All Chapters of Heated Pleasure : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Elara pov Ever since that day in his office, Chase had found every possible excuse to make sure he was the one taking me home, always using that damn deal as a trap to keep me under his thumb. He knew exactly how to play the game, leveraging the contract to make me feel like I had no choice but to comply with his whims, and today was no different. Out of nowhere, he had demanded that we have lunch together, but as the hours slipped away, it turned into a full-blown dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the city. Sitting across from him in a place like this felt completely wrong, as if we were pretending to be some high-society couple instead of a powerful CEO and a journalist who was essentially his prisoner for the month. The atmosphere was thick with a tension that I couldn't shake, and the more he looked at me with those knowing eyes, the more I felt like I was losing my grip on the situation.I had been chunking down the wine that had been placed on the table, glass after gl

I walked into the office at noon feeling like a different person, my skin still humming from the memory of Chase and my mind clear of the dead weight I had finally cut out of my life. I kept my collar turned up to hide the marks on my neck, but I knew he could see right through me, and the way he looked at me when I entered his private suite told me he was already thinking about how to break me again. I didn't even have time to set my bag down before he pointed to the reports on his desk and told me to get to work, his voice cold and professional, but his eyes were dark with a hunger that made my thighs press together. I spent the next few hours pretending to focus on the data, but every time he shifted in his chair or stood up to pace the room, I found myself watching the movement of his muscles under his expensive suit. The tension in the room was thick, almost suffocating, and I could tell he was enjoying the way I was struggling to keep my composure while he played the role of the

I woke up the next morning with my skin still feeling sensitized, the ghost of Chase’s grip lingering on my hips and the scent of him clinging to my sheets. For a while, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I had just signed away my entire life for a bonus and a bit of adrenaline. I had called him a predator, and he had leaned into it, but there was something in the way he had looked at me before I left the office—something that didn't feel like a game.When I walked into the building at nine, I didn't go to my desk. I went straight to his door. I didn't knock; I just pushed it open and stepped inside. Chase was already there, dressed in a charcoal suit that made him look like the king of the city, staring at a monitor with a frown. He didn't look up immediately, but I saw his shoulders tense the second I entered the room. He knew it was me."You're three minutes early," he said, finally turning his chair. His eyes swept over me, scanning my face and my body with a h

The air in the boardroom was stagnant, thick with the scent of expensive cologne and the lingering electricity from their first encounter. Sloane sat across from Julian, her spine a rigid line of defiance, her tailored suit acting as armor. She had spent the last forty-eight hours scrubbing the memory of his hands from her skin, trying to convince herself that the raw, animalistic hunger they’d shared was a momentary lapse in judgment—a chemical reaction to hatred.Julian, however, looked like a man who had just won the lottery. He didn't look at the documents spread across the mahogany table; he looked at her. His gaze was a physical weight, sliding from her composed expression down to the pulse jumping in her throat, then lower, to where her thighs were pressed tight together under the table. He knew exactly what he had done to her. He knew she was vibrating with a mixture of loathing and desperate, unacknowledged need."The terms are non-negotiable, Sloane," Julian said, his voice

The morning after the office encounter didn't bring any sense of peace, only a jagged, electric tension that made Sloane feel like her skin was too tight for her body. She walked into the firm with her chin high and her suit pressed perfectly, trying to ignore the way her thighs still felt heavy and the slight soreness between her legs that reminded her exactly how Julian had claimed her. She spent the first few hours burying herself in paperwork, hoping the sheer volume of legal jargon would drown out the memory of his voice growling in her ear, but every time the office door opened, her heart hammered against her ribs. She wasn't afraid of him, but she was terrified of how much she wanted him to walk through that door and ruin her professional composure all over again.When the summons finally came to go to his penthouse for the final review of the merger, Sloane felt a wave of nausea and heat wash over her at the same time. She took the elevator up in silence, her fingers trembling