All Chapters of Scent of Obsession : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

135 Chapters

Chapter 21: Closer

# Chapter 21: CloserShe arrived at 10:41.Three minutes later than usual.Damien noticed without looking up from his desk which was its own problem he'd stopped trying to solve.She stepped out of the elevator in cotton shorts and a loose long sleeved top, hair down, the slightly careful way of moving that told him she wasn't fully recovered yet even if she'd never say so. She looked better than this morning. Not completely herself yet. Close.She set her bag down by the door.Looked at him across the room."How are you feeling??," he said."I'm ok Demien.""Good, that's good.""Thank you for taking care of me." He has no idea what to do with her suddenly feeling grateful towards him, but he'll come back to it, She hadg dropped onto the couch and leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes briefly with the exhale of someone who had been on their feet longer than they should have been. "Nina made me help rearrange the entire back section before I could leave, she said

Chapter 22: Morning Light

Chapter 22: Morning LightShe woke up slowly.The city was doing its early grey thing beyond the glass, that specific light that existed for about twenty minutes before the sun committed to anything, and for a moment she just lay there in the warm dark and let consciousness arrive at its own pace.Then she felt it.His hand.At her waist. Her bare waist. Her top had ridden up at some point in the night and his hand was on her actual skin, warm and heavy and completely still with the weight of deep sleep, and she went absolutely motionless and stared at the city and took a careful inventory of the situation.She was alive.His hand was on her skin.She was not moving away from it.That last point was the one she was going to have to think about.She lay still and did what she always did when she needed to think and couldn't leave the situation she was thinking about. She catalogued. Methodically. Starting somewhere safe.His breathing first.Deep and even against the back of her neck,

Chapter 23: Almost

Chapter 23: AlmostThe kitchen was small in the morning.It had never been small before.The penthouse was enormous by any reasonable measure, floor to ceiling windows, marble everywhere, the kind of space that was designed to make people feel the weight of what it cost. Liora had never once described it as small.This morning it was small.She was at the counter waiting for the coffee and he came in from the bedroom already dressed, dark trousers, shirt not yet buttoned at the collar, and the kitchen immediately lost approximately forty percent of its available space.She looked at the coffee machine.He moved to the counter beside her.Not touching. Just beside her. His arm almost at hers, reaching past her for a mug, and she was acutely aware of the almost in a way that would have been embarrassing to explain to anyone."Slept well?" he said."Fine.""You were still asleep when I got up.""I told you I was fine."He looked at her sideways. She kept her eyes on the coffee machine.I

Chapter 24: The Distance Between

Chapter 24: The Distance BetweenThe penthouse felt different at 10:38.Not the usual different. Not the charged-but-manageable different she'd gotten used to navigating. Something heavier was sitting in the room when the elevator opened and she felt it before she saw him.He was at his desk.Jacket off. Shirt sleeves rolled. The lamp casting everything in low gold. He looked up when she stepped out and she saw it immediately, the controlled stillness of a man who had been holding something tightly for a very long time and was getting tired of holding it.She didn't say anything.Set her bag down quietly.Took off her coat.He watched her do it and looked back at his screen and she moved to the couch and sat and pulled her knees up and said nothing and the room held its quiet around them.Five minutes passed.Maybe ten."Victor gave a quote," he said. To the screen."I know. Elias told me."He looked up sharply."Not the details," she said. "Just that something was running tomorrow. H

Chapter 25: The Morning After

Chapter 25: The Morning AfterShe woke up knowing everything was different.Not because anything looked different. The room was the same. The city was doing its early grey thing beyond the glass. His arm was around her waist the way it always was.But everything was different.She lay still and let that settle.His breathing was deep and even behind her, the slow settled rhythm she'd learned in the first week, and she stared at the city and thought about last night with the specific helpless clarity of a morning after something you can't unfeel.His mouth.The first kiss. Careful and warm and nothing like anything she'd been kissed before and she'd been kissed before enough times to know the difference between someone kissing you and someone meaning it.He'd meant it.And then the second one.She closed her eyes briefly.The second one had been a choice. Both of them knowing what they were doing and doing it anyway and the shift in it, from careful to certain, had done something to he

