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Chapter Fourty Eight

Author: Ella
last update Last Updated: 2026-02-17 11:46:32

ANNA

The first time I made the call alone, my hand didn’t shake.

That surprised me more than the decision itself.

The numbers had been circling my desk for three days—an emerging tech expansion with volatile early indicators and a board divided down the middle. Half of them wanted caution. The other half wanted speed.

I wanted timing.

“Authorize the phased entry,” I said calmly into the conference line. “But cap exposure at thirty percent for the first quarter. If performance tracks within five
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  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Sixty One

    ANNASunlight crept through the blinds and fell across my face in soft stripes. I blinked awake slowly, feeling the lingering warmth of Carson pressed against me. My body remembered last night, the feel of his hands, the weight of him over me, the heat and fire that had consumed us. My chest still ached with a strange mix of satisfaction and exhaustion, and my hair was tangled from the pillow.“Morning,” he murmured, voice rough and low, eyes half-lidded as he looked down at me. I smiled, pressing closer.“Morning,” I whispered back, letting myself savor the closeness for a few more minutes.His arms wrapped around me tighter, and I let myself melt against him, content to linger in the afterglow of the night we’d shared. His skin was still warm, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek. I wanted to memorize every inch of him, to keep this moment frozen forever. But eventually, the reality of the day began to tug at me, and Carson shifted, disentangling himself.“I’m going to make breakfa

  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Sixty

    GRACEThe first alert came in at 6:16pmAt first, I thought it was routine. We had firewall notifications often, flagged login attempts, suspicious IP addresses, automated probes from overseas servers fishing for vulnerabilities. Archer Group was too large not to attract attention.But this one didn’t clear.And then another came in.And another.By 7:26, my inbox was flooded with urgent messages from IT, all marked HIGH PRIORITY.Unauthorized access attempts.Encrypted data packets leaving the server.Administrative credentials being mirrored.I was on my feet before I fully processed the implications.“Conference room. Now,” I told my assistant.Within minutes, the head of IT and two security analysts were patching into the big screen. Lines of code streamed down in frantic motion. Red indicators blinked against the network map like open wounds.“Talk to me,” I demanded.“It’s not random,” Daniel, our lead analyst, said tightly. “They’re not just probing. They’re targeting specific

  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Fifty Nine

    ANNAI didn’t realize I had fallen asleep until the sound of movement pulled me slowly back to consciousness.For a moment, I didn’t open my eyes. I just lay there, suspended between dream and memory, my body heavy in that delicious way that follows surrender. The sheets were cool against my skin now. The room was dim, lit only by the soft spill of light from the hallway.Carson wasn’t beside me.I heard the quiet rustle of fabric, the muted click of a drawer closing. When I finally opened my eyes, he was standing near the foot of the bed, already dressed in a pair of dark lounge pants, pulling a T-shirt over his head.The sight of him clothed felt strangely intimate after everything we had just shared.He glanced at me, catching my gaze. For a second, something unreadable crossed his face, something softer than his usual composure, but it vanished just as quickly.“Go back to sleep,” he said quietly.I pushed myself up onto my elbows. “Where are you going?”“Kitchen.”That was all.H

  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Fifty Eight

    ANNAHe pressed me against the door, gaze holding mine for a second before he kissed me back. His pace increased, kissing me with no caution this time. His hands slid from my waist to my back, pulling me firmly against him.The kiss deepened fast and I felt it everywhere, the heat, the pressure, the way his fingers flexed against me like he was trying to memorize the shape of my body.I pressed closer, my hands moving down his chest. The fabric of his shirt was warm from his skin. Without thinking, I slipped my fingers to his buttons and started undoing them.His breath turned uneven against my mouth and before I could reach the next, he caught my wrist.For a moment, he just stared at me, breathing ragged, like he was standing on the edge of something irreversible.Then he moved.Before I could fully process it, he lifted me off the floor. My legs wrapped instinctively around his waist, my hands gripping his shoulders.He didn’t look away from me as he carried me down the hallway.W

  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Fifty Seven

    ANNAI should have said no.The moment the words left his mouth, every rational part of my mind lined up with reasons to refuse. He was engaged. The office was watching. Emma was calculating. Eleanor’s warning still echoed in the back of my thoughts like a quiet alarm I was pretending not to hear.And yet, standing there with Carson’s hand braced against the door above my shoulder, his presence closing in around me, I felt the familiar fracture between logic and want.“Dinner,” he had said. “No offices. No boardrooms. Just you and me.”Just you and me.Nothing about that was simple.I should have said no.Instead, I heard myself say, “Fine.”His expression didn’t change much, Carson was too controlled for obvious satisfaction, but something in his eyes sharpened, as if a tension had been quietly resolved.“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.It wasn’t a question.All afternoon, I told myself I would cancel.I drafted three different messages in my head. Each one sounded either overly

  • When My Body Learned Your Name   Chapter Fifty Six

    CARSONI noticed it before anyone else would have, because I was the only one watching her closely enough to detect the difference. Anna stopped looking at me. Not dramatically, not in a way that invited speculation or gossip.She still showed up to meetings, still delivered her reports with the same precision that had made the board trust her, still spoke when addressed with composed intelligence. But she stopped looking at me, and that absence was louder than confrontation would have been.It wasn't an obvious avoidance. She didn’t request a transfer. She didn’t refuse proximity. She didn’t bristle when I entered the room. She simply became neutral, professionally impeccable, emotionally inaccessible.The first time I felt it was during the Monday executive briefing. She sat two seats down from me, close enough that I could sense her presence without turning my head. Normally, she would have met my eyes at least once, briefly, cautiously, but with awareness. That morning, her attent

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