dams ☁️

SITA UNTOLD (general marcus acacius) x (ofc) - complete masterlist

DEAR DESPERADO (harry castillo) x (fem!reader) - ongoing A decent thief, a smitten billionaire, one emerald ring, a simple con job, one very inconvenient attraction. Sex, lies, larceny—all before the sun comes up. Easy peasy, right? masterlist

falling (joel miller) x (fem!oc) - complete Joel Miller never expected much out of Jackson—just a quiet place to live out the days he had left. But when a baby’s cries lead him to a mother unravelling under the pressure of nursing her child she never asked for, he finds himself tangled in something he can’t walk away from—no matter how much he tells himself he should. masterlist

PRISON FOR LIFE (joel miller) x (fem!oc) - ongoing It's simple. Joel Miller takes a girl. Girl hates him. Girl is wanted for murder. Now everyone’s looking for said girl—and he’s the fool hiding her in his bed. 1 2

second sight (cregan stark) x (fem!oc) - completed part i, part ii, part iii, part iv, part v, part vi, part vii, part viii, part ix, part x , bonus i, bonus ii, bonus iii

second sight (modern!cregan stark) x (fem!oc) - completed now, before

There were no deliverables, checklists, feedback loops, or quarterly reviews. Nada, nothing. It was all vibes and expectations and the vague terror of miscalibration.

For starters, she flagged the ‘love’ part as unresolved. You didn’t technically have to be in love to be someone’s partner—evidence suggested, and she was willing to trust the data—so she absolved herself there.

She looked incredible, as her one and only had repeatedly expressed. She had a body that held up well under scrutiny and possessed some admirable shrewdness men loved. Precious stones seemed to recognise her on sight. She could charm people into generosity, into patience, into forgiveness.

These were all measurable competencies. Just as Harry said, they were her tangible assets, and he loved her for everything but.

What rattled her was the invisible labour; the constant internal surveillance. The scanning for signs of: am I doing enough? Am I being enough? Am I asking for too much? Am I disappearing too much? Am I opening my legs too little? A low-level vigilance that never powered down, even in sleep.

Harry didn’t help—by being too fucking perfect.

He was a great boyfriend in a way that felt almost cruel. Gentlemanly to the point of depriving her of resistance, polite without being distant. His thoughtfulness and decency left her with no obvious injustice to push back against, no bad behaviour to contextualise her unease, no flaw she could point to and say, “There—this is why I feel like this.” If he was solid—and he was—then the discomfort had to belong to her.

And she really, really didn’t want to lose him to her own mind.

So, uncertainty became productivity over the entirety of the four days—or five, she wasn’t keeping track—she spent in Monaco. If she knew everything about him, every preference, every habit and tell, every sharp edge, the precise shape of his silences, then this could be reframed as mutual effort. Balanced. Fair. Acquired knowledge, not anxiety. Research, and not preoccupation.

During the molten hours of sunset, Harry stepped out onto the balcony to take a work call. It dragged on, well past her patience, but she resisted interrupting. Instead, she drew a chair close beside him to do her newest hobby: marvel at this person who was all hers now.

Harry noticed the distance immediately, detested that, and without breaking stride, beckoned for her hand, drew her around the side table, and settled her neatly over his lap.

He glanced at her while the call continued, eyes flicking with conspiratorial delight. Slowly, he mouthed: save me, the arch smirk doing most of the talking.

She laughed softly. “If you’re good,” she whispered.

He lit up genuinely, boyishly—like that was exactly the answer he wanted, and felt up the length of her thighs. She draped an arm around his shoulders, pressing small kisses up his strong neck, the other lazily threading through his curls as the breeze lifted them. Man, she hoped premature balding wasn’t hereditary. It would be criminal to lose hair this good before fifty.

Now, on the call, Harry was an entirely different man. No charm or padding, he was an unsparing, unyielding authority. He spoke rarely, listened a lot, and made it clear the terms were his alone.

It would be a nightmare to work for him. The poor bastard on the other end was clearly living it.

Harry began to get irritated, and it showed on his face clearly. “Numbers check out. We move forward.” His eyes narrowed. “Why is that still open? Close it.” A pause. His jaw tightened imperceptibly. “Then adjust it. Don’t wait for me.” Another pause. Longer. “No, we’re not revisiting this. Stick to the plan.” He exhaled through his nose. “Just get it done. Thanks.”

She watched him, mesmerised. This was the part of him she was still mapping. The man who made the CNBC headlines, who didn’t negotiate, who expected competence as a baseline, and who definitely could cradle her in his lap so fondly, then dismantle someone’s week with four sentences.

And that—that quiet, impossible contrast—was what fucked with her the most.

He lifted the phone from his ear and ended the call with a sharp, aggravated click.

“Testing my goddamn patience... I swear, delegation is a fucking myth,” he muttered, letting the phone clatter onto the glass table. His shoulders dropped as he exhaled hard, the tension of the last half hour loosening all at once—and somehow, instinctively, it poured straight into her.

Then his voice softened, instantly.

“Hi, beautiful,” he murmured, words muffled, burying his face into her neck, fitting himself there in need of a reset. “I missed you.”

Heard that? Missed her, for the two hours she’d been gone, snorkelling off the pier, sunburned and salt-drunk and perfectly fine without him. This—his grand unguarded need was the shit that got under her skin.

She huffed softly, twirling the edge of his shirt collar between her fingers. “I thought your company was a big boy. That it could stand on its own two legs without you holding its hand.”

“Even big boys hit walls sometimes,” he mumbled into her skin, painting a kiss. “Enough about them. What’d you do without me? Caught some sun?”

“A little this and that,” she waved it off, deliberately vague. She didn’t want him to feel like he’d missed something essential. “Honey, I’m curious.”

“About?” He tilted back just enough to look at her.

“You.”

His grin hit her like summer sunshine—open, unearned, all too pleased. “I get that a lot.”

“Well, I want to know your... small things,” she said lightly, already half-embarrassed, still committing.

“No small things here. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, please. I’m very well acquainted with your big...” she playfully walked her fingers up the line of his zipper and poked his fly, “big things. That’s settled science. I’m talking about the rest.”

A perfect brow arched up. “My big, big heart?”

Now, her fingers slid into his, tracing the grooves of his knuckles. “Sure. And your likes. Dislikes. Dumb decisions. Wins. Relationshi—Jesus, are you having a stroke? What is that face?”

He shook his head as if the movie music was kicking in, widening stupid grin fixed in place, then lifted both hands to her face, thumbs warm and crowning her jaw.

“I just remembered,” he said quietly, “how much I love you.”

And he kissed her, deeply, certainly, no hesitation, knocking out her breath, and ironing every thought clean out of her mind.

Those words, somehow, survived the overuse. He repeated them—what—twelve times in eight hours, with the patience of someone explaining gravity to a person determined not to believe in it. An intravenous drip straight into her stubborn skull, feeding her the truth until it stuck. Plop, plop, plop... I love you, I love you, I love you.

And again, oddly, she had landed the best boyfriend in existence, hopelessly in love, and now the worst girlfriend alive was stuck nervously overthinking every second of it.

She pulled back a fraction, dazed, biting her lip. “Is that one of the small things?”

“Hell no.” He chuckled, nudging her chin with his thumb. “Ask me another.”

“Yeah? Anything?” she confirmed.

He nodded. “Anything.”

What started as a casual curiosity turned into a full-blown expedition. And there was truth to it—once you were in, there was no backing out. And once he started, he didn’t ration himself and seemed faintly amused by her appetite for it.

Yes-or-no questions softened into this-or-that, which unwound into a play of favourites, which quietly assembled themselves into something of a map. The chivalrous topography of her kinky king.

Music with Harry Castillo came in phases—Bon Iver or the Stones at cruising altitude, Miles Davis or Glenn Miller for thinking, Prince, Sade or Kendrick Lamar when he was done with everyone. He’d once seriously considered relocating to Nagano, Japan, for the clean anonymity of it, convinced he could disappear there properly. He was all about autumn mornings for the same reason—crisp air, muted skies, the discipline of restraint before the day lost control of itself. Food and cooking were sacred to him—no shortcuts, no dull knives, no hovering; the kitchen meant patience and knowing when to back off.

“Would you say you’re vintage or modern?” she asked.

“Mmmm...”

“Mmmm-modern.”

“God, sweetheart. You look so perfect like this,” he rasped. Then two long, loud licks and a pause later. “And I’m absolutely a blend of both.”

“Really—oh, my god. Right there.”

“There? How's that?”

“Uh-huh, that is crazy, Harry. You’re such a vintage guy. I mean, look at your apartment. All that art, the shelves, the vinyls and the wood.”

“You love my wood, baby.”

“Hard not to... ha, get it? Lumber joke.”

“Hush. Now, spread your thighs a little more. Hands on the headboard.”

“Like this? I’m not crushing you, am I?”

“No, this is fucking unreal. Grind down on me—yeah, there you go.”

“Oh... that feels good. So, when we get back home, I am totally remodelling your apartment. You should get a rug, Harry. A nice fluffy rug. Can we please get a Pierre Frey? Honestly, can you picture me stretched out on one with just my heels when you walk in after work?”

“Congrats, you’re on the payroll—but with love, truly, shut it.”

“Uh, rude.”

He hitched his arm around her thighs, grounding her down, two sex-drunk dark eyes looking at her from between her hips.

“Don't distract when I am about to give you the best head of your life.”

There was no dignified way to frame this. After a lot of insistence, she was riding Harry’s gorgeous, delighted face on his netted goodness of a bed, the sheets already defaced, the headboard her only real anchor. Somewhere in the back of her mind lived the practical concerns—suffocating him, slipping, cracking some ribs—but Harry had never once shown interest in self-preservation where she was concerned.

Fists braced, hips rolling, thighs shaking beside his ears, his curls tickling the inside of her legs, she gave up pretending this mindless conversation was going anywhere else. His mouth was already steadily working her clit and parting into her folds, devastatingly sure, getting her wet beyond her wildest dreams.

When his tongue knowingly pushed deeper, she let out a breathy laugh. “Okay, you win,” she said, already gone. “Bring it home, loverboy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured—most of it lost, blissfully, against her.

His hands were everywhere with intent to serve her pleasure: fingers curling deeper, tongue pressing into her dewy nub, palm firm on her ass, lashing a few playful slaps on it to make her jump. He didn’t rush it, his tongue laved slow lines, then ruthless; teasing, then exact—like he’d memorised her and was enjoying proving it.

She tried to breathe through it. Tried to stay upright. Surely failed at both.

When she looked down, it was the eye contact that finished her—him glancing up through his damp lashes, all smug, giving her a quick, cute wink before his jaw set and he went back to work with dangerous focus.

His tongue went up, in, up, in and his fingers did pretty much the same. Her walls clenched tighter and tighter around him, knowing that something beautiful was about to come forth.

That was it. There was no coming back from that.

So close blurred into gone, and the sound that tore out of her was unfiltered—half moan, half whimper—as she came apart on his tongue, body convulsing, suspended right over him. Oh, this was torture... to let go and hold on at the same time.

He lapped her up, unwilling to release her, hands bound around her as he kept her firm onto him, and not squandering even a bit. She collapsed forward, forehead against the headboard, laughing softly because it was either that or cry.

Harry shifted beneath her, hands smoothing over her dampened thighs like he was bringing her back down to earth.

“You alive, baby?” he asked, lazy, pleased. He kissed the inside of her thigh.

“Barely,” she panted, shaking her head as her knees trembled. She glanced down at herself, unbelieving. “Oh, my legs... Harry, what the hell, I can't feel my legs again.”

He laughed—a deep, unrestrained sound—and smoothed his palms over her hips and belly. “Got enough left in you to keep talking?”

She tipped her head, grinning, and tapped his cheek. “Which brings me to my next request.”

His brows lifted.

“Can we go again?” she said lightly. “But this time, I’m returning the favour.”

His laugh cut off. “Hey-ey—easy there, tiger. Careful.”

She shifted, turning carefully around the pillows, aware of every lingering aftershock, then she kneeled around his chest, leaned down against his strong abdomen and began to tie her hair into a knot.

“Ready for me?” she asked over her shoulder, feeling his hands blindly stroking up her thighs and calves.

He barely had time to answer. “Don't give me that look... are we really about to—man, this view is—oh, fuck, babe—”

Conclusion: within his many homes around the world, Harry loved modern living, but he never let go of the heritage that shaped it. Balance mattered.

And apparently, so did knowing he worked better as a bottom.

Harry’s family’s vintage car collection—one of the oldest in the Western hemisphere—was a source of pride and low-grade vexation. He loved the engineering, the history, the way things used to be built to last; he hated the expectation that he should sentimentalise it more than he did.

He was aggressively pro-sustainable space exploration, privately bankrolling a startup on the theory that without a responsible frontier, humanity would calcify. Also, falling in line, a huge nerd for the cool science stuff (which went on for a while). He talked passionately about ‘Lagrange points’ and explained them with celery and carrots while they made lunch together, throwing around words that she had no clue about, like ‘tardigrades’ and ‘algae bioreactors’, and became genuinely upset about space junk.

Mid-rant, he paused, cleared his throat, glancing at her. “Am I being annoying?”

She shook her head, smiling. “Nope. I find your space-litter rage very sweet.”

“It’s worse in space,” he said gravely. “No one cleans it up. It just stays there forever. Stop laughing—it’s a serious problem.”

She continued to laugh, nudging his hip with hers. “You’d run an HOA with an iron fist.”

He considered this. “Absolutely.”

Also, Harry had learned Klingon in under an hour as part of a high school dare and cared deeply about public libraries. He never wore tie pins, loved cufflinks, despised orange on clothes, and his paternal grandparents still lived a peaceful, content farm-loving life on a vineyard in Granada.

He liked power, but not pettiness. He admired efficiency in people, but not cruelty. He remembered slights longer than praises. He forgave very little, but when he did, it was absolute. A total of three girlfriends made it past the perimeter, and the last one—Little Miss Matchmaker, the architect of Peter and Charlotte’s domestic bliss—had been—

“A waste of my time,” he said flatly. “Lessons were learned. Moving on.”

She nudged the spoon away from her mouth, mildly affronted. Apparently, being fed black forest ice cream by your forbearing boyfriend in the middle of a lazy afternoon by the ocean was now her life. She was still adjusting.

“That bad?” she asked.

He shrugged, eyes forward, taking the spoon back and finishing it himself. “We weren’t aligned and we... concluded things amicably.”

“Concluded,” she echoed, snorting. “Did she conclude things with someone she already knew?”

He took another very long bite of ice cream.

Her mouth fell open. “No.”

His jaw flexed as he chewed.

“Oh. My. God,” she breathed, delight winning over tact. “The Harry Castillo got left for an ex? How hot was this ex? What is he, like, Captain America?”

His gaze could have punctured diamonds. “That is really helpful.”

She tried—and failed—to smother her little giggle, pressing her knuckles to her lips. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just—wow. I did not have ‘emotionally blindsided billionaire’ on today’s bingo card.”

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.

“Nah, duh. Just discovered I am basically psychic.”

“Great. Glad I’m your crystal ball now,” he scoffed, dropping the bowl onto the beach mat.

“Aww, honey. It’s okay,” she cooed, softening, sliding closer, curling an arm behind his neck and drawing him down until his temple rested against her collarbone. “Listen—this is good news. Means you’re capable of bad judgment. Makes you more relatable. And also, woohoo—you’ve got me now.”

He angled his head, pressed an open-mouth kiss to her throat, lingering there a little with a small smile. “Comforting.”

“Lucky for you, I’m super fun, a little high maintenance, but with fewer... group projects?”

He breathed a quiet laugh against her skin. “Any disclaimers I should be aware of?”

“Oh, plenty,” she said sweetly, brushing a kiss between his eyes. “But I recommend discovering them organically. And with legal counsel on standby.”

He poked her cheek. “Duly warned.”

One trivia after another, she absorbed it all, the bones of how he moved through the world, the reasons behind the silences, the places he’d chosen to harden and the ones he hadn’t. Proof that he was real, and he wasn’t just a fantasy she’d made up to soothe herself.

And somewhere between his answers and her questions, between the jokes and the silences, she realised this wasn’t information she was collecting to protect herself. Anymore.

“Have you... got a celebrity crush?” she asked when she finally took him up on the midnight walk along the beach. The tide was coming in with patient breakers; the crescent moon hung around scintillating stars, doing its best work. It was intensely romantic. Overkill, really. The universe was doing the absolute most.

He swung their joined hands between them casually. “She was in that ballet movie,” he said. “With the blood and the feathers.”

She squinted up at him. “The—what?”

“You know. Spooky ballerinas making out.”

“Oh. Black Swan?”

“That’s the one. Mira something.”

“Mila Kunis,” she said, laughing, and hit his arm for emphasis. “You are a pop culture black hole, Harry. How the hell do you survive all those movie premieres you get press-ganged into?”

“I nod thoughtfully,” he said easily. “Pretend I’ve seen everything and escape before anyone asks me my opinion on Netflix.”

She snorted. “Keeping it super profesh, I see.”

“Self-preservation. Next,” he said, clearly enjoying himself now.

She squinted at him, then at the sand. “Can you carry me on your back?”

He slowed a step to raise his brows.

“I don’t want to ruin my new shoes. See?” She lifted one foot pointedly, displaying the delicate Gucci sandals he’d insisted on buying her, now already dusted with sand.

He sighed, but a smile spread across his face as he bent down. “You'd better have a real question lined up after this.”

She looped her arms around his neck with a “yay!” and felt his hands settle at her thighs securely, grunting as he lifted her and started forward. The sand crunched beneath his steps, the world narrowed pleasantly to the breeze, salt, and the steady heat between them. Her strongest, safest place in the world.

She hummed contentedly, letting the sound stretch while she thought. “Okay. What’s... one thing you’d want to change about yourself?”

She felt it immediately—the shift when his hands reflexively loosened upon her thigh. He was working at it, containing. That subtle darkening behind his eyes, like a door pulled half-shut. When she glanced at him, he was staring straight ahead, jaw set, absolutely trying not to let whatever it was leak out.

“Stop ageing, I suppose,” he said after a bit, offering a mildly bored smile.

It was bullshit, but she let it pass. Pressing never got you truth—just better lies.

“Fair,” she agreed. “With all that cash, you’ll need forever just to get your returns.”

He stroked her thigh, grateful for the out. “Sort of. What about you?”

She bought time with a sing-songy hum. There were answers she could give that were cute and made him laugh, or went straight to the usual deflection. Instead, honesty slipped out before she could stop it.

“Hmm. I want to be… kinder?” she said.

He scoffed immediately. “Sure, just throw me under the bus like that.”

She laughed and ruffled his hair. “Not nice. I mean—present. Open.” She searched for the words as she felt them. “I want to care about people without planning my exit first. Make friends. Have hope. Be a part of something.” A pause. “All that horrifyingly wholesome stuff.”

She didn’t say what she wanted to—I feel like I missed out on that somewhere, while it sat there between them either way.

He tilted his head and pressed an intimate kiss to the inside of her elbow, and, reading right into her train of thought, he said, “Never too late, baby. I love that.”

She smiled, but her mind lagged half a beat behind. ‘Never too late’ was a lovely idea, and the kind of thing people said when they didn’t know how much work it would take to undo a lifetime of being sharp instead of soft.

But she did try.

She started with Charlotte. (A pretty shit place to start, but really, what was balance if not an illusion?)

She’d never really had girlfriends before, not a solid group, or even a singular, reliable person. When life narrows down to trust and survival, whole categories of intimacy get quietly deprioritised. Boyfriends mean vulnerability, friendship meant exposure—someone seeing the crooked reflections, the half-truths, the parts that didn’t align. Another lie to maintain, another variable she didn’t feel like managing.

Still, she was tired of the hollow ache that hit every time she scrolled past the lives of girls she'd once been close to and somehow moved on—middle school friends who’d shared the same corridors, the same stupid dreams. Now they had girls’ nights out, crushes on cute neighbours and celebrities, and endless selfies at cocktail hours and Pilates classes. Drunk sleepovers, mascara-streaked heart-to-hearts, random midnight drives with the windows down, chasing the fleeting feeling of reality. All the things she’d missed, outgrown.

She’d swapped her girlhood for some chump change, and now the sting of that loss was sharp enough to make her want it all back.

So she sought out Charlotte, who was stretched out by the pool, sunbathing with willful commitment. Peter was off somewhere with baby Sophia—this trip, she gathered, was Charlotte’s sanctioned break from mommyhood, buffered by a husband who actually showed up.

Charlotte pushed her Prada goggles up into her hair and grinned when she saw her approach. “Hi, you. Come sit.” She patted the lounge chair beside her. “You look fabulous, babe. I was wondering when Harry would finally get his claws off you.”

“Oh,” she laughed nervously, “you look... fabulous, too. Babe, heh.”

She slouched onto the chair, unfazed and entirely aware of how that sounded. They’d had an amazing night of more vanilla sex together—and a great morning after with his head between her legs. That was far from running its course.

Charlotte’s eyes flicked to her ears. “Those are new.”

“Are they?” she said, too quickly, fingers lifting to the platinum hoops. Then sighed. “I mean, yeah. Thanks—um, thank you. I—no, we... Harry and I went shopping.”

It struck her, faintly irritating, that if a man had said that, she’d have rewritten it in her head, dismissed it and reframed it. Here she was instead, flustered like a teenager, exposed, unpolished.

“Very nice,” Charlotte hummed, gaze bright. “Let me guess—Harry went from we’ll pop into one place to... I’ve rented out the next ten stores?”

“Worse,” she grumbled. “Apparently, he wanted to fly the whole rack and everything back to his apartment.”

Charlotte let out a laugh. “You’re welcome. I saved you.”

Her head snapped around. “You did?”

“Absolutely. I told him if he tried to micromanage the fantasy that hard, he’d ruin it.” Charlotte shrugged. “He listened. That part’s new.”

It was a reflex, really. Nothing scared her, but that last part stuck got under her skin—how Harry had been trying so hard to control things. She wasn’t used to someone taking her so seriously, and it threw her off more than she cared to admit. But she couldn’t let anyone know how much she did care if things started changing. No way.

“I can handle myself, thank you,” she said, reflexively.

Charlotte studied her for a beat. “I know. But you don’t like being carried.”

She looked away, jaw tightening. “I just hate being boxed in.”

“Same thing,” Charlotte said gently. “Harry calls it help.”

Of course, she didn’t like the idea of being beholden to anyone, least of all Harry. It wasn’t about him—it was the principle. She couldn’t afford to let anyone have that sort of power over her, not again. The thought of being controlled, of being handled, made her skin crawl. She’d made it this far on her own; she wasn’t about to start relying on anyone now. Well... everything except money.

“Y'know, Peter says he’s never seen him like this,” Charlotte continued. “He’s more neurotic. Generous to a fault. Keeps assuming everything will work out because it has you in it.”

“Sounds unhealthy,” she muttered.

Charlotte grinned. “Oh, it is.”

She huffed a laugh. “Fantastic. Why are we glad?”

“But,” Charlotte added, sobering, “it’s also sincere. He’s not trying to trap you. He’s just—” she searched for the word, “—bad at subtle.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Charlotte leaned back, squinting into the sun. “A while ago, jetting off to Monaco would’ve been unthinkable. He never left his office—so convinced that if he loosened his grip for even a second, everything would fall apart. Now he’s launching think tanks, turnaround arms, and dragging his girl across Europe.”

“He’s always been intense,” she said. It felt safer than saying I know.

“No way, not like this.” Charlotte looked at her again. “We were not kidding back then. Babe, he’s wild for you. Cray-cray. Like, he’s finally learned how to live.”

She groaned, pressing her palms into her eyes. “I don’t know what to do with all that. How am I supposed to deal?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Charlotte assured, giggling. “Just let it happen, and don’t run off because it’s easier.”

Slipped past her defences and landed, sharp, precise.

“For the record, that man is completely harmless,” Charlotte added, smirking as she lowered the sunglasses back over her nose. “He’d bag up the dirt you walk on and sleep on it if that wasn’t deeply fucking creepy.”

She laughed despite herself, then fell quiet.

Because harmless wasn’t quite the word. And being adored like that—so openly, so generously—felt more like gravity. Steady, inconsequential, something you didn’t push against without paying for it later.

And so she kept returning to the same question, hoping repetition would turn it into clarity: what was she meant to do—and when would it feel less like trying?

“Someone woke up missing Mama,” Peter murmured as he appeared poolside, Sophia bundled against his chest, all warm, rumpled, sleep-soft limbs and disgruntled blinks.

She was barely five months old, and they were already carting her across the Atlantic like it was nothing—first class bassinets, private lounges, the whole seamless machinery of money that the world would always arrange itself kindly around her.

Sophia was unmistakably a Castillo baby. The same dark curls, the same brown eyes—alert and curious even through sleep—but Charlotte shone through in the sharp little nose, the expressive mouth. One of the golden ones, too. Rarely fussy, content to observe, as if she’d already figured out the world was going to take care of her.

Sophia reached for her mother, then paused—attention snagging. She studied the newcomer in her home with solemn intensity, a tiny finger worrying at her lip while Charlotte took her in stride.

“Hi, sleepy girl,” Charlotte murmured, kissing her cheek. “Did you miss Mama? Yeah?” Then, following the line of Sophia’s gaze, she laughed softly. “What’re you looking at, huh? Auntie Eve?”

Sophia promptly turned her head away and giggled, shy.

“You wanna say hi to your pretty auntie?” Charlotte sing-songed, tipping her forward. “Hiii. Say hiiii.”

Gradually, Sophia said a small, breathy “ha,” as she reached for her hand.

She smiled, a rusted gear loosening in her chest. Seriously, babies were awesome, even if they paid in shit and every kind of mess imaginable.

“She’s such a sweetheart,” she gushed.

That was all it took. Charlotte gathered Sophia automatically into her arms. “Here, hold her. She’s not a big crier, she warms up to people really quick.”

Out of pure practise, she began patting Sophia’s back in that unconscious burping rhythm she had developed and never consciously learned. So many babies had fallen for this, and Sophia was no different.

She melted right into her, cheek to shoulder, immediately fascinated by the earrings. Tiny fingers closed around the hoops, accompanied by soft, delighted noises.

“Hi, baby girl,” she cooed, tickling her belly. “Your mama liked my earrings, too.”

Sophia made another cooing, happy sigh, rolling the small, dangling diamond between her twitchy little fingers. Was it too late to yank out her IUD and have a tiny Sophia of her own?

Okay, so that thought needs to die.

“You’re a natural,” Peter said, coming up beside Charlotte and slipping an arm around her shoulders.

“Occupational hazard,” she replied. “I nanny part-time.”

Charlotte blinked. “Wait—Harry said you were in theatre.”

“I am.” She huffed softly. “The nanny gig pays in actual money. Acting mostly pays in rejection.”

“Oh, that's too bad.” Charlotte’s face fell immediately. “We’re desperate for a nanny. Our last one was a nightmare.”

“Because you found her on Etsy, hun,” Peter cut in. He glanced at her, amused. “She took six weeks to ship. Came gift-wrapped.”

She snickered into Sophia’s hair.

“She thought organic kale smoothies for a newborn were a balanced diet,” he added.

“Eloise had a bluebird-sticker decorated blog,” Charlotte shot back. “And she was British. They literally invented nannies.”

“They invented colonialism, too. Doesn’t mean we hire it.”

“She got me with the accent!” Charlotte whined, smacking his arm.

He snorted. “Next time, try finding one on Amazon, love. At least we’ll get free returns.”

