LOGINThe car was quiet except for our breathing.
So heavy and messy. My forehead was pressed against Damien’s neck, and I could feel his heart hammering as hard as mine. He was still inside me, warm and deep, and for a few seconds the world felt almost quiet. The alcohol made everything soft and blurry around the edges, but the ache between my legs and the way my body was still trembling kept me grounded in the moment. I rocked my hips slowly, chasing the last sparks of pleasure, trying to hold onto that feeling of forgetting. Marcus’s face was still there in the back of my mind, but it was further away now. Faded. I wanted it gone completely. “Again,” I whispered against his skin, my voice hoarse and needy. “Please… don’t pull out yet. I don’t want to remember. Make me forget more.” Damien’s hands tightened on my hips. For a second I thought he might give in. His cock twitched inside me, still hard, and I moaned softly, grinding down on him. But then he cursed under his breath and lifted me off him in one smooth motion. I whimpered at the loss, feeling empty and cold as he set me back in the passenger seat. “Elena… stop,” he said, voice rough and strained. He tucked himself back into his pants with quick, almost angry movements. “This was a mistake. You’re drunk. You’re not yourself right now.” I reached for him again, my hands shaky as I tried to climb back into his lap. The car felt too small and hot. My dress was still bunched around my waist, panties pushed to the side, and I didn’t care. “I am myself,” I said, tears starting to fall again. “This is me. The me that’s tired of being hurt. Please, Damien. I need more. I need you to make it all disappear.” He caught my wrists gently but firmly, holding me back from climbing on him. His breathing was still ragged, his eyes dark with something that looked like regret mixed with want. “You’re not thinking straight. Five minutes ago you were crying over my brother. Now you’re begging me to fuck you again in my car like it’s going to fix everything. It won’t.” I cried harder, the alcohol making the emotions swing wild. “It did fix it for a minute. When you were inside me… I wasn’t thinking about him. I wasn’t thinking about how he laughed while he was fucking her. How I gave him everything and he still chose someone else.” My voice broke. I tried to pull my wrists free so I could touch him again. “Please. Just a little more. I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you want.” Damien’s grip stayed steady, even as his eyes flicked down to where my dress was still hiked up, my thighs shiny from us. He looked like he was in pain. “Jesus Christ, Elena. You’re killing me. But I’m not doing this. Not while you’re this drunk and this hurt. I told you I'm not that much of a bastard.” My phone was silent, but his started ringing again on the dashboard.Still the fucking bastard Marcus calling. The name lit up the screen like a slap. I lunged for it before he could, snatching the phone and holding it tight against my chest. “Don’t answer,” I begged, my words slurring together. “If you answer, he wins again. Please, Damien. Just… stay with me. Touch me again. I need you.” He stared at me, jaw tight, one hand still holding my wrist while the other hovered like he wanted to take the phone back. The ringing stopped. Then started again immediately. Marcus wasn’t giving up. “Give me the phone, Elena,” he said, voice low and controlled. That was the thing about Damien, even now, with me half-naked and begging in his car, he still sounded like he was in charge. Like he could shut this whole night down with one decision. I shook my head, fresh tears rolling down. “No. If you talk to him, you’ll leave. You’ll go be the big brother and fix his mess instead of fixing me.” I leaned closer, pressing my body against his arm, my free hand sliding up his thigh. “I’ve always wanted this. Even when I was with him. I used to see you at those family dinners and wonder what it would be like if it was you instead. Please don’t stop now. I’m so wet still… feel.” I tried to guide his hand back between my legs, but he pulled away, gentle but firm. “Stop,” he said again, voice tighter this time. “You’re not in your right mind. Tomorrow you’re going to wake up hating yourself. Hating me. I’m taking you home.” He reached for the keys, but I climbed halfway into his lap again, straddling one of his thighs, my arms around his neck. “Don’t take me home. I don’t have a home anymore. Not after tonight. Just… stay here with me. Kiss me. Touch me. Fuck me again. I don’t care if it’s in this car. I just need you inside me. I need to feel full so I don’t feel empty.” Damien’s hands came to my waist, but instead of pulling me closer, he held me still. His forehead dropped to mine, breathing hard. “You’re drunk, Elena. You’re crying. You’re using me to hurt him. I want you, fuck, I want you so bad, but not like this. Not when you’re this broken.” I sobbed against his neck, grinding slowly on his thigh even as he tried to hold me still. “Then be selfish. Be the bad guy. I want the bad guy right now. Marcus was the good guy on paper and look what he did to me. Please, Damien… I can feel how hard you still are. Don’t leave me like this.” The phone started ringing again. I held it tighter, pressing the side button to silence it. “See? He doesn’t get to ruin this too. Just you and me. Right here. Make me scream your name so loud I forget his.” Damien groaned, his fingers digging into my hips like he was barely holding on. For a second I thought I had him. His cock was still hard against my thigh, and I could feel him throbbing. But then he lifted me off his lap completely, setting me back in the passenger seat with careful hands. “No,” he said, voice final even though it sounded like it cost him. “I’m not doing this. You deserve better than a quick fuck in my car while you’re too drunk to stand straight. I’m taking you home.” I cried harder, reaching for him again. “You don’t get to decide what I deserve. I decide. And I decide I want you. Right now. Please don’t make me beg anymore.” He started the engine, jaw locked tight as he forced me to spill my address. Then car pulled back onto the road, but his hand kept drifting back to my thigh like he couldn’t help himself. I kept whispering to him, telling him how wet I still was, how much I needed him, how Marcus never made me feel like this. Every word made the air in the car thicker. Damien’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Stop talking like that,” he growled. “You’re making this impossible.” “I know,” I whispered, sliding my hand up his thigh again. “Make it impossible for you to say no.” Damien didn’t answer. He just drove. His hand stayed on my thigh the whole time, gripping tight like he was fighting the biggest battle of his life. We were only a few blocks from my apartment when everything changed. A black SUV suddenly cut us off, forcing Damien to slam on the brakes. Two men got out fast, looking angry and familiar, one of them was Marcus’s friend from the party. Damien’s whole body went tense. “Stay in the car,” he ordered, voice sharp. But I was already reaching for the door handle, drunk and reckless and done with everything.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







