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He's older. Powerful. A stranger.
And for once, that last part doesn't feel like a warning.
It feels like relief.
No name to remember.
No one to take care of.
No tomorrow to promise.
Just one night I get to choose.
2
SEBASTIAN
No names. No promises. One night.
I've negotiated with men who run countries. I've never agreed to anything faster.
Now she's standing beside me in my private elevator. The doors are closing.
The staff see everything.
They'll say nothing.
No one at the Sovereign says anything about me, ever. They're careful around me. Everyone is.
It's efficient.
It has never once felt like a problem until now, because I don't want her careful. I want her exactly as she was at that table, chin up, telling a man to tip the bartender on his way out of her life.
My phone has buzzed eleven times since nine o'clock. Corinth. My brother. My father's lawyers. I haven't looked at it once since she sat down.
She's watching our reflection in the brass doors.
So am I.
The red dress catches the light every time she breathes.
It follows every curve of her.
The dip of her waist.
The full, generous swell of her hips.
The soft weight of her breasts against the neckline, and the way it rises when she knows I'm looking.
I've been looking since she landed against my chest on the terrace.
I haven't stopped.
She's lush in a way that makes my hands ache. A body built to be held properly, slowly, by a man who knows what he has.
Mark didn't.
Eight months. Eight months of having her across the table, and he spent them counting what he wasn't getting instead of realizing what he had. He looked at a woman like this and saw too much.