She pressed her lips together, considering. There it was—that familiar tug between practicality and optics. Between being helpful and being absorbed, who she was and who she’d been quietly recast as in Harry’s orbit.

Would it be strange? Wrong? To work for his brother?

“I could help out,” she said at last, measured. “If that doesn’t... cross a line.”

Charlotte didn’t even blink. “Omigod, I’d love that. Like, a thousand times yes!” She reached over, squeezing her arm. “Just probably run it by Harry first?”

“I'll just sit here and look pretty, I guess,” Peter mumbled to himself.

“Run what by me?”

Harry’s voice drifted in from behind them, casual and perfectly timed, like he hadn’t just walked straight into a life decision.

There were two immutable truths about people and babies. The first was simple: watching your partner hold one flipped some primitive switch—future, continuity, permanence, a family you could almost reach for. The second was less romantic: when that future stopped being theoretical and started blinking up at you, it suddenly looked like a hell of a lot of responsibility.

The second truth did not register with Harry at all.

He was already smiling, stupid, wrecked. That meant he’d jumped several steps ahead and was currently imagining her knocked up and glowing, surrounded by kids with his curls and a big dog shedding on everything.

And, mee-ow. On second thought, she would not say no to that. Harry was obscene like this. Tanned, relaxed, white T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, blue Levi’s sitting low on his hips. It was deeply unfair. She could fuck him with one big thought.

“Folks. Soph,” Harry murmured, kissing the crown of the baby’s head before leaning in to press his mouth into her hair. “Hi.” Then, quieter, into her ear: “Five.”

“High five back at you, but I’m holding a baby.” When he bared a small grin, she shook her head. “Five for what? Are you planning to populate an entire village?”

“I heard you get a punch card. The sixth one’s free,” he whispered, making her crack up again. “And I’m invested in a franchise.”

“Right,” she whispered back. “Guess I’ll just have to pray I don’t break anything. Like the bed, my back... or your big di—”

“Baby,” Charlotte coughed into her fist.

They both turned.

Charlotte smiled beatifically up at her shit-eating-grin-wearing husband. “Baby, did you hear about the thing? With the other thing?

“Subtle,” Harry snorted.

Charlotte stuck her tongue out at him, entirely unrepentant.

“Char wants Eve to nanny for us,” Peter said, cutting clean through the nonsense.

He looked from Sophia—wide-eyed, observant—to Charlotte, expectant, then finally to her. She felt suddenly visible in a way that wasn’t entirely comfortable. This was logistics, not fantasy. Integration. A step closer to being placed.

He glanced back down at Sophia, then shrugged lightly. “Looks like she passed the audition. We can’t argue with results.”

Her stomach flipped. Oh, so he was cool with this. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Sophia, right on cue, began to babble up at her, her palms patting at her jaw and cheeks.

“Even the management agrees,” Harry joked.

Sophia was reaching again, determined this time—little hands stretching toward her uncle like she’d decided he was the best option for a chair. Harry scooped her up easily, settling her against his chest, pressing absentminded kisses into the soft down of her hair while the conversation rolled on around them.

Call it love. Call it madness. Call it hormones brought on by European sunshine and her boyfriend, who looked fucking hot holding a baby.

Whatever it was, for one reckless, unguarded second, she thought: screw it, fine. I am a primitive woman. Give him his ridiculous Castillo baby village. Five, six, ten—populate the whole fucking map. She’d figure it out. He could have her sideways and backwards and on all fours and emotionally ruined if that was the price. She’d survive it—probably.

“You won’t be all weird about your precious girlfriend working for us?” Charlotte asked, pointedly casual.

Harry glanced up, Sophia tucked under his chin. “Should I be?”

“I’m just saying,” Charlotte pressed. “If it’s going to be a whole ego issue...”

Her phone buzzed sharply. And so wrong.

She’d silenced and scrubbed every social media for this trip. Every app, every alarm, notification, and contact. There were exactly two people who could bypass that—and none of them should’ve been looking for her now.

Her mind leapt ahead without permission. Immigration. A crack in the paperwork. Her name was on an international wanted list, or surfacing where it shouldn’t. Or something dumber, crueller, worse.

She plastered on a smile. “Sorry—one sec.”

She squeezed Harry’s thigh lightly as she passed, a reflex more than reassurance, and walked far enough away that the chatter by the pool dulled into background noise.

She pulled out her phone. The screen lit up with a blade of message from an unknown number. No name. A scrambled string of digits she didn’t recognise—and felt, instantly, that she should.

Miss me, yet... Eve? - P

All the air fled her lungs.

Oh, fuck no.

She lifted her head, instinctively scanning the terrace, the poolside edges, the staff moving in their careful, rehearsed patterns. The exits she’d clocked on arrival. Sightlines. Angles. Blindspots. Reflections. Her own face stared back at her from the glass doors—serene, pretty, untouched.

Another curt buzz: The Fairmont. Two hours. I’ll be waiting.

Fuck, shit, fuck, shit—her fingers hovered uselessly over the screen, suddenly thick, foolish, unreliable. Cold spouts of panic tried to frantically climb up her spine.

Then: You’ll come to me, or I’ll come to you. Tick tock, baby. Don’t make me chase you.

So this was how he’d chosen to reappear. She had expected nostalgia and a bit of sexy talk that pretended they’d ended on better terms than they had. Instead, this fucker came back like this—demanding certainty, staking ownership, operating under the lazy assumption that she’d show up because she always had. The audacity.

She slid the radioactive phone back into her pocket slowly.

When she turned around and walked back toward the family, she was already reassembling herself—slotting her smile back into place, loosening her shoulders, becoming someone who could laugh, who could talk about babies and nannies and logistics—while every nerve in her body calmly recalibrated for danger.

Two hours wasn’t a pretty invitation. It was a goddamn countdown.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS KEYWORD TRENDING: “HARRY CASTILLO”

— HARRY CASTILLO NAMED HIGHEST-PAID CEO OF THE YEAR AFTER JUST THREE YEARS AT THE HELM According to Bloomberg’s Pay Index, Castillo earned $6.2 billion this year—entirely in equity and performance incentives—nearly 11 times more than the second-highest-paid U.S. executive.

— CASTILLO GROUP CROSSES $200 BILLION MARKET CAP FOR THIRD CONSECUTIVE QUARTER Analysts cite the explosive adoption of Castillo Solutions across finance and infrastructure. “Not only is he winning—he’s rewriting the rules,” a JPMorgan strategist said.

— ‘TOO BIG TO FAIL?’ REGULATORS QUIETLY MONITOR CASTILLO GROUP’S GROWTH Despite public confidence, insiders say Washington is “watching closely.”

ENTERTAINMENT/LIFESTYLE OUTLETS KEYWORD: “HARRY CASTILLO MONACO”

— HARRY CASTILLO SPOTTED IN MONACO WITH AN ANONYMOUS WOMAN The notoriously private financier was photographed leaving a private marina late Sunday night. Castillo’s team declined to comment.

— WHO IS THE MYSTERY GIRL SEEN WITH HARRY CASTILLO? No social media, public appearances, and no known ties to the Castillo Group. Internet sleuths are already speculating.

— INSIDE HARRY CASTILLO’S ULTRA-PRIVATE ROMANTIC LIFE Friends say Castillo “doesn’t date casually”—but sources stress this sighting can mean nothing at all.

INSTAGRAM / TIKTOK HIGHLIGHTS KEYWORD: “HARRY CASTILLO GIRLFRIEND”

(Grainy speedboat footage) (Paparazzi long-lens photos around shops in Monte Carlo) (A blurry shot of a silhouette beside him at the hotel bar)

CAPTIONS:

“Harry Castillo in Monaco tonight 👀” “finally going public?” “Who IS she???” “this man doesn’t miss lmao” “gotta admit, her pixels are fiiiiine”

SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS THREAD: @/celebwatchdaily

↳ username01: literally who the fuck is this hoe 😭 ↳ username02: girlie came out of nowhere ↳ username03: no socials = NDA girlfriend ↳ username04: bffr she won’t last ↳ username05: imagine pulling HARRY CASTILLO just by existing ↳ username06: men like him never marry mystery girls ↳ username07: I give it one week 🤷‍♀️ ↳ username08: yeah she’s not his type ↳ username09: watch her ass disappear like that ↳ username10: i rebuke this, release his soul devil ↳ username11: She looks so normal?? ↳ username12: If she’s not rich, she won the mfing lottery ↳ username13: Netflix salivating for biopic rights rn ↳ username14: i’d give my left tit to know what she does for a living

FINANCE TWITTER/REDDIT SNIPPETS KEYWORD: “CASTILLO”

— HC adds $200B to his net worth and still gets dragged for who wets his dick — lolololol everyone’s obsessed with the girl while he silently owns half of Wall Street — ok, but literally WHO the hell is she? No way the guy just dates ghosts and civilians? — ran a reverse image search... nothing. That’s not normal! — If she doesn’t have a LinkedIn, she’s either insanely rich or contractually invisible. — People don’t accidentally end up in Monaco with Harry Castillo, just saying, smells like corporate politics — family office daughter or sovereign wealth adjacent BET — Watch her be some EU banker’s mistake from 2018 lol — Castillo doesn’t do mystery unless the mystery benefits him

r/FinanceGossip

THREAD DISCUSSION: Did anyone ID the woman with Harry Castillo yet?

— she’s not in any charity galas from the last five years — checked Monaco property registries —no matching name... — this feels very NDA-coded?? — reminder: harry’s last known relationship was pre-IPO. he’s not sloppy — if she were important, we’d know already, that’s the point — I hate how much this is bothering me

BUSINESS MEDIA SIDEBAR BLURB

While Castillo Group added $18B in shareholder value this week, online attention remains fixed on the unidentified woman seen accompanying CEO Harry Castillo in Monaco—an unusual fixation for a man known for airtight personal privacy.

An effortless escape required favourable conditions. Usually, that meant no ocean hemming her in on a private island, and a decent amount of distance between herself and her headstrong, filthy-rich boyfriend.

It also helped if there weren’t patrolling security details. Or helicoptering staff. Or Charlotte. Or Peter. Or a sensitive five-month-old baby girl who had lungs calibrated to maximum disruption.

But she could always rely on cooperative elements.

Young Pierre, for instance, was ferrying the speedboat from the island dock to the marina. Eager, and easily undone by a charming smile, a strategic flash of thighs beneath her sundress, a few massacred French phrases—s’il vous plaît, juste un petit tour—and a tidy roll of hundred-euro notes.

She preferred this part of things. Information, control, familiarity, running the numbers before committing to an outcome. She liked knowing where every door led, how fast she could move, how badly things could go wrong before they became irreversible. Ideally, she ended most plans without a gun to her head or cuffs on her wrists.

Unfortunately, a threatening text and the looming possibility of a bullet lodged somewhere inconvenient made precision a little academic.

Necessary, yes. Comforting, even, but no calculation got her out of this clean.

The speedboat cut across the water, delivering her back into Monaco’s obscene harbour—superyachts drifting like bored gods, billionaires mid-lunch pretending they weren’t being watched. She hopped out lithely and blew Pierre a kiss in thanks, and he flushed. Sweet kid. He’d remember her fondly. Assuming tonight didn’t go sideways.

The Fairmont was a short cab ride away, brutal in its geometry, perched above the famous hairpin—the tightest turn on the historic Monaco Grand Prix circuit. She watched the road curve beneath them and felt a brief pang of regret. Shame she wouldn’t get to take one of Harry’s ridiculous, gravity-defying cars through it herself.

Depending on how the next half hour played out, she might not be driving anything ever again.

She checked her phone. Fifteen minutes to the run-up.

The screen lit again. Not Harry, thank god. The text read: Good girl. Room 217.

Her jaw tightened. The predictable motherfucker was tracking her.

What made it almost funny was that he hadn’t noticed she was being followed. The same silver Mercedes had tailed the cab for four avenues now—prudent, professional, just distant enough to pretend it was a coincidence.

He might have the money for intimidation, but someone else had the habit of making sure she got home alive.

“Harry,” she grumbled.

If she had issues, Harry Castillo had issues with vastly more money and a truly frightening level of commitment. Sometimes it was alarming how psychotically compatible they were—different resources, same instincts.

When the cab eased to a stop, the silver sedan politely lingered well back from the drop-off. A little squinting, a little silhouette-reading, and she clocked him immediately.

Ben. Chauffeur, security, fixer, human contingency plan of one Harry Castillo. Entire fucking apparatus in a well-tailored package.

Mostly irrelevant, but occasionally useful. Especially if things went sideways upstairs—which, knowing who she was about to meet, felt unlikely. He preferred control through fear, not spectacle.

Still, it was comforting to know Ben existed.

Harry, apparently, had already been notified of her relocation. Her phone lit up the second the cab door shut behind her—like the universe itself was narcing. One call slipped through, rang for ten seconds, then dropped. Another followed immediately. She didn’t answer either; she needed three full breaths before she could put on the right voice, even in text.

A message came through instead: Do I really snore that loud that you had to book your own hotel room?

She closed her eyes for a second. This man. This sweet, devastatingly clueless man.

Her thumbs hovered, then she typed, choosing mercy over honesty—for now: I need a little space, ok? Tell Ben to stop hovering.

She hit send and immediately regretted how thin it sounded. Sure enough, his reply came back almost instantly: Why?

She exhaled slowly: Because I asked nicely. I’ll explain everything when I’m back.

Several seconds passed before he hit her with: Are you safe? Did someone get to you?

She pressed her lips together, nodding even though he couldn’t see it, like the gesture might somehow transmit through the screen. She typed carefully, gently, this time: Harry. Relax. I’M FINE. I just need you to trust me and let me handle myself.

The typing bubbles appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. She could practically see him pacing, phone in hand, jaw tight, loosening his collar, running scenarios that all ended with him bulldozing into sharp edges.

Finally: Ben’s nearby. Don’t push this and come back home to me.

She stared at the screen until it dimmed, then slipped the phone away.

He would wait, worry, and obviously obey—because he trusted her, because he loved her, because he had no idea how ugly the truth actually was.

An explanation was coming his way, but first, she had to survive the part where she sat across from a man who knew her old name, her old habits—and convince him she was still that woman, pliable enough to use.

Later, she’d give Harry a version of the truth that wouldn’t wound him. Something normal and boring that didn’t sound like—I’m meeting an ex-partner I used to fuck and steal with, and he’s probably going to threaten to kill me.

Look, as much as she could rely on her insanely powerful boyfriend to bulldoze this problem into submission, they were liabilities to each other. He was too visible, too clean, too above reproach. Her past didn’t need oxygen—especially not in his world.

What if her mess bled into his immaculate life? What if someone decided she was leverage? Or him?

No, it was better to tie this off herself quietly and efficiently. Lie her ass if she had to. Let the worst thing on record be that she’d stolen one stupid ring from the right man at the wrong time. Yes, she could live with that version of the story.

She straightened her shoulders as she headed for room 217.

Unlike Pero, she worked better alone.

That wasn’t her sociopath showing—it was optics, experience, and a lifetime of watching men telegraph their weaknesses before they ever realised they had them.

Picture this: you’re a shipping magnate wearing the newest Bregeut watch with an ego the size of a small country. A beautiful woman with her eye on you walks into the room. Your interest sparks, possibilities and confidence follow. Then—cut to some glorious young, hot idiot hanging off her arm, laughing too loud, touching too much. Spell broken, boner dead. You move on.

Big picture? Men like clean access. Men hate competition. And that glorious young idiot weakened her game.

Which, in a long and well-earned story short, was why she’d ditched Pero’s ass and never circled back.

There were better reasons, of course, and bloodier—like the fact that Pero loved his guns. He loved them how some men loved god—reverent, obsessive, convinced of their righteousness. Polished them, named them, showed them off. Used them when they weren’t exactly needed.

Back then, when they were running scrapyard jobs, they’d been feral together. Months of stolen momentum—cheap motels, hot engines ticking as they cooled, hands still dirty from copper wire and catalytic converter guts. The Bonnie-and-Clyde adrenaline hadn’t burned off yet, and it seldom did with Pero; he carried it around like his second spine.

He’d crowd her into whatever space they had—lamplit alleys, back seat, abandoned warehouse offices—mouth already at her throat, canines just shy of pain, a wandering hand slipping past her zipper to slide right between her folds before his cock followed after for a solid, mind-blowing screw. There was no softness, no permission, simply the shared understanding that this was how they came down from the high.

And he didn’t pretend it was romantic, which was a relief. They fucked like it was part of the job: fast, sweaty, bruising in places she didn’t check for marks until later.

After, they’d lie there sometimes in their boxy bedroom half-dressed, sniffing a fan of cash, legs still tangled. He’d light a roll-up, and she’d steal it from his mouth and tell him with a short puff and a laugh, always, on the dot—

“You and I... we’re burning too fast.”

He’d grin and say, “I like it hot, baby.”

That was the cycle. They’d fuck, steal, laugh, repeat, and they were amazing together.

She planned, mapped, and timed her actions. She knew which scrapyards paid cash, which guards nodded off after midnight, and which alarms were ornamental. Using which Pero executed with quick hands, strong arms, fearless in a way that made men hesitate.

She and he were a system—her eyes always scanning, his body always in motion. She handled the talking, and he handled the heavy lifting. When something went wrong, she fixed it with words. When those words failed, he would give her a smile as if it was finally getting interesting.

After a clean hit, they’d sit on the hood of the car eating gas-station snacks, his cigarette-scented leather jacket around her shoulders, copper wires on the dash, a waxing moon overhead, and in some convincing fucked-up version of a Halsey music video.

“You ever think about stopping?” she’d asked him once jokingly. “One last score?”

He had laughed at her, draping his arm across her shoulders. “Why would we?” Then, softer, he said against her cheek, “Esto somos nosotros.” (This is us.)

She knew he never would, but the money kept coming, pleasure kept coming even more. It felt endless, invincible, as if all the rules had simply stopped applying to them. They were the wildest months of her life, and surviving them felt a lot like luck.

Still, she had very much liked the routine of Pero and their jobs. The way sex blurred into planning, adrenaline made everything sharper, louder, sexier. Pero was good in bed in the way dangerous bad boys often are—perfect, possessive, slightly unhinged. It worked... then it didn’t.

No big surprise there, bad boys didn’t come with exit plans. They burned hot and left smoke.

She hadn’t even known Pero was carrying a gun during their last midnight scrapyard runs together. Not until a night watchman caught them mid-score—flashlight cutting through the dark, voice cracking with panic.

She’d gone motionless immediately and done what she always did when she got caught. Hands behind her head, be calm, comply, and negotiate her way out. Survival-mode clean and efficient.

“Get on the ground now!” he barked.

She turned her head just enough to catch Pero in her periphery. “Do it,” she murmured. “We can talk our way out.”

Pero, meanwhile, had done the opposite—and decided to introduce himself properly. He’d shoved a 9mm into the man’s face and fired two warning shots into the dirt, so close that the echo rattled in her teeth.

Pero shoved the smoking barrel closer. “Don’t fucking move.”

The guard had collapsed in on himself, hands clawing at the ground, sobbing, pissing his pants, begging for his life, for the lives of his wife and two children, in a voice she would never forget. It barely even sounded human anymore. Pure, raw terror.

“I won’t say anything—I swear—I swear to god, please, please—”

Pero crouched, bringing himself eye-level with the man, smiling like they were sharing a secret. “You’d better fucking not.”

Despite her blood running cold, she stepped between them without thinking. “Get up,” she told the wailing guard. “Run and don’t look back.”

The man didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled away, panting, vanishing into the dark. Silence rushed in after him.

She rounded on Pero, snarling, “What the fuck was that?”

He finally holstered the gun, shrugging like she’d criticised his driving. “He was never going to do anything, cariño. Relax.” He grabbed her wrist as they ran, hooting a laugh. “Fuck, yeah!”

They got away, sure, but she never forgot how close Pero had come to pulling the trigger—for the sheer thrill of the moment. The worship in the man’s terror.

That was the line, and he stepped over it like it didn’t exist.

It was much later; how he replayed that goddamn moment; that she knew she had to leave him immediately. They were naked, sheets twisted, sweat of sex cooling between them. She was thinking about everything and nothing when he began laughing—telling the awful story again, embellishing it now.

“I swear, the second I pulled it out, he folded. Crying like a little puta.” He had glanced at her, still smiling, tracing a finger down her arm. “Pobrecito. Crazy what people do when they think they’re about to die.”

She had watched his mouth while he talked. The pleasure did not feel sexual anymore, and the fantasy collapsed.

She saw the trajectory of her life five years out—running faster, lying harder, flinching every time he reached for his waistband. She saw blood where there hadn’t been any yet, and realised it would soon be hers.

Abso-fucking-lutely not. After every circle of hell she’d crawled through just to stay alive, she wasn’t giving it up now.

After he fell asleep, that was when she quietly started packing her things. In the morning, she kissed him goodbye on habit and took his biggest score on the way out, considered it severance, payment for crossing the line, disappeared on him, and never looked back.

And now—how beautifully fucking ironic—one of his beloved guns sat beside a hotel breakfast spread like a centrepiece. Bacon, eggs, waffles, coffee.

Silver gun to match the silverware. Cute. Horrifying, but… cute.

Her gaze lingered on it, analytical regardless of the panic. How the hell had he gotten that through American customs? Right. So stupid. It was probably French-made.

Well. If he shot her, at least she’d go out with something European. Classy, artisanal death.

That was when the uninvited thought hit her that she’d accomplished nothing for such a demise. Because she was staring death in the face, genuinely scared, and all her brain could cough up was that she’d never graduate high school, she would never go back home and apologise for running away, and she would never get to tell Harry that she—

Her jaw tightened. She bit her lip as she sat across from Pero at the dining table, watching him tear another strip of bacon between his teeth, smirking like this was brunch and not a potential execution.

She glanced from the gun to his face. Then she smiled a small, dry one.

“On a scale of one to prison,” she asked, “how bad is this about to go?”

Pero rumbled out a laugh as he chewed, working the food from his cheek before speaking in that sexy Spanish drawl of his. Once upon a time, she’d found it intoxicating—bad-boy cadence, gunslinger confidence, the illusion of protection. Now it just sounded like a threat taking its time.

“Funny,” he murmured. “Funny girl.”

“It’s a gift.”

“Your boyfriend won’t think so, Eve.”

She snorted, incredulous. “That’s your big play? You’re gonna tell on me to my boyfriend?”

Jesus. The standards she used to have. Embarrassing, really.

He flicked his fork in her direction, squinting at her. “What are you even, his little pet? Looks like he keeps you on a short leash.”

“Fuck you.”

He calmly speared more eggs into his mouth, grin unbothered. “After I finish.”

She felt more tired than scared now, to be honest. Arms folded, she sighed, “Let me guess. You scare me first, then you act like we’re pals. So derivative.”

He smiled a private one. “Because you scare easy now.”

“Only of men who talk while chewing. You're still so gross.” Something in her snapped—irritation overriding instinct. She pushed to her feet, leaned across the table. “Look, pal. If this is your idea of a reunion, it’s dogshit timing. I’ve got places to be. So if you have a point, make it fast.”

That earned her a flat, assessing look. Then his hand drifted, patient, until it rested beside the gun. I dare you to say another word, he silently gestured.

“Sit.”

Not ‘down.’ Just ‘sit,’ like the decision had already been made. And she wilfully obeyed, pulse thudding where her tongue used to be clever. The chair felt too low, the table too wide. Her eyes locked on the waiting gun as her throat worked around nothing.

“Good girl,” he hummed from his chest. “See? We still understand each other.”

She stayed quiet. Let the asshole talk and show his hand.

“I also see that—” he shovelled another bite, “—you’ve upgraded. Rich man. Europe. Pretty dresses.” His gaze flicked—earrings, the sundress, the thin glitter of gold at her wrist. “You look expensive.”

“I moisturise.”

He snorted. “And the jokes. Even when you’re lying.”

“We’re not serious,” she lied too fast, and hated herself for it. “If that’s what you’re circling.” Because she was completely in love—but she’d rather swallow glass than give Pero that leverage.

“I wasn’t.” He leaned back, leather jacket squeaking. “I was wondering how long you plan to stay.”

“With him?” She shrugged. “Indefinite. But I like his dick a lot.”

“For fucking,” he said. “Or... for love?”

She let out a soft, disbelieving huff. “You really think I do love?”

“When it’s useful.”

The silence stretched, and the gun continued to gleam between the plates.

“And if I don’t like your curiosity?” she asked.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Then you wouldn’t be sitting here. You’d already be down there.” He nodded toward the floor. “And your pretty face would be a problem someone else had to clean up.”

She swallowed.

He leaned forward now, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, studying her, voice dropping into that quiet register she remembered too well—the one that didn’t waste words.

“Relax. If I wanted to hurt you, my breakfast would be colder.”

“That’s... comforting.”

“It should be.” A beat. “I came with an offer.”

Her mouth tightened. “Shocker.”

“And you’ll shut your smart fuckin’ hole and listen.”

“Not this time,” she sighed, exhausted. “That's not me anymore. I’m out of that life. And I definitely don’t clean up dumbass loser’s messes either.”

“You’re in a better life now,” he agreed, clicking his tongue. “Which makes you more valuable.”

Oh, fuck. There it was—the angle she hadn’t wanted to see. He was throwing her a curveball here.

Her fingers curled in her lap, nails biting skin. “What do you want, Pero?”

His smile returned—thin, satisfied. He counted off his fingers as he spoke, “Access. You. And...”

She cocked her brows impatiently. Pero set down his final card before her, touching the pad of his third finger.

“...Harry Castillo’s five-million-dollar emerald ring.”

Eventually, her brain recalled its purpose, and she drew in a small breath through her nose. Hard reset, no time to fear.

Ring. Harry. Five million dollars. Thought it was half-a-million, but it looks like the price has gone up significantly.

Fuck. Alright, let’s not spiral. Breathe and inventory.

First problem: access. Pero didn’t just stumble into her life again or just get lucky. You don’t “run into” someone on a private island off Monaco unless you paid for the map. He had her number, her location, and her timing down to the last minute. He knew when she’d be away from Harry.

This meant that he was no longer freelancing; he was now financed. With serious, surveillance-level money. Answering to someone higher up the food chain with deeper pockets, a bloodier balance sheet, handlers and deadlines and men who don’t blink when something goes wrong. Oh, how fun.

Which also meant Pero wasn’t the apex predator. He was just the silly mouthpiece.

Second problem: intent. Pero liked fear, but he liked profit more. He liked leverage. He liked watching people squirm first. He wouldn’t shoot her unless it served a purpose... right? She was here to be useful. Which meant—good news—she was leaving this hotel room alive. Bad news: the price of that exit was still very much undecided.

Third problem—worse than the first two combined: Harry.

Harry-Castillo-the-asset, not Harry-her-wonderful-boyfriend. Or rather—Harry-Castillo-the-asset’s ring. Five million dollars, in a single object that could be slipped off a finger. Portable, traceable only if you were stupid.

And she had been really fucking stupid.

Her mind snapped back to the beginning, to the night she’d stolen the ring, to that ridiculous suite—the gorgeous view, the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be sex, the way she’d clocked the ring when she spotted him at the bar without meaning to. Emerald, spectacular pave, old money taste with new money arrogance.

She’d taken it because that was who she was then. Because she could, and she almost always did.

The real fuck-up hadn’t been the theft. It was what came after.

She’d tried to fence it too fast and too close to where it was taken. She had let her greed outrun caution, and lit up backchannels she should’ve known better than to touch. Triggered alerts meant for professionals from Manhattan to fucking Tijuana.