Chapter 26: Unveiled

Chapter 26: Fissures The Ivory Report ran at 9AM. Damien read it once at his desk with his coffee going cold beside him and his face doing nothing and set his phone face down and opened the Singapore file and worked. That was how you handled Victor. Not with reaction. Not with the anger that was sitting clean and cold behind his sternum. With precision. With the specific focus of a man who had learned a long time ago that the worst thing you could do with an enemy who wanted your attention was give it to him. He worked. By eleven the Singapore acquisition was confirmed. By noon he'd reviewed three contracts and signed two of them and identified a discrepancy in the third that his legal team had missed and sent it back with four words. Read it again. All of it. Elias appeared in the doorway at twelve thirty with lunch he hadn't asked for and the careful face he'd been wearing since the morning. "Stocks," Damien said without looking up. "Down point eight." Elias set the food o

Chapter 27: Kindling

Chapter 27: KindlingThree things were different now.She knew it the moment she walked in on Wednesday evening and he looked up from his desk and the looking was different. Not the assessing look. Not the tracking look. Just him looking at her the way you looked at something you'd decided about.The second thing was the kissing.They'd established that now apparently.It had happened the previous night in the dark after the conversation about Raymond and Slim and we and it had happened again this morning in the kitchen, brief and certain, him handing her coffee and her reaching up and neither of them making anything of it afterward, just going about the morning like people who kissed in kitchens did.She was still adjusting to being a person who kissed in kitchens.The third thing was that she wasn't afraid of it the way she'd expected to be.That was the most disorienting part.She'd spent six years being her mother's cautionary tale to herself. The thing she came back to every time

Chapter 28: The Rail

Chapter 28: The RailThe designers arrived at eleven.Three of them. A lead and two assistants carrying covered rails that filled the elevator in two trips and transformed the penthouse living room into something that looked like a very expensive, very private showroom.Liora stood in the middle of it with her coffee and watched them set up and then looked at Damien sitting in the chair by the window with his own coffee and his crossed ankle and the expression of a man who had arranged this and was entirely comfortable with having arranged it."This is too much," she said."It's a rail of clothes.""It's three people and what looks like an entire fashion week.""You need something for the dinner.""I could have bought something.""You could have," he agreed. "This is faster."She looked at the rail.At the fabrics catching the morning light. Silk and structured fabric and things that had no price tags because the kind of people who needed price tags weren't the kind of people these we

Chapter 29: Two Weeks

Chapter 29: Two WeeksThe first week passed in small things.Tuesday she came in and he was already in the kitchen when the elevator opened, which had never happened before, and he handed her coffee without a word and she took it and stood beside him at the window and watched the city the way they watched it now, comfortable and close and neither of them pretending otherwise.Wednesday he came to the bookstore.Not for any reason she could identify. Marcus pulled up at eight forty five and Damien got out and walked in and Nina made a sound from the back room that Liora chose not to acknowledge and he browsed the shelves for twenty minutes with the focused attention of someone who genuinely liked books and bought three and left with a nod that somehow communicated everything without saying anything.Nina appeared at her elbow the moment the door closed."He came to see you," she said."He came to buy books.""He came to see you and also bought books." Nina looked at the door. "He look

Chapter 30: Reckless

Chapter 30: RecklessMarcus pulled up outside the penthouse at 8:47PM.Liora was out of the car before he fully stopped.Damien was already at the elevator when the doors opened.He looked at her face.She looked at his.Neither of them spoke for a moment."He sounded the same," she said. "Like nothing happened. Like he was calling to catch up."Damien said nothing.He put his hand at her back and walked her to the couch and went to the kitchen and she heard him moving, kettle, mugs, the specific sounds of someone doing something with their hands because the alternative was doing something else entirely.He came back with tea.Set it in front of her.Sat across from her."Tell me exactly what he said," he said.She told him.Word for word. The pleasant voice. The new friends. The we should talk. All of it.Damien listened without interrupting and when she finished he was quiet for a moment and she watched his jaw and the thing behind his eyes that was cold and precise and nothing like

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