Great, now I was having visions of him pleasuring some made-up girl in my head, thanks, Kate.
I laugh, but it comes out brittle, breaking at the edges. “Right. All business.”
She doesn’t notice. She’s already flitting across the room, talking about cocktails and music and the endless list of people she wants to introduce me to tonight, like I’m not still bleeding inside from the way her father walked away from me on that damn boat.
I shouldn’t care. I keep telling myself that—I shouldn’t care if he’s cold or distracted or buried in his work. I shouldn’t want him to look at me the way he did in the kitchen, against the wall, with his mouth on mine and his cock splitting me open. I shouldn’t crave that version of him when all I’m supposed to be here is his assistant.
But the lie sits heavy in my throat, choking me.
Kate hums while she does her makeup, the music from her speaker rattling the mirror. I sit on the edge of the bed, pretending to scroll through my phone, when really my eyes keep flicking to the clock on the nightstand. Counting the minutes. Waiting for the sound of his car on the drive.
Pathetic.
I should be dreading it, terrified he’ll look through me again like I’m nothing, like I was just a body he used to scratch an itch. That’s what this should be. Just sex. Just a mistake.
So why does my heart stutter every time the floor creaks in the hallway? Why does my pulse trip when the front door slams shut and the low sound of his voice carries up the stairs?
Kate doesn’t hear it. She’s too busy singing into a mascara wand. But I hear it. I feel it.
He’s home.
And no amount of cocktails or fake smiles or Kate’s careless laughter is going to drown out the truth pressing against my ribs.
I want him.
I want him even when he’s cold.
I want him even when it feels like it might ruin me.
Especially then.
“Brook?” Kate’s voice cuts into the storm in my head, and I snap my gaze up. She grins at me, oblivious. “Ready?”
I force a smile. “Yeah. Ready.”
But as we walk out of the room together, heels clicking down the stairs, I can feel it—the weight of his gaze. Heavy. Claiming. Hidden somewhere in the shadows of his house.
And I know—no matter how many times I tell myself I won’t let another man break me—Dean Walker is already doing it.
Kate chatters the whole way down the stairs, but I barely hear her. My head is pounding with everything I don’t want to admit—that I care he was cold, that I care he brushed me off like I meant nothing after taking what he wanted.
It makes me sick.
I should hate him.
Hell, I do hate him.
I hate the way he pretends it didn’t happen, like I’m just some stupid girl playing dress-up in his world. I hate he can touch me like that, own me like that, and then vanish behind his walls of money and power and control.
I hate he left me aching and then sat across from me on that fucking yacht like I was invisible.
And I hate myself more because even while my chest is burning with anger, I still want him to look at me. Just once. Just to prove I wasn’t a mistake.
Kate pushes through the door first, laughing, and I follow, the air in the hallway thickening like smoke. He’s there. Leaning against the wall, sleeves rolled up, glass in his hand. Casual, like nothing in the world could touch him.
His eyes flick to me for the briefest second. I know that look. Cold. Detached. Dismissing me as if I’m no more important than the wallpaper.
Something in me snaps.
