Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bought by the Billionaire +18: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 38

Chapter Thirty-Two: Smoke, Fire, and FleshArdyn's POVLucien’s hands were warm.Not greedy, not forceful, just steady. Confident. He stood behind me in the training room, his chest brushing my back as he adjusted the angle of my wrist, guiding my aim toward the center of the red silk target nailed against the far wall."Don’t grip it so tightly," he murmured, his breath ghosting my ear. "Let the tension sit in your core, not your hands."His voice shouldn’t have done anything to me, but it did.The way his fingers lingered. The way his body shadowed mine. It wasn’t Caelum’s brand of dominance—dark, demanding, devastating—it was something else. Slower. More deliberate.A weapon aimed not to conquer but to unravel.I exhaled, but the weight in my chest didn’t ease. My entire body ached from the whiplash of the past week—watching Mirelle return like a ghost from hell, watching Caelum bend to her touch. Like he forgot everything he built with me the second her mouth was on him again.Lik

Chapter Thirty-four ArdynI hadn’t cooked a damn thing in years. Not properly. Not without someone barking orders behind me or slapping my hand away when I reached for the salt. But that morning, I woke up with a ridiculous idea in my head: I wanted to cook for him.Caelum.The man who’d once called me a plaything. The same one who now, somehow, kissed me like I mattered and held me like I wouldn’t break.I wanted to do something real. Something soft. Something normal. So I grabbed my phone, searched "easy romantic dinners," and watched three YouTube videos with shaky camera angles and perky American voices before deciding on a spicy shrimp pasta that looked way more doable than it actually was.First problem? I didn’t have half the ingredients.So I threw on a hoodie, tied my hair back, and slipped out the front gates, heart pounding like I was breaking a rule.Halfway down the street, as I debated which store even sold paprika, I heard that voice."Domestic looks good on you."My s

Chapter Thirty-Six Ardyn I woke up still aching, sore in all the best ways. My legs tangled in sheets that still smelled like Caelum, the faintest ache between my thighs a reminder of everything he did to me in the car last night. We didn’t talk after. He just carried me upstairs, silent, cradling me like something fragile. And I let him, too tired to ask what was twisting inside his chest. The mansion had moods. I used to think it was my paranoia, the way the walls creaked differently depending on who was home, the way the hallways felt colder when Caelum avoided me. But today... today it felt like something was watching. Not someone. Something. Caelum had left early, muttering something about a call with an estate attorney. He kissed my shoulder before he left. Said, "Don’t wait up." I waited anyway. Sort of. I wandered. It wasn’t boredom, not really. It was more like... a pulse under my skin. An itch I couldn’t scratch. After the party, after the exhibitionist moment in th

Chapter Thirty-Eight (Caelum's POV)The letter was folded once, tucked beneath the office door like a threat pretending to be polite.I stood there, staring at the seal. The same one I burned out of my father’s journal years ago — a black crest etched with two intertwined serpents and a sword down the center. Thorne blood always bled into legacy and violence. This was both.I opened it with cold fingers.You owe me a debt. You owe me my life.There was no signature. Just that one line. But I knew the handwriting. The way the "y" dipped low. The way the letters tilted like a curse trying to crawl off the page.Revyn Thorne was back.I buried you with my past, I thought. Why are you clawing your way back now?My hands trembled slightly. I folded the letter, slid it into the bottom drawer, and locked it.Ardyn couldn’t know. Not yet.---Flashback: The BetrayalRevyn had been the one person who knew the worst of me and stayed.We grew up in the same hell — same father, different mothers