Chapter 2: The Contract

The elevator doors opened and Liora stepped out into a place that didn't feel like somewhere people actually lived. The place screamed luxury from top to bottom

The floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble that reflected the city back at itself. The kind of silence that costs money to maintain. She had a second to take it all in before Elias came out of a room from from her left, looking like he hadn't breathed properly in an hour, his normally neat curls that he painstakingly comb a thousand times and she makes fun of every morning was sticking out in uneven directions like he’d been dragging his hands through them nonstop.

"Thank you for coming." He pulled her into a hug that was too tight and too brief. "I'm sorry.let me explain"

"Leave us."

She turned.

He was across the room, Damien Voss, leaning against a marble island with his arms crossed, watching her the way you watch something you've been waiting on. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of face that held you captive and left you waxing poetry concerning its perfection. Black sweatpants. No shirt. She clocked all of this in about a second and filed it behind the more pressing fact that his eyes hadn't left her face since she walked in,

she wasn't very good at reading people but she was pretty sure he was looking at her like she was a meal, and it felt very unsettling and something else..

Elias didn't move. "Sir, maybe I should stay and try to….."

"I said leave."

A beat. Then her brother looked at her apologetic, helpless and stepped back into the elevator. The doors sliding shut and sealing her fate.

Damien Voss pushed off the counter and walked toward her. Not fast, not slow. The kind that showed that he was used to people waiting for him which meant he wasn't worried about whether she'd run.

He stopped a few feet away and looked at her fully, her jeans, cream sweater, hair down, his gaze assessing, she figured this was how he looked at deals before he put his signature on it.

"You're smaller than I expected," he said.

"And you're stranger than I expected." She held her ground a little offended by his remark on her height. "What do you want, Mr. Voss?"

Something moved across his face. Not quite a smile.

"Your blanket. The one you left in my car for months, for whatever reason . It helped me sleep." He said it flatly, like a man reporting facts he found personally offensive. " For the first time in three years I slept fully, deeply. Then someone on my staff washed it last night."

"I'm sorry about that, but I don't see how this is any of my business or where you are going with this" she wondered if he wanted another blanket of hers, it was very weird and seemed perverted but who was she to judge the rich, they did weird stuffs all the time.

‘I could ask Elias to get you one of my other blankets, if it helps with……’

"Not the blanket." He cut across her. "What I want , Miss Kane, is You."

She waited for the other shoe to drop, or for him to complete his sentence, but he kept looking at her calmly as if he had all the time and money in the world, which he does,

‘‘Excuse me Mr Voss, but I don't seem to understand what you mean.’’

"The scent is still on you, the one from your blanket. It's on your skin, your hair, whatever it is you used before you came here. I could smell it when you walked in." He said it without embarrassment, like this was a perfectly normal situation that happens everyday like and they both needed to accept it. "I need you here. In my bed. So I can sleep."

Liora looked at him for a moment.

"You've completely lost your mind, Mr Voss, you do realize that"

"Probably." He didn't seem troubled by this, on the other hand he looked relaxed and still calm. "This isn't a negotiation Miss Kane, I hold all the power here and if you fail to comply, your brother's job is gone, the one you both depend on. And If you leave tonight, he's done by morning. Not just here, anywhere."

The anger that moved through her was clean and hot, the fact that he could so calmly talk about destroying someone who had worked and practically slaved away for him for the past two years, made her stomach churn. "You're blackmailing me over a *scent.*"

"Yes, but I'm also offering you a contract." He moved to the desk and pulled a tablet from the drawer. "Eight hours a night. Eleven to seven. Your days are yours, your job, your life, whatever you want. I'll pay you well. More than well."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you know what happens." He set the tablet on the counter between them. "I'd rather not do it that way,i always get what i want, one way or another other, you can choose to take this offer or ……"

He let the sentence die there.

Whatever it is that is that he left unsaid made her legs week, there had been rumors that the Voss industries had ‘’other sides’’ and she wasn't interested in finding out about whatever the ‘‘sides’’ were about.

