CHAPTER 5;THE CEO PRIVATE PATIENT

Chloe’s POV

I went to work the next day the way I always did—coffee in hand, spine straight, expression carefully blank. For the first few hours, I managed to avoid him, slipping into meetings, answering emails with mechanical focus, and keeping my body angled away from the glass wall of his office. It didn’t matter. Richard had decided the game was over. Every time I passed his doorway, his gaze locked on me, heavy and deliberate.

Before I’d left the house that morning I’d hired a private investigator. The man had been discreet, professional, and expensive. By the time Rachel walked down the aisle, I would have everything—photographs, timestamps, and hotel receipts. The grand reveal would land like a blade on her wedding day. That knowledge should have steadied me. It didn’t. Not when Richard’s presence still pressed against the edges of my concentration like a bruise, I couldn’t stop touching.

The intercom crackled.

“Chloe. My office. Now.”

My pulse jumped hard enough that I felt it in my throat. I stood, smoothed my skirt, and walked the short distance with measured steps. The moment the door clicked shut behind me, the air changed—thicker, charged, the faint scent of his cologne and the colder undertone of the leather chair he never quite sat still in.

“Your clothes are on the table,” he said the instant I crossed the threshold.

I turned. A neat stack of fabric waited on the polished surface of his desk. “Richard—”

He was already moving.

Strong hands closed around my waist, lifting me as if I weighed nothing. The world tilted; the hard edge of the desk met the backs of my thighs. He set me down, knees spreading my legs in one smooth motion until I was open to him, skirt rucked high. The wood was cool against my bare skin as the fabric had ridden up. I sucked in a sharp breath.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, voice low.

“Checking whether you miss me.” His eyes stayed locked on mine. “You’ve been running all morning. Hiding. Pretending last night didn’t happen.”

“I wasn’t hiding. I was working.”

“Liar.” His fingers slid under the hem before I could close my legs. He found the edge of my panties and dragged them down just far enough that the lace clung to mid-thigh, a soft, useless restraint. The first brush of his fingertips against my bare folds made my stomach tighten. “You’re already wet. Were you thinking about me while you sat at your desk pretending I didn’t exist?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Touch you?” He circled my clit once, twice, with the pad of a single finger. The spark that shot through me was so bright I had to grip the edge of the desk. “Or don’t make you admit you want it?”

Then he bent on his knees the next minute

The heat of his mouth replaced his hand. His tongue dragged a slow, deliberate line from entrance to clit, and the sound he made—low, almost a growl of satisfaction—vibrated against me. He sealed his lips around the swollen peak and sucked, tongue flicking in precise,relentless strokes.

“Richard—” My voice broke on his name.

He didn’t answer with words. He answered with pressure, with the wet, hungry pull that dragged another pulse of heat low in my belly. I could feel myself opening for him, slick and shameless, the scent of my own arousal rising between us. He worked me with the same focused intensity he brought to boardrooms—reading every tremor, every hitch of breath.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured against me, the words hot and rough. “Still going to pretend you don’t miss this?”

I couldn’t form an answer. My thighs began to tremble against his shoulders. I was right there, balanced on the knife-edge of climax, when the knock came.

Three sharp raps.

Richard lifted his head. His mouth was glistening, eyes dark. One glance at my face—flushed, parted lips, the silent plea I couldn’t quite voice—and he moved. In a heartbeat he had me off the desk and under it, the heavy wood shielding me. My panties still tangled around my thighs, skirt twisted, the taste of him still on my tongue from the brief, bruising kiss he stole before he straightened.

“Stay quiet,” he whispered, so low only I could hear. “Not a sound.”

The door opened.

James stepped inside. Rachel’s fiancé. His voice was steady at first. “Richard. Sorry to drop by unannounced. I wanted to make sure you received the invitation.”

“I did.” Richard’s tone was calm, as if the desk between them wasn’t still warm from my body, as if I wasn’t crouched in the shadowed space beneath it, heart hammering, the ghost of his mouth still pulsing between my legs. “I’ll be there.”

James sat heavily in the visitor’s chair. For a moment neither man spoke. Then his composure cracked.

“I hate this,” he said, voice low and raw. “The whole fucking match. I hate walking into a room knowing everyone is smiling at a lie.”

Richard’s foot shifted—so close I could have touched his shoe. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” James dragged a hand down his face. “William and Rachel. The late nights. The hotels. I’ve known for months. I have proof. And I’m still going through with the wedding because my mother demands it. Because a significant piece of my inheritance is tied to this union. If I walk away, I lose everything she controls.”

Silence stretched above me.

“You’re marrying her anyway,” Richard said carefully.

“I’m marrying her because I have no choice.” James’s laugh was bitter. “And the worst part? She doesn’t even bother to hide it well anymore. She looks at him the way she used to look at me. And I still have to stand at that altar and pretend I’m the luckiest man in the room.”

