Chapter 5

ETHAN'S POV

I wake up feeling wrong.

My head is thick, foggy, and weighted down by something heavier than a normal night’s sleep. I’ve been drinking whiskey since I was twenty-two, and I know the exact texture of a whiskey morning ... the cotton mouth, the dull throb behind my eyes, the slow churn in my stomach. This is different. Deeper. Like my body had been taken apart and put back together after running a marathon of raw, unrelenting sex.

I open my eyes and I am blindsided by the morning light that pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing the room in soft gold. Isabella is still asleep beside me, curled on her side. Her dark hair fans across my pillow, wild and tangled from my fingers gripping it all night. The sheet has slipped low, exposing the curve of her bare breast, the faint red marks from my mouth, and the bruising grip of my hands on her hips. She looks thoroughly claimed and well-fucked. Beautiful in a way that twists something uncomfortable in my chest.

I stare at the ceiling, and clench my jaws

Last night comes back in a sharp, vivid fragments. Immediately I walk through the door and her scent hit me the second I stepped inside ... warm vanilla, feminine heat, and something that short-circuited my brain. The way my legendary control, the same iron wall I’d kept intact for two full years in this apartment, simply vanished. One moment I was Ethan Sinclair, the distant contract husband. The next, I was a beast ... devouring my wife on the kitchen island, bending her over the living room couch, and fucking her against the staircase banister, then ruining her for hours in this very bed.

Her tight, dripping pussy clenching around my fat cock as I drove deep enough to kiss her womb. The wet sounds of her squirting while I pressed the vibrator to her clit. The way she sucked me clean between rounds. Her broken screams echoing through every room until she finally fainted from exhaustion. I fucked her until sunrise, until my cock finally softened inside her cum-soaked heat.

I slide out of bed quietly, careful not to wake her, and head straight for the shower. Scalding water beats against my shoulders as I scrub the dried sweat, her scent, and the evidence of last night from my skin. But no amount of soap erases the memory of how perfectly she took every brutal inch of me. How she moaned my name like she’d been starving for it too. My cock twitches at the thought, but I ignore it and dress in a crisp charcoal suit.

By the time Isabella appears in the kitchen doorway, I’m on my second black coffee, standing at the island with my jaw set like steel. She’s wearing that thin silk robe again, hair loose and slightly mussed, moving with the soft, languid grace of a woman who spent the night being fucked senseless by her husband. She looks comfortable here. Too comfortable. Like she belongs in my space. That bothers me more than the drug itself.

“Good morning,” she says, her voice still husky from hours of screaming.

She walks to the coffee machine with that quiet precision I’ve observed for two years ... the way she knows exactly where everything is, how she’s silently managed this entire penthouse without ever asking for credit. She’s been doing it all while I kept her at a cold distance.

“You should eat something,” she offers gently. “I can make eggs, or toast, or...”

I don’t return the greeting. “What did you do to me last night?”

She freezes near the coffee machine. The white mug from her family home on the counter.

“Ethan…”

“Don’t.” My voice is calm, ice-cold. The tone I use when there’s no room for negotiation. “I remember walking in. You were on the phone. Then everything… changed. I lost control completely. I fucked you in every room like an animal until sunrise. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t me.”

She turns slowly, her face carefully blank, but I see the slight tremor in her fingers.

Her eyes widen slightly. She looks genuinely surprised. “I didn’t… Ethan, I didn’t do anything to you.”

I step closer, studying her face. “You expect me to believe that? The timing. The way it hit me the second I walked through the door. The way I couldn’t stop. Someone put something drugged me yesterday. I remember having a glass of wine at some point. And then I come home and suddenly I’m an animal tearing through my own wife.”

Isabella’s face pales, but her gaze stays steady. “It wasn’t me. I swear it. I was on the phone with Sofia when you walked in. I didn’t give you anything. I didn’t touch your drinks last night. You didn’t even pour one in front of me .... we went straight from the hallway to… everything else.”

The kitchen falls deathly quiet. The tension is thick enough to choke on.

“Ethan...”

The kitchen falls silent. I search her expression for any crack, or any sign of deception. She has always been good at hiding things behind that careful mask, but right now she looks hurt. Almost angry.

“You really think I drugged you?” she whispers. “After everything that happened between us last night… you think I had to force you to want me?”

The words land harder than they should and all I can think of is the way she moaned my name while I ate her out on the kitchen island, the feel of my stubble scraping her soft thighs. How she pushed back against me on the stairs, taking me deeper. The way her pussy fluttered and milked me when I finally came inside her at dawn, my cock softening only then after hours of relentless fucking.

I push the memories down.

“Last night we crossed every boundary we have,” I say flatly. “It was reckless. There could be consequences. My assistant will arrange a discreet appointment at the clinic on Sixty-Third for this afternoon. Morning-after measures. It’s practical.”

She flinches visibly this time. “A clinic. Of course. Because the idea that you might actually want me...that you might have lost control because you finally let yourself feel something ... is too terrifying.”

“Now it is a problem,” she repeats softly, her voice laced with pain. “Whether it is me or the possibility of a child. Or anything that might make this feel real to you.” She sets her mug down carefully. “You’re humiliating me, Ethan. Politely, over morning coffee. So you don’t have to feel like the villain. You don’t have to admit that last night you wanted me. That you pinned me down, sucked my breasts until they were bruised, fucked my tits, ate my pussy until I squirted, and came inside me so many times I was dripping for hours. You called me yours while you were buried to the hilt in my womb.”

“I don’t need a clinic,” she whispers.

“Last night was a mistake. Better to handle any potential consequences now before they complicate our agreement.”

She turns and walks out of the kitchen, the silk robe swaying around her marked thighs.

I stand there, my coffee growing cold. Then I carry it to the study and close the door. The Singapore file waits on the desk. I open it, determined to bury myself in numbers and negotiations.

Four minutes pass. I haven’t read a single word.

I can’t separate what happened. Was the haze from something slipped into my drink earlier in the day ... at the office, at a meeting, or somewhere I let my guard down? Or had two years of pretending Isabella meant nothing finally snapped the moment her scent hit me? The way I devoured her on the island, carried her through every room, couldn’t stop even after she collapsed… how much of that raw, possessive hunger was external, and how much was simply me finally unleashing what I’d locked away?

I don’t know. And not knowing gnaws at me.

At noon, my assistant confirms the clinic appointment.

“Send the details to Mrs. Sinclair,” I instruct.

The apartment beyond the study door is completely silent. Isabella always absorbs everything quietly. She has done it for two years ... the distance, the cold contract, the loneliness. She takes it and keeps functioning and I’ve always found that convenient.

But right now, this silence feels suffocating and wrong.

Her words echo in my head. The memory of her soft, exhausted whimpers as I held her close at dawn, my cock finally calm inside her, refuses to fade. For the first time, the walls I built around this marriage feel less like protection and more like a cage I constructed myself.

And the woman I just coldly suggested a clinic to ... after claiming every inch of her body last night ... is quietly bearing it all again.

I’m not ready to find out why that bothers me.

But this penthouse has never felt so damn empty.