Claimed By My CEO Stepdad의 모든 챕터: 챕터 61 - 챕터 68

Aria Pov I went home feeling weak and tired and so deeply frustrated that even the familiar route through the evening traffic felt longer than it should have.The day had pressed itself into my body in heavy, successive layers that refused to separate cleanly from one another. The closed-door confrontation in Marcus’s office still sat behind my eyes, followed by Jones’s clinical seven-day ultimatum and Victoria’s insistence, delivered with the calm certainty of someone arranging furniture, that I would marry a man I barely knew for my own good. Alexander’s silence during all of it remained the most unsettling piece. He had smiled, sat down, and allowed the room to declare positions around him without offering the refusal I had almost expected, and that unanswered quiet had followed me out of the building like a second shadow. By the time I reached the entrance of the apartment, the nausea and the exhaustion had tangled together into a single dull weight, and I wanted only a door I co

Aria Pov I rode him.At first the movement was careful, almost tentative, as my body adjusted around the thick stretch of him. He filled me completely—every inch seated deep while my thighs framed his hips and my palms stayed braced against the hard plane of his chest. The carpet pressed into my knees. The low light from the terrace doors washed over his face and the open hunger he made no effort to hide as he looked up at me. His hands rested at my waist, warm and steady, following the rhythm I set rather than forcing a different one.I lifted and sank again.The slow drag of him inside me pulled a soft, broken sound from my throat. Pleasure gathered low and heavy, building with each downward motion as I took him to the hilt and rose until only the head remained before sinking once more. Alexander’s breath deepened beneath me. His fingers tightened slightly at my hips, not to control the pace, only to hold on as I found an angle that made my spine arch and my mouth fall open.“Aria…

Aria Pov I was not expecting the reply so fast.The message lit the screen while I was still staring at the sentence I had sent—*I want to leave this country*—as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less absolute if I gave them enough time. They did not. They remained exactly what they were: the first clean decision I had made in weeks. Then her reply arrived beneath it, quick enough to startle me in the quiet of the locked bedroom.Where do you want to go?Four ordinary words, and somehow they made the intention real in a way my own message had not. Wanting to leave was one thing. Being asked for a destination turned the want into a plan that required answers, logistics, and the kind of practical courage I was not certain I still possessed. I sat up against the headboard, phone balanced in both hands, and for a moment the weight of the apartment around me—the closed doors, the secrets, the seven-day countdown still ticking somewhere beyond these walls—pressed in fr

Aria Pov I did not dress for the office.The decision settled over me the moment I woke, before the nausea even had time to fully announce itself. The thought of the executive floor—of Albert’s possible return, of Victoria’s satisfied glances, of sitting at my desk while the seven-day pressure and the private chaos continued to close in—made my chest feel too tight for tailored blouses and careful composure. Today I needed a different kind of room. One with white walls and clinical answers. One where the secret under my ribs could at least be measured.I found Alexander in the kitchen.He was already finished with coffee, phone in hand, the controlled posture of a man about to step into the machinery of Kane Enterprises. When he looked up, his gaze moved over my clothes first—the ordinary ones, not the office uniform—and something questioning flickered across his face before he locked it down.“I’m not coming in today,” I said.The words came out steadier than I felt. No long explana