5

For one terrifying, intoxicating second, I almost let myself fall.

Zane’s nearness was a living thing, heavy and consuming. His hand skimmed over my waist as though he was mapping every curve for memory. His breath ghosted against my skin, warm, daring, promising. My pulse drummed like a war cry, begging me to either run or give in—anything but stay caught in this unbearable limbo.

Then his lips brushed the corner of mine. Not a kiss. Not really. Just the cruelest whisper of what could be, a taste of the danger I had been trying so hard to resist. My body betrayed me, leaning closer, craving the contact even as my mind screamed at me to pull back.

I could feel his erection poke my abdomen, and my panties pooled with my juice as a response. He lifted me up against the door until his erection was directly rubbing against my core.

He moved slowly, and the friction drove me crazy. I was this close to surrender.

And I might have. I might have surrendered—

If not for the sudden, sharp vibration in his pocket.

The sound split the spell like glass shattering. My breath rushed back in a gasp, my palms pressing against his chest as though I had found my strength again. Zane’s jaw tightened, annoyance flashing across his perfect features. For a moment, I thought he might ignore the call, but then his gaze flicked down to the phone and something in his expression shifted. Serious. Focused.

“Saved by the bell,” he whispered, as his eyes snapped back to mine, blazing, sharp enough to cut. “Don’t get too comfortable. Fate won’t always intervene.”

He slid his thumb along my lower lip, slow and deliberate, as though committing the shape of my mouth to memory. My breath hitched, and before I could move, his other hand trailed lower, brushing against my hip with sinful precision. It was not a grope, not crude—but calculated. Possessive. Like a signature.

“That’s mine,” he murmured, so quietly I wondered if I had imagined it.

The phone buzzed again, more insistent this time. With a growl of frustration, he pulled away, shrugging his shirt halfway back over his shoulders though he didn’t bother to button it. He answered the call, his tone instantly shifting into clipped professionalism. I barely heard the words, only fragments—“urgent,” “boardroom,” “immediately.”

I should have bolted then, taken my chance while his attention was elsewhere. But I was frozen, watching him transform from the dangerously seductive man who had me pinned against the wall into the ruthless businessman commanding empires. It was whiplash, and yet both sides of him were equally magnetic.

He ended the call with a sharp tap, his gaze sliding back to me. I thought—hoped—he might leave without another word. But Zane Wilde didn’t seem like a man who left loose ends.

He closed the distance again, slower this time, deliberate. His fingers brushed along my jaw, trailing down the side of my throat until they rested over the rapid beat of my pulse. His smirk returned, darker, more dangerous now.

“Remember this,” he whispered, leaning down until his lips grazed the shell of my ear. His hand slid lower, tracing a path along my chest, his touch searing, branding me. He pinched my hardened nipple through my dress, and I gasped out this time, not able to hold it back.

By the time his hand reached the curve of my hip, my body was trembling—whether from need or fury, I couldn’t even tell anymore. He rubbed my core with his fingers through my dress, earning muffled moans from me.

Then he stepped back, straightening his cuffs as though nothing had happened. “I’ll be back. And when I am, sweetheart…” His eyes burned with promise. “You won’t have the excuse of a ringing phone to save you.”

The door unlocked with a soft click, and before I could gather my wits, he was gone, leaving only the echo of his touch and the dizzying scent of his cologne behind.

I collapsed into the nearest chair, my hands shaking. My heart was still hammering, my lips still tingling from where his had nearly claimed them.

Zane Wilde was dangerous—more dangerous than I had imagined. And I hated myself for the truth that gnawed at me in the silence of his absence.

Part of me couldn’t wait to see him again.

----

I got home late in the evening, but my mind was anything but quiet.

Zane Wilde.

His name pulsed in my head with every beat of my heart, a rhythm I couldn’t shut off no matter how hard I tried. I should have been angry. Outraged. Disgusted by the way he had cornered me, touched me, claimed me without permission. Any other man, and I would have been.

But Zane Wilde wasn’t any other man.

Every memory of his icy-blue stare replayed in my mind like a film stuck on loop. The press of his chest against mine, the heat of his breath against my ear, the way his voice had dropped when he promised I’d scream his name—each fragment lingered, twisting itself around me until I could barely breathe.

By the time I reached my apartment, I felt like I was walking in a haze. I tossed my clutch on the counter, kicked off my heels, and stood in the dim silence of my living room, fighting with myself.

Why did I feel this way?

Why did I want to feel this way?

I pressed my palms to my face, trying to erase the image of him standing there—shirt open, chest bared, eyes dark with hunger—but it only grew sharper. Every detail of him was etched into me: the rough scrape of his stubble as it grazed my cheek, the commanding strength in his hand when he pinned me, the arrogant smirk that told me he already knew what I was too afraid to admit.

I had almost given in. God help me, I had wanted to.

And worse—somewhere deep inside, buried under layers of denial—I wished we hadn’t been interrupted.

The thought made me shudder, both in shame and in want. I crawled into bed, desperate for sleep, but even then I couldn’t escape him. Zane Wilde followed me into my dreams like a shadow that refused to let go.

There, in the world behind my eyelids, there were no locked doors, no ringing phones, no interruptions. There was only him.

I dreamt of Zane inside me, taking me with the same intensity he carried in every word, every look. His hands branded my skin as though I belonged to him, his mouth claimed mine in a kiss that left me breathless. I felt his hardened cock moving within me, relentless and consuming, driving me to a place I hadn’t touched in almost a year.

In the dream, I didn’t resist. I didn’t fight. I wrapped myself around him and begged for more.

And the way he gave it to me—hard, demanding, merciless—felt like the exact thing I had been starving for all along.

I woke with a gasp, tangled in sweat-damp sheets, my body trembling, my thighs slick with a need I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge in so long. My chest heaved as I pressed a hand over my heart, trying to ground myself in reality.

But reality was no safer. Because even wide awake, I could still feel him.

Zane Wilde was in my blood now. In my thoughts. In my body.

And I didn’t know how to stop him.