"I want it in writing," she said, she was completely powerless and it made her hate him for it, regardless of the reason causing his insomnia. "Right now. Eight hours only nothing more nothing less. No touching past what's necessary. No advances, and you'll pay like you said, If you break any terms, the contract's void and my brother keeps his job with full severance."

Damien sat down and started typing without argument.

He read the terms aloud in the empty penthouse, like he was dictating to a room full of lawyers instead of a woman he'd just coerced into his apartment. She listened carefully. The language was precise. She couldn't find a fault in it, which bothered her more than if she had.

When he handed it over she read it twice.she thought for a moment and decided to add a few more clauses at the bottom:

"Miss Kane will be placed on a monthly stipend of Fifty thousand dollars per month concerning the duration of the contract and Any violation of these terms by Damien Voss renders this contract null and void. Elias Kane will retain his position with one year's salary as severance, effective immediately, if there is any fallout between the two party’s"

Damien read it. The corner of his mouth moved, barely.

"One more clause," he said, and took the tablet back.

She watched him type.

"Duration: Six months, renewable by mutual agreement. For the term of this contract, Liora Kane agrees to serve as the sole source of sleep assistance for Damien Voss. She will not withdraw from this arrangement without thirty days' written notice, during which time she remains obligated to fulfill nightly terms."

He set the tablet down in front of her.

"Six months," he said. "Since you're the only thing that's worked in three years. I'm not leaving a loophole where you walk out after a week because you've had second thoughts."

She rolled her eyes ‘Dont worry i wont walkout of this since you've practically backed me into a corner, I have no choice in the matter, but how do i know if this contract is legally binding’’

‘’Good and to answer your second question, you don't, you'll just have to trust or you can have your lawyer look at it but that will be a waste of time now, don't you agree Miss kane’’

Liora read it again with gritted teeth reading through, he knew they couldn't afford a lawyer and she and Elias had too much going on, and for the first time all evening she felt the full weight of what it actually meant. Not just sleeping beside him. Being the thing he depended on. His fix. His only one.

"You're making me a drug," she said, but what she really wanted to say was he reminded her of a dog who had a favourite blanket he couldn't live without and she practically had to live with being the said blanket

He didn't flinch. "I'm making you a contract employee. The distinction matters legally."

"Doesnt feel like it matters?"

He said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer.

She should have walked out. She knew that clearly, the way you know something and do the other thing anyway. But she thought the money fifty thousand dollars for next six month was approximately three hundred thousand dollars, that could help to finally bury what happened in their home town, and Elias, the tightness in his voice on the phone, two years of work, the bills they split down the middle every month and she picked up the stylus.

She signed.

Damien signed below her without hesitation, like he'd never doubted she would.

He straightened up standing taller and carefully slid the tablet into an open drawer. " i’ll give you a copy tomorrow but for now, come with me."

The bedroom was dark wood and city lights, a king bed dressed in black sheets that probably cost more than her monthly rent. He pulled back one side without ceremony, titled his head to signal her to get into bed.

The first time in her entire existence of sharing a bed with the opposite gender and it just happened to be Him and since this was just him using her as a drug it was disgustingly platonic, she was going to make sure of that.

She toed off her shoes, climbed in fully dressed, and stayed as close to the edge as possibly allowed, with her back to him.

The mattress dipped as he got in. He didn't speak. He just turned toward her, grabbed her waist and physically dragged her to the middle of the huge bed, he leaned in, and pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

She stopped breathing, and felt everything the naked chest she'd been ignoring all evening, its warmth covering her back and the huge arm wrapped around her waist,

‘’I dont think….’’

‘’Relax miss Kane, this is what you signed up for’’

He inhaled. Once, slow. Then again. A sound came out of him low and involuntary, the sound of a man setting down something he'd been carrying for a very long time.

"There," he murmured against her throat. "Lavender. Strawberry."

There was so many things she could say at this moment but she was tired and so many things were going through her head, which left her speechless

His breathing slowed.

Ten minutes, maybe twelve. Then it deepened into something else entirely.

She lay awake beside a sleeping billionaire and stared at the city through the glass, all those lights, all those people with normal Tuesday nights and thought about the word "sole."

Six months.

She wondered if she'd still recognize herself at the end of them.