One of those pings had clearly found its way into the wrong hands. And from there—like rot spreading through pipes—it had led straight back to... motherfucking Pero.

Her jaw hardened. No coincidences, just consequences.

Still—one must never show their hand first. Assumptions got people killed.

She met his eyes, let her mouth curl faintly, like this was somewhat amusing instead of life-altering. “So,” she said, stretching the word, “who whispered about the shine?”

Pero didn’t bother swallowing. “Guy who sells rust.”

“And?”

“Tony ran it downhill.”

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Goddamn it.”

Of course, it was Tony. Her go-to middleman when she’d still been sloppy enough to believe familiarity was protection. That answered one question cleanly and brutally: she’d been traceable. She let the irritation flare and die—self-flagellation was a luxury she couldn’t afford right now.

“Alright, fine,” she said, waving a hand. “Then help yourself.”

Pero grinned like she’d suggested flying. “Can’t walk that one, baby,” he said. “Your boy’s running Z-grade walls. Dead eyes, live guns. No gaps.”

She tilted her head. “Pricey paranoia.”

“A big money house.”

She knew it was true. Harry never went anywhere alone. Men with earpieces, men who didn’t look like guards until you knew what to look for. She’d always joked that she felt like she was dating a walking crime documentary. Turns out she wasn’t wrong—just late to the conclusion.

“Again, why the hell am I here?” she asked.

Pero took his time wiping his fingers on a napkin, unblinking eyes never leaving hers.

“Because,” he said gently, “you’re already past the perimeter.”

Her pulse ticked louder. She leaned back, crossed her arms, forced her tone to stay level. “Five million doesn’t just wander off.”

“Not for anyone else,” he said, pointing at her with the fork. “For you, it’ll grow some sexy little legs.”

She scrubbed a hand over her face. “This is so fucking stupid—”

“Look, you sleep with him. You travel with him. You touch him whenever you want.” His eyes flicked to her hand, the one that had rested on Harry’s chest more times than she could count. “You’re trusted. You’re invisible.”

“I’m not doing it,” she said—flat, immediate. Anymore negotiation was a short walk to hell.

He smiled anyway. “Five mil, baby. Five mil,” he said, slower.

“Awesome,” she shot back. “I’ll just shake him upside down, see what falls out.”

“Ay, coño, you're still not listening. If we split that kinda cash—”

“Three ways?” Her laugh was sharp, humourless. “So I’m bankrolling you and your mystery investor. Pass.”

“You don’t need to run the math anymore,” he said smoothly. “All you have to do is play girlfriend a little more, suck his dick harder, and come home shiny to your Papi.”

Her jaw locked. “Watch your mouth. I’m not expendable.”

“One last score, remember?” he pressed, leaning in to crowd the space. “In and out. You walk clean.”

She held his gaze a second too long.

This was the hook—the old pitch, glossy and repackaged. Nostalgia dressed up as inevitability. Fuck, steal, disappear. Like it hadn’t nearly killed her and sent her packing the first time.

“Funny thing is,” she said quietly, eyes and voice sharpened down to a point, “I stopped being that girl.”

Pero’s smile didn’t fade. “Funny thing is,” he said back, “you’re the only one who can do it.”

As if words had finally run out of usefulness, Pero reached for the chair beside him instead. He unzipped a bag, pulled out a tablet, and slid it across the table—skidding past the gun like it didn’t exist and stopping just short of her fingers, an offering made with intent.

“Before you say no again,” he said, almost kindly, “you should take a look.”

She didn’t want to. Every instinct she’d ever sharpened screamed “don’t!” This was the thin, precise second where you could still pretend you hadn’t seen the blade before it went in. Before knowing made you complicit.

But pretending had never saved her. She picked up the tablet.

Boring medical records—death and insecurity flattened into Helvetica. She rolled her eyes, already bracing for Pero’s theatrics, but really wished she had not when she read on.

Clean fonts in neutral languages, clipped doctor's shorthand. Dates, surgeons’ names she vaguely recognised from rumoured circles. Three private clinics with addresses that didn’t exist unless you paid to know where to look. Discretion fees were listed in numbers so obscene that it seemed fictional.

Her eyes moved faster, trained. And then she saw it. A few words she never thought she would associate together. Curveballs, after curveballs.

PROCEDURE: Bilateral Femoral Lengthening PATIENT NAME: Harry Castillo.

Her breath caught. “What the fuck,” she murmured, before she could stop herself.

“You pulled a rich mark with a soft spot,” Pero said.

She re-read it. Slower, then faster, hoping the meaning might rearrange itself if she changed speed. Hope died. What, what, what lengthening?

Pre-op measurements, post-op gains, recovery timelines stretching into years. Complications listed with clinical indifference—risk of non-union, nerve damage, infection, and chronic pain. Pain management protocols detailed enough to make her gulp—external fixators, internal titanium rods, controlled fractures.

Bones broken on purpose and stretched millimetre by millimetre like patience on a rack. Suffering, rendered politely.

Oh, Christ, Harry. What the hell have you done to yourself?

Her first reaction was disbelief, then irritation—an evil, old reflex. Like... height? Really? Especially, Harry? Money, respect, power, presence that bent rooms around him—and this was the thing he’d worried about? Being the tallest guy?

She pictured him standing naked in front of the mirror in some aesthetic clinic suite that reeked of antiseptic and cash, measuring himself against other men, against some ghost standard no one else could see.

Dumb, wealthy fuck, her mind snapped.

Then—less sharp, more reluctant—it adjusted.

Men like him didn’t wake up one day and decide to shatter their own legs for vanity. At least, not without history or old calcified pressure. This wasn’t even about gaining inches, perhaps a little older than that. A sentence thrown too casually, or a laugh that lingered too long. A comparison framed as a joke from a girlfriend who’d meant no harm and still done it. A boardroom full of men who all stood just a fraction taller. A childhood kitchen where someone had said “you’ll catch up”—and never realised how long that echo could last.

Power never erased that horseshit, merely gave it better clothes.

She scanned again, noticing what she’d missed the first time.

AGE: 28 (PRE-OP)HEIGHT: 5 feet 7 inches

She squinted, confused. Taller than that? Who was he aiming to intimidate, the spice rack? With that amazing equipment he had downstairs, he could have taken life lying down.

PSYCH EVAL: Passed, but extensive. NOTES: Patient demonstrates fixation on proportionality rather than height alone. Frames procedure as necessary to level perceived social and professional power imbalances.

Proportionality. The fuck? As if something about him had always seemed off to himself. Did he think his body was a miscalculation?

She sat back slightly, scrolled once more and closed the tablet with care, hands steady by force alone—breaking it would feel too much like breaking him.

“You ran a background check,” she said flatly.

“A thorough one,” he added, proud of himself.

“This is medical blackmail,” she snapped, heat slipping through despite herself. “That’s low, even for you.”

He shrugged. “I’m not the one pulling the trigger.”

Her chest felt like it had shifted off its axis and refused to settle. And Pero continued to watch her closely—just as she always did to her marks. For leverage, logging fracture lines, the smallest tells. Weird to be on the receiving end of that look.

“Here’s the math your boyfriend should care about,” he said evenly. “Ring or ruin. Page Six lights the match, the blogs fan it, and everything else burns. The press smells blood, the market reacts, and his own shareholders tear him apart. Very simple.”

She looked back down at the tablet, at the implications.

Harry’s privacy. His body, his ultimate choices. The way he’d never mentioned it—at least come close to it—could not be deceit or trust. Some things were allowed to remain stifled. Because wanting something badly enough to suffer for it didn’t make it anyone else’s business.

And Pero wanted to exhume it publicly with a fucking smile and a digital shovel.

“You’re asking me to...” Words failed her. Oh. Oh no.

She’d done bad things, lived with them, justified them, but this asked her to—oh, it was horrible. To turn her voice into a weapon and aim it at someone she knew too well. And the reason—an exit, a fortune, the illusion of a clean slate—sat there gleaming, ugly and irresistible all at once.

God, she used to think like that.

“I’m asking you to remind him,” Pero corrected, “that privacy is an amenity. Once it has a price tag, it’s all just inventory. You know this.”

That used to be her language, too. Cold. Inventory. Ruin. She’d once reduced people to assets and exposure and margins, and hearing it now—applied to him—felt like swallowing bile. Disgusting.

Her fingers had curled around the edge of the table. She forced them to loosen, one by one. No. Control the body, then the room. Old rules still worked.

This wasn’t a job anymore.

When it had been about her, she could price risk like currency—skin, reputation, exits, burn rates. Love fucked that math clean in half. Love was a liability; emotional, irrational, impossible to hedge.

Which meant Pero had finally played the right card.

“Super,” she sighed. “Back to square one.”

PHONE CALL BETWEEN HARRY C. AND EVE

Harry. ... Harry, I’m okay, just needed to breathe for a bit. ... Honey, come on. I said I'm alright. ...I am so goddamn mad at you. Very mad. Spanking mad. Ooh. Stop laughing. Testy. I’ll make it up to you tonight. I’d like to see you try. God, I love when you’re mad at me. Does Daddy promise to tie me up and spank me?... Sorry. My boyfriend. He loves bondage and butt stuff. What in the— Don’t act shy now. I rode your face all morning. You’re not getting fucked out of this discussion, sweetheart. Did you find Ben? No, I canno—oh, hi, Ben. He’ll bring you back home... Baby. Baby, I need you to be serious. And who might you be? Just—are you alright? Is something bothering you? Talk to me, and I can make it all go away. ...I promise I’m fine. I’m on my way to you. Good. Get here. I want eyes on you. Yes, Daddy. It is your fault I like that. Your fault, you hear me?

By the time she and Ben made it back to the island, Château Castillo had tipped fully into fête and excess.

In the four hours she’d been gone—two productive, two absolutely unnecessary and, therefore, essential—the villa had been re-skinned into a spectacle. Now, she could’ve wrapped the whole mainland detour in an hour, easily. Instead, she’d burned the extra time doing what she did best: running Harry’s card one more time for the perfect dress, because if this really was her last night in Monaco, she refused to go quietly... or cheaply.

Sensual drum and bass throbbed through the trees along the pier, basslines vibrating up through the wooden planks underfoot. The song drifted over the water from the terrace, Labrinth half-swallowed by conversation and the breeze.

“I took your heart, I did things to you only lovers would do in the dark...”

Laughter broke loose in decadent bursts from the terrace. Champagne flutes chimed. Track lights cut hard shadows along ivy and clematis-covered walls, the whole estate teetering between high-gloss glamour and fever-dream.

Big bucks love a party, she believed. Especially when it thinks nothing can touch it.

The speedboat docked, and the second her heels touched stone, a good thing returned. Not relief—damn, nothing that clean—perhaps the peace of returning to familiar ground.

Ben steadied her without ceremony as she navigated the pebble path in her white Manolos, biting into the ground like they meant business. The stunning dress did the rest.

Bond-girl scarlet, nothing strategic about it. Pin-thin straps framing a back cut low, a plunging cowl-neckline in front that dared anyone to look twice, a thigh-high slit that only revealed skin when she wanted it to, and a short train that kissed the ground.

A dress that said, sweetly, baby, I’m yours—and, just for her Harry, in invisible ink: ...to fuck.

She inhaled deeply, then leaned closer to Ben as they walked.

“Hey, Ben,” she murmured, voice pitched low. “Look, I know you worship your boss. And I know you probably think I’m a walking red flag with tits.”

His nostrils flared a little. He didn’t slow.

“I know you also think I’m a no-good asswipe, a two-bit thief, blah, blah,” she went on. “In my defence, I’ve been very consistent.”

He glanced at her, unimpressed.

“But,” she added, softer now, “I would never be that person to Harry. Not after... everything we have now.” A beat. “I’m trying to be better than my worst instincts. He deserves that.”

They stopped just before the main terrace, the music swelling around them. For a moment, Ben studied her like he was recalculating something he’d already written off.

Then he exhaled and shoved his hand back into his suit pocket. “Yeah. Well.”

She pressed her lips together, nodded once. “Okay. Cool.”

“Don’t pull anything stupid around him again,” he said gruffly. “And we’re square.”

She pouted. “Again?”

He shot her a look. “Don’t push it.”

A sly grin tugged at her mouth anyway. “Doesn’t mean you like me, right?”

“It means I don’t trust you,” he corrected, already gesturing toward the terrace. “Move it.”

He totally liked her. She snickered under her breath as she stepped into the light, into the music, into her illusion. “I can live with that.”

Within the villa, the living room had been annexed by money. Air-conditioning whizzed at a perfect, wasteful temperature while music pulsated all around through too discreet Bang & Olufsen speakers. Staff glided between clusters of guests with trays held just so, choreographed and imperceptible. Thirty, maybe forty people total, and she was fairly certain at least two of them had co-founded Intel. One handsome face belonged to a rugged man currently headlining the most popular HBO show on television.

The cumulative wealth in the room could’ve propped up a third of Rio for half a century, and instead it was buying champagne foam and amazing sound systems.

She edged past the busiest knot of bodies on the terrace—and then her chest did that stupid, traitorous thing because there he was.

Harry Castillo, destroyer of her endorphins, decked out in a sexy, slim tux, so obsidian it caught the light and went almost liquid. His posture carried that familiar storm—contained power, restless energy that never really powered down. Hair slicked back, but coifed curls still sticking out in places, alluring stubble still there because she’d asked him not to shave, and apparently, he listened.

It was ridiculous to wait for her breathing to calm or her stomach to unknot, and honestly, what was the point of trying to be composed when Harry existed?

He hadn’t noticed her yet, currently mid-conversation with a pretty brunette who was looking at him like he was explaining the meaning of life instead of, presumably, boring psychobabble. She clocked the way the woman leaned in, the way Harry smiled politely but didn’t give her the full wattage.

Good, she thought bitterly. Stay disappointed.

She kept her eyes on him as she cut a direct path to the bar.

“What do you give people who absolutely shouldn’t be drinking?” she asked the bartender.

He blinked. “Uh… Death in the Afternoon? I mean, I only made it that one time—”

“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll take two.”

The bartender stared at her like he was watching a slow-motion car crash. She downed the first one in three gulps, shuddered violently, and waved him off when he looked concerned.

She blew a raspberry and reached for the next. “It’s fine. I’m speed-running regret!”

Absinthe and Moët—together and back to back—was a crime against judgment. She knew that. She also knew she had maybe twenty minutes of functional clarity before things got… creative. It had been years since she’d let herself get properly drunk, so her tolerance was a mystery, which felt on-brand for the evening.

Her gaze slid back to Harry. Then—because she was weak—let it drift down.

His legs. Long, lean, strong. Built for movement, for power, for pressing into mattresses and—alright, moving on.

Oh, is that why he had that weird thing about her legs? She grimaced internally. Ew. No. Probably not. Not the best idea to psychoanalyse him now.

Naturally, her feminine brain, disloyal thing, started flipping through memories like it was packing an emotional go-bag. The bullshit she had put his body through for some crazy sex.

That time in missionary when he’d gone still afterwards, like he was afraid to move. That time he’d ridden her on his living room floor, breath wrecked, control completely gone. That time, he’d carried her on his back like she weighed nothing.

She swallowed. There was no escaping how bad a girlfriend she was.

Harry laughed at something the brunette said and turned casually, just scanning the room, and then he saw her.

Instantly, his shoulders squared, his spine straightened, the polite smile dropped, recognition sparked, unmistakably, and her heart slammed up so hard it felt like it might bruise.

He subjected her to a slow scrutiny, inventorying everything he’d been denied for the last few hours. Maybe he needed to reassure himself that she was still real and his girlfriend.

She pretended not to notice, made a show of tucking her hair behind her ear, all casual disinterest, eyes lingering instead on the large abstract piece across the room that looked oddly phallic. She focused on it very hard, lips pressed together, because if she smiled, she’d give herself away.

The heat of his gaze was so tactile, she could feel it, like hands sliding over her skin, mapping familiar territory, and when it finally became unbearable, she looked at him.

Harry angled his head, one perfect eyebrow lifting. The message was clear: Are you planning to stand there all night?

Fine. Message received.

She pivoted, just a little, then let herself turn fully. A small, lazy twirl. A little offer to reap benefits, and let the dress do exactly what it was designed to do. The low back dipped scandalously, the neckline exposed her naughty bits, and the silk clung like it had been sewn into her, and she tossed a wink over her shoulder.

That little, lethal hook at the corner of his lip appeared, tongue pressing briefly into his cheek.

“Excuse me,” he said to the brunette, already stepping aside, never once looking away.

Her first impulse was to close the distance herself—to rush to him, throw her arms around his neck, disappear into him and forget the room, the party, the whole fucking mess waiting patiently in the background. Just Harry.

He stopped before her and had a nice look. From her heels upward, along her thighs, the curve of her waist where the dress hugged her, the swell of her chest, her face—so possessive without being crude.

He only said, “Sweetheart,” and god, he wrecked her.

He drew her into his big arms and kissed her—barely. A brush, a promise of his lips at her cheek, so soft it was almost nothing, which somehow made it more devastating. He knew just how to get her wanting.

“Hi, honey,” she said, tipping her chin up, smiling. “Didja miss me?”

“So much, I’m starting to feel selfish,” he murmured, mouth near her ear. “I want you all to myself right now.”

She sighed out a laugh. “Like you didn’t already outsource that part.” She leaned back to glance up at him, unapologetic. “You had me followed, Harry. What was that about?”

A thoughtful beat. Then—no denial—“You disappeared,” he said, jaw flexing.

“You tailed me.”

“Because you vanished without a word.”

The conflict there was real—annoyance threaded through relief, care sharpened into proprietary. The invisible line he was trying to draw to keep her within reach.

“I didn’t vanish,” she said, softer now. “I handled something. And I came back.”

He searched her face like he was trying to read what she wasn’t ready to say. Finally, his thumb brushed the inside of her wrist, right over her hopping pulse.

“You scare the shit out of me, baby,” he admitted.

Her smile flickered. “Smart man. Remember that.”

Half a laugh escaped him as he pulled her closer again, forehead resting briefly against hers. “Next time, you tell me before you go off playing lone wolf.”

“Next time, you don’t put eyes on me without asking.”

His lips curved up. “We can circle back to that—”

“No, no, no, there will be no circling—you cannot stalk your girlfriend, that is—”

“Yes, okay, okay. Alright...” he appeased, and when he tilted his head in resignation, she blew out a breath. “Care to let me steal you for the night?”

An electric thrill flared through her; he was speaking her language. She slid her free hand from his shoulder down his arm and laced their fingers together, grounding herself in the solidity of him. In Harry Castillo, here and real and safe and hers.

“Convince me,” she teased.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted again—dark, intent. “Watch me.”

The spell he spoke snapped shut, and he lifted a hand to her jaw, thumb brushing gently at her lip, wiping away a faint smear of red. The Castillo emerald flashed cool against her skin as his fingers traced downward, and she pressed herself closer without meaning to, clutching his lapels.

Just kiss me already, she thought, absurdly undone.

When he finally did, it was building, sluggish and affectionate—soft lips moving with hers, feeling her out. Just enough to make her breathe his name into the space between them before he broke away, nudging her hair aside and murmuring a “gorgeous girl” against her neck, minty breaths warming her right up. He used his tongue to lick that spot that connected right down to her downstairs, and she was ready to blow.

She moaned deeper. “Kidnapping’s never sounded this sexy.”

He hummed into her neck, grazing another kiss that she felt at every nerve ending. “And we haven’t even gotten to the restraints yet.”

She blinked, then laughed softly as he pulled away to flash his wicked grin. “You’ve been holding out on me,” she said, pointing accusingly at his chest. “Since when do you have a drawer for this, you kinky slut?”

He laughed, poking a playful finger at her nose. “Speaking of holding out... I thought you should see this.”

Then he reached for his phone inside his jacket, and she felt it before she saw anything, how reality crept back in through the cracks.

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “If you’re about to show me the thousand grainy shots of us on that speedboat while faceless strangers call me your nameless whore—”

“Not that,” he cut in, irritation flickering. “That’s already being handled.”

“Buried,” she corrected. “For now.”

Even from across borders and time zones, she’d noticed the way certain links stopped loading or how the nastier headlines slipped off the first page within hours. Comment sections mysteriously locked, and accounts quietly suspended. The algorithm didn’t do that by accident—her obsessed rich boy’s money and lawyers did. A PR team moving like a cleanup crew after a chemical spill.

She watched his face closely, sighing. “It’ll surface eventually, Harry. Things like that always do.”

“Surface how?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. A man used to problems dissolving before they reached him.

“That your girlfriend is a nameless whore.”

“Stop—you’re not a...” He exhaled through his nose.

She shrugged, unaffected through the miles-deep armour. “Public opinion doesn’t care about accuracy.”

“I do,” he said immediately. Then, gentler, already steering them away from the edge—“I’ll deal with press and PR when I’m ready to introduce you to online weenies who think headlines count as intimacy. Can we not turn tonight into that?”

She tilted her head, studying him. “So… no red carpets? No movie premieres and arm candy moments?”

“No, that’s what my other girlfriends are for.”

Laughing, she smacked his chest before she could think too hard about that sentence. He caught her easily, arm locking around her waist, pulling her back into him so she stumbled and ended up flush against his body.

“There’s a lot of boring legalese I don’t want to dump on you right now,” he murmured as expected. “We’ll sort out the details later.”

Now, if she didn’t react at all, she might’ve asked the wrong question—like how long before someone slid a phonebook-looking NDA across a table and called paperwork as protection. Or how many signatures it took to become invisible properly. Or how love looked once it passed through legal.

She already knew the answer. She searched his face—the sincerity, the blind spots, the way love and control sat side by side in him without ever arguing.

“I have you now,” he said simply. “Rest is all noise.”

Her mouth opened on instinct—because noise had contracts, and teeth, and a way of ruining lives—but he didn’t let her get there. He lifted his phone and pushed it into her space like a physical interruption.

The second time today, someone had used a screen to upend her life. Wild until it felt statistically rude.

“Harry—”

“Just look.”

She squinted, the absinthe buzzing pleasantly through her veins, irritation sharpening her focus. The screen resolved into something aggressively official.

A portal—GED Testing Services. Her name under a neat little table, four rows, four sins she’d been dodging for years: Math, Reasoning, Science, Social Studies. All with dates, locations, and confirmation numbers.

She stared at it, then at him, then back at the screen like it might confess to fraud if she glared hard enough.

“…Why does it say I’m enrolled?”

“Because you are.”

Her head snapped up. “What the hell did you do?”

“You were never going to do it,” he said, matter-of-fact. “A filled-out application was just sitting there, waiting. You meant to, and you didn’t. So I... pushed.”

“No.”

“Helped?” he rephrased.

“Helped,” she repeated flatly, tasting the word. It tasted a lot like control. Goddamn Charlotte was fucking right.

He flashed a pleased smile. “Nice going, superstar. You’ve got three months until your first test.”

Three months. She couldn’t even begin to pretend she knew what day it was, let alone three months from now. How the hell did calendars work again?

“But I have—”

“No commitments until then,” he cut in smoothly, already lifting two fingers to catch the bartender’s eye. “I’ve got you covered.”

Two champagnes appeared, definitely summoned by the scent of his money alone.

“You just sit tight,” he continued, “study hard, pass some tests.”

She laughed once—sharp, defensive. “Sit tight, where? On the fucking street? Because that’s where I’ll be if I miss rent. Hope you like kissing your frozen nameless whore.”

He rolled his eyes—so adorable whenever he did. It was not often he resorted to that. “None of that is true.”

“Love the confidence.”

“You won’t have to make rent because,” he said patiently, “you’re sleeping with your landlord.”

“Oh,” she said slowly through the realisation. “So I’ve been downgraded. I’m not even your whore anymore. Just… a whore.”

“Enough with the whores,” he sighed.

She scoffed. “Said no straight man ever.”

“I’m the landlord you’re sleeping with,” he repeated, slower now, as if it were obvious.

Her tipsy paranoia latched onto one terrifying possibility. “Omigod, you did not. Baby, did you... buy my apartment building?”

“Not a bad idea, but,” he said immediately. “I respect the Geneva Conventions. Also, I’m not in the business of making hellholes profitable.”

She cracked up with a small laugh. He reached up, palm warm against the side of her head—possessive, gentle, infuriating. “Besides, I have something better in mind.”

She narrowed her eyes. “No, you don’t.”

“You can stay at one of my places in the city.”

She blinked. Drunk enough now that this felt like an improv exercise. “Jesus Christ. Wow.” She shook her head. “Okay, um—Which one?”

He hummed. “The big one. The one I’m staying at.”

She bit back a grin. “And you will be staying…?”

“Extremely,” he said, “inconveniently close to you.”

“Harry,” she drawled, laughter threading through it, because if she didn’t, she might panic.

“I’m not asking you to move in,” he said quickly, as if he could hear the alarm gearing up in her and wanted to head it off. “Just—temporarily. Until you finish your diploma. Clear your head. Get your footing. Then we slow it down, talk about what’s next, and settle in… with me.”

The arm wound on her waist tightened possessively. Clearly, he’d already placed the furniture in his head and was mentally measuring the Pierre Frey rugs in the living room.

She was acutely aware of how it read from the outside. The few people who had started glancing their way, curiosity sharpening now that she’d been pulled closer, and that she looked less like an accessory and more like a question.

Infuriating Harry noticed none of it. Or maybe he did and didn’t care. His attention stayed locked on her, total, undiluted, like she was the only variable worth tracking.

“You’ve known me less than five business minutes,” she said, when he leaned in and stroked his nose against hers. “Fate clocked in way too early.”

He smiled against her mouth. “It was enough to know I want more.”

A disbelieving smile curved at the edge of her lips. “Are you that serious about me?”

“I am,” he said, eyes boring deep into hers. “And we’re still learning each other. I like that.”

She searched his face for the pivot—the moment where he’d hedge, soften, retreat. It never came.

“You realise this isn’t how most people do this, right?” she said casually, but there was an edge under it. “You don’t even have the full picture.”

And god, it was awful that he didn’t. He didn’t know the mess, the backtracking, the careful omissions. He didn’t know how often she’d reinvented herself just enough to stay afloat.

His face softened. “I don’t need to have you figured out to know I love you.”

Well, slap my ass and call me breakfast. Why was he like this? How did those words just fall out of him like that? Like they didn’t spike her pulse to an embarrassing 142 and set off a cascade of entirely unhelpful bodily responses?

Because it was working, unfortunately, and not in the poetic, soul-deep way she could intellectualise out of—no, it was working lower. Hotter. Soaking fucking wet between her legs and absolutely unbidden.

She pressed her palm to his chest, to the one thing she trusted. He could bullshit the world, but this never lied. His heart stuttered under her touch, frantic, earnest, a rhythm she’d memorised without meaning to.

“You're insane,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Crazy, dumb, delusional—Jesus—”

She gave up, dropping her forehead to his. There was no arguing with someone dead set on investing money, time, and affection into her particular brand of shit.

“I need a drink,” she mumbled.

“I watched you put away two already,” he remarked, amused, as she pivoted, claimed the champagne flutes from the bar, and pressed one into his hand like a rebuttal.

She raised her glass. “There. Now, here’s to me hoping I pass my GED,” she said brightly, smile dialled to dazzling. “It’s easier than forging one.”

He laughed that deep rumble. “I’ll drink to whatever makes you smile like that.” He lifted his glass up to hers. “Then it’s settled. I’m not going anywhere... Salud, mi amor.”

Hot, very hot. “Salud,” she echoed.

They clinked glasses. And she drank—fast—already filing away the way he’d handled her future like a solved problem, already planning how to stay grateful without being owned, already deciding which truths to keep quiet a little longer.

