Chapter 5

A month and a half. That was how long it had been since the night at the casino. Forty five days of stolen mornings and tangled sheets and a man who looked at her like she had hung the moon.

Avery had stopped pretending she was in control of any of it.

She stood in Drake's bathroom now, wearing one of his white dress shirts that fell to her mid thigh, her hair still damp from the shower. Through the open door, she could see him on the bed, propped against the headboard with his laptop balanced on his thighs. He was working. He was always working. But his eyes kept drifting to her, and every time they did, his fingers paused on the keyboard.

"You're distracting me," he said without looking up.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Exactly." He closed the laptop and set it aside. "You're standing there in my shirt with wet hair and bare legs, and you expect me to focus on quarterly reports."

Avery smiled and leaned against the bathroom doorway. "I expect nothing. You're the one with no self control."

He was across the room before she could blink, his hands gripping her waist and lifting her onto the cool marble counter. She gasped as the stone touched the backs of her thighs, but his body pressed against hers, warm and solid, and the discomfort faded.

"Self control," he murmured, nudging her legs apart with his hips, "is highly overrated."

"You have a meeting in an hour."

"Cancel it."

"I can't cancel your meetings for you."

"You just did." He kissed the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then the sensitive spot below her ear. "I told my assistant I was unavailable all morning."

Avery's head fell back against the mirror. "That's irresponsible."

"That's devotion."

She laughed, but the sound turned into a soft moan when his mouth found her throat. His hands slid under the shirt she was wearing, pushing it up her thighs, her hips, her stomach. She helped him pull it over her head, and then she was naked on the cold marble, and he was looking at her like he wanted to devour her.

"You're so beautiful," he said. "I don't think I'll ever get used to it."

"You say that every day."

"Because it's true every day."

He kissed down her body, slow and worshipping. His lips traced the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. By the time he settled between her legs, she was already breathless, her fingers twisted in his dark hair, her hips lifting toward his mouth.

"Please," she whispered.

He smiled against her skin. "Please what?"

"Drake."

"That's not an answer."

She tugged his hair harder, and he groaned, and then his mouth was on her and she stopped being able to form words at all.

---

Later, much later, they lay on the bathroom floor.

A rug beneath them, a towel bunched under her head, Drake's arm draped across her stomach. The marble was cold against her back, but his body was warm, and she didn't care about anything else.

"We should do this more often," she said, staring at the ceiling.

"Have sex on the bathroom floor?"

"Spend entire mornings in bed. Or on floors. You know what I mean."

He turned his head to look at her. "We could do it every morning."

"That sounds like a promise."

"It is."

Avery turned onto her side to face him. His hair was a mess, his lips were swollen, and there was a scratch on his shoulder from her fingernails. He looked thoroughly debauched and thoroughly satisfied.

"Drake," she said quietly.

"Hmm."

"What are we doing?"

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean this." She gestured between them. "Us. The nights. The mornings. The way you look at me like I'm the only person in the world. What is this?"

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached out and traced her bottom lip with his thumb.

"This is me falling in love with you," he said.

Her heart stopped.

"I know it's fast," he continued, his voice low and rough. "I know you probably think I'm insane. But I've never felt this way about anyone, Avery. I didn't think I was capable of it. And then you walked into that party in a green dress, looking at me like I was the most dangerous thing you'd ever seen, and I knew. I knew you were going to ruin me."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm not trying to ruin you."

"You don't have to try." He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her. "You already have."

She buried her face in his chest and let herself cry. Not sad tears. Overwhelmed tears. Happy tears. The kind she hadn't cried since she was a child.

"I love you too," she whispered into his skin. "I didn't want to. I tried not to. But I do."

His arms tightened around her. "Say it again."

"I love you."

"Again."

She laughed through her tears. "I love you, Drake Montenegro."

He kissed the top of her head and held her like he would never let go.

---

They spent the rest of the morning on that bathroom floor, talking about nothing and everything. She told him about her childhood, about her parents who had died when she was nineteen, about the years she spent working three jobs to put herself through college. He told her about his father, a cold man who had built the Montenegro empire and then handed it to Drake like a curse. He told her about the loneliness of wealth, the way people always wanted something from him, the way he had stopped believing anyone could see past his money and his name.

"Until you," he said.

"Until me," she agreed.

"I'm not an easy man, Avery. I'm controlling and possessive and I don't know how to do things halfway. If you stay with me, I'm going to want all of you. Every part. Every thought. Every breath."

She cupped his face in her hands. "Good. Because I want all of you too."

He kissed her then, deep and slow, and she felt the promise in it.

When they finally got dressed and emerged from the bathroom, the sun was high in the sky and Drake's missed meeting was three hours in the past. His phone buzzed incessantly on the nightstand. He ignored it.

Instead, he took her to the kitchen and made her breakfast himself. Eggs and toast and fresh fruit, arranged on a plate like he was trying to impress her. He wasn't very good at cooking, but she ate every bite and told him it was perfect.

"You're lying," he said, watching her chew a piece of slightly burned toast.

"I would never."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm an excellent liar. You're just very observant."

He smiled, and it was the real smile, the one that made him look young and unguarded. "Stay for lunch."

"I have to go to work."

"Call in sick."

"I can't keep calling in sick. My boss thinks I have a rare disease."

"Tell her you're in love with a billionaire and you need the day off to have sex on bathroom floors."

Avery laughed so hard she almost choked on her toast. "I'll get right on that."

But she didn't leave.

She stayed for lunch. And for dinner. And when she finally walked out of his penthouse that night, her body sore and her heart full, she knew she would be back tomorrow.

She would always come back.

Because Drake Montenegro wasn't just the man she was falling for.

He was the man she wanted to spend forever with.