasing the friction impatiently, as a groan tore out of him through clenched teeth.

The muscles of his stomach clenched with every pull.

This was the same man who could hold an entire room still with his stillness, and he was coming apart on a couch in the dark like he had finally outrun his control.

Then I saw the phone in his other hand, and the world dropped out from under me.

It was me.

The video... The one meant for Liam, that I'd sent in a fit of reckless humiliation barely an hour ago.

It was playing in his palm.

My voice spilled from the speaker.

When my back arched and my thighs fell open wider, he let out a broken, guttural groan as his hand sped up.

"Fuck!" He cursed as his hips bucked into his fist. His head tipped further back, his throat exposed, vulnerable in a way I had never seen him.

He was close.

He was watching me cum and was going to cum to me.

"Oh, my God."

The words slipped out before I could drag them back and bury them somewhere safe.

He went still, and everything snapped to silence under that ruthless control, so fast it frightened me.

Then, with terrifying control, he turned his head toward me, and our eyes met. His deep grey eyes were flat, burning with something so dark it could as well swallow me whole.

God, his face was brutally, impossibly calm, giving me nothing. No panic. No guilt. No apology. Not even surprise.

He didn't seem like a man caught doing something shameful.

He didn't cover himself. He let me see every inch of him. He let me watch him watch me, and held my stare without a crack.

I stood frozen in the doorway, shaking so hard I could barely hear my phone ring from the mini-sitting room.

His gaze moved over me slowly. "Nadia..." His voice came almost as a growl as his eyes returned to mine.

“You weren’t supposed to see that.”