Because love, apparently, came with logistics. She was very, very good at surviving those.

The champagne went down and didn’t stop. Bubbles, burn, warmth blooming low in her belly—she drank like she was erasing something line by line.

The bass-heavy music swelled, taking her swaying body hostage—someone clearly decided subtlety was dead—and she tried, once more, to tug Harry toward the loose half-circle by the fire where bodies were already starting to move.

“Come on, Harry,” she urged. “You don’t have to be good. Your cute butt makes up for everything.”

The spoiled sport shook his head, lips twitching. “I'll stick to watching you from here.”

“Please, for me?” she tried.

He smiled, resolute, and stayed exactly where he was. “Go have fun.”

Fine. Boo this whore. Just because he wasn’t going to dance didn’t mean she wasn’t.

She slipped from his hold, already feeling more lightweight—untethered in that way that came with alcohol and noise and permission.

Dripped up and dazzling in pink Saint Laurent from head to toe, Charlotte Castillo found her mid-step, her eyes glassy, her grin feral. A hand nursed a halfway gin-and-tonic, and her husband was—well, Peter had taken up Harry’s side by the bar, observing the two of them. Was it weird that she was the only one questioning where the hell Sophia was?

Charlotte slurred, “Eeeeeve! Dance with me, babe!”

Charlotte grabbed her hand and dragged her straight into the heat of it—Catalan music clicking, shoes scuffing, warmth licking at her skin, perfume and sweat and expensive liquor blurring the bodies packed close enough that personal space was officially dead.

Someone shoved a drink into her hand. She didn’t ask what it was and drank it anyway. Who the hell was going to hurt her when Harry was around?

This was easier. Movement instead of thought. Sweat instead of fear.

The alcohol loosened her in stages. First her shoulders rolled, then her hips found the rhythm, ass popping. Followed by the tight little coil of vigilance she carried everywhere, finally unclenched. The insistent music threaded through her, and she let it move her—let her body remember how to belong to itself without explanation.

She danced with her eyes half-mast. Hair stuck to her lips from tossing it around; her skin grew damper, her muscles ached, and she twirled with her skirt clutched in one hand. The world reduced to tempo and sway and the delicious, dangerous feeling of being unaccounted for.

Another drink appeared. Then another. She let it happen, lost count.

Each swallow pushed things further out of reach: names, papers, futures spoken too confidently—but the bass drowned them out. Pero dissolved into noise, and the medical documents folded themselves away. Harry’s careful plans, his certainty, his logistics—all of it slid off her like water.

Fuck all of that.

Rosalia sang her heart out in the back. “Pienso en tu mirá, tu mirá, clavá', es una bala en el pecho...”

Right now, there was a thrumming pitch in her chest and heat in her limbs and the simple, glorious anonymity of being just another body moving in the dark.

She closed her eyes—and time lost its edges. The room, sound, and movement melted, smeared into gold and shadow and movement. And then—there were hands on her hips. Familiar, large, safe hands.

She registered Harry the way you register the pull of a magnet: suddenly, undeniably there.

His possessive arms slid around her waist, palms firm against her stomach, her hips, pulling her back until her spine met his chest, moving with her stiffly. The contact sent a shivering, molten jolt straight through her—bare, alcohol-fueled.

She laughed, breathless, tipping her head back against him. “Baaaaaby,” she slurred. “You changed your mind.”

“I got you,” he murmured. Through the liquor haze, she felt his attention sharpen—past her. A man by her hesitated, caught the fierce look on Harry’s face, and wisely retreated, hands up in surrender. Minefield avoided.

Harry’s mouth brushed her neck, but she felt him everywhere: solid behind her, surrounding her, stapling her back to herself while the rest of the night tilted off-axis.

The music surged, lyrics curling through the air—

“Cuando sales por la puerta, pienso que no vuelves nunca, y si no te agarro fuerte, siento que será mi culpa...”

...and her body answered.

She moved into him without thinking, hips rolling, skin electric, the alcohol turning every touch louder, wetter, too intimate. His grip tightened—just a fraction—and it was obscene how grounding that felt, being claimed without being caged.

The room blurred completely then. Faces vanished, time unravelled, drink tally lost.

She couldn’t tell where one drink ended and another began. There was only heat and motion, and the way he kept her upright when her knees went soft. Only the thrum of desire curling hungrily, fed by the dark and the noise and the way she’d decided, consciously, not to stop any of it.

Later—she didn’t know how much later—she’d remember this in fragments. Heat. His breath on her ear. The steady drag of him against her as if he was reminding her of what she belonged to.

But for now, in it, she didn’t fight the blur. She let herself be drunk, held, touched and forget. Tomorrow could have its logistics and consequences.

Tonight belonged to the wild ones.

“Stop taking pictures of me. Seriously, I look disgusting.”

“No, and absolutely not. I’ve been photographing you this entire trip like a responsible archivist, and I will not stop now—”

She clapped both hands over her face, tipsy laughter bubbling up. “No!”

“—because my stunning girlfriend,” he continued, circling her like a menace with a phone, “is somehow even more beautiful—”

“But I am so druuuunk—”

“—when she’s shitfaced. Exactly. Come on, give me something. A pose.”

She peeked through her fingers just in time for the phone to make that elderly, loud snap! noise. The man owned half of New York and still hadn’t figured out how to silence his camera shutter.

“Harry!” she whined, lunging for the phone.

He dodged easily, laughing, standing just out of reach, still snapping away like a paparazzo with tenure. “Gotcha. That one was excellent. Pissed-off. Very sexy.”

“You’re such a dick,” she laughed, abandoning dignity entirely.

To humour him—because she was drunk, because the sea breeze had loosened her bones, because it felt good to be adored at her lowest—she cupped her palms under her chin and gave him her most exaggerated influencer smile. Big eyes, overcommitted pout, zero shame.

Harry lit up behind the screen like he’d just struck oil.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

“Oh my god, enough,” she said, dissolving into laughter. “You’re going to fill your phone.”

“Just a few more...”

He looked unfairly good like this—blazer slung over one arm, shirt half-undone, sleeves rumpled, like he’d misplaced the part of himself that scared boardrooms. She, meanwhile, was barefoot, Manolos abandoned in one hand, a thousand-dollar dress wrinkled beyond salvation, hair a beautiful disaster wrecked by sweat and hands.

Eventually, satisfied, he dropped down beside her with a pleased little exhale. “Gonna last me a few days.”

She noticed it even through the soft fog of alcohol—that careful way he lowered himself, the subtle pause, the strenuous stretch, the grunt he tried to pass off as nothing.

She squinted at him, a smirk gone affectionate. “Bad knees at your age, grandpa?”

“Not eighteen anymore, little girl,” he joked along.

The sea stretched out before them, black, jagged like the inside of a broken piece of coal, breathing softly against the shore. The music from the villa now felt distant, muffled, as if it belonged to another night entirely.

Liquid courage nudged her forward. “Is that why you’ve got those scars?” she asked, too casual by half. “To fix it?”

He glanced at her, mortification flashing across his face, as though she’d undressed him with a look and found something to mock.

“No,” he said quietly, eyes dropping to the water. His throat worked. “Not really. It’s just—it’s something different.”

Her brain lagged, drunkenness suddenly feeling clumsy, intrusive. She opted to stay quiet.

He stared out at the sea, jaw tightening, breath slowing as if he were practising composure in real time. When he spoke again, his voice was steady—but it had taken some work.

“I’d rather talk about it when you’re more clear-headed,” he said. “And when I… know how to say it.”

She nodded softly. “Okay.”

He glanced back at her then, a faint, grateful curve touching his mouth. “Okay.”

They sat there like that for a moment—close, quiet, the night holding its breath around them—her drunk and loose-limbed and unguarded, him thoughtful and suddenly, disarmingly human.

Harry had never mentioned the leg-lengthening surgery or even hinted at it, not once. And suddenly she understood why. This wasn’t a secret you shared to deepen intimacy. You buried this stuff because it belonged to a version of yourself you’d already killed. You didn’t exhume that kind of thing for “love.” You survive, move on, and become someone no one could look down on again.

Here was the part that got under her skin: for this to be an option—this kind of methodical pain and suffering—something else had to be worse. Worse than titanium rods hammered into bone, learning to walk again or years of controlled agony measured in millimetres.

Which meant someone, somewhere, had made him feel small enough that breaking himself felt like improvement. It was a humbling, humanising thought to have.

It sharpened protectively until it sprang tears in her eyes.

To commodify himself for perfection or chase some superficial ideal to get a real connection was horrible. And it made sense that he had to push all that insecurity down and present himself as powerful. Desirable.

“I'm thinking that,” Harry hummed, leaning onto his palms as the sea breeze scattered at his curls and flattened his shirt tight around his amazing chest, “we fly to Italy next. Milan, Lake Como, and Venice for a few more weeks. What do you say?”

“You have work,” she tried to mutter, running a finger under her waterline to catch the wetness.

He clicked his tongue. “I can let up for a little longer. Peter's got my back.”

“He's still no mighty Harry Castillo.”

His teeth flashed in the dark. “Lucky me. But, I don’t need the title, baby,” he said, then nudged her shoulder. “I already won.”

Loving him felt inevitable when he put it like that. She sniffed, the liquor haze dragging her under once more. Good god, it must be nice being Harry. But, of course, it came with its fair share of shit.

Still, the thought wouldn’t loosen its grip—the idea of him, somewhere inside, unbearably insecure enough to build himself like this. To engineer worth. To suffer clinically for inches, for symmetry, for something invisible but loud enough to haunt him.

The tears didn’t stop coming, and it startled her, honestly. She hadn’t cried like this in years, and she was fairly certain she’d donated her tear ducts to the Salvation Army at some point—right around the time she learned that crying was for people who felt safe enough to fall apart. She’d made a career out of not being that.

“Fine, I fold,” Harry was saying, still trying to rescue the mood, all hopeful. “Maybe we don’t go far. How does L.A sound? Dad’s place is empty for the season. We could wander Hollywood Boulevard, find your Keanu Reeves star, have La Scala set aside a table for dinner, and—”

He turned, and his grin fell immediately.

“Baby?”

She gave up on pretending. Dragged the heel of her hand across her eyes, smearing mascara, nose betraying her with an undignified sniffle. It was hideous and natural, and she hated that it was happening in front of him. Or anyone.

“Hey,” he murmured, already moving closer. “C’mere. Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted between a sob, the words tumbling out before she could organise them into something less vulnerable. “I’m so sorry, Harry. I’m sorry...”

He didn’t ask questions; he simply took her face in his hands, thumbs brushing away tears, then pulled her fully against him.

The glorious Harry cuddle returned. It swallowed her whole—face buried in his shoulder, senses overwhelmed by him. Oud le Castillo in her nose, the soft give of his Brooks Brothers shirt under her palms, his strong arms locked around her like a perimeter nothing could cross. For a moment, nothing existed outside of that hold. Nothing could hurt here.

“Oh, baby, no,” he shushed gently, stroking her hair. He took off into a ramble. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. Knowing your track record with running, I thought that—shit, I don’t know—I was wrong to put Ben after you, and it wasn’t about trust, I just—” He stopped himself, exhaling. “You deserved space, too. I should’ve handled it better. Just... honey, please stop crying. You’re breaking my heart. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated anyway, because it felt like the only true thing she had. Her voice cracked, muffled into his shirt. “I’m really sorry.”

He didn’t rush her as she assumed he would. He waited, arms warm and firm around her, until the tremor eased just enough for him to ask, carefully, like he was stepping onto thin ice, “For what?”

She swallowed. The answer had been living in her chest for weeks, sharp-edged and unwelcome, and it was time to give it air.

“For taking your ring,” she whispered.

“What—”

“I’m sorry I took your ring that night, Harry. I told myself it was just metal. Money I need.” Her mouth twisted. “But I know what it was really about—and I don’t want to treat you like that anymore. I am such an evil bitch.”

His arms tightened slightly.

“Baby, really,” he sighed, lips pressing gently into her hair. “I don’t care about the ring. We’re far past that.”

She inhaled shakily and pulled back, needing him to see her say this. Her eyes were red, swollen, stripped of their usual clever distance. No more angles left to hide behind.

His hand came up again, slower now, thumb brushing under her eye as if he was half-convinced she might bolt if he moved wrong.

“In a fucked-up way,” he said quietly, “that ring brought you to me.”

She let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost a sob. “Yeah. It did.” Then, softer, honest: “And you changed the math. You make me want to be more every day.”

A small smile twisted at his mouth. Something crossed his face—recognition, perhaps. The understanding of what it meant to rewrite your own equations.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I know what that feels like. You don’t have to do this.”

She hated moments like this—they always demanded irreversibility. The space between them narrowed until it felt like a corridor with no side doors left. There was only one honest direction left to go—forward.

“I do,” she insisted. “Because I love you.”

No flourish to soften the plain finality, the words came out honest—terrified, relieved, exhausted down to the bone. “More than I let myself believe was even on the table. Because loving you means I can’t run anymore. It means I don’t get to half-ass this. It means I actually give a shit what happens to you. And I will do everything I can for you. Anything.”

An expectant beat.

“Also, I’m... uh, sorry if that scares you.”

For a moment, he looked genuinely stunned—as if the universe had just miscalculated and handed him something precious by accident. A dozen reactions crossed his face in rapid succession, and none of them lined up politely: shock, a stunned smile, a faltering crease between his brows, words lining up only to scatter again.

“That’s a dumb thing to apologise for,” he said finally, a big, dazed laugh slipping out. “But could you—” He gestured vaguely, like he didn’t trust his voice yet. “Could you say it again?”

She sniffed, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “What?”

“I don’t ever want to forget how that sounded,” he murmured. “Say it. Tell me you love me.”

Her smile broke through now—small, crooked, still damp around the edges.

“I love you,” she echoed. “I love you so much, Harry.”

He dropped his head forward, exhaling hard, like the world had finally decided to give him one clean win. When he looked back up, his eyes were dark, bright, absolute, and wrecked yet unmistakably hers.

“Once more?” she teased.

“Please,” he laughed. “I want to make it my ringtone.”

She laughed with him, their foreheads coming together, fragile anchors, his palm warm at her nape. No reassurance was needed. This was their wordless ‘I am staying.’

“I love you,” she promised him.

Eight hours ago...

Sure—Pero had played it clean. Clean for his dumbass, anyway.

He’d come to her directly instead of circling like a coward. He’d waved his benefactor in her face, and then there was the sweetener: the Fairmont envelope slid across the table like a magician finishing a trick he was very proud of.

She hadn’t opened it right away. People in her profession always made sure the number looked and felt heavy before they ever counted it.

“Eighty grand,” he said eventually, smirking when her eyes didn’t drop. “And counting. You get the rest after I get the ring.”

After.

And still—he was wrong about one thing.

Whatever had driven Harry to that operating table wasn’t going to be weaponised while she was still breathing.

This wasn’t about a five-million-dollar ring or an old lover trying to drag her back into the familiar dirt. This was about a man who had trusted her without telling her everything—and someone else trying to turn that silence into an arrow.

She lifted her eyes, face already composed, already locking things away. Years of practice slid into place. This fucker had no idea how many long games she’d survived—how many rooms she’d walked out of empty-handed and still breathing.

“Let me save you some time,” she said, folding her hands on the table, levelled voice, almost bored. “I’m not getting you that ring.”

The smirk faltered a fraction. “Cute. Playing principled?”

“Oh, no,” she said calmly. “This is where you find out you misread me.”

“You really want to burn this bridge for him?” he asked, pointing between them. “Some rich guy who didn’t even tell you the whole story?”

“He didn’t lie,” she replied. “Your problem is he didn’t suffer enough.”

He leaned back like he needed distance from the thought, lips curling. “And you’re being fucking naïve,” he said, recovering. “You want a happy ending with someone like that? What, because he’s loaded? Come on.”

The old sermon came next, the part where inevitability became truth. He continued before she could answer.

“Guys like Castillo?” he went on softly—he always sounded smartest when he asked her to give up. “They ain’t got peace. They get mileage. Secrets stacked on scars stacked on regrets.” He cocked his head. “You don’t get to call it love and fuck away the guilt.”

She felt it register, slot into place—and then break apart. Because she’d lived that prophecy already. She knew the script: rich, untouchable, and all alone. She knew what it cost to never choose anything that could hurt you.

She smiled mirthlessly. “You ever notice how your ‘truths’ always end right where your courage does?” She shook her head. “Funny how that works.”

His jaw tightened.

“You don’t build what we build and walk away whole,” he stated, colder now. “We get rich, and we get empty. That’s the price of the trade. You either accept it, or you waste years fighting it.”

An electric silence stretched until she leaned forward slightly, gaze unwavering.

“Harry doesn’t owe me a pretty little ending,” she said. “He doesn’t owe the world his scars. And you don’t get to fucking auction them.”

His smile faded.

“You walk away from this,” Pero warned. “From the money and protection, and me. You know what happens next.”

She did, and that was the point. The fear had already been priced in.

She stood, unhurried, already finished. Controlling the tremble in her fingers, she laid her hand over the hilt of the gun and slid it an inch closer to his reach.

“Do whatever the hell you want, Pero,” she said evenly. “Chase me, threaten me, shoot me in my goddamn face. Tell yourself I’m making a mistake if that makes you feel smarter.”

She leaned in just enough for him to hear the truth beneath the calm. “But you don’t get him. And you don’t get to use me as the blade.”

Her eyes hardened, final. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

She straightened, turned, and walked out, leaving the envelope behind.

“You just bought your dumbass another problem, baby!” he called after her.

Overpricing himself. Adorable.

She tilted her head, unimpressed, considering his sloppy threat, then shut the door behind her.

There was, of course, the cards Pero had played, and the possibility that he was really wrong. He would never see the pivot, she thought as her eyes trained onto his silver pistol one last time. Soon enough, the non-negotiable verdict landed—

You don’t touch what’s mine.

© damneddamsy

been a long time, folks! I missed you, but this update after very long is purely because of editing, thinking, and making up conversations with myself (Pero is hard to write) so... what do we think is coming up next? 👀 any ideas?

First: men are bigger emotional spenders than women. She would know; she had to steal to survive. She understood the math of need, that money activated dopamine—quick, cheap, rewarding. For men who choke their feelings into silence, spending money becomes the only emotion they are socially allowed to express. Guilt, desire, loneliness, sex—they swipe it onto platinum cards and unconsciously feel relieved. Trigger the reward, numb the pain.

See Exhibit A, a completely gratuitous, reputation-ruining trip bound for the French Riviera. A private jet, Dom Perignon, six security personnel pretending to look the other way, and a detour that directly contradicted the COP summit Harry was supposed to attend later that year. If the press ever caught wind, she mused, they’d pin him to the wall in think-pieces for recycled pitchforks.

“Now… that wish list of yours—how many times am I on it?” Harry murmured into her ear, his arms a warm cocoon around her in the backseat of the English white Rolls-Royce gliding down one of the world’s most expensive roads.

She wasn’t listening. She had spent the entire ride working her jaw, aggressively popping her ears from the flight, and felt half-deaf. All she registered was the street sign that flashed past the window—

MONTE-CARLO.

She snapped upright like someone plugged her into a socket, with a medically concerning wide grin. “We’re going shopping? Already?”

Harry’s rumbling chuckle skimmed her spine before his lips did—a soft, claiming kiss at her neck. “I’ll open every store in this city just for you, sweetheart.”

“Well, you owe me. I’m taking compensation,” she affirmed.

He gave her a look—an assessing, who-the-fuck-are-you-kidding once over.

“One thing. Singular,” she falsely swore. “And don't try to upsell me.”

“Me?” Harry placed a hand over his heart, a glint in his eyes. “I would never.”

The car slowed at the Casino Square. Auric light welled forth everywhere—over the marble, over the tourists, over Harry’s profile. Monte Carlo glowed like a brilliant appetite.

He got out first whilst buttoning back his blazer, circled to her door, and offered his hand. “M’lady.”

“M’Harry,” she joked, placing her hand on his. “One little thing, okay?”

“Small things,” he reminded her, brushing a kiss to her knuckles.

“You make that very hard,” was all she said, grinning away.

A good-to-know about people like Harry? They slipped into love. Momentum, gravity, and foolishness, all of which she never trivialised. Once they began, they could never stop.

This brought her to the second truth about men. A shocking number—especially the wealthy, insulated, delusionally confident ones—are far more comfortable expressing affection with their wallets than with their actual mouths.

And it’s not entirely their fault. Our patriarchal society hands them a ‘provider’ manuscript at birth and applauds every time they hit a payment milestone. So, of course, they grow up conditioned to think love is a financial plan, affection is a transaction, and devotion is a receipt.

Enter, stage left... à la financial exploitation. Because these gentlemen, sweet dumbasses that they are, beg you to abuse your power when they confuse benevolence for emotional intimacy. And that’s where she flourishes—pull a string, twist a thread around her finger, anchor a smile just so, and voilà—

“It’s so hard to choose one when I look this good,” she sighed at her reflection, wrist adorned with a rose-gold Bulgari Serpenti Viper bracelet that looked like it was alive, slithering around her arm. The matching earrings sparkled when she swept her hair behind her ear, angling herself so the private shopping lounge's lighting hit the gems exactly right. She had never felt more beautiful in her life, in her own skin.

“Bling,” she sang out with a laugh.

Madonna would’ve applauded. A material girl in a material world, except this one had no idea what to do with a man who wasn’t trying to buy her.

The young French retail associate perked up instantly—scenting commission like prey. “The necklace is available as well, madame.”

Her brows lifted. “How much?”

“It comes to sixty-two thousand before—”

“Mhm. Harry, honey.” (Translation: Watch this.)

She turned to him instead, giving him the full effect: wrist, earrings, neck, attitude, feline smile. She stroked the earring with two fingertips—slow, delicate, tempting—designed to detonate somewhere irrational.

“How do I look?” she asked. Then pouted when he didn't answer, “Too much?”

Harry gave her a look that lasted precisely three seconds—but it was loaded. Unbearable fondness, stunned pride, possession, utter helplessness. Suddenly:

“We’ll take it,” he said, already producing his Amex, never taking his eyes off her.

She opened her mouth. “But, I also like the—”

“All of it,” he finalised.

She wrinkled her nose to hide her delight, glancing back at her reflection in the mirror. Psh, you call that a challenge? The man probably sneezed bigger numbers.

The retail associate exhaled a dreamy sound (he had that effect), and already she was sending the pieces off to be packaged into velvet boxes.

As Harry turned away to address one of his security detail—a tall, stoic man with an earpiece—everything in the store deviated into motion. Staff straightened, faraway shoppers snuck glances. Thus was the strange solemnity of fortune: it rearranged the atoms in the room.

The associate leaned in, her voice a whisper. “Mademoiselle, your boyfriend loves you very much.”

Her lips curled. Delightful, very delightful.

“Ah… je ne sais pas,” she hummed, tilting her head as if considering it. Thank you, elementary school French. “It seems I love his credit card more than I love him.” (I don't know.)

The woman snorted into a laugh, hand over her mouth. “Moi aussi.” (Me, too.)

They shared a conspiratorial grin—the universal sisterhood between women who knew the bizarre, fragile ego of wealthy men. As the associate wrapped each piece methodically—tissue, velvet box, gold ribbon—she watched the choreography of French indulgence unfold.

Angles, shadows, glass reflections—Harry’s security combed them all. A sommelier in a suit offering seltzer served in crystal glasses; soft, murmured French from the staff; and, of course, trailing their boss: his favourite thief.

It became a neat little pattern through the hours—store, sparkle, look, swipe. By the third boutique, she wasn’t even entering them; she simply paused outside the window display, hands behind her back, pretending to “just have a look,” and Harry would practically herd her inside before she could finish a sentence.

“You can have a closer look from inside,” he encouraged her.

First stop: Zimmermann, where she strutted in and out of clothes, finally landing on a frayed mini dress that looked like a bottle of Veuve reincarnated as fabric. Then, Hermès, where she decided a Birkin, even boxed, would loom too loudly and settled on a modest canvas Herbag instead. At Stuart Weitzman, he made good on those long-overdue strappy sandals—guilt clearly compounds. L’Occitane supplied the almond body oil she’d been eyeing since forever, and Guerlain, naturally, contributed with the limited-edition Rouge G in its little gold case and pop-up mirror, amongst others.

What truly baffled her was the sincerity. Genuine, earnest, Harry-shaped sincerity. She had his endless attention, his inexplicable compassion, his terrifyingly deep pockets. A trifecta of danger. An emotional booby trap wrapped in a billionaire with soft eyes.

“Do you like it?” he’d ask, always from just behind her shoulder, absolutely crowding her rather than the mirror.

Perfume, shoes, dresses, scarves, lingerie she couldn’t even convince herself to pretend she’d wear outside this place. Every time she tested something on, she could feel the gravitational pull of her own selfishness—a greedy tide licking closer.

She’d look up at him, torn between two internal voices: Too much, too generous, too difficult; or the ever-insatiable, Just take it, he can afford to replace the whole store.

Harry watched her make that moral calculation like it was the cutest maths problem he’d ever seen.

“Take it,” he murmured, eyes certain and annoyingly convinced. “Try more on. Pick whatever you like.”

She swallowed, ignoring the warm pricks climbing her chest. “You don’t think it’s…?”

He shook his head before she could even invent the word. “It’s you. You always look incredible.”

Christ, why did he have to say it like that? He was spending a shitload of money for… what? A woman who had robbed him multiple times and would, if the world demanded it, do so again? Nothing!

Where, exactly, in her beautifully disorganised life was she ever going to wear this Balmain number outside of today?

She twirled in it anyway, arms stretched out, letting the fabric kiss her skin. White, backless, short, gold buttons—so luxurious it made her slightly dizzy. It felt like slipping into another version of herself, one who didn’t lie for sport.

“Yes, I am taking the 407 for dinner,” she declared to her reflection, flicking her hair. “Tsk. Traffic is for mortals.”

Harry lowly laughed from behind her. He was lounging on the viewing sofa, legs set miles apart, like some handsome Roman emperor, espresso in hand, thoroughly entertained by the show.

She couldn’t help the squeal. “Omigod, I’m in love! Look at my butt pop!” She reached back, pawing for the tag. “Two? Three grand—”

“I’ve got it covered,” he dismissed, blowing into the cup.

“Six?” she yelped. “Six!”

He looked too unimpressed for his own good while he set the cup aside. “Rounding error. Cute.”

Harry rose, all polished power and brash indulgence, and approached her with that look—the one that made her feel posh even without the dress. He gently turned her back to the mirror, letting her see the two of them together, her wrapped in gold-trimmed sin, him looking at her as if she were an investment he was delighted to lose money on.

“Go as nuts as you want, sweetheart,” he murmured, fingers gliding slowly down the bare line of her spine. “I made this money so someone drop-dead sexy could enjoy it.”

“Ooh, keep buttering me up, rich boy,” she hummed, leaning into his touch as he reached the point where cloth met skin. “And you’d better keep making more because I am unnaturally expensive.”

He bent down, lips brushing her ear, her temple, his hand journeyed lower—past her ass, along the smooth length of her thigh, worshipping, proprietary.

“Trust me,” he said, thrumming voice sinking into her bones, “you’ll run out of wants before I run out of zeros.”

Her laugh was breathy, disbelieving. “Sure,” she murmured, “but I make a living proving people wrong.”

Dark eyes caught hers in the mirror, intent, hungry, while his hand slipped up the hem of her skirt.

“Mhm…” he hummed, thumb brushing her inner thigh. “I don’t mind owning the fallout.”

