LOGINI should have told him to stop.
I should have asked him to drive me home and forget this whole night ever happened. But the alcohol was loud in my blood, and the picture of Marcus laughing while he was inside that girl kept flashing behind my eyes. I couldn't even think straight. I turned toward Damien instead, my hand sliding over his on my thigh, pressing it harder against me. “I don’t want you to stop,” I whispered, my voice cracking. A fresh tear slipped down. “Marcus… he fucked her like I meant nothing. Like all the times I let him have me whenever he wanted didn’t count for shit. And she wasn’t even that pretty. She wasn’t. But he still chose her over me.” Damien’s jaw clenched tight. His fingers dug into my thigh, but he didn’t pull away. The car slowed like he was actually considering pulling over. “Elena… you’re drunk. You’re hurting. I’m not going to be the guy who takes advantage of you like this.” But his hand stayed right there, thumb still moving, making it hard to think straight. I leaned in closer, my lips brushing his ear, my breath shaky. “Then be that guy. Just for tonight. I need to feel something else. I need to forget how stupid I was for loving him. Please, Damien… touch me. Make it stop hurting even a little.” He cursed softly, the sound raw. The car swerved slightly as he gripped the wheel tighter with his other hand. “Fuck. You don’t know what you’re asking.” “I do,” I said, my hand moving to his chest, feeling how fast his heart was beating. I was crying again, quiet tears rolling down my cheeks, but I didn’t care. “I’ve always noticed you. Even when I told myself not to. You were always off limits because you’re his brother. But right now… I don’t care about limits. I just want you.” Damien exhaled sharply. He pulled the car over into a darker side street, killing the headlights but leaving the engine running low. The sudden quiet made everything louder; my breathing, the way the leather creaked when I shifted closer, the soft sound of my sniffles. He turned to me fully, both hands on my waist now, pulling me across the console until I was straddling his lap in the driver’s seat. My dress bunched up around my hips. I could feel how hard he was already, pressing against me through his pants, and it made my whole body heat up. “Last chance,” he said, forehead resting against mine, voice strained. “Tell me to take you home. I’ll drive you right now. No questions asked.” I shook my head, rocking against him slowly, chasing the friction. “I don’t want home. I want this. I want you inside me. Make me forget his hands. Please.” Damien groaned, his fingers digging into my hips. “You’re going to hate both of us tomorrow.” “Then make it worth hating,” I whispered, reaching down between us to palm him through his pants. He was so hard it made me dizzy. I kissed him first this time; messy and desperate, tasting the whiskey on his tongue as I rocked harder against him. He kissed me back like he was starving, one hand tangling in my hair, the other sliding under my dress to push my panties aside. His fingers found me wet and ready, stroking in a way that made me moan into his mouth. “Fuck, you’re soaked,” he muttered against my lips. “All this because of him? Or because you’ve been thinking about this longer than tonight?” “Both,” I admitted, gasping as he slid two fingers inside me. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” He didn’t. He worked me with his fingers until I was shaking, crying quietly from how good it felt and how much it hurt at the same time. Then he freed himself from his pants, no condom, nothing between us. I didn’t care. I was going crazy and I wanted to feel all of it. He positioned me over him, the thick head of his cock pressing against my entrance. “You sure?” he asked one last time, voice rough. I sank down onto him slowly, taking every inch until he was buried deep inside me. We both moaned. He was big, stretching me in a way that burned so good my eyes watered again. I clung to his shoulders, nails digging in as I adjusted, my forehead pressed to his. “Move,” I whispered, starting to rock my hips. “Please move.” Damien gripped my ass with both hands and thrust up into me, hard and deep. The car rocked with us. The windows started fogging up. Every thrust made me cry out, the pleasure mixing with the tears and the anger until I couldn’t tell what I was feeling anymore. “That’s it,” he growled against my neck, biting down as he drove into me faster. “Take it. Use me to forget him.” I rode him harder, chasing the building heat, my tears falling onto his shirt. “He laughed at me… while he was inside her. I gave him everything and he still…” Damien thrust deeper, hitting that perfect spot that made stars explode behind my eyes. “He’s a fucking idiot. You feel so good. So fucking tight.” The orgasm hit me hard and sudden, crashing over me until I was shaking and crying his name. I clenched around him, pulling him deeper as waves of pleasure rolled through me. Damien groaned loud, burying himself as far as he could go and coming inside me, hot and deep, filling me completely. For a long moment we just stayed like that, breathing hard, bodies locked together, sweat and tears mixing on our skin. My head was spinning. The reality was already creeping back in, but the warmth of him still inside me made it a little easier to breathe. Damien kissed my forehead, surprisingly gentle. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “You okay?” I nodded against his neck, but fresh tears started falling again. “I… I don’t know anymore.” He held me tighter, still buried deep inside me, like he wasn’t ready to let go. Then his phone started ringing on the dashboard. The screen lit up. Marcus calling. Damien’s body tensed under me. His hand moved to my hip, holding me in place as the phone kept ringing. “Don’t answer it,” I whispered, rocking against him once more, feeling him twitch inside me. “Please.” He looked at me, eyes dark and conflicted, the phone still ringing between us.ELENA I submitted the transfer request at 9:14 a.m.Dana looked at the form like it might explode in her hands. She read it twice, then looked at me over the top of the screen.