Chapter 5

The next day was an exercise in psychological and physical torture. I sat at the head of the conference table at Vance Corp, surrounded by high-level executives and financial consultants, but my mind was miles away, trapped in the shadows of a side street and the leather seat of my Mercedes.

I was distracted. Every time a director mentioned terms like “profit margin” or “logistics expansion,” my brain translated everything into the technical, visceral sensation from the night before.

I could feel it, almost like a ghost, the pressure and heat of Kyle’s mouth around my cock. The memory was so vivid that my body reacted instantly, without any command from my will. I stayed hard the entire day.

The impeccably tailored suit, custom-made in London, suddenly felt too tight,an armor trying to contain an urgency I couldn’t control.

It was humiliating and arousing at the same time. I kept adjusting myself inside my pants every ten minutes, pretending to reach for my phone or strategically crossing my legs to hide the bulge that betrayed my obsession.

My fingers drummed on the oak table, following the accelerated rhythm of my heart every time Kyle’s pale face and those dull green eyes appeared behind my eyelids.

Peter Harrington was there, attending the meeting as the lead legal consultant for the merger with a European tech giant.

He was the only one who didn’t seem intimidated by my serious aura. During the coffee break, he approached me with that smile of someone who had conquered the world and a few women the night before.

“Man, you have no idea what you missed.”

Peter murmured, pouring himself an espresso while watching me with curiosity.

“The night with the stripper was fucking incredible. The girl was a force of nature, like she was made of rubber. And you? Did you get lucky after you left the club? Or did you go straight back to some quarterly report?”

Flashes of Kyle came back with full force. The cold touch of his hands opening my zipper, the smell of asphalt and desperation, and the way I came,an orgasm so violent that my legs still felt slightly weak.

I felt my face heat up, a reaction I rarely allowed in public. I cleared my throat, trying to regain the posture of Aidan Vance.

“I just went home, Peter. I was really tired. It was a long day.”

I lied, quickly changing the subject while pretending to study a bar chart that made no sense to me at that moment.

“Tired? Aidan, you’re twenty-eight years old, you have the world in the palm of your hand, and you’re acting like an eighty-year-old retiree.”

Peter laughed, slapping my shoulder with the familiarity of someone who had known me since college.

“That yacht idea is still on the table, huh? Maldives, sun, incredible women who don’t know what a balance sheet is, and zero meetings. You need this before you turn into a full-blown robot. The silicon is going to your brain, my friend.”

I forced a laugh, a hollow sound that echoed in the emptying room. Peter was a good friend—perhaps the best I had.

I knew that if I told him about the abandoned building, the guilt that had been eating me alive for thirteen years, or my failed, mechanical attempts with other men to feel any spark of life, he would support me. But I couldn’t break the image.

I had a reputation to uphold: Manhattan’s most coveted bachelor, the stud who made the society columns and business magazines. The world saw me as an alpha predator, an insatiable conqueror, when in reality I was just prey to my own past, living off sensory crumbs.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of signatures and video calls. By the end of the workday, as the sun set between the skyscrapers, the silence of my private office became unbearable.

The image of Kyle handing my money to a dealer and entering that rundown building wouldn’t leave my mind. I felt dirty for having felt so much pleasure from his pain, but the hunger for that feeling was stronger than any ethics.

I needed a definitive test. I needed to know if Kyle was truly the only key that unlocked my body, or if I could still be the man Claire and all the others expected me to be. I needed to prove to myself that what happened in the car was an anomaly caused by shock, not a sentence.

I sat down in my leather chair, the upholstery creaking under my weight. I picked up my personal phone with a still slightly trembling hand. I scrolled through the contacts until I found the name that had lit up my screen that morning,a reminder of the perfect performance I had delivered that night.

“Claire?”