Good god. Sexy, smutty man. This unbelievably smutty, slow-burn menace of a man. He was like a Harlequin fantasy—and she was the idiot willingly signing the waiver.

Also, she was absolutely enjoying the electrical storm he was setting off across her skin.

His fingers dipped higher. Her spine bowed before she could think, a soft sound escaping her when he stroked along the soft, soaked heat between her legs. He moved around the edges of her panties, teasing, pushing into her, stroking—mapping her as if with every intention of planting a huge, smug flag.

Of course, he didn’t waste time. The man was efficiency in a $5,000 blazer—he drove two naughty fingers right through the wet fabric.

“Harry,” she warned, reaching back blindly to grab a handful of said blazer.

“Wet for me already?” he teased.

“There’re people—”

“I don't care. Everything you do makes me want you more,” he whispered against her ear, teeth grazing on her helix. “This is all mine.”

Normally, that sentence earned a hard eye roll from her—possessive men were a nuisance. But coming from him, with his breath at her skin and his hand stroking exactly where she wanted it, the words sounded less like a claim and more like a vow.

Then two of his fingers slid inside her, and any rebuttal she had disintegrated on the spot.

Holy fucking hell. She watched in the mirror—watched herself coming undone against the unshakable rhythm of his hand, watched her thighs clench, watched her lips part, watched him behind her, composed and focused. Erotic didn’t even begin to cover it.

In, out, in, out, in, in, in... slow, intentional, slick. It was obvious, he wanted her to see exactly what she looked like when he fucked her.

Just as his fingers coaxed every breath from her throat, and she bit her lip to keep from—

A voice broke through the curtain.

“Madame, the new—oh! Oh mon dieu. Pardon. Pardon!”

Harry withdrew instantly—coward, traitor—leaving her wanting, grasping for air and sanity. He stepped back, already sliding into a lazy leonine sprawl on the sofa as if he had not been knuckles-deep inside her thirty seconds ago.

Meanwhile, she was one heartbeat away from collapsing into the fitting-room carpet. She yanked the skirt down and tried to paste on something resembling human poise.

“He was just helping me… test the… elasticity,” she said brightly, clearing her throat. “Very stretchy. Good stretchy. Sorry—what were you saying?”

The poor attendant stammered through apologies, arms full of dresses, looking everywhere except directly at her. “Ah—oui, I have… the new collection…”

Which would’ve helped because Harry—absolute demon menace that he was—chose that moment to reward her composure by lifting that finger to his lips and giving it a slow, contemplative suck.

“So good,” he mouthed.

She choked on a laugh and converted it into a cough so violent it startled even herself.

The hot (sexual noun) afternoon spiralled from Dior to Celiné, and by the twelfth store, the Rolls’ trunk could have passed for a luxury ransom drop. Shop ‘til you drop was a real thing, and she was feeling it.

She scratched her temple, guilt finally pricking. “Might’ve gone a tiiiiny bit overboard.”

“Might need another car,” he mused, examining the overflowing boot. “Terrible trunk space on this one.”

She groaned when he took her by the elbow. “I’m sorry,” she complained as he gently guided her back to the car. “I have a problem. There’s just too much stuff in this world for me, and it's just not fair.”

“Exactly,” he said without missing a beat. “And you still have the passenger seat to fill.”

She laughed. “And if that fills up?”

He opened her door, leaned down, and murmured, “Then I’ll get to sit you on my lap.” Certainty powered him to press an innocent kiss between her eyes.

Just in time for the third and final note: the richer the man, the more money becomes a proxy for emotion. The poorer the man, the more money reveals emotional pressure. Do with that what you will, and choose wisely.

As for her, Harry Castillo was especially, exceedingly rich.

Which meant her consequences were… expressive. Despicable, disgusting emotional consequences. They were messy, slow, and left indelible stains.

But then there was him—this infuriating, infallibly generous man with too much money and too little sense. And it tasted sour on her tongue, but she had to consider it: was he actually using money as an expression? A screwed-up language? A stand-in for something he couldn’t say because saying it would involve feelings and vulnerability and whatever other allergic reactions most men got?

So bleak for such an embarrassingly sweet, masculine idiot.

Was he really that emotionally illiterate? Did he truly think affection required permits? That protection needed to be itemised? That intimacy came with a warranty card?

How awful—...awfully exceptional.

And the cynical part of her, rather than the diseased romantic—the part that had kept her alive, clever, and one step ahead of all her targets—offered a second interpretation: that maybe Harry wasn’t ‘expressing’ anything.

Maybe this was building dependency. Maybe he was doing that rich-man thing where he and his empire became gravity, and she was expected to orbit him. Maybe he was idealising her, weaponising generosity with diamonds, controlling the dynamic.

Oh, this minted motherfucker.

He probably thought she was some cheap whore he could upgrade! Shower her with shiny shit and expect gratitude sex, and a lifetime of blowjobs. Or worse—a loyal, well-kept, half-domesticated mistress who came shaking her ass the moment he opened his wallet.

“One of these fingers could use a shiny rock for yourself,” he had murmured a while ago, lifting her hand with the newest Graff gold cuff and punctuating each finger with a kiss.

How fucking dare he. Traumatised, damaged, broody—whatever he was, it did not grant him coupons for condescension.

She had game. She had options. She had slipped through tighter traps with nothing but wit, clothes and the ability to vanish in plain sight. She could drop his ass in a heartbeat, disappear into another mask. Who needed him? She could buy all this stuff herself—or get it from someone who didn’t confuse attention with ownership.

It took her a full forty seconds to realise she’d been silently glaring a hole through the side of his head. He glanced up from his phone, caught her expression, and did a startled double-take.

“What’d I do?” He was already diligently setting aside his phone.

“Nothing,” she lied. “Just looking.”

“That is the look of someone deciding where to hide the body. Dial it back.”

She stared, nostrils flared.

He snapped his fingers as if struck with an idea. “I know that look, you get dangerous when you’re hungry. I’m not risking it. Dinner, hm... how about seafood?”

“Huh.”

But then her eyes slid to the rearview mirror—past her own face, past her own indignation, to the rose-gold Bulgari winking from her ears like tiny, expensive accomplices—and the righteous anger betrayed her. So much for integrity; they shattered like glass under a heel.

The Erykah Badu soundtrack wasn’t doing her any favours, either.

“I, I’ll bring the honey, you, you just bring the money…” wafted through the car while Ben in the front seat drummed the beat, mouthing along, “Fingers crossed behind my back… ’cause, Munny, I want you back, la-la-la-la...”

The ugly truth becomes established. When you spend most of your life clawing your way through scarcity—when need always trumps disappointment, when survival means relying on no one but yourself—there is something dangerously comforting about being… cared for.

Alright, okay. Cared for was too generous. Coddled sounded humiliating, and spoiled sounded naive.

But, in that moment, being his cheap whore felt startlingly like rest, or stepping out of the grindstone of her own competence.

Let’s also rephrase that before her feminism card was revoked.

Sometimes, in the give-and-take economy of adult, self-reliant life, it felt disarmingly good to be given to. To imagine a softness she’d never had access to since she was four. To pretend—even momentarily—that the world was generous, that the sky stayed up for her, that there was always a driver waiting with the engine running and she didn’t have to do everything with her own two hands.

But the minute they walked in through revolving doors for dinner, the spell broke, and all the old instincts came rushing back.

While they waited for their table at the bar, she found herself tip-tapping her fingers—an uncharacteristic tell. Everything she usually hid behind lacquered poise spilled through her body language: paranoia, irritation, confusion, an internal spreadsheet of mistakes. She hated being readable, even to herself.

One sweep around the restaurant, casing the crowd, told her everything she needed about her rich boy's not-so-hidden agenda. A humble little hotel spot, if you didn’t know how to look, pared down to its bones—Michelin-starred all the same—defined by clean geometry, ash-grey walls, walnut tables stripped of everything but a sprig of greenery and a trembling tealight.

Besides that, there were no families at the bar and no businessmen slumming it on expense accounts. The people were all waiting for their table, each with a varying definition of lovey-dovey couples: geriatric, millennial, short-term, long-term, bored, excited, desperate, and undisguised. This place wasn’t for fine dining—it was for romance and delusion.

She straightened, spine clicking into hauteur.

If this was the stage, ‘Eve’ had to step back into costume.

As much as she disliked wearing the persona of ‘Eve’ in front of Harry—all the calculated charm, the performative femininity, the illusion of power—it felt like the only expected response to the luxury shopping spree he’d paraded her through. Gentle worlds had rules:—receiving meant returning, and pleasure meant performance.

Wanting Harry Castillo was a frivolity reserved for women with softer childhoods and easier lives. She had neither, but.

She understood ecosystems. Sex, attention, competence, charm—these were the currencies she’d perfected. And if he was going to be generous with his abundance, she also understood the etiquette of the exchange.

Besides, the whole value-at-risk fiasco still hung between them—incredible really, how she could so easily reenact the same night she’d stolen that gorgeous emerald ring straight off his finger. The fact that he still wore it, glinting at her like a private joke, was either a threat or foreplay.

Harry made it infuriatingly easy. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since they walked in and settled down—as if she were some rare commodity he was privately appraising. He sat pressed close against her side, heat coiling through layers of fabric. One hand cradled a glass of Hennessy on the rocks; the other traced languid strokes across her back, territorial in a way that should have pissed her off more than it did.

He was claiming her, evidently, elegantly, effectively. For tonight—and maybe a bit longer—she was his.

She let her eyes drift up to him. His attention snapped to meet hers immediately; of course, it did. The man was a laser-guided weapon when it came to tracking her.

“You’re unfairly beautiful, you know that?” he murmured.

She managed a little smile. “If you say so.”

“...oh, wow.”

And she raised her brows.

“Is that tension I sense, or just wishful thinking?” he asked, a thumb teasing the waistband of her shorts.

Her outfit for the night—jean shorts, a white tank top, messy hair from many ensemble trials—gave off a high-net-worth Kardashian vibe, not ideal for this scene at all. But Eve had built her life on improvising with whatever materials were available; dignity, wardrobe, and morality included.

She angled her body toward him, sliding a hand around his glass. “Try confidence,” she murmured. “I already know what I’m going to do to you tonight.”

He watched her lift his drink, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Do what?”

“I want you so deep inside me that you can’t tell where you end and I begin.”

His only response was to relax, casually unbutton his blazer and lean across the bar to stroke her cheek with the backs of two unbearably warm fingers.

“Alright then, sweetheart.”

…That’s it?

Her eyebrows dipped by a fraction as she brought the drink up to her lips—an expression too small for anyone to catch. Seriously? No quip, no pushback, no challenge? That wasn’t the Harry she knew. That was… him being stupidly, inconveniently, romantic.

Ew, ugh. This is why people warned against ‘fucking feelings’—they diluted your game. A goddamn scam that made everyone go gentle when she needed them sharp.

Fine, okay. Focus. Find leverage.

She took a sip of the drink, mind leaping ahead, searching for heat, anything with a bit of teeth. Her gaze flicked around the bar, scanning for opportunity, especially since her charm wasn’t enough to keep control.

She clocked it all in a single sweep. The distracted bartender had pulled out a bottle of Black Label and set it aside instead of shelving it. Interesting. And then—perfect—the waiter approaching from the far end of the bar with a black leather access card clipped to his belt.

Bless the universe for handing her illicit props.

Her fingers drifted out in an innocent, idle stretch just as he passed, and—slip, dip—the card slipped out neatly and nestled into her palm.

She slid it into her pocket. Zip, zap, zoom, that was more like it.

Her gaze flicked to Harry, who was currently busy receiving a tray of oysters. Obscene things. Glistening, greyish bodies lounging in their curved half-shells and ice chips, randomly sexual somehow in the way only molluscs could be, surrounded by wedges of lemon and parsley stalks.

Harry murmured, “I am starving,” as he immediately set about the erotic ritual of eating them—squeezing lemon with long fingers, prying them loose, offering all of it with a casual, devastating masculinity that made every woman in a ten-foot radius stare.

He lifted one toward her. “Here, try some.”

“No sea filth for me tonight,” she said, dragging the plate aside, shells clattering. She had a keycard burning a hole in her pocket and precisely zero patience left.

Time to escalate.

Harry blinked, halfway to protest. “Babe, what are—”

Social propriety vaporised, and a flash of something hot, reckless, and entirely hers surged forward, and she closed the sliver of space between them—one purposeful lean, a hand in his shirt—and hauled him into a kiss. A shut-up-about-chow-and-feel-me-kiss.

He made a startled, muffled ‘oof,’ hands flinching before instinct took over, and he dissolved into a laugh against her mouth—low, delighted, disarmed—and dragged her in with a force that punched breath straight out of her.

In an instant, he was kissing her back the way he did everything: intensely, completely, with his whole stupid, billionaire heart. There he was, her prodigal fuck-me-now Harry Castillo returns.

The bar blurred into a heat-hazed backdrop—perfume, money, Mediterranean sweat, and too much liquor—but she only tasted him. Warm, male, a little vain, a little startled. A lot hers.

And she gave him the version of herself he kept falling for—the one with invincible lust. Legs slotting between his, hand fisting into the lapel of his blazer, his fingers threading through her hair, another softly stroking the back of her thigh.

God, they were really doing this. Full-on Frenching in the French Riviera like a pair of horny teenagers.

She deepened the kiss, tilting her head, tongue stroking against his, and the taste of him hit her—a hint of Hennessy and purely fantasy. It made her hum a dangerous little sound. If she had even one less moral scruple, she would have laid him flat on the bar and made a headline of them.

Eventually—reluctantly—she pulled back, resting her forehead against his, lips tingling, breath uneven. Harry looked dazed and happy while his nose nudged hers, soft, boyish, and completely at odds with his reputation.

Then panic flickered in his eyes as he darted a look around her shoulder with the full-body oh shit, did anyone see that? But this was a romantic location, and everyone was too busy tongue-wrestling their own mistakes to notice theirs.

“I’d ask why,” he rasped, attention back on her, “but I already know better.”

“Rightfully so,” she said, brushing her thumb over his bottom lip, wiping a smudge of her lipstick he’d stolen. Then softer: “Harry…”

He leaned in, instantly vigilant. His voice dropped several octaves. “What is it, sweetheart?”

She shook her head dumbly.

His brows furrowed, worried. “Hey, ‘sokay, talk to me. Is something bothering you?”

She shook her head again. She hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt and tugged, purring, “Instead... what do you say we get out of here?”

And that—unsurprisingly—was where everything began to tip downhill. Or was it uphill? Her impulses never agreed on the geography of disaster.

In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have moved quite so fast. Yes, exactly—in hindsight. She was operating firmly in now-sight, which tended to be louder, brighter, and catastrophically unbothered by everything.

She didn’t wait for his inevitable, incredulous “wait, what?” or the follow-up “hang on a second,” Harry always defaulted to verbal speed bumps when she made a decision with her whole chest. Too bad for him—she’d already stopped listening.

She hopped off her barstool with the stolen Johnnie Walker tucked under one arm and, with her free hand, caught the wrist he’d half-extended to rein her in.

“You’re so cute when you’re floored,” she said over her shoulder, breezing past him and pulling him into her wake, toward the vestibule. “Come on, come on!”

He followed—of course he did—blazer askew, shirt rumpled from her kissing, eyes glued to the line of her spine and the swing of her ass in shorts. Whatever gravitational field she emitted, it had him at a ninety-degree tilt in her direction.

She spun into the elevator lobby, walking backwards, waving the bottle in a lazy arc. Harry looked one part bewildered, one part aroused, and two parts man-in-over-his-head.

“Did you steal that?” he asked. “When did you—how—I—”

She slipped into her impression of him—smooth, rich-boy drawl. “Yeah, yeah, bought me an entire truck worth,” she mocked. “Please, don’t tell me this is your first brush with petty crime.”

“I have never—and we can’t just—”

“Wow,” she cut in, and her grin sharpened. “Then you’re going to love this.”

She flashed the black keycard between two fingers.

“No,” he refused, eyes wide. “Baby, what did you do?”

Before Harry could seize it, she folded her hand—poof. Tucked up her sleeve, vanishing within, sleight of hand smooth enough to make a stage magician weep.

She didn’t know what she’d use it for yet; improvisation was her native language. And whatever this card unlocked was undoubtedly better than the overpriced sea-slug appetiser.

“Let’s see, where to first…” She tapped her chin theatrically. “Rooftop access? Pool deck? Back kitchen?” Then she gasped. “Omigosh, presidential suite!”

Harry finally caught up to her, striding forward—jaw ticking, shirt untucked, sleeves pushed up like he’d been dragged through a kissstorm (which, to be fair, he had)—and stepped right in front of her, blocking her from the elevator buttons with his whole much-too-distracting body.

“This is not happening,” he started.

She cocked her head. “Oh, look at you. Big man says no. Adorable.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.” She smiled sweetly. “That’s what makes it funny.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. Infuriating. His expression didn’t change either—just flattened, dangerously patient.

She lifted a comical brow at his immovable wall of No. “What, too pussy to play?”

“I don't want to play.” He even used air quotes—air quotes—and somehow managed to look unimpressed while doing it. It knocked her mood—not down a peg so much as sideways. “I want to have a nice dinner with you.”

She sidestepped him, hit the elevator button with a cheerful ding. “No, you don’t,” she dismissed. “You think you do, but you absolutely don’t.”

He wanted a nice, merry dinner. In there. Like civilians with stable attachment styles. What was the point of all that when they both knew what they actually did best? They were built for breaking furniture with fucking chaos, chemistry—not cheese soufflé and dry talk.

Harry reached past her and pressed the button again, turning it off. The little LED died, and so did the buzz under her skin.

He eventually faced her—obsidian eyes, controlled exhale—and she knew instantly she’d miscalculated.

“I actually do. Look, what’s the big deal?” he asked quietly, softly. “Why are we doing this again?”

Oh, she had a list. A whole museum of trauma, neatly catalogued.

But she shrugged it off. As in, Olympic-level bullshit. Because what she really wanted to say was: I am very replaceable. I have to earn your attention like everyone else. If I don’t perform, I am nothing.

But she wouldn’t say any of those things. She’d rather swallow glass than admit them to her own reflection, much less Harry Castillo and his inconvenient sincerity.

Instead, she said, “You’re overthinking.”

“You’re underfeeling,” he countered.

Jesus, this emotional Kevlar was rubbish.

“Can’t you just be with—” He paused to exhale his thoughts instead. “Is it that hard to drop the mask and not turn everything into a game or a punchline? Because it really is not funny on my end anymore.”

Her smile—her armour—slipped. He leaned in until she couldn’t dodge the meaning in his stare.

His voice lowered to say, “I'm done pretending this doesn't mean anything. I have intentions, just as you do, but I don't joke about mine, alright?”

She forced an eye roll, muttering, “You like me, I get it.”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes—frustration, restraint, maybe a plea. “‘Like you’ isn’t the half of it. I wish it were that simple.”

“Maybe it should be simple, you always make it so intense,” she mumbled to herself, folding her arms.

“I make it—” The words stalled as he looked at her, incredulous. He let out a humourless laugh, then pushed his hand briefly into his hair. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

She looked down at her feet, feeling a thousand pinpricks at the intensity of those dark eyes. She couldn’t bear his earnest or handle the risk of being wanted for something other than her shit circus acts.

How the hell was she supposed to recover from this? Why him? Why this? Why was he choosing her when she knew exactly what she wasn’t?

Was his last girlfriend a trauma bond? Was he sick in the head? Untreated childhood wounds, perhaps, or a brain injury? It was easier to insult his emotional stability than admit she was terrified. And she refused to feel bad for him, for herself, or the way his people stared at her like she was a security breach.

Harry reached gently, slid the stolen Johnnie Walker bottle out of her grip, and she let go without resistance.

“Let’s put all this back where it belongs,” he murmured. “Then I’ll have the car brought around.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She fucked up real bad.

“Car?” she asked, forcing a hopeful laugh. “Are you kicking me out before I even get fed?”

No answer, and the silence lodged in her throat.

He pushed open the cornermost lobby door and waited for her, not turning around, giving her the dignity of choice. No dinner, no suites, quick fucks or distractions either.

Wherever they were going, it wasn’t back to the restaurant. She had fucked it up pretty nicely, so that door had closed before she’d even realised she wasn’t the one holding the knob. Were they going “home”? Did he have a home here? Did she? Or was he about to do the super executive thing and ship her back to New York like return-to-sender merchandise?

She climbed into the car beside her expensive monolith—and tried to pinpoint the exact moment she’d gone off-script. She never missed with him; moreover, men like him. She read intentions the way other people read books: quickly, decisively, with a high success rate.

So where the hell had she misplayed it? Had she rushed? Pushed? Skipped steps? Probably. Definitely. Absurdly. However, men often enjoyed being rushed by a pretty girl. Usually, they mistook it for flattery or a quickie, and she often wielded that like a scalpel.

Harry wasn’t acting like a man who’d been rushed. He was acting like a man who’d seen something she didn’t mean to reveal. Irritating son of a bitch.

She snuck a look at him, and he became even more unreadable—this gorgeous slab of silence, all angles and self-control, jaw tense, impassive gaze forward, expression a complete blackout. The hardest part was that he wasn’t angry, because anger she could work with. Anger had handles.

A new category: deeply, inconveniently unfathomable.

Also, not talking. That was so not ideal.

She turned her head a fraction, studying him. He’s not mad. He’s thinking? Processing? Plotting my assassination?

She folded her arms, disinclined to meet that fate. “So are we doing the silent film version of tonight?” she asked lightly. “I could start miming. I’m pretty good at interpreting myself.”

He said nothing, dark eyes ahead, loosening his tight cuffs on his wrists. Now, that annoyed her more than any argument could have.

She leaned her head back and let her thoughts sharpen. Her gaze dropped to his hands—capable, calm, resting on his knee like nothing in the world could force them to clench, not even her.

If he wanted something, he’d say it. If he wanted me, he’d take it. If he wanted me gone, he’d already have tossed me out. So what the hell does he want?

Everyone always wanted something from her. A taste, a thrill, a bit of reflected glamour, a night they’d brag about later. That was the rule: maintain the equilibrium. Attention for attention, heat for heat, touch for touch. It made sense, it was transactional and safe.

So why wasn’t he fucking taking anything? What was he doing instead—offering no demands, giving without collecting, making space rather than closing it. Which, ironically, felt like the biggest power move of all.

She blew out a breath through the O of her lips, forced her mind back into familiar territory—detachment, analysis, strategy. If he didn’t want anything, she’d figure out why.

Because a man who doesn’t take might be the one who can, they only move when they’re absolutely sure. Dangerous, flattering, cute. And, when the time comes, she’ll be ready.

Life had a way of reimbursing her in the most mystifying currencies.

Tonight’s payment: a four-poster bed draped in lovely gauzy bednet, thousand-thread-count sheets cradling her freshly shaved legs, softest floral print pyjamas, amazing lingerie, hair smelling like Le Labo had baptised her, and a body pleasantly aching from an entire day of shopping, wandering, and being doted on by a gentleman who really shouldn’t know how to dote. She felt like Holly Golightly times infinity.

“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered, palming her face.

Because peace shouldn’t feel this nerve-wracking and because this—this idyllic nocturnal luxury—was a trap she was trying very hard to enjoy.

By one in the morning, sleep felt like an unpaid internship. She wrestled with the Alaskan-king duvet—more beast than bedding—shoved pillows around like she was rearranging battle formations; even tugged a silk sleep mask over her eyes. None of it helped.

That silence that belonged to him more than the deafening night. That damned, sprawling, expensive silence had followed her here, from the hotel, onto the pier and the beach.

Here, meaning a place she very much should not have ended up: a little island off Monaco coasts named Isla Bravamar, which sounded fictional, like something pirates would shout before leaping to their deaths.

Things to note: yes, it was real, and no, you cannot find it on a map.

Because the man she was currently failing to sleep beside—well, not beside, but in the vicinity of—owned the island.

Owned an island.

Could we go back and read that again? It deserves one more.

The realisation had clunked into her skull only after the pier had disappeared behind them and the speedboat had fired forward across the lazy sea. She had assumed—naturally—that they were headed for a superyacht or possibly a submarine (though even she admitted that was pushing it).

But no, the rich fucker had a whole landmass to his name.

She’d been excessively generous with her attempt at emotional neutrality when Harry had guided her onto that sleek boat. She’d maintained a façade of “oh, yeah, this is totally normal,” even as her stomach twisted with something sourer than seasickness.

The not-knowing was humbling. The waiting for his mood to shift, for him to speak, for someone to break the impregnable barrier of quiet he’d built between them since the restaurant.

She’d dared a glance at him a few times on the bumpy speedboat, and he’d been ocean-still: one arm spread along the back of the bench, auburn curls whipped by wind, wrinkle-eyed gaze fixed on the dark horizon—calculating, planning his next ten moves with the ease of someone who didn’t know what it meant to lose. The media vultures had gotten at least one thing right about him: Harry Castillo was always thinking ahead.

Then, through the dying streaks of Mediterranean gold, his island emerged—jagged, dramatic, mountainous—like a geological middle finger to God. And perched arrogantly on its crest, lit by the last bruised light of the sunset, rose Château Castillo.

You’d think a family in finance would cling to something obnoxiously modern—buildings with more sharp edges and that practically growled old money, new money, all the money. Something like Harry’s penthouse: elegant lines, concrete, windowpanes stretching like skyscraper limbs.

But a Belle Époque villa tucked into tall carob and olive trees was… whimsy? Sentimentality, softness, human?

Set snug into a grassy embankment, the place looked less like a billionaire’s hideaway and more like the home of a lonely storybook princess, singing to birds and blowing dandelion seeds into the wind. Blushing clematis and bougainvillaea cascaded over the arched entryway like pastel snowfall, and the garden ran in neat, romantic geometry beneath the gangling windows, ending at a crooked, weather-worn trellis drinking the last of summer's sun.

A little path of mossy flagstones wound up from the jetty. She followed it, heels clacking, forgetting about the crew still unloading the boat.

“This whole place is his,” she murmured, out of breath, out of her goddamn mind. The word that landed in her chest was: invasive.

“Ours,” she thought she heard Harry say behind her—quietly, like he wasn’t sure she’d allow the shared pronoun.

Ow, unacceptable. She didn’t touch that thought.

Anyway—insane, truly insane—how a man could just buy an island like purchasing a side of fries. Apparently, nothing was impossible if you had the net worth of an empire and the emotional depth of a locked vault.

Inside, the villa only doubled down on its charm offensive.

If one of Harry’s grandparents had been a count or countess, she wouldn’t have been surprised. The place was a collision of old-world beauty and filthy fortune—Versailles oak parquet floors, ranging French windows so tall they could double as gateways to Narnia, Saarinen and Wegner furniture arranged to face a tremendous fireplace, Murano chandeliers dripping down like crystal rain. A sweeping staircase split into two upper floors of majestic bedrooms.

One of which was hers, ahem, the biggest, with a vast terrace overlooking glistening Monaco Bay and half the Mediterranean.

Moneyed comfort at a scale that felt… too personal. How surreal that in a home so beautiful, she felt like the ugliest thing in it—her, Harry, the unresolved mess between them. A splatter on a flawless postcard, smudging the whole tableau. Her with her emotional potholes and a man who cared too loudly.

But she was good at ignoring regret. A master, even. So she inhaled, smoothed her hair, and chose the only emotionally responsible option: pretend everything was fine and enjoy the shit out of this.

“Harry, can we please...” she tried to call out to him, but—

“Later. Bit busy right now,” was his quiet response.

