All Chapters of Trapped by the Ruthless Tycoon: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

SunnyThe master suite doors unlocked with a heavy click.I was at the tea table by the window, and my body went rigid before I looked up. Roman came in with his jacket off, white shirt open at the collar, dark hair damp from the storm. He didn’t look like a man who had just crossed Europe. He looked like a storm brewing in the dark—tense, dangerous, and completely overwhelming.Clara, who’d been quietly sweeping the hearth, bowed her head nervously and scuttled out of the door pulling it shut behind her. Ryker and Keller took their positions outside, and silence closed over the corridor.Roman didn’t speak immediately. He walked to the oak writing desk and let his eyes travel the polished surface. My stomach dropped. The panel under the kneehole was shut and the rug was straight, but I didn’t know what he would see.His hand rose to the corner of the desk and rested there. For a long, awful moment I thought he would crouch and open it.He didn’t. He poured two fingers of whiskey from

SunnyI woke to the slow rhythm of Roman’s breathing against my back.Gold light fell across the canopy bed in long bars. His arm lay heavy over my waist, drawing me so close that my spine was flush against his chest. For a few seconds I didn’t remember where I was, and in those seconds it felt like the safest place I’d ever slept.Then I remembered.I turned over in his arms, slowly, and looked up through my lashes.He was already awake. His storm-gray eyes were softened with sleep, and the quiet intensity in them hadn’t gone anywhere.“Good morning,” I murmured.His hand moved up my back and drew me against him. “You’re soft this morning, Sunny.” Rough, low, against my ear.His mouth traced my jaw, the line of my throat, the hollow of my collarbone. I tilted my head back and let out a sigh and slid my fingers into his dark, disordered hair. For anyone watching, it would have looked like a tender romantic surrender.Every touch I accept buys me another hour of trust, I thought, clea

Sunny His voice in the dark dropped my heart straight to the floorboards. I didn’t move. My hand stayed flat against the empty velvet, my knees pressed into the cold hardwood. Every muscle in my body locked. Slowly, I turned my head. Roman sat on the edge of the canopy bed, his silhouette cut out against the last red glow of the hearth. He hadn’t reached for the lamp. He didn’t need it. His eyes found me in the dark as if they had been resting on me for some time. “I asked you a question, Sunny.” No anger. Only a flat, level calm. “Looking for something?” I drew my hand out of the desk and stood, keeping my back to the glass. “The compartment was open.” “It was locked.” He rose and pulled on his robe, knotting the sash with careful, unhurried fingers. “It opens only when someone presses a spring latch under the kneehole. A latch you shouldn’t know exists.” He crossed the rug without a sound and stopped three feet away, and his shadow swallowed what little light there was. “Th

SunnyFor three days, the world pretended to be normal.I slept sixteen hours straight in my own bed, under my own squeaky ceiling fan, and woke to burnt coffee and street traffic instead of salt mist and crashing waves. Aiden stayed beside me, holding my hand until his fingers went numb. Lena made chicken soup, drifted around the apartment in soft sweaters, and brought extra blankets whenever I so much as shivered.It was the life I’d prayed for on that cold stone terrace.So why did the air in my own living room feel so thin?Whitlock & Miller had closed its doors in the second week I was gone. Aiden told me over the soup, as if it were weather. He’d picked up freelance work at a friend’s studio and he refused to be anything but grateful I was alive. I smiled and held his hand and knew exactly whose fingerprints were on it.On Saturday morning I stood at the front window with a warm mug of tea. My scraped palms were bandaged and the bruises on my arms had faded to a dull yellow, but

Sunny By seven-fifty, the apartment was quiet. Aiden was stuck at a zoning site across town, leaving me alone with the cream envelope on the coffee table like something that might go off. I’d put on the dark wool dress. Not for him. Because armor was armor, and I didn’t own anything better. I was reaching for my coat when the front door swung open. Lena stepped in, shaking drizzle from her umbrella. She took one look at me, the dress, my pale face, the envelope in my hand, and her movements stopped. “Going out?” The sing-song had left her voice. “Aiden said he wouldn’t be back until nine.” “I know… I have an errand.” Her eyes narrowed, tracking my hand as I slid the envelope into my pocket. She stepped into my path, shoulders tight under her rain jacket. “An errand? Sunny, you’ve been home less than a week. You flinch at every noise, you barely eat, and now you’re dressed up to go out alone in the rain? Where?” “Just air, Lena.” “Is it about the man next door?” The question