So, I decide to take a more relaxed walk through the older part of campus, where the dorms and the arts and humanities buildings are. The buildings are brick and covered in ivy, traditional and academic. There are fewer people wandering around than on the rest of the campus, just a handful of early arrivals and summer session stragglers.
That's when I see her.
She's sitting under a massive oak tree, her back against the trunk, completely absorbed in a book. The dappled sunlight filters through the leaves, creating patterns of light across her face, her bare arms, and the pages she's reading. She's wearing a simple pale blue sundress, and her honey blonde hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail. She's beautiful, but that's not what stops me in my tracks. I’ve seen so many beautiful women, even at the ripe old age of twenty-six, that they tend to blur together, but I’ve never seen a woman like this.
It's the way she's reading.
She's completely lost in whatever world the book contains, her expression shifting as her eyes dance across the page. There’s a small smile, then a slight furrow of her brow. The unconscious way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She's utterly unself-conscious, unaware of being observed, and there's something about that complete absorption that hits me like a physical blow.
It takes me a moment to register that I feel something.
For the first time in my life—except for Giulia, except for that one anomaly—I feel something genuine, immediate, and overwhelming. It's not the performative interest I show in business meetings or the calculated charm I’ve perfected in social situations. It's gut-churningly, dizzyingly real.
Desire. Fascination.Need.
It feels like a truck slamming into me, like all the air is sucked from my lungs. Iwanther. Not in the abstract way I want other women, for the aesthetic pleasure of their company and the physical release they can offer me later. I want her viscerally, in a way that I’ve never experienced before and never thought to want to. I want to possess her, to be the focus of that complete attention she's currently giving to her book.
The intensity of it instantly alarms me. I've spent my entire life never moved by anything I can't predict or manipulate. This feeling—this sudden, visceral want—is dangerous. It's a vulnerability.
And I don't care.
I stand there, partially hidden by another tree, and watch her read. She shifts position, drawing her knees up and resting the book against them. She's wearing sandals, and I can see the delicate bones of her ankles, the pale pink polish on her toenails. Everything about her seems soft and feminine, utterly unlike the hard edges of my world.
After maybe ten minutes, she checks her phone, marks her place in the book, and stands. She stretches, then gathers her things and walks toward one of the academic buildings. I follow at a distance, careful to stay out of sight, watching the way she moves. I feel an inexplicable flash of jealousy at the small smile she gives to a campus security guard, another unexpected and unfamiliar emotion.
She disappears into the building—the humanities complex. I wait a few minutes, then follow, checking the directory in the lobby. The building houses several departments: English, History, Classics, Archaeology.
I leave campus and drive home to the penthouse I bought when I turned twenty-five. It's all exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling windows, leather and hard edges, masculine and expensive and impersonal. I pour myself a scotch and sit in the leather chair by the window, looking out over the city.
I should forget about her. I should focus on the MBA program, on the Riverside development, and all the carefully laid plans that constitute my future. This sudden obsession is irrational and completely unlike me.
Instead, I pull out my laptop and start searching.
It takes me less than an hour to identify her. The university's student directory is poorly secured, and I have resources that most people don't. Her name is Savannah Beauregard, and she's a first-year graduate student in the archaeology program. She’s twenty-two years old and has an undergraduate degree from USC. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina.
Beauregard.
The name triggers something in my memory, some fragment of family history. I dig deeper, pulling up business records and news articles and society page mentions, until I finally find the rest of what jogged my memory.
Twenty years ago, my father and Edgar Beauregard—Savannah's father—were involved in a business deal. A real estate development in Charleston, perfectly legitimate on the surface, but with certain financial arrangements that were less than legal. The deal went bad. Money disappeared. Accusations flew. The partnership dissolved acrimoniously, and both families walked away convinced the other had betrayed them.
The Ciresas and the Beauregards have been enemies ever since, in a sort of cold war. There hasn’t been bloodshed or violence, and it seems like there’s an agreement that there won’t be, so long as the families stay away from each other’s territories and businesses. As long as there’s no interaction, there will be no further problems. Just bad blood.
I should care about this. The bad blood between our families should matter to me. My father would be furious if he knew I was even thinking about a Beauregard, let alone obsessing over one.
But I don't care.
I spend every day until the semester officially starts learning everything I can about Savannah Beauregard. I hack her email—easy enough with the right tools. I access her academic records, her class schedule, and her financial aid information. I follow her social media accounts with a ghost profile, though she posts rarely. There are only a couple of pictures on her Instagram—breezy, summery shots of her by the water or on a boardwalk in sundresses, but just looking at them is enough to make me feel that visceral thrill again.
Just looking at her makes me hard. Butfuck, it feels different. I’m no stranger to physical desire and the pleasure of sex… just because I don’t feel emotion doesn’t mean I don’t like getting off. But this feels like more than just my dick getting hard. There’s an ache, a fuckinglongingthat seems to throb through me along with the pulse in my cock, and for the first time in my life, I ignore my stubborn erection. I don’t just want to jerk off to a picture of her long legs in a sundress.
I want those legs wrapped around me while I mark her pretty, smooth skin with my cum, while she moans my name and begs me for more.
That line of thought is entirely antithetical to what I learn next… which is that she’s engaged.
My jaw clenches as I read through the society announcements. She’s engaged to marry Thaddeus Whitmore III, heir to a banking fortune. He’s Edgar Beauregard’s pride and joy, apparently, his protégé and heir apparent. The engagement was announced a few months ago, and the wedding is planned for two years from now, after Savannah completes her master's degree.
There are plenty of pictures of them together, at charity galas and society events, carefully staged photos that appear in the social pages. He's handsome in that bland, patrician way that old money produces. Tall, fair-haired, with an ease and a smile that suggest he's never had to work for anything in his life. In every photo, his hand is possessive on her waist, her shoulder, the small of her back, even before his ring was on her finger.