So, he vanished. Naturally. People like him didn’t wait around—they absorbed into shadows, into phone calls and weightless laptops, into whatever high-level universe needed them.

Whilst she wandered between Spanish flair in every tilework, endless empty closets, a Sub-Zero fridge, another Viking Range, and then finally… family photos.

“Aww, tiny Harry,” she cooed, picking them up one by one.

Lovable chubby little Harry and his brother, knobbly-kneed in matching swim trunks, French tan, posing with goggles too big for their faces. A candid at a holiday dinner, well into the now—between candlelights, arms thrown over shoulders. A wedding photo of Mr and Mrs Castillo, hands linked, eyes lit with the kind of uncomplicated happiness she had only ever seen on billboards and dreams. Altogether, a close, happy, lavish family.

It all felt too intimate, like she’d stumbled into a heart with muddy boots.

She carefully set the frames down and blinked at them once more from afar.

Whatever bridge she’d imagined earlier between her and Harry—precarious but crossable—it now stretched into an impossible canyon. A curated world built on legacy, love, privilege, expectations and foundations she had never had and didn’t know how to stand on.

The void yawned, and she stepped back. Couldn’t even survive that jump if she tried. Another bitter truth: she did not belong in this island, house, or in the same orbit as its owner.

Upset and disoriented from the invisible chasm, it was around two in the morning when she felt the supersized bed in all its off-white, netted, feathery goodness dip under a new weight.

She kept still, eyelids lowered, breath even. A flawless performance of sleep, all while listening to the gruelling movements and efforts of one Harry Castillo.

The gentle scuffling of the duvet. The deep, frayed yawn—god, men had no idea how pornographic they sounded when tired. The drag of cloth against the skin; shirt going off. The muted clicks of a phone hastily checked and dropped aside, and eventually, the collapsing noise of his head hitting the pillow. His sigh—long, spent, defeated—rolled over her like a tide.

Her pulse did the opposite of staying calm, palpitating right to her throat. She should not have known his rhythms this well. Irresponsible.

She felt him hesitate behind her—for a fraction, a breath—before sliding closer. The mattress dipped again, and warmth crawled up her spine. Then, his fingertips... his palms... and all her nerves, the absolute sluts, stood to attention.

He painstakingly swept her hair off her shoulder, nimble fingers feeling the tingling love spots just behind her ear and along her neck. So delicately, his forefinger reached up and pressed the roundness of her bottom lip. Fireworks. Neural implosion. Absolutely humiliating.

Then his drawling, laughing sigh. “I'm so screwed.”

Like-fucking-wise, Castillo, she thought, drowning in heat.

She issued the most noncommittal, sleep-drunk groan she could fake and burrowed her smile in the pillow. A dismayed, scandalised little “no” escaped him.

Too late. She felt his hand settle at her waist and then, slowly, inexorably, he pulled her in.

Oh, fantastic. Full-body contact. Just what her overtaxed self-control needed.

His palm slid forward, spanning her stomach. His arm came around her, his chest aligned with her spine. A leg, long and warm and unfairly proprietary, wedged between hers. His warm lips brushed the slope of her shoulder; the hot exhale alone nearly melted bone.

Every tension suppressed in her body surfaced despite her best efforts. Her breath hitched, and—humiliatingly—she arched the smallest bit toward him.

He noticed, of course.

“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he compelled at her neck, his voice sleep-hoarse and too intimate. “I know you’re awake.”

She stayed quiet at first, letting the pull of him, the absurd magnetism of him, settle into her ribs. He wanted conversation. She owed him that much after the emotional debris field she’d dragged him through today.

So she scuttled sideways to face him—careful, slow—clutching the sheets to her chest even though modesty had abandoned them both hours ago.

He was right there, too close for safety and sanity; exactly where he always seemed to end up.

This was the kind of view people pretended to enjoy in five-star hotels. Who cared about the Empire State Building when Harry Castillo was stretched out beside you in the lamplit dark, a living, breathing monument worth craning your neck for?

He lay on his side, handsome face half in shadow, half bathed in a warm amber glow, like someone had painted him using soft brushes and good intentions. Thicker stubble dusted his cheeks—twenty-four hours older and unfairly lickable. His impossible brown eyes—burning, maddening—were nothing but quietly attentive. Like she was an answer to a question he’d been chewing on all night.

And she realised she wasn’t breathing until he did. A soft rush of warm breath that ghosted across her lips and cheeks and made her stupidly aware of how close they were. How close he’d chosen to be, and she kept allowing him to be.

She broke first, leaning in without consciously deciding to.

“I still don’t know what you want from me,” she admitted—too honest, too naked, a truth slipping out before she could stuff it back in.

He didn’t look away as his thoughtful fingertips traced the soft bridge of her nose, the arch of her brow, as though searching for the right page in a book.

“Why must I always want something from you?”

She almost screamed, almost rolled her eyes, almost got the fuck away—because denial was easier than sincerity.

“Because I don’t know how to give you anything else, Harry,” she blurted.

God. There it was, the ‘cheap whore’ judgments. Ten out of ten, perfect. Embarrassment flared up her spine, and she wanted to drag the words back down her throat and punch them in the balls they should not have.

Harry’s brows drew together, genuinely confused. “I’m not following.”

“It’s not you,” she rushed, heat pricking up her neck. “It’s just... I’ve only ever been good at one thing: giving people what they want.” Her gaze flicked away, to his collar, the duvet, her own hands. Anywhere but his unblinking eyes. “And people usually want the wrong things from me. That’s all I’m used to.”

A hollow laugh left her. “I guess I filled in the blanks.”

Silence stretched—solemn, intentional, intimate in a way that made her want to vaporise on the spot.

“You think I treat you like some joke?” he asked softly. “Is that the impression I gave you?”

“I didn’t say that,” she muttered, retaining her stiff expression as her stomach knotted. “I just didn’t think any of it was meant to be simple or real. Not after—” She gestured vaguely toward the absurd opulence around them. “All of this.”

“I wasn’t trying to buy anything off you,” he emphasised. “I just wanted to give you something you’d love, and I wasn’t sure I measured up by myself.”

“I do love all of it,” she agreed. “And you... you’re enough for me.”

That came out so much worse than she imagined it would. She winced where he could not see it.

Another long, gentle pause. Harry shifted a fraction, enough to soften the line of his shoulders, then:

“I brought you here,” he said, “because I wanted more time with you. Because I enjoy the person I am with you. And I want to keep you past the end when the lights go out.” His thumb brushed her cheek, a touch so tender it almost wasn’t real. “I wish you’d want something with me that wasn’t just… fleeting.”

Her throat constricted with barbed wire. She blinked at him, startled.

“It’s not?” she whispered because she genuinely couldn’t compute it.

A smile ghosted across his face—tiny, fond, unbearably gentle. He tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured. “My beautiful girl.”

Beautiful girl, beautiful girl, beautiful girl. It was like a trap snapping shut.

Instantly, the magnet he had forged into her wrenched. She lifted her head off the pillow before she could stop herself, bracing on her forearm so she could hover down at him, gain some power. He lay back, one arm folded behind his head, the other hand lazily roaming her waist, her neck, the soft architecture of her cheek like he was reacquainting himself with every angle.

“We’re complicating this,” she announced, because panic made her eloquent.

“Then let’s uncomplicate it,” he countered calmly. “Tomorrow, we could... fly to Spain. How does Granada sound?”

“Spain?” she echoed, horrified and intrigued.

“Or the moon,” he shrugged. “Your choice.”

She indulged him anyway. “I don’t have a spacesuit.”

His eyes gleamed with mischief. “Who needs a spacesuit when you’re already breathtaking?”

“Jesus—honey. Harry.” She palmed his cheek seriously. “No offence, but you’re supposed to be the sensible one here.” She motioned between them. “Look at us. Truly. Look.”

He did, and he looked far too pleased about whatever he saw.

“That’s the problem,” she barreled on. “We don’t fit. We don’t even belong on the same planet, much less—” she flapped a hand vaguely toward the bed “—as something.”

“Together,” he amended.

She sighed.

“But that’s how it works,” he said, infuriatingly patient. “People don’t start aligned. They choose to grow into each other.”

A sharp snort evaded her. “Grow? Are you for—hold on—” She started counting off on her fingers. “I’ve robbed you—multiple times. I twist things, I push, I pull, I manipulate you, I use you. I have no life plan, shit—I don’t even have a five-hour plan. Ninety per cent of my brain is morally grey-to-black sludge, I cling to money, I’m vain, I’m selfish, half my life is one long, stupid strategy and—”

She was winding herself up like a cartoon bomb, her breath growing shorter with each indictment. With a surplus of revelations and realisations looming large, a subtle confession dropped into her mind out of nowhere. 

I think some part of me is falling in love with you.

Oh, god.

No, god, no. No, no, no.

Anything but that.

Harry just watched her, amused, fond, like her frantic declarations were the best thing he’d heard all night.

“W-o-w,” he said finally, each syllable separate, laughter warm as he cupped her chin. “What a mess.”

Finally! “Precisely.”

He tapped her nose once. “Still not disqualified. You're actually winning with that pitch.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Be serious.”

“We wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.” His smile faded; gentled. “Why are you so determined to make me see the worst in you? Do you really think you can convince me to hate you?”

“You should. I make it pretty easy,” she muttered.

“Not even close.” His eyes flashed with a sudden rush of—sympathy? “Sweetheart, you’re still a good—”

“No, no, don’t—” She shook her head like it might rattle the words away. “Don’t call me something I’m not. Please.”

Because he was wrong, and he had to know it. She knew it, lived with the truth daily. She was, by all respectable metrics, a terrible human being.

And hey, she’d made peace with that a long time ago—around the same period she pawned a silver locket she’d lifted off a toddler in a stroller.

One sickly March night sleeping on a stoop had been enough to teach her the fundamental rule of her life: morals don’t keep you warm, and they sure as hell don’t keep you fed. A manageable life required flirty smiles, nimble fingers, a flexible conscience, and the ability to lie through one’s teeth.

And none of those, she reminded herself, were exactly “girlfriend material.” Larceny wasn’t quirky, manipulation wasn’t charming, and conceit didn’t play well in relationships.

But they kept her alive. And survival, she’d always known, was a far more realistic goal than redemption.

“Maybe all the fun is getting to your head,” she whispered, aiming for wry but landing closer to tired.

“Blame the company.” His voice dipped. “I love our fun.”

She gave him a helpless little smile. “I love our fun too.”

His mouth twitched, the smallest upward curve. Through the incoherent daze of sleep, through his dubious demeanour, a softness she had longed to see.

Tell me you can love me. Tell me we can love each other somehow. Tell me I’m not imagining this. But her throat held the confession hostage.

“I hate when this happens,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” Her traitorous voice shook despite her best efforts. “I hate that you’re not closer.”

The second it slipped out, she wanted to swallow it whole. Vulnerability felt like stepping on a landmine barefoot, but he wordlessly opened his arms, a warm little space carved out just for her.

She tried to laugh the chagrin away, ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her face crumple, and nestled in against him—and, Jesus Christ.

No one cuddled like Harry. He didn’t half-commit; he did it the way he kissed her—with his whole stupid enormous body, big arms protectively bracketing her on the centre of the bed, her cheek on his bicep, one strong thigh clamping her close. A full-body shelter as he wrapped her until the world narrowed to warmth, breath and faint laundry detergent, until the darkness felt less like danger.

She burrowed in until her nose brushed his throat. “You’re so warm,” she muttered, the closest she’d allow herself to admitting she liked this.

“You’re freezing,” he murmured back, rubbing a hand down her back.

When she shifted a little, something decidedly awake pressed against her inner thigh. My, oh, my, this was turning from a cuddle to a fuckle (yes, that is a word).

She wriggled enough to tilt her head back and glance up at him. “You’ve got a little…” she murmured, pointing down, “affection erection going on downstairs.”

“Ignore it,” he mumbled, barely awake.

“I think he’s feeling left out.”

He groaned into her hair. “Can you not refer to my penis in the third person?”

“I can’t help it—he’s practically knocking on my front door.” She slipped her hand down between them with a mischievous little hum, fingers stroking down her favourite massive shape of him through his trousers. Hot, tough, thick, twitching, hungry, definitely not asleep.

“There, there. I got you, too.”

“Or address it directly, it's not a puppy.” Although his hips went off on a slow tangent against her palm.

“But he came out all shy to say hello,” she cooed.

“That’s it.” He angled his head down, one amused brown eye peering at her through a curtain of curls. “You keep talking like that, I’m going to have to hide him in your mouth.”

She gasped in delighted outrage, giggling. “Harry!”

The bed trembled with his laugh, and then he solved the entire issue before she could ponder over how a person could get used to hearing that sound. He dragged his palm up her thigh, guiding it around his hips, until she was straddling the length of him. Her panties brushed over his hard cock, heat meeting heat, and she felt every thick ridge, every line, every damn vein that could very well ruin her in moments.

“Is this okay?” he murmured, concerned.

One of his banded hands stroked the back of her head, fingers combing slowly, tenderly, like he was coaxing her to sleep. Or smoothing down every raised feather of her fear.

She nodded, eyelids drooping on a sigh. “Mhm. Soooo okay.”

He kissed her forehead and reached behind him to turn off the lamp. “G’night, sweetheart.”

The tenderness startled her every time—as if she’d trip and fall straight through it if she wasn’t careful. But she let herself sink into him anyway, resting her cheek on his chest. She squeezed her face in, clutching him tight. She wanted to keep this so much, always, all of his late nights, his midnights, his mornings...

“Night, Harry,” she whispered, finally letting the world go quiet.

Monday, 10 a.m.

People loved to say breakfast was the key to a great morning. Which was very cute, very wholesome.

Also, deeply incorrect.

The true champion of mornings—the real engine of human joy, the nutritional powerhouse—was sex.

It didn't have to be great sex. Plain vanilla sex, which had everything: cardio, serotonin, dopamine, a light dose of emotional delusion, and enough sweat to count as exercise. It was health, wellness, and spiritual alignment all in one sinful package. Gwyneth Paltrow could never.

And if sex was the reigning champion, then waking up next to Harry Castillo was the victory parade.

She surfaced from sleep to find herself still tangled in him—his legs locking hers, his arms wrapped around her so tightly it was a miracle she didn’t wake up laminated. Sunlight traversed his face in a theatrical diagonal, like God had ordered down a spotlight just for him. And then the choir started up (in her head, unfortunately.) White robes, big wings, gold harps, smug-looking angels.

The choir crescendoed. Then suddenly... snoring?

Yep, loud Harry snores. The angels dissolved into the horrendous rumbles of a big snorer, bed shaking along with the sounds of an induction motor powering up. A real honk-shoo symphony. It should have been a form of domestic terrorism, but.

On Harry—it was unfairly adorable. Disgustingly adorable.

She was definitely fucked when she watched him for ten indulgent seconds, her heart all soft and gooey, then... reached over and pinched his nose.

One beat. Two. Three. Four—

Finally, Harry inhaled with the force of a vacuum cleaner, eyes snapping open, wild and disoriented. Then he noticed her, instantly appeased, and tucked himself right back around her, as if her body were his home base.

“Morning,” she chirped, planting a kiss on the arc of his cheek. “You were about two snores away from sucking in the walls.”

One bleary eye opened. “Imagine what I could do fully awake.”

“Be a human foghorn?”

“Next time, I’m biting you back.” He burrowed his head closer into her hair.

She threaded her lithe fingers through his hair, delighting in the feeling, sweeping curls back from his forehead, and both his eyes fluttered shut with a pleased sigh. Then came the kisses: her cheek, her temple, then the soft place under her ear that short-circuited her entire frontal lobe.

“I could wake up like this forever,” he murmured against her skin. “How have we never done this before?”

She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Morning breath. Don’t be romantic right now.”

He grinned against her palm, nudged it away, and nuzzled her nose with his. “Then I’ll just kiss you everywhere else.”

Well, goodbye, spine. Goodbye, dignity. Welcome, big O.

She melted, then liquified, then bolded, italicised, and climbed on top of him. In under ninety seconds, the morning evolved from tender to biblical. Like, pillars-of-fire, Old Testament biblical.

How was she to explain this to anyone who was not her? See, morning sex with Harry was like... sourdough. Stupid comparison, but painfully accurate.

A little warmth, a little patience, and suddenly the whole thing rises and comes alive. Bouncy, best devoured fresh, and preferably with cream. (Alright, she really needed breakfast.)

She peeled herself out of his sleepy vice grip, pushed him flat onto his back, and swung a leg over his hips. His morning hardness ground up into her, arrogant, unapologetic, so ready for her.

His fly was already open—because apparently she’d been grinding in her sleep—so he propped up on his elbows, laughter rumbling against her chest as he buried his face between her breasts.

“Yeah,” he mumbled into her skin, bliss-drunk. “Forever.”

Oh, god, she was so fucked.

She could absolutely, unequivocally get tired of Harry as a human being—his overbearingness, that hot mouth that always had an opinion, his heroic tendencies that made her want to scream into a pillow. But sex with him?

No one gets tired of miracles, and he was inconveniently starting to feel like one.

She propped herself up, then slid her hands along his shoulders, pulling him in for a slow constellation of kisses down his neck. Harry shifted her closer, cosying her over his thighs. They were both still molten from sleep, all soft limbs and softer hearts, desire humming like a lazy current instead of the usual wildfire.

“You wanna stand up,” he murmured, lifting the strap of her camisole with two fingers, “and show me what’s hiding under this? Make my whole morning worth getting out of bed?”

She winked, whispering, “Yessir,” because teasing him was half the foreplay.

A pleasant, dizzy heat rushed her—half arousal, half ego—so she rose onto her knees, pushing off his chest, eyes never leaving his, hooking her thumbs to her waistband, slowly peeled down her pyjama bottoms and skimming off her camisole. His eyes followed like they were attached to her hips by a string, all while yanking his trousers down and kicking them off the bed.

The black La Perla set was almost unfair in daylight. Soft sheer triangles lifting her breasts, another cut of satin framing her hips—floral, delicate, wanting.

And oh, he was losing it.

Dark eyes crawled over her with reverence, then greed, then something softer. It was almost too simple now when he looked at her like that. So simple to want him, have him, and want him a little more. He had completely devoured with an overwhelmed smile until she humoured him a little.

When she swivelled her hips and struck a smug little pose, he actually laughed under his breath. She bit her lip for extra effect.

She snapped the string at her hip. “Oh,” she murmured, fingers drifting to the thin strap of her bra. “That sound means I’m winning. Like what you see?”

“I’m breaking laws for it, babe,” he admitted in an exhale. “Do you know how illegal this is?”

“Being too hot, officer?” she purred. She slid the strap down one shoulder, not enough to free anything.

“Being fucking irresistible.” He crooked a come-hither finger, voice darkening. “Get that ass over here before I press charges.”

“Needy, needy.”

Of course, she went, but she didn't walk this time. She sank to her hands and knees over the duvet, moved toward him in a slow, feline prowl, ass swaying with sinful intention, her hair falling forward in a fluffed-up curtain as she crawled between his knees.

“Sweetheart,” he groaned with a grin.

“Ssh-ssh-ssh... feel this.”

Her hands slid up his strong thighs first, and when she reached his torso—she leaned in, embossing a kiss just below his sternum. A soft one, then another, higher. Then one to the hollow of his throat. The lune of his neck. She kissed her way up him, inch by torturous inch, tasting the tension in his skin, the restraint in his muscles, the storm he was trying not to let break.

His large, impatient hand rose to her chin, the cold emerald ring brushing her throat as he traced a decadent line down her front—between her breasts, over her stomach, stopping just above her panties. Her muscles fluttered under his fingertip.

“Now?” she asked, arching a brow.

Harry wrinkled his nose—a mischievous, boyish expression he had no right to make while his thumb hovered two inches from her slit. “You starve me.”

She mirrored the expression mockingly, caught his wrist, and dragged his hand around to her ass. “Later. Just fuck me.”

There it was—the sacred trifecta of words every adult eventually blurts out, whether from desperation, epiphany, or sheer hormonal mutiny. She hadn’t meant to sound like she was invoking a spell, but apparently it worked, because he caught her hips like she’d dropped her entire world into his hands and trusted him not to let it roll off the Atlantic bed.

Morning breath, pillow hair, consequences—who cared? She could fuck him through a gas leak at this point.

He dove in, slanting his lips against hers, unhurried, greedy, his tongue swirling with hers. His brown curls were a riot, his skin warm with sleep, his biceps firm as they crushed her closer to him, and she felt the familiar spark of him waking up everywhere they touched. Hair standing on ends, goosflesh over his skin, abdomen tautening. Some alchemy, she thought hazily, involving both germ exchange and emotional exposure. So romantic.

Broad palms over her hips, thumbs brushing her lower belly, fingertips tracing the small indents at her waist—he mapped her like he missed an update overnight.

“How do you want me, Harry?” she murmured against his ear, teasing the lobe with a nip. “Soft and sweet? Hard and deep?”

He rumbled a laugh into her neck. “Both ways, Dr Seuss.”

Composing erotic Seussian sonnets. This was how he scrambled her—the man turned her into a poet of porn.

But he wasn’t listening. Or rather, he was—just not to the words. He slowed them down, tugging her back to appraise her. Just to look.

“Where do I even start...?” he said to himself. “Dreamgirl.”

His palms knew her better than mirrors did. He charted her body like a cartographer reading a landscape: the swell and valley of her breasts, the ridges and hollows of her ribs, the curve of her stomach, the softness at her waist she usually hid under perfectly chosen dresses. The endless stretch marks like river lines, the little dimples of cellulite like tiny lakes, the scars and freckles scattered like a galaxy—they were all perfectly hers, and he touched and loved every one, all the topography of years of lived-in imperfections that she carefully disguised only by tubes of Sally Hansen leg makeup.

Now it was all here. Disorganized. Bare, unavoidable, and she was waiting, absurdly, for him to blink, or laugh, or ruin it by looking away.

Harry didn’t; he reached her face last, cupping it gently, and she cuddled into his palm without thinking.

“This,” he said quietly, thumb brushing her cheek, “this is the closest I’ve ever felt to you.”

He could’ve confessed anything—love, longing, fear—but nothing would’ve landed with the same serene force. They’d had feral, spectacular sex before, borderline architectural feats. An unguarded morning mess with no armour, no banter to hide behind, was the one that felt the most intimate.

And because speaking would’ve split her chest wide open—because one wrong syllable might’ve let everything she tried not to feel spill out—she chose the one language she didn’t mistrust.

Touch.

She took his hand to her lips, kissed each fingertip—slowly, knowingly—tracing out coordinates on a map only the two of them had access to.

By the time she rose up and aligned him beneath her, her brain wasn’t doing language anymore. Sensation, nerve-endings, Harry, and the intense need to love the shit out of him. Make it count, make it last.

She sank down onto him in one controlled, devastating descent, slow enough to feel every gorgeous inch. Every inch until she could choke on the fullness, her every sense was sensitised to a million.

Their groans met halfway between them, a perfect collision—her, at the sweet, shocking stretch; him, for the heat that wrapped around him like a welcome home present—and she folded herself over him, clenching around him like her body could overwrite every previous version of closeness she’d ever allowed.

Full. Deep. And unmistakably hers as much as she was his.

Christ, those eyes of his... so dark, so goddamn possessive when he was buried this deep in her. He knew no one had ever had her like this, the only luxury he’d ever wanted and finally gotten his hands on.

She surged in and out of every memorised ridge of his length, mouth latching onto his neck, teeth piercing him to scrape a hickey, licking up his throat. Loud, wild, feral—she didn’t bother pretending she was capable of moderation. That crap had packed its bags the second she woke up to his snores.

Quietest, softest sex she had ever had. Her moan cracked out when he attempted to thrust up into her—needy, powerful, a shock straight through her spine. Oh, the bliss. Oh, the Harry-ful ecstasy.

And yet—for all the billions technically riding beneath her, inside her—nothing made her feel as helpless as the way he watched her. She was his: his choice, his private liberty, all of his futures with a picket fence and a mailbox with both their goddamn names on it.

The tempo built, tension tautening between her hips, their bodies syncing easily, and still, with all his gentle strength, he held her like she was breakable—one arm wrapped securely around her waist, grounding her while his mouth closed over her breast.

He freed it from the lingerie, patient, impatient, greedy, all of which she secretly adored, then set to her—lifting it to his tongue drawing slow circles, suctioning on a nipple until he bit down, flicking up and down, teasing around, savouring. She felt each motion like a current through her ribs. When she threaded her fingers through his hair and swept it back from his forehead, he glanced up.

He bared a wicked smile on her nipple and a muffled “hi,” before hollowing his cheeks with a suck, and she twitched violently, a moan tearing out of her.

“Fu-uh,” was all that eventually made it out.

Then, suddenly—before she could register anything beyond ‘oh, fuck’—her world flipped.

In a thoughtless, instantaneous motion, she was on her back, he was settled between her thighs, taking her hands, entwining them with his, drawing them up above her head, and sliding into her in a single hard stroke that blanked her vision. Body-slammed was more accurate.

“Come on!” she whined between kisses.

“You come on,” he triumphed with that twisted little smirk she hated loving, “you don’t get to stay in charge every time you climb on top of me.”

He drove into her—slow first, then deeper, building a rhythm that made her breath scatter and back arch. Sheets bunched under them as he worked her up the bed in fast thrusts.

“Look at that,” he murmured. “You wanna come that bad?”

She nodded helplessly, grabbing his shoulders, nails dragging, her walls tightening around him reflexively.

Her body tightened, pleasure winding sharp and electric where she couldn’t hold it, more, more, faster, inside, inside, and she broke—came hard, went to pieces all over him, shaking, her moans dissolving into vowels that barely resembled language or his name.

He held her through the ride, one hand braced beside her head, the other keeping her hips locked right where he wanted them.

“That’s it, sweetheart. There you go,” he rumbled his coax until she felt it vibrate at her clit. “Come for me. Make a mess on me.”

As if she needed permission.

Instead of chasing his own finish, he seemed determined to wring every tremor from her, dark eyes drinking her in this mindless state of pleasure, stalling just enough to prolong her orgasm long, his gradual strokes undoing wet, slick sounds from somewhere between her legs. Saviour was generous; she felt more like a willing hostage.

A broken, wanting sound tore out of her. Longest orgasm ever, period. She was limp now, overwhelmed by the sensation that pricked at her skull, hovering in that impossible space where the question of ‘how am I still coming?’ stopped being rhetorical and started feeling existential.

“One more,” he breathed. “Gimme one more, honey.”

When he finally kissed her—deep, claiming, head angled just where he liked it—his hips began to snap harder than the last, deeper, each intense thrust pulling a moan from her, building right into the oversensitive edge she was still riding.

When her eyes eventually met his, for a heartbeat, it felt quietly seismic. Stars flickered in that moment, bleeding in softly between them, an intimate little universe spun just for two.

His arms tightened around her, muscles locked, breath hot against her mouth, and she felt that last fraction of control slipping from him.

“Shit—oh, baby—” he groaned, wrecked and breathless.

And then he spilled into her while she was still trembling, still pulsing around him, still stupidly, blissfully open.

They stayed tangled like that—boneless, overheated, slick with sweat and others, pleasantly dazed—for a full two minutes that felt both indulgent and necessary. He’d gone slack on top of her, cheek pillowed on her breasts, hands roaming with lazy entitlement. Cock still buried deep, the occasional twitch a reminder that neither of them was quite done processing what had just happened.

