Chapter 1I: The Room Number

ADRIAN’S POV

My grandfather had been threatening me with grandchildren for the better part of a year, as if a wife were a line item he could simply demand added to next quarter's projections.

"You're thirty-four," he'd said at the last family dinner, jabbing his cane at me like it was a legal document. "I built this company so it would outlive me. Not so it would die with you because you couldn't stand to share a bed."

It wasn't that I couldn't stand to share a bed. It was that women, in my experience, came pre-loaded with agendas… some wanted my name, some wanted my money, and the rare few who claimed to want neither wanted my attention so badly it became its own kind of tax. I found all of it exhausting in a way I didn't have patience for. Easier to keep them at a distance. Easier still to avoid them altogether.

Which was why the business gathering that night felt like any other.. a room full of investors performing charm at each other, waitstaff moving through the crowd with trays of champagne, my glass never quite empty because someone always wanted a reason to refill it and linger.

Scott stood beside me for most of the evening, doing what he always did, laughing too loudly at things that weren't funny, watching the room like he was cataloguing weaknesses. I'd known him since university. My oldest friend, my business partner, the one person who supposedly didn't want anything from me except my company's continued success, which was also his.

I should have paid closer attention to how often he handed me a fresh glass.

It happened fast… one of the waitresses, weaving between tables with a tray held high, got jostled from behind by someone I didn't see. She stumbled sideways, and before either of us could do anything about it, she landed half across my lap, one hand braced against my chest to catch herself.

I expected the usual reaction. The tightening in my jaw, the urge to set distance between myself and whichever woman had found a reason to touch me tonight.

Instead, there was only her scent.. something soft and rosy, unexpectedly clean, cutting through the cigar smoke and perfume thick in the air and a strange, disarming quiet where my usual irritation should have been.

She was already scrambling upright before I'd fully registered any of it, red-faced, apologizing in a rush of words I only half caught. "I'm so sorry, sir, I didn't.. someone bumped into me, I'm so sorry"

"It's fine," I said, which surprised me more than it seemed to surprise her.

She didn't wait around to hear it twice. She righted her tray and hurried off into the crowd, and I found myself watching the space she'd occupied a beat longer than made any sense.

By the time I noticed the room tilting slightly at the edges, it was already too late to ask myself why.

It came on slow, then all at once, a heaviness behind my eyes, my own voice sounding distant to me, the ordinary chatter of the gathering blurring into a single flat hum. I told myself it was the champagne, though I'd had less tonight than usual, distracted as I'd been.

I don't remember deciding to leave. I remember my assistant appearing at my elbow, asking if I needed anything, and I remember myself thick-tongued, lightheaded, some instinct beneath the fog reaching for the one thing that felt solid, saying words I wouldn't fully understand until much later.

"Find that waitress. Send her to my room."

I don't know why I said it. I've turned it over more times than I can count since, searching for the version of myself that gave that order, and I can't find him. I only know that when my assistant pressed a key into my hand and left to do as I'd asked, I looked down at it through a haze and saw a number stamped into the metal that wasn't mine.

*Room 205.*

My room was 310. I knew that. Some fragment of me registered the discrepancy, turned it over, and reached the wrong conclusion entirely that this must be my assistant’s key, he'd prolly taken mine by mistake in the scramble of the evening, but it hardly mattered whose door the girl walked through so long as she found the right one eventually.

The rest of that night exists for me only in fragments. Heat, static, a door, a voice that didn't sound like mine giving instructions I can't fully account for. And beneath all of it, underneath the fog Scott had poured into my glass without my knowing, something that wasn't heat at all.

Crying. Quiet, and then not quiet. A voice saying no in a way that should have stopped me and didn't, because whatever had been put into that drink had taken more from me than clarity, it had taken the part of me that would have stopped.

When I woke, the room was empty. Whatever haze had carried me through the night had burned off into a headache sharp enough to make the light unbearable, and it was in that clean, sober light that the full shape of what I'd done finally arrived, all at once, with nowhere left to hide from it.

She was gone. The room held no trace of her beyond the disturbed sheets and a used glass on the nightstand I didn't remember pouring.

I called for my assistant before I'd even found a shirt.

---

AMARA’S POV

I reached Room 205 and noticed that the door was slightly ajar.

I knocked softly three times.

Silence.

“Hello?” I called, pushing the door open a little farther.

Still nothing.

Assuming whoever was inside had simply failed to hear me, I stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind me.

The curtains were drawn, leaving the room dim. My eyes slowly adjusted, and that was when I noticed the figure lying motionless on the bed.

A man dressed entirely in black.

“Excuse me, sir?” I called cautiously as I approached.

There was no response.

I moved closer and gave his shoulder a tentative tap.

The next thing I knew, I was thrown backward onto the mattress.

A startled cry escaped my lips.

The man had moved with frightening speed. Before I could understand what was happening, he had pinned me down, his expression unreadable in the darkness.

Fear shot through me.

“Sir please!” I struggled against him. “You’ve got the wrong person. Please, just listen to me!”

My voice trembled as I tried to push him away, but he seemed completely unresponsive to my pleas.

For one terrifying moment, I wondered if he even realized who was beneath him.

In the next moment I felt a warm tingling sensation on my neck.

This total stranger was kissing my neck like he was starving. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stop him, I just laid there accepting my fate with tears in my eyes.

From my waist, his hands slowly went up to my chest. My breast. His steady hands slid smoothly under my waitress uniform, his cold hands squeezing my breast and caressing my n*ppl*s.

I’ve never done this before and never felt this way but there was this pleasant feeling overshadowing the hurt and fear I was feeling earlier.

He continued kissing my neck aggressively and then moved to my lips while his hands were undoing my shirt buttons. The kisses slowly moved from my lips to my neck again and then to my breasts.

Pleasure.

He crept across my skin leaving me unsettled… I don’t know what it was but it was a nice feeling, I became acutely aware of every nerve in my body.. a sudden chill ran through me as I realized I was wet. Down there. Between my legs.

And then he stopped. What surprised me most at that moment was that I didn’t want it to stop.

Normally, I would have wanted nothing more than for it to end, yet somehow, this time, I found myself wishing it would continue and that realization startled me more than anything.

Before I could process my thoughts, he bent my legs at the knees, bringing them up at roughly a right angle… his hands finding its way to my waist simultaneously pulling down my pants and underwear with a gentle but swift action.

His warm lips slam into my clitoris while his arms circled round my tighs pulling me down. “Mmmfffp! Unnf… Mmm-ahh... A-aahh... Ahn... Mngh-ph!!” I let out loud cries in response to him sucking on my clits like a toddler would a lollipop.

He was slowly coming back up with his lips kissing my clits to my tummy all the way back to my lips. I felt his fingers caressing my body from my waist all the way back down to my thighs and then vagina. Gently rubbing on it while feasting on my boobs, a finger gently trying to pave way for his c*ck.

My hole was tight. I’m a virgin. That finger in a steady and rythmic motion glided in and out of my p*ssy from a slow pace gradually increasing speed.

The movement was deliberate prolly to let out a cry from my lungs and yeah it worked. I screamed. More like a moan but it was so loud. I felt another finger slide in adding to the one that was in there before… both moving at same pace.

His warm kissed landed on my neck once again as his fingers left my vagina.

Sluwrshllp.

That was his d*ck sliding into my p*ssy

“AHHH~~”

My voice broke out into a trembling gasp

I blacked out.