L’Aubergewas an exclusive, notoriously difficult-to-book restaurant. It was also an hour’s drive outside the city limits.
He remembered the swift, delighted reply from Rosália, completely unaware of the trap closing around her. She had beenso eager, so starved for his attention, that she had readily agreed to make the long drive alone while he supposedly wrapped up a conference call at home.
The second he knew his wife was safely trapped in an hour-long commute, David had pulled Katherine off the kitchen counter.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he had ordered, his voice thick with lust.
He had carried her up the grand staircase, pushed open the double doors of the master suite, and thrown her directly into the center of the heavy silk bed he shared with his wife every single night.
It was the ultimate desecration.
He had fucked Katherine relentlessly in that bed. He had tangled her blonde hair in Rosália’s pristine pillows. He had pinned her wrists to the mattress, driving into her with brutal, punishing force, listening to her scream his name in the exact same room where his wife quietly undressed every evening. The sheer, unmatched cruelty of the deception—the absolute power of doing it in his marital bed—had made it the most intense, mind-altering sex of his entire life.
When the digital clock on the nightstand struck eight, David had picked up his phone. Katherine was straddling his hips, her chest heaving, slowly riding his cock as he dialed his wife’s number.
Rosália had answered on the first ring. She was sitting alone at a candlelit table an hour away, waiting for a husband who was never going to show up.
“David? Are you almost here?” Rosália’s soft, hopeful voice had drifted through the speaker.
David had reached up, wrapping his large hand around Katherine’s throat, his thumb pressing lightly against her windpipe to force her to stifle her loud moans. He looked up at Katherine’s flushed, ecstatic face as she squeezed her tight inner muscles around his thick cock.
“I’m so sorry, Rose,” David had lied smoothly, his professional, apologetic tone a sickening, jarring contrast to the filthy reality of what his lower half was doing. He subtly rolled his hips upward, driving deeper into Katherine, making her eyes roll back in her head. “The Vanguard merger just blew up. I’m drowning in paperwork. I can’t make it.”
“Oh,” Rosália had whispered. The quiet, heartbreaking disappointment in her voice was palpable. “I... I understand. It’s okay.”
“Order whatever you want, put it on the card, and drive home safe,” David had murmured, his cock twitching violently as Katherine rode him harder. “I’ll see you when you get home.”
He had hung up the phone, dropping it onto the nightstand, feeling nothing but a rush of absolute, sociopathic power. He had flipped Katherine over, burying her face in Rosália’s pillows, and fucked her until they both came violently, screaming into the quiet house.
He had sent Katherine home twenty minutes later. He had frantically stripped the bed, throwing the ruined silk sheets into the washing machine, and remade the mattress with fresh linens before Rosália’s headlights finally swept across the driveway.
But the scent had lingered.
When Rosália had finally climbed into bed that night, deeply exhausted and heartbroken from eating alone, David had pulled her against his chest, playing the role of the apologetic, tired husband. But as he closed his eyes, his senses were entirely overwhelmed. Mixed with the clean smell of the fresh laundry, he could still smell Katherine. He could smell the sweet, heavy scent of her floral perfume and the sharp, unmistakable, intoxicating musk of their sex clinging to the very air of the room.
Standing in his home office now, two months later, the phantom smell of that afternoon filled David’s lungs, suffocating him.
A heavy, painful throb settled deep in his groin. He couldn’t take the distance anymore. He couldn’t stand watching Sean play the perfect gentleman with his wife while his own mistress cowered in fear next door, denying him what was his.
David slammed his empty tumbler onto the desk. He reached into the inner pocket of his tailored suit jacket and pulled out the dark, sleek burner phone.
His thumbs flew aggressively across the glass screen, typing out a message with completely unyielding, dictatorial authority.
To Katherine:I don’t care if he’s home. I don’t care what lies you have to tell him to get out of the house. Do the impossible. Meet me at the Starlight Motel on Route 9 in exactly one hour. If you aren’t there, I’m walking across the lawn and coming to get you myself.
He hit send, his dark eyes fixed on the massive house next door. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, his jaw set in rigid determination, completely unaware that his desperate need for control was the exact match that was about to burn his entire life to the ground.
Chapter 14
Rosália
The view from the sixty-fifth floor of Sean’s corporate headquarters was absolutely staggering, a dizzying grid of steel, glass, and crawling city traffic that seemed to stretch into infinity.
Rosália stood perfectly still before the floor-to-ceiling windows, her hands wrapped so tightly around a porcelain mug of black coffee that her knuckles ached. The glass felt freezing against her forehead. The massive, cavernous corner office was a temple built to Sean’s intimidating power—rich, dark mahogany, heavy leather seating, and aggressive, modern art. It was entirely soundproof, shutting out the chaotic roar of the world below.
Yet, inside Rosália’s mind, the noise was deafening.
“He came home at three in the morning,” she whispered. Her voice was barely a thread of sound in the quiet room, but she knew Sean heard every syllable. She kept her eyes fixed blindly on the tiny cars below. “He tried to be quiet. But the walls of that house are too thin in the dead of night. I heard the faint click of the garage door. I heard him walk down the hall. He didn’t even come into our bedroom first. He went into the guest bathroom and turned on the shower, trying to scrub her off his skin before he crawled into my bed.”