I stayed perfectly still under the desk, listening to the quiet fracture of another man’s life while the ache Richard had left in me refused to fade. My pulse thudded against the place his tongue had been. Every careful breath I took carried the scent of polished wood, of him, of the wetness still cooling on my thighs.

Richard’s voice remained even. “I’m sorry, James.”

“Don’t be. Just… be there. I need at least one person in that church who isn’t lying to my face.”

The conversation continued above me—quiet, heavy, finished. James stood. The door closed.

Only then did Richard’s hand reach under the desk, fingers brushing my knee in a silent command.

I stayed hidden a second longer, the space between us still thick with unfinished hunger and the sharp edge of everything we still refused to name.

I stayed perfectly still beneath the heavy oak desk, the polished wood cool against my back, the confined space thick with the scent of Richard’s cologne—dark, woody, edged with something sharper that always made my pulse skip. His legs boxed me in. Then one of them shifted, deliberate, and the toe of his shoe nudged my ankle. Slowly. Insistently.

“Keep talking, James,” Richard said above me, voice smooth and unhurried. “I’m listening.”

His knee pressed between mine, spreading my thighs with quiet authority. Heat flooded me so fast I had to bite the inside of my cheek. The fabric of my skirt rode higher with every inch he claimed. His hand followed—warm palm sliding up the bare length of my thigh, fingers tracing the sensitive crease where leg met hip.

James’s voice drifted on, complaining about Rachel, the wedding, the pressure. I barely heard him. All I could feel was Richard’s slow, deliberate strokes. The pleasure was sharp, almost cruel in its restraint. I wanted to moan. God, I needed to. Instead I clamped my teeth shut and reached blindly for his leg, gripping the hard muscle of his calf through the fine wool of his trousers.

Richard’s fingers brushed the edge of my panties.

“You should confront her,” he said calmly, as if he weren’t touching me at all. “Directly. Tell her how you feel before it’s too late. Maybe she’ll call the whole thing off herself.”

I dug my nails into his leg in warning. In pleading. He only pressed closer, the heat of him searing through the thin barrier of fabric. My thighs shook. Wetness slicked the insides of them. I hated how much I wanted him to keep going. Hated the way my body leaned into his touch even while my mind screamed that this was dangerous.

Finally James stood. The scrape of his chair. The polite goodbyes.

“Think about what I said,” Richard told him. “Sometimes the only way forward is to stop pretending everything’s fine.”

The door clicked shut, Silence crashed down.

I scrambled out from under the desk on unsteady legs, cheeks burning, skirt twisted. I needed air. Distance. Anything to quiet the frantic yearning clawing at my chest. I took two steps toward the door.

Richard’s hand closed around my wrist, “Stay.”

One word. Soft. Absolute.

I should have refused. Should have twisted free. Instead my voice came out shaky. “Richard… someone could walk in. James only just left—”

“No one is coming in.” He guided me back until the edge of the desk bit into the backs of my thighs. His eyes were dark, unreadable, but the set of his mouth promised no mercy. “You hid under my desk for nearly twenty minutes. You think I’m letting you walk out like nothing happened?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” I whispered, even as my pulse thundered. “You told me to stay there.”

“And you obeyed.” His free hand slid beneath my skirt. Fingers hooked into the waistband of my panties. “Just like you’re going to obey now.”

He drew them down with agonizing slowness. The lace scraped over hypersensitive skin. Cool air kissed the wetness between my legs. Shame and hunger warred so fiercely I could barely breathe.

“Richard—” My voice cracked. “Please… not this.”

“This?” He crouched just enough to ease the fabric past my knees, then my ankles. I stepped out of them because he made it impossible not to. Then he brought the scrap of lace to his face and inhaled deeply. The soft sound of it—his breath drawing my scent into his lungs—made my knees weaken.

A low, private sound of satisfaction left him. “You’re soaked. You’ve been soaked since the moment I touched you.”

Heat flooded my face. “That’s not— I was trying to be quiet. I didn’t want—”

“You didn’t want to get caught,” he finished, folding the damp panties once, twice. “But you wanted everything else.” He slid them into the inside pocket of his jacket as if they belonged there. “You’ll get them back when I decide you’ve earned them.”

The words sank into me like heat. I opened my mouth—to protest, to beg, I didn’t know.

“And if I say no?” I managed, the question thin and unsteady.

Richard stepped closer, until I had to tip my head back to meet his eyes. His voice dropped, rough and intimate. “Then leave without them. Walk through the office knowing I’m carrying the evidence of how much you want me. Knowing that every time you shift in your chair for the rest of the day, you’ll feel the air against your bare skin and remember exactly who put you in this position.”

My breath shuddered out of me. The power imbalance hung between us, heavy and electric. He had taken something intimate and made it his. And part of me—the part that ached with raw yearning—wanted him to keep it.

I left his office without underwear, every step a reminder of the cool air against bare skin, of the way my thighs still trembled, of the man who held both my dignity and my desire in the pocket of his jacket.