You know, there are moments in life—rare, suspiciously perfect ones—when everything settles and clicks into place. When the universe stops improvising, the noise just shuts up, the chakras line up like obedient little soldiers, and peace doesn’t feel aspirational. You are content.

She was well within the walls of that cosmic moment now, contained and held by it.

“Harry...” she began, stroking the back of his head.

“Whatever it is, the answer’s yes,” he mumbled.

She laughed, satisfied, and felt herself reflexively clench around him without meaning to. “Cracked the code for next time. We were that good, huh?”

He lifted his head, eyes bright with a grin that was far too smug for a man still catching his breath. “Missionary on a bed is pretty unbeatable.”

She arched a brow. Expected more from him, to be honest.

“Correction,” he said, hovering closer. “Missionary on a bed with you is unbeatable.”

That, she could accept. She looped her wrists behind his neck and pulled him down into a kiss—hungry, unhurried, acquainted. His hips rolled in instinctively, knees nudging her thighs apart, urging himself back into the newly empty fragment of space inside her. She heaved in a breath and shuddered out a moan.

She broke away first, because she was the practical one—even now. “We’re going to be stuck here all morning.”

“I see no flaw in that plan.”

She smiled, knowingly wicked. “So, you don’t want to see me all wet in a bikini?”

He groaned into her neck. “That’s a dirty trick.”

She patted his chest. “Come on then, rich boy. Up and at ’em. Up, up—Harry, no—don’t you—!”

He ignored her entirely, launching a relentless assault of kisses that had her giggling and squirming. He locked her in place, smothering, spreading his kisses as if claiming every inch of exposed skin.

“Every time,” he murmured, punctuating the entire sentence with kisses dressing her neck and shoulders, “I think, I’ve had enough. And every time, I realise”—kiss, kiss, kiss—“absolutely not. I want more, more, more. You make me so selfish.”

She endured the love onslaught with a happy sigh and a grin she didn’t bother hiding. She was satisfied right where she was.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured against her mouth, the word still warm from a kiss. He lifted his head again, eyes searching hers now, collected, unmistakably nervous.

“I want to do this right.”

Her stomach dipped. Oh?

“Alright,” she said carefully after a beat, bracing for impact.

“You. Us.” He hesitated, then committed with a hard swallow. “I don’t want to screw it up.”

She felt the warning flare immediately—heart, ribs, instincts all lighting up at once—fight, flight, flirt. She chose the third.

“I—ah.” A pause. Then, because she was her: “Probably not the conversation to have while you’re still inside me.”

His brows slanted over his eyes. What?

She gave him a look. You know what.

He glanced down, realisation dawning, swore quietly and—because he was unbearably a man—he rocked into her once more, a reflexive, greedy goodbye. Then he pulled back with visible effort, like leaving somewhere he already missed. She inhaled sharply, resenting how quickly the absence registered. Hated it even more that her body mourned him before her brain could catch up.

She tugged her panties back on and sat up, spine straightening to hear his bad news. He flopped onto his back, forearm thrown over his eyes, like a man about to be interrogated by Cupid or a jury of ex-girlfriends.

She rested a soft hand on his chest. I'm right here, she wanted to say. Beneath, his heart leapt a big beat and answered immediately—fast, uneven, utterly unpolished. She grinned, liking that she did that to him.

“Honey.”

He let out a long breath. “I know, I know. Just give me a second to recalibrate.”

“Recalibrate what? What’s going on?” she coaxed.

He hesitated, jaw flexing where she could see it. “How do I say this without sounding like I’m auditioning for Gilmore Girls?”

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it—heady, surprised. Of course, he watched Gilmore Girls. That tiny, stupid detail—him on a couch in his mighty Tribeca apartment, emotionally invested in fast-talking women—was treacherous to her resolve.

The sound drew him back; he dropped his arm and met her gaze with a crooked, nervous smile, replacing the bravado.

She slid her fingers along his jaw. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He searched her face for some sign. “You honestly want to hear it?”

She nodded eagerly.

“You sure about that?”

She frowned. “I don't like this game.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is not how I planned for this to happen. I had a whole thing...”

“For what? I swear, I—”

“Sweetheart,” he cut off.

She sucked in a breath. “Yes, Harry?”

“I love you,” he said.

Whoooooosh. Heart. Motherfucking. ATTACK.

So, as the moment stretched, there were no good responses preloaded for this scenario.

And her body froze with the spike of her pulse; the words had hit her bloodstream before her brain caught up. The thoughts arriving were spectacularly unhelpful—fuck, fuckety fucking fuck—echoing around her skull like a fire alarm.

She stared at him, lips parted, the screeching shock giving way to the obvious. “Oh.”

Because the truth—annoyingly, irrevocably—was, of course, this was a sentence catching up to reality. She knew.

She had known, in her slow, undeniable accumulation of proof. Since the night she’d shown up at his apartment unannounced. Since he’d turned what should’ve been the world’s most expensive booty call into whatever this was. Since the way he stayed with and without, looked at, and chose her.

She had clocked it, catalogued it under ‘inconvenient truths’, and, because survival required it, pretended she saw something else.

But there it was now, spoken and impossible to evade.

When the kick-up love dust finally settled, she didn’t discover his feelings in that moment. She finally stopped pretending she didn’t already know that this man was abso-fucking-lutely in love with her.

“I do, I love you so much,” Harry repeated, breathing a sigh. This time, he was planting his feet into it. She had never expected to hear those words aimed at her, right then, or in this lifetime—spoken so plainly, without an angle, and meant it.

“I’ve been sitting with it for a long time now. I checked—timing, proximity, sex brain, all the usual bullshit. It’s not that.” He met her eyes, mouth tilting. “I really, really love you. I hold you, and things slow down. When you’re gone, and it gets louder. You’re next to me, and I’m not managing the room, performing or negotiating feelings. I look at you, and it’s—easy.”

The word easy seemed to rattle him as much as her. He went still, as if he’d tripped over a truth he had never planned to say out loud, or perhaps he never thought the words would make it out.

Which gave her time to do what she did best when intimacy demanded responses: plan an exit. Jokes. Distance. Motion. She could be halfway dressed and charming in under thirty seconds if she needed to be.

She could feel the instinct coiling, ready... but where the fuck was she running off to anyway? Every inch of the planet was fair game. That’s the thing about two hearts, equally unhinged—they always find each other and sparks fly.

She dropped her gaze to the hand on his chest, the thrill on her tongue curdled briefly into regret.

“I’m not asking you to meet me there. I just… needed to be clear about where I am,” he reminded her quietly.

His heart was still racing too fast for his exposed words, and that made sense. It certainly hadn’t gotten the memo that he was a rich, powerful, brilliant man making a calm confession to some dumb thief.

The impulse to leave tasted reliable. Except—it didn’t win.

Because, damn it all, she loved him, too. So freaking undeniably hard.

Had, for longer than she wanted to inventory. It crept in sideways, in pauses, with it's destiny-bullshit, not before the sex (she wasn't rewriting history)—though she wasn’t about to pretend his godly, gorgeous, big, presidential dick hadn’t made a compelling argument and made her listen to him—but somewhere in the space where he stayed when she tested him and didn’t try to correct her sharpness or soften her edges for comfort.

Harry offered her things she’d trained herself not to want anymore: closeness without leverage, desire without obligation, a side of sweet love, all tied together with the radical freedom of fucking up and not being discarded for it.

It didn’t sound as stupid and terrifying as it used to. Still dangerous but—not impossible anymore. The thought skidded through her head, scattering a thousand emotions behind it.

As if sensing the precise moment she might bolt, Harry closed his hand over hers. His heart kicked harder under her palm. And that—ridiculous, earnest, wild truth—that he was afraid too, but still here.

He wasn't fearless, but he was choosing her anyway.

“Baby,” he called.

“Yeah, still here,” she mumbled, impressively calm for someone whose internal organs had just been rearranged—emotionally and otherwise. “Just… recalibrating.”

Yes. Recalibrating sounded sane. Mechanical, temporary.

“You do that. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned in and brushed a soft, criminally affectionate kiss to her cheek.

She startled anyway, her heart skipping like a faulty gear, and then he ruined the moment by moving away.

Harry rose out of bed with the audacity of a man who had just poured his heart out and expected the universe to accommodate it. Naked completely, golden sunshine catching every unfair, exercised line of him—bare ass, big dick, rippling back muscles. He stretched—arms up, spine arching, neck rolling—completely unbothered by her stare, as if nude confidence were his natural state.

She blinked. Had she hallucinated the last thirty seconds? Was this post-orgasm psychosis?

“Thought you're not going anywhere,” she mumbled.

“Not too far, I promise. But three lovesick confessions in twelve hours?” he replied, unimpressed with himself. He clucked his tongue and placed his hands on his hips. “My credibility is in shambles. I need to do something aggressively masculine to recover.”

She burst out laughing despite herself, mood lightening instantly. “What, you’re gonna wrestle a bear? Or punch a—wait.” She held up her fingers, counting to make sure. One last night, one just now... “When was the third?”

She looked up for an answer. He was gone.

“…Harry?”

Movement caught her eye, and she glanced down.

“You gotta be shitting me.”

Harry was on the floor... doing push-ups.

Slow, controlled, ridiculously competent push-ups. Back flexing, biceps straining, perky ass clenching, little grunts escaping like punctuation, confidence visibly reassembling itself rep by rep. His cock was swinging slightly with the motion, too, because Cupid clearly had favourites.

“Omigod,” she muttered, snickering. “You’re processing feelings with your delts.”

“Working through it,” he puffed.

“Do it one-armed, baby,” she challenged.

And he did. Didn’t even falter—one arm tucked behind his back, pace steady, barely winded. So, so, so hot, ridiculous, tempting to not get on top of.

He popped back up to his feet, did two cross punches in the air, and winked. “Yep. Still got it.” He lowered his voice a gruff octave while leaning to cup her chin. “Did I scare you off?”

“With the naked push-ups?”

His mouth flattened. “Not exactly.”

She rose onto her knees, fingers in his hair, brushing her nose with his. “Then, no. Not even a little.”

Relief softened his expression. “Good. I don’t say things I don’t mean—I’m only yours.”

She hated how much that worked, and she grinned immediately when he pushed a soft kiss into her lips. All aloof, he grabbed a towel and headed for the en-suite, whistling like he hadn’t just detonated her emotional equilibrium.

“And hey, when was the third!” she called after him.

The bathroom door swung shut.

She collapsed back into the mattress with a huff, staring at the ceiling, heart still doing laps, thighs still slick, brain short-circuiting. She rubbed a hand over her chest.

Hot rich motherfucker in love doing push-ups about it.

This wasn’t what she’d imagined wanting—it felt inevitable now. And she would not change a goddamn thing about it.

Never once did she think she could love a man this fucking hard.

Monday, 12 p.m.

my everything list

Shopping $$$

Get drunk :P

Make a decision - Job?? GED?? both? neither?

yacht ride, babyyy

Cook

Harry, we need to hash some things out before

I love you I love you I love you lovelovelovelove

She had never been good at focusing on one thing. Luckily, life rarely demanded purity of attention—simply momentum. Perfection was a luxurious myth sold to people with time and parents, and life didn’t actually reward any singular devotion; it rewarded traction. Juggling. Overlap. The ability to keep several fires burning and pray that at least one stayed warm.

Multitasking, then, was her love language.

And today’s lineup so far: cooking, GED, job lead, dote over Harry. Ambitious, but manageable. She’d done worse on less sleep.

So far: alive.

The GED application glowed on her laptop at the edge of the counter, one accidental elbow away from a battery death. It was going shockingly well, all things considered. No guardian consent needed—thank fuck—no parental signatures to bullshit or explain. New York treated it like a free-for-all, which felt right, and six dollars for practice tests. She could swing six dollars. There was ten grand just whiling away in her bank account right about now.

The kitchen smelled like butter and heat and crazily close to optimism.

Cooking-wise, she’d gone intentionally low-risk, high-reward: pancakes. Simple, forgiving, impossible to fuck up beyond recognition.

Not the shitty protein-packed ones either—these were indulgent. Golden, thick, fluffy. She dumped sugar where restraint suggested “a pinch” and melted a whole bar of Echiré butter. Oatmeal had been a staple food for the poor; now, these pancakes were proof that she was doing all right for herself.

Her phone was jammed between her shoulder and ear while she whisked with one hand and nudged the laptop trackpad with the other.

“Yes—nannying for about three years now,” she answered, cracking an egg with misplaced confidence. “Part-time... sometimes full-time. Depends on the week, really... or the meltdown—”

Shell fell in. She stared at it.

“…so I also have experience with twins,” she resumed quickly, fishing shell fragments out with a fingertip. “Triplets, if you count kittens—oh, shit.”

The microwave beeped angrily. Butter smoked into the sterile kitchen.

“Dammit.”

“Are you busy?” the voice on the other end asked gently. “Is this a bad time?”

She hissed as she yanked the butter out and tossed it with a clang against the marble countertops. “Not a bad time at all!” She laughed nervously. “Nah, no way. I’m just being... efficient.”

The girl on the phone—Sarah—sounded younger than her stress warranted. She wasn’t actually looking for a nanny, it turned out. She was looking for a caregiver for her father. Joel something. Sixty-something. Stubborn as hell, according to Sarah, and deeply uninterested in the concept of help. The family was moving to Connecticut—she, her husband, their kid—and she didn’t want to leave her poor dad alone in New York pretending he was indestructible.

She nudged the phone tighter against her shoulder, flicked the stove down a notch, and scanned the counter for the vanilla she knew she’d put right there.

“Schedule-wise—I’m flexible,” she continued. “I don’t scare easily, I don’t hover or nag, and I’m very good with tantrums. I’ve survived a two-year-old screaming at me in Cantonese for forty-five minutes straight. Didn’t cave once.”

She paused, reconsidered. “I mean—he did win eventually. But I held out longer than his parents.”

Nannying had always been like that, it's own sort of fun. Less about the job, more about where it took her. Those Upper West Side apartments with too much light and upholstered furniture that no one ever sat on. Nouveau riche couples who talked about gallery openings, charity galas, their Hamptons timeshares and preschool waitlists like they were battle plans. Sometimes, late at night, she’d lie on a guest bed wrapped in hotel-grade sheets and imagine herself there permanently.

Inside the Charlotte York life. Chanel suits, Vivienne Westwood chokers, a well-behaved little puppy, a kid she chose, and a rich, handsome husband who was gentle without being condescending.

Now with Harry in her picture, the fantasy felt… closer. Just a tiny inch.

Sarah laughed on the other end—relief blooming through the line. “You might be overqualified.”

She set the bowl aside and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “That’s what I'm hoping.”

There was a hesitation. A soft crackle of static. “I should warn you—my dad isn’t easy. He can get… bossy. And rude.”

As if summoned by the accusation, a booming voice cut in from the background—gruff, irritated, unmistakably alive. “I can hear you, kid.”

She winced reflexively.

There was a sniff. A chair scraping. Then, louder: “Now who the hell is this supposed to be?”

Sarah hadn’t muted the line. Rookie mistake. “Potential caregiver,” she mentioned.

“Yeah, that’s not happening. Hang up.”

“Listen to me, just—”

“I don’t need a goddamn nanny, y’hear me?” His voice drifted farther away, fueled by momentum and indignation. “I ain’t crippled, I ain’t senile, and I sure as hell ain’t dying yet!”

“Oh, c’mon, Daddy, nobody said any of that! It’s just for backup, your knees are—” Another scrape, something knocked over. Sarah returned to the phone, mortified. “I’m so sorry about this. Can I call you back?”

“Yeah, totally,” she said easily, very much kissing ass. “You can check my references, too, and you’ll hear—”

The line went dead. She stared at the contact screen for a second, then let out a breath through her nose.

“—good things,” she finished to no one. Fifty dollars’ worth of an international phone call went down the drain.

She bit her lip and set the phone face down on the counter. Inhaled—once, twice, three times—until her lungs burned just enough to feel productive. This will pass. This will pass. This will fucking pass.

The job prospect had collapsed back to zero, which was impressive considering it had barely gotten off the ground. Still, the griddle was hot, and the GED application still sat patiently open on the laptop, blinking at her.

Note to self: not everything had to be solved at once. Survival had taught her that much. Progress was relative; it was a series of small wins.

I love you. I really, really love you. I’m only yours.

She leaned back, closed her eyes for a beat, and let the words sink in. Her smile widened, and her mood lifted with it. Magic words from a magical mouth.

She scooped batter onto the buttered pan, the sizzle answering immediately, reassuring. As it spread, she glanced back at the application and felt the old doubts stir.

Sure, she’d been smart once. A sharp, bright, first-bench kid. But who was to say years of scrubbing bleach into tile grout with fumes clawing into her sinuses and wiping baby asses hadn’t sanded a few neurons right out of her brain? Academic intelligence wasn’t exactly a muscle she’d exercised lately. Mostly, she’d trained in endurance, patience and the art of getting through a day without wanting to scream.

The pancake settled into an obedient circle, browning perfectly, bubbles blooming neatly along the edge.

Okay, well. At least one thing in her life behaved.

She flipped it. Golden. Immaculate. “Boom.”

Two things, then.

She prided herself on multitasking—on keeping several plates spinning without letting any one of them crash too loudly, no room to think too hard about any one thing.

But none of it had prepared her for Harry walking into the kitchen.

And just like that, her flawless system developed a variable. The I-love-you variable.

I love you. I really, really love you. I’m only yours.

It was almost offensive how good he looked in a post-shower, beach-is-life-adjacent way—linen button-down hanging open past his chest, khaki shorts, barefoot on marble. His hair was damp, curls darkened, towel slung over his shoulder as he scrubbed at it lazily. Whatever wreckage they’d made of each other in the bedroom an hour ago, the sharp haze of lust had been softened to a sweet eye-crinkling smile.

She blanked for a second. Fingers drumming uselessly on the counter while her stomach became overcome by flutters. Too late to deny she had fallen so hard on her ass for this man. She became acutely aware of being watched, like she was doing something extraordinary instead of flipping pancakes and silently spiralling about her future.

He came up behind her, pressed close, and scattered some fond little kisses along her shoulder.

“I didn’t know my shirt came with a hot model,” he murmured, tracing a hand down the seam of his button-down to cup between her legs.

Heart melt. Panty melt. Whole-soul melt. She swallowed the smile and nudged him back with her hip. “Guess we’re both winning. And move over, I haven’t showered yet.”

“Still, hard not to feel like I’m winning right now,” he said, giving her ass a little love tap.

Then his attention drifted—to the island cluttered with batter splatter, upturned measuring cups, crushed eggshells, and a saucepan of tragically scorched butter. And finally, inevitably, to the laptop.

Oh no.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t look, please, please.

He did, of course. Yes, you beautiful, wealthy man who just declared his love—here is the part where you discover the girl you’re falling for is finishing high school embarrassingly late and pretending she’s not fucking terrified.

“Hey, honey,” she rushed in, too fast, “do you want to finish these for me? I’m gonna run upstairs and clean up.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said absently, already scrolling. Fuck.

She scowled and escaped the kitchen, her footsteps heavier on the marble than she meant them to be. What was so fascinating about it anyway? A few exams. Some scores, some numbers. A life checkpoint she’d shoved into the corner of her mind because it was easier not to look directly at it. Now it loomed, avoidance coming for its due.

Byredo in the blue-mosaic walled rainfall shower, L’Occitane worked into warm skin, Eres white-and-gold bikini strings knotted, and finally she tugged on a short knitted cover-up to catch her reflection—sun-warmed, loose-limbed, almost suspiciously happy.

Not even slow progress could dent this because—come on. She was about to have breakfast on a private island in France with the hottest man she’d ever laid eyes on after a morning of soft lovemaking. A man who had very calmly, very earnestly told her he was in love with her, and fine, she hadn’t said it out loud yet, but her body had cast its vote, she was swimming in it too, deep and effortless, like she’d forgotten what it felt like to stop treading water.

So honestly? Everything else could fuck right off.

Harry’s appreciative glance—quick, warm, unmistakably proud—came with a kiss pressed to her temple and a quiet “my sexy girl.” Then they were outside on the sheltered sandstone verandah, slumped near the zero-edge pool where the water disappeared into the clear blue horizon. Afternoon light glazed everything gold, saline air scented with the sweetness of new beginnings and sugar.

Breakfast—lunch, technically—was unapologetic: a tower of pancakes drowning in maple syrup, butter melting into glossy puddles, summer berries bleeding red into whipped cream, with a side of pistachio biscotti and coffee. Beyond it all, the Monaco coastline lounged in the distance, absurdly enchanting, a postcard view.

At the rate their hormones had been syncing, she half expected them to be off fucking their brains out again by now, publicly, irresponsibly, but instead they sat there and ate together, close, sluggish, drifting in and out of each other’s orbit and thoughts. A delicate little something had settled between them, and neither seemed interested in jostling it.

She caught herself studying his legs—bare now, stretched out comfortably—and the scars.

Thick, purled, pale lines mirrored on both sides, too symmetrical to be accidental. Surgery, maybe. Or something more violent? The questions rose, then waited. She was learning when not to pry.

“What did you picture for yourself, back then?” Harry asked suddenly, like he’d been waiting for the right silence.

She sputtered a laugh into her coffee. “Excuse me? Where did that come from?”

“Curious about little-you,” he clarified. “What did you think you’d be?”

“You first,” she countered. Old habit. Deflect, delay.

“Chef.” No hesitation. He leaned back, sunlight catching in his hair, turning it silver. “You’ll need to ask my brother about it sometime. He’s got photographic evidence. Fat kid, bowl cut, deeply serious about béchamel.”

She opened her mouth to tease, but he lifted a finger. “Uh-uh, no diversions. Your turn.”

She scooted closer instead, invading his space like that might change the rules.

He squinted at her, mock-studying. “Princess. Fashion icon. Pop star. Professional surfer.”

“I’m going to pretend that wasn’t wildly sexist,” she said sweetly, “and say world domination.”

“Ah. Supervillain.” His smile curved. “That tracks. You’ve already conquered my entire being.”

She laughed along with him. “Is this absurdly soppy version of you here to stay?”

“Be honest with me, sweetheart.” He turned toward her now, serious, one knee folded up on the cushion. The scars were unmistakable in the light. “Really, who did you think you’d become?”

Her gaze dropped away. She shovelled berries into her mouth, buying seconds with cream and sugar. Chewed, thought, prepared to hear his laughter.

“Doctor,” she said, muffled.

He nodded, as if confirming his thoughts. “Called it.”

She blinked. “You did not.”

“I absolutely did,” he said calmly. “You’ve got that spark. The one people get when they want to fix big things. I can see it. You’d be curing cancer by now, or—” his eyes lit mischievously, “turning people into dinosaurs.”

A smile tugged at her mouth, crooked and rueful. “Yeah, well... too late now.”

He didn’t soften it with platitudes; he only reached over, thumb brushing her wrist, right where her pulse gave her away, and said, “I don’t buy that for a second. Sounds more like unfinished business.”

She flipped her hand over and squeezed his, firm, gentle, a thank-you disguised as a boundary.

No, it was too late. It was finished. Even if she dragged herself through the next twenty years with her teeth clenched and her head down, doctorhood wasn’t waiting at the end of the road for her. That road had closed, and life had made sure of it. You don’t get to reroute a whole fucking life without casualties.

But—

There was a small, stupid, embarrassing thought that had taken up residence in the back of her head. One she hadn’t invited, but hadn’t evicted either.

Ever since the Pretty Rich Pussy cartoon had run—thanks to him, of course—she’d gone digging through old boxes, old drawers, old versions of herself. Sketchbooks, scribbles on receipts, loose scraps that were too clever or too cute to destroy. Proof that she’d always been like this, drawing, doodling, making sense of the world edgewise.

Wouldn’t it be something—to make a living off it?

Not a fantasy life or an overnight success. Simply as someone who got paid for askew perspectives and telling the truth sideways. Surrealist art, if you wanted to make it sound expensive. Maybe a column, some exhibitions. Maybe her name printed clean and unborrowed beneath her own work. A legacy that didn’t belong to anyone else.

It wouldn’t rival Harry Castillo—nothing could—but at least it would exist in the same gravitational field. He was undiluted energy, motion, emotion and impossible speed. She didn’t need to match him; all she had to do was stand upright without disappearing.

“I won’t guess anymore,” he said softly. “Tell me what's on your mind.”

Her eyes dropped to their hands. The instinct of a girl in love kicked in—silence, minimise, don’t ask for shit you can’t afford.

“I…” The words made it halfway out and died there. “Nothing.”

It physically hurt to say, like swallowing a lie sharp enough to draw blood. There were a thousand things she wanted—but real love had always come with strings and expectations and humility. She was all up in it now.

“Don’t bullshit me either,” he bit out. “I know when you’re lying.”

That was the problem. It was fucking exhausting—this way, he kept offering himself without keeping score. Letting her take and take without once asking for collateral.

“It's not like that,” she sighed.

“Let me put it this way at least: if there were no consequences—no debt, no expectations—what would you let yourself try?”

So, if he was offering, she allowed herself some more honesty. She quietly told him, “I’d stop pretending this is just a phase.”

Yes, because a ‘phase’ meant that you did not have to defend it, or protect it, or grieve it when it was taken from you. But hearing herself address it now, she realised how much it cost her to keep up with that. How many versions of herself she folded up and shoved into drawers because believing felt greedy, unnecessary, stupid? Stripping all of it down of those flimsy lies, she was left with a stubborn pull that had survived every mistake and slammed door. And admitting that—to him, to herself—felt like stepping out without armour and daring the world to swing.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Look at me.”

When she did, he shifted closer, observant eyes faltering her heart, lifting their joined hands to his chest. The intimacy of it—skin, heartbeat, heat—hit her so suddenly.

“Do you know what I’d do for you?” His voice plunged into a bare huskiness, rougher now. “I’d bring the sun down to one hand, and put the moon in the other. I’d burn bridges, cross every line I’ve ever drawn all for—for this... this single lock of hair.”

He tugged lightly at a loose strand. When she smiled eventually, he closed his hands over hers again, pressing them flat against his heart.

“So,” he said, “whatever it is, you bright, beautiful girl—let me make it real for you.”

He continued to look at her, hopeful, patient—like he wasn’t going anywhere until she said the thing she was circling. She exhaled, defeated by that alone.

“Harry...” She gulped painfully.

“Right here, baby.”

“Please don't give up on me,” she finished.

His attentive gaze sharpened. He lifted her chin gently, as if he needed to read her face up close, not miss a single flicker. When her vision blurred and she blinked it back, he absorbed it all.

“I’m a fucked-up insensitive jerk who takes feelings for granted, I've made horrible mistakes, and hurt people, but,” she heard herself and realised how much pain it caused her to admit this, “I wasn't always like this. Nobody starts life dreaming of taking what isn’t theirs, but I ended up here. One bad decision stacked on another.”

She drew a shaky breath. “I want to return now. For me. And—” she slowly committed, “—for you.”

Her voice wobbled, and she hated that it did. “I can’t promise perfect. I can barely promise I won’t screw up again. I probably will. But I can promise better. That I’m trying, and I can be different.”

She swallowed, sounding too scared when she admitted, “So just—stay, Harry. Stay with me while I figure it out.”

That was all she had to offer him. Not a sweet miracle or a grand reprieve. Honest effort, and the promise that she would keep showing up, that when she fucked up again—and she definitely would—she wouldn’t run, and she wouldn’t ask him to either.

Love, she’d learned, was the easy part. Belief was the hard one; it was what rooted it, what kept it upright when everything else tried to tear it down. And he was a man who lived in motion, thrived in noise and pressure and appetite—rich in everything except stillness. Maybe she could be that, the little chaotic thing that held in it.

