บททั้งหมดของ The Surgeon’s Revenge Deal: บทที่ 141 - บทที่ 150

Alex I have been chased by women in the past. Even in the present. But nothing felt as satisfying as the idea that Janessa was chasing after me. The same woman whose attention I had desperately sought in the past months. When I had discovered that she had not been looking for me because she missed me or wanted me in her bed, of course I had been filled with a different kind of disappointment. That was a very crude joke. It would be the world’s end if I ever got such a text from Janessa. God knows I wanted to give in then and there, running to her side at the slightest order. But wasn’t this what she had always wanted? Distance? She said she needed me for work purposes. I guess I was her second option after what that bastard Marcus did to her. As much as I wanted to strangle the bastard to asphyxiation. I was nothing but a hypocrite. God knows I wanted to feel her body on mine, have her in ways that would only be called lewd by even the holiest of priests. I was no saint.

His mouth was everywhere and nowhere near enough, and I hated how completely I'd stopped caring about the reasons this was a terrible idea somewhere around the second time his hand slid against the small of my back and pulled me flush against him.I hadn't been kissed like this in longer than I wanted to admit. Elias kissed like a man being careful with something breakable, gentle and measured and always, always holding something back. Alex kissed like he'd been starving for exactly this for longer than either of us wanted to name, like every ounce of frustration he'd swallowed down over the past week had transformed itself into something that tasted like desperation and felt, God help me, like relief.I wanted to crawl inside his chest and stay there. I wanted, with an intensity that frightened me even as it consumed me, to feel him buried so deep inside me that I forgot, even for an hour, what it felt like to be tied to a headboard, or to watch my own son go silent and tight-lipped

GwenI was going insane. Literally.Why did my body keep misbehaving whenever I was within a few feet of him? Why did every ounce of sense I'd spent years building seem to evaporate the second his hands landed anywhere near me? I had a doctorate. I had built a company from nothing. I had survived things that would have broken most people in half. And yet apparently none of that mattered the moment Alex Thorne was standing close enough for me to smell whatever soap he used, because my brain simply switched itself off and let my body do whatever it wanted.The hug had been humiliating. Legitimately, deeply humiliating. I had launched myself at a man like a golden retriever who'd just been told it was getting a walk, wrapped my legs around him in the middle of a professional office, and then had to slink out of the room like I hadn't just handed him a very clear picture of exactly how little self-control I actually had left."Get it together," I muttered to myself, back at my own desk, g

GwenI found Elias in his kitchen the next evening, methodically packing what looked like a leather duffel that had clearly seen its share of business trips before."Can we talk?" I asked, hovering in the doorway."Of course." He didn't stop packing, folding a dress shirt with the same unhurried precision he did everything. "What's on your mind?"I made myself say it plainly, the way I'd practised in the mirror that morning, stripped of every soft edge I might have been tempted to wrap around it. "I don't think I can give you what you're waiting for, Elias. I've been telling myself for weeks that I could get there eventually, that gratitude would turn into something more if I just gave it enough time. I don't think that's fair to you anymore. You deserve someone whose whole heart is actually available, and mine isn't. I'm sorry."I braced for something– anger, hurt, the cold, clipped edge he'd shown me on my doorstep the night before. Instead, he simply nodded, folding another shirt,

GwenThe gala had gone better than any of us dared hope.Weeks of planning collapsed into one long, glittering evening, string quartet in the corner, donors in tailored suits circling the hors d'oeuvres, a slideshow of the research playing on a loop against the far wall. I'd given my presentation early in the night, hands only shaking slightly as I walked a room full of people with more money than sense through what stabilising that compound actually meant, and by the time I stepped down from the small stage, three separate potential donors had already cornered Alex, asking how to get involved.No disasters. No Marcus. No Elias hovering at the edges keeping score. Just a room full of people finally, genuinely excited about something I'd spent years bleeding for, and by the time the formal part of the evening wound down into something looser and more social, I felt lighter than I had in months.Which was probably why I said yes to the champagne. And then the second glass. And then, som