جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 50

DominicThe drive back to the city feels like returning from another world.I’ve been gone one night. Thirty-six hours. But sitting in traffic with my hands tight on the steering wheel, I feel like I’m leaving something essential behind. Something I didn’t know I needed until Seraphina looked at me in the moonlight and made me believe, for just a moment, that I could be someone other than who I am.The house appears too soon, solid and real and full of obligations I don’t want to face.Elena’s car is in the driveway. Of course it is. Where else would she be?I sit in the car for a moment, gathering myself, building the walls back up. The man who spent last night making love to his wife’s sister in a lake needs to disappear. In his place: the concerned husband, the busy executive, the man with perfectly reasonable explanations for everything.The transformation is easier than it should be.I walk into the house and it smells Inside like Elena’s tea and something baking.“Dominic?” Her

SeraphinaI can feel him getting close, the way his thighs tense, the way his breathing changes, the way his grip in my hair becomes almost possessive.His other hand comes up to join the first, both fists tangling in my hair now, holding my head in place.“Don’t you dare pull away,” he orders. “You’re going to take it. Every fucking inch.”Then his hips start to move.He bucks up into my mouth, driving deeper, and I have to force myself to relax, to breathe through my nose, to let him use me exactly how he needs.“Fuck, fuck—” His control shatters completely. He’s thrusting up now, both hands gripping my hair, holding me steady as he fucks my mouth with wild, desperate movements. “Take it. Take all of it. That’s it, baby, just like that.”Tears spring to my eyes as he drives deep, hitting the back of my throat with each thrust, but I don’t pull away. I let him take what he needs, let him chase his release, loving the way he’s completely lost to it.“So fucking good,” he groan

DominicThe numbers don’t lie, but I keep staring at them anyway, hoping they’ll somehow rearrange themselves into something less catastrophic.The company needs a capital injection. Now. Not next quarter, not next month. The Crawford loss created a domino effect I didn’t anticipate. Two more clients followed them out the door, spooked by the ownership change and Adrian’s involvement. Revenue is down thirty-two percent. Operating costs remain fixed. The math is simple and brutal.I need half a million dollars to keep the doors open long enough to stabilize.The bank won’t extend more credit. I’m already leveraged to my limit, my personal assets tied up in Elena’s treatments and keeping the company afloat this long. Adrian sits on thirty percent of my company, watching me bleed out, probably enjoying every second of it.There’s only one asset left that’s worth enough and liquid enough to solve this problem.The lake house.Elena and I bought it five years ago, back when the comp

SeraphinaI take the elevator to the fourteenth floor, my reflection in the mirrored walls showing a woman who looks far more composed than she feels. Hair neat. Makeup perfect. Outwardly calm.Internally screaming.The receptionist looks up when I approach. “Can I help you?”“I’m here to see Dominic Ashcroft. I’m his sister in law.”Recognition flashes across her face. She’s seen me before, probably knows exactly who I am and what I am to him. Or suspects, at least.“Do you have an appointment?”“No, but it’s urgent. Family matter.”She picks up the phone, speaks quietly into it, then hangs up with a professional smile. “His assistant says he’s in a meeting right now, but she can see if he’s available in about twenty minutes.”Twenty minutes. I don’t know if I can wait twenty minutes.“Can you tell him it’s Seraphina? And that it’s really urgent?”“Of course.” She makes another call, and I pace the lobby area, unable to sit still, unable to think about anything except the

SeraphinaDominic undresses me with a patience I didn’t know he possessed, his fingers working each button of my blouse with quiet attention, pushing it off my shoulders and setting it aside rather than tearing it away. His hands move over my skin like he’s relearning it, like the pregnancy has made me new in some way that requires starting from the beginning.“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against my collarbone. “I don’t tell you that enough.”“You tell me other things.”“Those too.” He looks up at me. “But this is what I mean right now. Just beautiful. Just you.”He lays me back gently and the desk is hard beneath me but I barely feel it because his hands are everywhere and they’re so careful, that the tenderness of it becomes its own kind of overwhelming.When he finally enters me, it’s slow and deep and unhurried, but the stretch still steals my breath. My walls flutter around the thick intrusion, already slick from his earlier teasing, and he groans low in his throat as he sin