“You’re sure?”“Yes.”“This will go up the chain.”“I know.”She didn’t try to talk me out of it. She just nodded once, tight-lipped, and hit submit. I walked back to my desk with my pulse hammering and the strange, brittle calm that comes after you’ve finally done the thing you’ve been circling for days.Jess watched me sit down.“What did you just do?”“Requested a transfer.”Her eyes widened. “To where?”“Anywhere that isn’t this floor.”Jess opened her mouth, closed it, then muttered, “He’s going to lose his mind.”“He doesn’t own me.”She gave me a look that said she wasn’t convinced either of us believed that.I tried to work. The numbers on the screen blurred. Every sound on the floor felt too sharp; keyboards, low voices, the soft chime of the elevator. I told myself I had done the right thing. Dista
Something inside me snapped.“My sickness is none of your business.”The words came out sharper than I intended, loud enough that Damien’s eyes narrowed. I didn’t care. The combination of Marcus’s voice still echoing in my head, the years of secret watching, and the way Damien kept looking at my stomach like he had a right to the truth made the last of my restraint crack.“I already took something for it,” I continued, voice tight. “It’s handled. I don’t need you diagnosing me, sending cars, or watching me like I’m about to collapse again. Stop using it as a distraction.”Damien’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him did. Cooler. More focused.“It’s not a distraction.”“Yes it is.” I stepped closer, anger giving me courage I wouldn’t have had two weeks ago. “You’ve been dodging the only questions that matter since the night you decided to confess. Why were you watching me for years? Why did you pay for my school and then stay in the shadows while your brother dated me? Why
“Mrs. Harper.”The name hit my spine like ice water.I turned slowly. Damien stood a few feet behind us, hands in his pockets, expression carved from the same cold control he wore for the rest of the building. Whatever version of him had sat in my bedroom and confessed to years of wanting me was gone. This was the man the entire floor feared.Jess had gone completely still beside me.Around us, keyboards slowed. Someone coughed once and then thought better of it. The air on the executive floor always changed when he appeared, but this time the weight of it pressed directly against my throat.“My office,” Damien said. Quiet. Final. “Now.”Jess’s eyes screamed a thousand questions at me. I didn’t look at her. I simply adjusted the strap of my bag and walked past Damien toward the corner office, feeling every stare on my back. He followed. The soft click of his door closing behind us sounded too loud.The second we were alone, I didn’t wait.“I heard you.”Damien stopped near his desk an
I shouldn’t have come.That was the first clear thought that cut through the static in my head as I stood frozen near the entrance of the executive floor, the tall plant only half-hiding me.I had taken the day off yesterday. The nausea had finally eased after I’d forced down the medication the pharmacist swore was safe, and for the first time in days my body had felt like something I could control again. This morning I had woken up with a single, stubborn decision:I needed answers.Not the version Damien had given me in my bedroom; the controlled confession about years of watching, the scholarship, the waiting. I needed the rest of it. Why he had stayed in the shadows while his brother dated me. Why he had never approached me before that night in the bar. Why a man who claimed I had lived in his head for years had been content to let Marcus have me.I had come early, hoping to catch him before the floor filled. I had stood near the entrance with my bag and my carefully rehearsed
DAMIEN Marcus never knew when to shut up.He paced the width of my office like the carpet had personally offended him, hands moving while he talked, voice climbing the way it always did when he felt wronged. The afternoon light cut across the glass wall behind him and turned the whole room into a stage he thought he owned. He didn’t. He never had.I sat behind the desk and let him dig his own hole.“She’s doing it on purpose,” he said. “The silence. The way she looks through me. Two years and she acts like I’m the one who broke something sacred. I made one mistake….”“You fucked someone else at your anniversary party,” I said.Marcus stopped pacing. His mouth tightened.“It was a mistake. People make mistakes. She kissed you in the street like she was trying to win a prize. You saw it. Everyone saw it. And now she’s in your building, on your floor, walking around like she belongs here. It’s a joke.”I leaned back in the chair and studied him. Same restless energy. Same need to be th
ELENA By mid-afternoon the nausea had become a living thing.It sat under my ribs and rose in slow, mean waves every time someone walked past with coffee or the printer released another burst of hot paper smell. I kept a sleeve of plain crackers in my top drawer and ate them one by one like medicine, praying no one noticed. Jess noticed everything.“You’ve gone green again,” she whispered, rolling her chair until our knees almost touched. “That’s the fourth time today. If you vomit on this expensive carpet I’m telling everyone it was a protest.”“I’m fine.”“You’re the least fine person on this floor. And that includes the man in the corner office who looks like he eats board members for breakfast.”I didn’t answer. Speaking felt risky. I pressed my lips together and stared at the revised elevation on my screen until the lines stopped swimming.Across the floor, Damien’s door opened.I knew the sound now; the soft hydraulic sigh of the frosted glass, the shift in the hallway air. I