As if he’d plucked the thought straight out of her skull, he said, “I don’t need you fixed.”

“Lucky you. Fixing is not my strong suit,” she lamely joked.

“I mean it.”

She sniffled into her wrist. “Stop making me so damn tense!”

“Baby, I don’t want some other future version of you I have to wait for. I want this one. You, right now. The divine, clever, trying one.” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, as if warming something cold back to life. “Better is enough for me.”

She swallowed. “You say that now.”

“I’m saying it because I know exactly how perfect you are—and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone else.”

All the love shards in her chest softened in a way that scared the shit out of her. Annoying, beautiful.

She leaned forward, resting her brow against his, their hands tangled between them. His soft breaths framed her jaw, and for the first time in a long time, she felt… contained. Like there was an invisible roof over her head, something solid keeping the weather out, keeping her warm.

“I can’t promise I won’t disappoint you,” she whispered.

He let out a soft laugh. “Yeah. Join the club.”

Too much, too much. She had to move. She pulled back with a soft laugh, sniffed, and shook her head.

“Feels like we just got here and we’re already having a third-act conversation.”

He smiled, clocking the deflection and letting it pass anyway. “Then don’t go. Stay as long as you want. Do whatever you want, wherever you want.”

“Don’t be all unrealistic and tempt me,” she groaned, dragging a hand through her hair. “We’ve got lives to get back to, hon. Real ones with bills, messes, bad days.” A beat. “And I’ve got a lot more shit to untangle.”

“We?” he asked, amused.

“We,” she echoed, surprising herself with how natural it felt.

“I like ‘we,’” he murmured. “I could ‘we’ with you for a long time.”

She poked his cheek. “‘No pressure, Castillo—” Then she leaned back, bolder now, stretching out and swinging her legs up onto his lap, knees bent near his chest. Casual. Not casual at all.

“...But how would you feel about doing the whole ‘we’ thing back home as well?”

The goddamn smile on his face, unfiltered, boyish delight, was almost nasty. Like she’d just offered him the last cookie on earth and promised to fuck him senseless afterwards for good measure.

Jesus. Men.

And tragically—infamously—her man was a leg man. His hands slid to her feet, thumbs massaging slow circles before trailing up her calves. He lifted one leg, mouth warm on the inside of her ankle, and answered her in pieces—each word broken open by a kiss.

“I,” kiss, “absolutely,” kiss—kiss—kiss—“love that.”

She snickered, flexing her leg. “Me, too.”

“You,” kiss, “make me,” kiss, “so,” kiss, “so happy.”

She dragged the back of her spoon through the last of the berries and cream, smacked her smiling lips, and thought—yeah, she could get used to ‘we.’ It tasted better than fate's bullshit ever had.

“Just so we’re aligned,” Harry drawled, settling back, hand still firm on her leg, “this is where I stop sharing you with coincidence? And I get to keep you more often now?”

She snorted softly into a bite of berries. “I’m trying this new thing called commitment. Turns out coin-cidense is très… fatigue, ooh la la.”

He rumbled out a laugh. “Babe—”

“Yes, Harry,” she cut in, rolling her eyes, though the smile ruined the effect. “You can keep me. A little more than often.”

He stroked his considering hand back down her calf, all possessive. Her words had just stoked a whole bonfire. “Meaning... boyfriend privileges.”

She made a theatric gasp. “Sacrebleu!”

“You can sacre my bleu later, naughty girl. Answer.”

She giggled, pointing her spoon at him before setting it aside. “Very confident for someone who hasn’t seen the fine print on those privileges.”

“I wouldn’t bring it up if I hadn’t earned a few,” he said easily. “I’m a generous stakeholder.”

She bit her lip, hard, to keep the smile from giving her away. “Oh yeah?”

His gaze dipped to her mouth, lingered, then met her eyes again. “Oh, yeah. And I play for keeps.”

Fucking loverboy. God, she could eat him up with a fork.

She caught his shirt collar, tugged him in, close enough that his breath brushed her lips. “Dibs on the rest of you, then.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe his luck, dark eyes all soft and half-lidded, mouth already open for her. “First dibs forever, baby.”

And she kissed the fuck out of her boyfriend.

Yes—boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Harry, devastatingly hot, stupidly in love with her, and all hers. You know how it goes—when you know, you know. And they knew. There was nothing left to hedge, no hovering lines, no loopholes.

There was a finality in the kiss, too, fully enforced want and love. They were both smiling into it, ridiculous, incandescent, like two jack-o’-lanterns tearing into each other.

Because weight was just advice, Harry lifted her easily onto his lap and yanked her cover-up over her head in one smooth, greedy motion. She fisted his shirt in retaliation, plucking some buttons, dragging it off him, helping where she could, impatient as hell. His hair fell apart immediately—mussed, perfect, wispy curls—and her chest went tight at the sight of him like that. All bare skin and devotion. One gullible target and one cynical marksman made the perfect chaos.

“Harry,” she breathed, wrecked.

“I love these,” he murmured, palms warm as he squeezed her breasts together, playful and reverent. “I love all of you. Every inch, baby.”

She. Could not. Stop. Fucking. Smiling.

He kissed her again, and she clung, legs locking around his hips as he carried her—hands firm on her ass, his hard-on pressing in to the seam of her legs like punctuation—down into the recessed living room. He navigated the little tilt of steps and the velvet couch without missing a beat, mouth breaking from hers only to speak.

“You realise I was a perfectly functional man before you,” he said mildly, as he set her down.

She fell back against the couch, spread out for him, arms over her head, all seductive. No strategy or shame. She just wanted to look sexy for him. “And now?”

“Now I’m your machine. For sex and so on.”

“We need to explore the ‘so on’ portion,” she said, lazy, smug. “Boyfriend privileges are a lot of work, you know.”

Jesus, his response in kind was not even fair. She’d take half-naked, sun-warmed Harry over tailored, boardroom-polished Harry any day. The tan, the chest, that kiss-swollen mouth, those impossible eyes. Everything inside her clenched hard enough to count as exercise. Best Kegels of her life.

“If they’re this good,” he exhaled, eyes dark as he took her in, “they require a steady hand.”

She arched a brow and parted her thighs, inviting, unrepentant. “Good thing I can handle a steady hand... or two.”

His smile went feral—wolfish, wrecked—and then he was there, spreading her thighs wider, hauling them up with an ease that made her laugh even as it made her breath stutter. He dipped his head, a low growl thrumming out, muscles flexing on his back, all beautiful intent.

She sighed when he ploughed a series of soft, teasing, ticklish kisses over the fabric of her panties, too deliberate to handle.

“Two steady hands, huh?” he murmured, tongue flattening right into the spot where he knew she would feel it most. “That what you really want?”

Her hips rocked into his tongue instinctively, needy, shameless. “I—”

“Harry!”

Freezing wasn’t the word. They both blew a fuse at the exact same time.

He lifted his head. She lifted hers. They stared at each other—three full seconds of identical, wide-eyed disbelief—like they were silently negotiating whether a human voice had just entered the room or if they had finally fucked themselves stupid.

“Harry, are you in here?” the voice came again—young, female, too close, unfamiliar.

Uh-oh. Oh, fuck.

Her brain went straight to DEFCON 1, skipping logic entirely. Who the hell is that? Why is she here? Confused staff? Threesome applicant? Ex-girlfriend? Or—sure, yeah—a murderer. Murderers announce themselves politely all the time.

Harry moved first—thank god for him—smooth as sin even while clearly dying from cockblock. Or was it pussyblock? He eased her legs off him carefully, pressing a finger to his lips in a warning that was half command, half apology.

“Let me handle this,” he whispered.

“I hate you,” she whispered back.

“Liar.”

Footsteps. Close now. Too close.

“Yeah, Charlotte!” Harry called out, voice immediately normal, maddeningly composed. “Just a sec!”

A sec? A fucking sec? And who the hell was Charlotte? Now, she had very little experience being a committed girlfriend, but she was learning quickly that she might never survive it—because this man was about to make her lose her goddamn mind.

Harry scrambled for his shirt and whatever dignity was left on the floor. She, meanwhile, clocked the fact that she was still in a slinky, criminally indecent bikini and—surprisingly—felt zero regret. If this was going to be humiliating, she wasn’t going to shrink from it.

She stalked after him, hissing, “Who the hell is—”

“I told you I had the place for the week, asshole!” another voice cut in—male this time, approaching fast, and way too familiar. Sounded… disturbingly like Harry.

“The baby, honey,” Charlotte scolded.

“Shit, sorry.”

A baby. There was a baby.

Wait, pause. Some old mental files snapped open with the unending ‘Charlotte, Charlotte, where have I heard that name?’ and pulled from an obsessive deep-dive—post-first-one-night-stand paranoia. Wedding afterparty photos. Background shots. Harry, half-visible, lurking at the edge of frames. His brother and new sister-in-law. Drunk smiles. Too much champagne. Family.

Oh, that Charlotte. Then the other voice must be the brother... what was his name again...?

Harry was suddenly in front of her again, already pulling his shirt around her shoulders like a shield. “Here—come here, baby. Quick.” He adjusted the fabric, buttoned a few strategically, then lifted his fingers under her mouth, framing it gently. “Small smile. For me?”

She slid her arms into the sleeves and glared up at him.

“I tried,” he muttered, resigned, smoothing the shirt over her chest.

His hair was still wrecked—standing up in places from where she’d been clawing at it earlier. She reached up without thinking, fixing it, taming sex knot into casual human.

Charlotte’s voice stalled mid-step. “Where the hell—” Then, sharper: “Harry, there you are!” Charlotte’s eyes landed on her. “...Oh my.”

Peter stopped short behind her. “Whoa.”

The ocean did that whooshing, theatrical breathing thing it does when no one’s talking. Four adults holding their collective breath. Then the black baby carrier in Peter’s grip made a small, offended snuffle, like the infant disapproved of the tension.

She stood there in Harry’s shirt, barefoot on cool stone, pulse still jackhammering through her veins. Her body hadn’t caught up yet—still wired from the abrupt stop, the almost. Chin instinctively tipped just enough because pride, once engaged, does not disengage.

From what she remembered, Peter and Charlotte were the couple. Their wedding had been featured in The New York Times and splashed across wedding blogs as a trendsetter. Wedding journalists had feasted on it for a month straight. Golden-hour photos, impeccable tailoring, effortless symmetry. A love story that arrived pre-approved.

And Charlotte’s Instagram confirmed it—public, polished, and aggressively curated—had been a rabbit hole of glossy ‘Adore’ tags and destiny-coded captions. A matchmaking agency special. Set up, locked in, meant to be.

Which meant—married bliss or not—she was still a dead fucking duck.

This was not how you met your boyfriend’s family. Especially not a boyfriend you’d technically had for—what—ten minutes? Fifteen, if you counted eye contact?

“Harry,” Peter said, dragging the name out, smirk already loaded.

“Pete,” Harry bit out, jaw tight.

“Harry,” Charlotte echoed, this time impressed as hell, giving her a curious, assessing sweep from bare feet to borrowed shirt. Flattering from such a gorgeous woman.

“Char,” Harry sighed.

“Harry,” she murmured, tugging his wrist—a reminder that she was still here. And that he was still half-naked.

Harry scrubbed a hand down his face and into his hair. “Baby.”

“Baby?” Peter and Charlotte chimed in unison.

“Okay—enough,” Harry said, and she watched him flip the switch. Public Harry snapped back into place. Composed, charming, gracious, like it didn’t cost him a goddamn thing. Impressive, annoying... hot as hell.

His unambiguous hand settled on the small of her back. “Yes. She’s officially my girlfriend. Peter, Charlotte—this is... the Eve I told you about. Babe, meet the more infuriating half of my family. My dick of a brother, and the poor girl who drew the short straw.”

The couple spoke over each other in murmurs, each expressing their own complaints. Very cute.

But that fucking name again, like a ghost with branding rights. Would it ever stop following her around? She clicked her tongue up at him softly. “Eve? Really?”

“You have to admit, it’s a cute nickname,” Harry soothed, thumb brushing slow circles against her spine. “My original sin. My favourite sin.”

She widened her eyes, delighted, chucking his hand off her. “Shit timing.”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Charlotte burst out with it, already striding across the room. Sure—sooner, when they’d been dating all of twenty minutes.

She leapt up and pulled Harry into a tight, congratulatory hug. “I’m so happy for you, H.”

“And you—oh my god, it’s so nice to finally meet you,” Charlotte squealed, pivoting immediately and wrapping her in a vice-grip hug that popped at least one lung. She pulled back, eyes bright.

“I feel like I've known you for so long, and... just look at you,” Charlotte said, hands still on her arms like she was cataloguing her. “You’re even more beautiful than the photos I—”

“Charlotte,” Harry warned, already making a cut-it-out gesture.

“—should not elaborate on,” she finished cheerfully, obediently. “Nothing too weird. You know how boys with crushes are. Ridiculously obsessed.”

“Amen to that,” Peter snorted from behind the baby carrier. “I’ve never seen a man zoom in on shots so respectfully in my life.”

Charlotte chuckled along anyway. “I swear, my baby heard your name before mine.”

Oh wow.

So Harry Castillo hadn’t just been interested in her. That folder that he had said he had on her... he’d literally catalogued her, and had her cross-referenced. It all lined up—the uncanny timing, the run-ins that had felt accidental but never quite were, the way he always seemed to know just enough to stay one step ahead without tipping his hand.

Her mind immediately took the scenic route to worst-case scenarios. Private investigators, background checks, a terrifyingly expensive man in loafers tracking her movements, like she was a stock about to spike. Equal parts flattering and mildly alarming, that he kept tabs on her all the time.

She tipped her head, studying Harry now with new eyes. “This whole time?” she asked.

He shrugged, as if he’d already decided how much of the truth she could handle. “You were a question mark. I don’t like unanswered ones.”

“So,” she drawled, even as her pulse ticked up, “you spied on me.”

His mouth tilted at one corner. “That’s an aggressive word.”

“I don’t know whether to feel very special,” she continued, “or start checking my phone for trackers.”

“Both can be true,” Peter offered helpfully.

Harry sighed before turning to deadpan at his family. “Outstanding, family. I feel deeply cherished. Anyone else care to pile onto the psychopath accusations?”

His avid brother didn’t miss a beat. “Obviously, this psychopath is nuts about you. Nuts isn’t even it. He’s goofy about you. Fully brainsick—”

Harry cut him off with a look alone. “Don’t.”

“No, no—emotionally fucked,” Peter clarified, unbothered, rocking the carrier with one foot like he’d done it a thousand times. “Which is honestly better for him. He’d been walking around like a stray before you showed up.”

She felt Harry’s embarrassment before she saw it—a subtle pressure shift beside her. She bit the inside of her cheek, amused.

Peter noticed immediately and pointed at her, nodding along. “See? That look. That’s how it starts. That’s how he gets you. Next thing you know—”

Harry stepped forward, voice calm, eyes lethal. “You really wanna finish that sentence, Pete?”

“You gonna hit me while I’m holding your niece?” Peter grinned.

“I think I might give it a—”

Charlotte clapped her hands once, interrupting. “Okay, that’s enough testosterone for one afternoon.” Then she turned to her, tone shifting—warm, curious, sincere.

“Eve, why don’t you and Harry join us for dinner tomorrow night? We’re planning on meeting with a few friends, and I would really love to get to know you better.”

The question was obvious; this was it—the moment you either shrank or showed up. Stepped forward and let yourself be seen.

She glanced up at Harry. Rather than wary or defensive, he looked… hopeful, openly elated at the idea of her saying yes.

She breathed out her little ball of anxiety through a smile. He never helped. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? Public humiliation? Emotional exposure? Mild death? Whatever, she had survived worse.

“Yeah,” she said, rolling her shoulders back. “I’d love that, too.”

“Yay!” Charlotte celebrated, then smacked a hand over her forehead. “Dang it—you haven't met our little Sophie, yet...”

Harry’s hand found her back again, saying I’m here without making anyone else listen in, and her stomach flipped—like the vertigo of stepping onto solid ground after a long fall.

She let herself lean into Harry just a fraction, just enough for him to feel it. He held her in place, lips coming to rest down by her temple.

“Thank you,” he murmured against her skin.

“You owe me,” she whispered, nudging her elbow into his ribs.

Well, fuck, she thought. Looks like I’m really doing this.

Looks like ‘Eve’ was meeting the family.

© damneddamsy

Did you really think I'd let this chapter go without a Pedro boy?!?! Also, predictions as to what you think is going on... and which Pedro boy would you like to see next?

There lay the appeal. Power wasn’t about holding fast or the crown; it was about flex. About knowing when to withhold, when to concede, when to make him think the ground was solid right before she pulled the carpet out from under him.

And Harry—dear, outraging Harry—was exactly the type who mistook the stumble for proof that he was still leading the dance.

ONE WEEK LATER... Friday, early evening.

Tonight, Jack wore a ring.

Normally, that would’ve been her opening, her easy seam to pry into, except the ring in question wasn’t ornamental or shitty. A gold band, left hand, ring finger, worn smooth with years of loyalty and habit. That said, the Roman “vein of love” myth was total anatomical bullshit, but customs stick, and this mark was nothing if not a man of custom.

So yes, Jack wore his ring. Married men usually did. The only shock was how much it shocked her tonight, how she checked herself, toed the line, filed it away, and proceeded to give precisely zero fucks.

It was all just data. Wives existed, targets existed, and neither cancelled the other out.

And Billionaire’s Row Jack, bless his swaggering soul, had come crawling back, goat to slaughter, her burner number in hand, still wondering why she’d stood him up a while back. Fortunately, she’d finessed her way into a do-over—chalk it up to Big Dick Castillo scrambling her compass and circuits—and he’d swallowed it.

So, here she was, sitting beside him. At the same time, he played saviour with another high-end omakase reservation that probably required blackmail to secure, and before aged otoro, Kobe beef dusted with gold flakes, cured uni so fresh it hummed.

And holy shit, it worked. She felt lit up, adorned, a million bucks—though if she was being honest (and she rarely was with herself), she couldn’t shake where she’d rather be. Somewhere darker, with someone untouchable, maddening, defrosting her own Grecian ice sculpture. That hot ache began to build in her chest when she thought of having his hands on her instead of chopsticks...

But back to Jack. She’d done her reading on him, dug deep into Jack’s glossy cowboy mystique and discovered more than just whiskey fortunes and ranches sprawling across continents. The man’s liquor empire had its fingers dipped in defence contracts and suspicious pharma exploits, of all things. Power that came dressed up in Southern charm and called her darlin’ without irony, which she hated to admit, was stupidly endearing.

But here was the problem: she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. He was all prize, no stakes. His Richard Mille winked at her from his wrist, limited edition, rare, but even that didn’t raise her pulse. He was gorgeous, he was magnetic, and he could probably wreck her in bed and kiss her ankle on the way out. And a gentleman, annoyingly enough—but he wasn’t dangerous to her. Without danger, what was the point of him?

Still, he had his charms. He was game. He’d even laughed off his complete failure with chopsticks, every piece of nigiri sliding out of his grip.

“I’m makin’ a damn fool of myself with these,” he drawled, grinning sheepishly.

She should’ve pounced; the opening was there, waving her home. That was her role, right? Instead, her mind drifted—miles away from him, from herself, to a man. It was as if she’d lost all her superpowers with him. Now, Jack deserved a performance, but which mask was it tonight? The ditzy dove, the ice queen, the wounded porcelain doll? She couldn’t commit to any of them; all her old tricks felt hollow.

So she went with the one that never failed: wit.

She plucked a piece of sushi off his plate, deftly wielding her chopsticks. “Pretend it’s foreplay,” she murmured. “Awkward, clumsy, slippery… until someone gives up and—” She pinched the nigiri with her fingers and held it out just shy of his lips. “—uses their hands.”

Bullseye. Still got it.

His slow-burning smirk crept in between appetite and amusement, and he leaned in, lips closing not just on the sushi but her fingers. Teeth grazed, tongue lingered.

“Guess I’m warmin’ up, then,” he murmured after swallowing, laugh low in his throat.

She had a sly quip primed—when her phone blinked in her lap. Normally, she’d have let it rot. Except this buzz belonged to one of her many Google alerts (yes, she had them; no, she was not proud).

For Harry Castillo. No shame, or at least no functioning shame left.

“Sorry, I have to get this,” she muttered, already thumbing the cracked glass.

One click, and she was tumbling down the rabbit hole—some finance blog running a live-tracking of a gala at Gotham Hall. And there was her Batman, making everyone else in frame look like background noise. Black Tom Ford, steel cufflinks, champagne dangling between long fingers, shaking hands with suits. Dark curls slicked back, beard sharpened around that granite jaw, dusky eyes locked on some poor soul while conversing, commanding, looking ten degrees removed from whatever conversation he was in.

The caption dutifully played scribe:

“Corporate financier titan Harry Castillo delivered a rare keynote tonight, offering candid insights into leadership, market upticks, and the evolution of ‘Castillo Solutions’—the firm’s turnaround arm for underperforming companies that not only...”

She exhaled a breath, biting back a laugh.

Jesus fuck. Nothing turned her on like philanthropy dressed up as empire-building. She’d expected him to be pure siege-and-conquer, all teeth and takeover. Yet here was his… benevolent streak. Legacy thinking, a man who thought in time horizons, which, of course, only made her want him more.

Scrolling down, more gold. An interview excerpt, the neat little Q&A they trot out mid-gala:

Q: Castillo Group is traditionally known for strategic investments. What’s next for the firm? H.C.: We’ve always been about value creation—but let’s be honest, scale begs for evolution. So, we’re building a billion-dollar think tank. Not solely research—intelligence... with teeth. Market foresight, innovation strategy, global competitiveness. All the fun stuff. It’s about building resilient machines that don’t break when the world does...

She stared at the screen, lips parting. As if she didn’t already think enough about him. God, she was so dumb. Still, the words sank their claws in: resilience, foresight, innovation. The man discussed global competitiveness in a way that others murmured sweet nothings. And worse, he made it sound just as seductive.

Q: With a schedule like yours, is there room for anyone outside the boardroom? H.C.: Wow, is this WIRED or People Mag? Q: Some of us would like to know the human behind the billion-dollar valuation. H.C.: And I like privacy. We can’t all get what we want. Q: So, you’re saying there is someone—just not public yet? H.C.: And if that were true, do you think I’d hand you that exclusive for free? Q: Not even a hint? A first letter? A profession? H.C: If I decide that’s relevant to shareholders, you’ll read it in an SEC filing. Until then, let’s stick to business. Thanks.

Oh, shit. Was he talking about her? No, that could not be her. He would have talked up a storm about red carpets and movie showings... right?

She shut off her phone before she could scroll further, and pressed her palm into the ache behind her eyes. If she didn’t, she was liable to embarrass herself in public. Because really—what was hornier than a man who thought in billion-dollar decades?

“Well, well,” came a slow murmur by her ear. Jack, watching her with that half-grin. “He still in your life, or just sittin’ in your phone?”

Her stomach pitched. Observant. Great.

“Just some guy,” she said lightly, jamming the phone deep into her purse. She turned back to beam at him, all theatre. “Unimportant.”

“Unimportant, huh?” He swirled his sake, eyes still on her. “Reckon a fella’s gotta be some kinda important if you’ve got alerts set on him.”

Oh, fantastic. A handsome cowboy with intuition. She forced a shrug. “He’s—” she corrected herself, “was someone convenient.”

“Mm,” he drawled, sipping his sake. “What’s that you kids call it… a situationship?”

A genuine laugh spilled out. “You’re fluent in the Gen Z slang.”

But his eyes didn’t leave her. “So who is he?”

She deflected, tapping her chopstick against the gold band gleaming on his finger. “Bigger question is—who is she?”

His mouth quirked, but the answer was quiet. “Who was she.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t seen that coming. She glanced down, poking absently at a stray piece of sushi. How the hell had she missed that in her little background dig? Sloppy. “Sorry for your loss.”

“Happened a long time ago.” He twisted the ring deeper into his finger. “Couldn’t bring myself to take it off.”

And there it was: the dead wife card. Shit. How was she supposed to keep her footing now? What kind of vile cunt thought about slipping a Richard Mille off his wrist after a confession like that? She hated herself for even thinking it, that survival had rewired her brain to steal before it let her feel.

Why was she even doing this? Why was taking always the default, even now, when she had a little fallback cash tucked away, when she’d finally quit that godawful nightmare nanny-share gig that paid in baby spit instead of bills? And still, she couldn’t imagine leaving empty-handed.

“First right date in a year,” Jack said softly, shaking his head. “And I go and muck it up.” His voice didn’t sound like pity anymore. “Funny thing is, I met my wife the same way I met you.”

“She almost trampled you on the stairs?” she guessed.

He had a warm laugh at the ready. “Yes, ma’am. Damn near knocked me flat. Guess that’s why I knew I had to come back—figured maybe I’d get lucky twice.” He hesitated, eyes dipping. “Hope that doesn’t make things too uncomfortable for you.”

“No!” Too quick, too sharp. She cleared her throat, forced softer. “No, of course not.”

“Sorry about all of this,” he sighed, shaking his head. “This ain’t how I wanted tonight to go.”

“We still have time,” she offered, almost surprising herself.

He nodded, leaning toward her as if to reset the board. He seemed grateful when he said to her, “Alright, go on, then. So tell me all about you—what keeps you busy these days?”

And here it was—the question she dreaded. The trapdoor she always danced around. For once, she let a sliver of honesty slip through.

“A lot of things,” she said slowly, quietly. “Nothing specific at the moment.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” Gradual, constant—he made it sound like an invitation.

Her mouth opened, then stalled. What did she want? The answer was a mess—so many pieces pointing in opposite directions, she couldn’t tell where the centre was anymore.

Her lips curled, rueful. “A lot of other things.” She bit her lip, looked away. “I can’t tell anymore. One minute, I want to... build something; the next, I just want to burn it all down. And then there’s—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “Forget it.”

There it was. The ugly, embarrassing reality slipped out, the one she’d meant to keep hidden. For a second, she regretted it, bracing for a laugh—until Jack leaned back, swirling his sake with a thoughtful hum.

“That fella on your phone, huh?”

She looked up, startled, defensive. “You don’t know that.”

“Don’t need to, that look says it all.” He gave her a small smile. “Sounds to me like you’re tryin’ awful hard to carry somebody else’s map. Ain’t no wonder you can’t tell where you’re headed.”

Her eyes flicked, sceptical. “Somebody else’s map?”

He gave her a sly look, enough to make her catch the drift.

She mocked him with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a spit. “I totally have a map. It's just... not shaded in.”

“Sure. Always gotta be some big shot with a big name, bigger plans. Makes a whole goddamn production outta knowin’ what’s best. You keep starin’ at where he’s goin’, you forget you’re the one holdin’ the wheel.”

Harry, without being named. Of course, Jack had caught on. Vigilant bastard.

She scoffed, hiding the little tremor under her tongue. “You think I’m that easy to read?”

“Darlin’, you lit up like a church steeple the second that phone did. But I’ll tell you what.” He leaned in, a chuckle dying out. “You don’t strike me as a woman who plays second fiddle for long. You’re too damn sharp for that.”

She wanted to laugh, to brush it off, but his words slid in under her ribs, edged as glass shards. She hated how much she wanted to believe him.

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Simple don’t mean easy,” he drawled, with that little shrug men like him had perfected. “But it’s yours. That’s what counts.”

She looked down at her plate, unsettled. Jack had no idea what she’d been planning—what she always planned—but somehow he’d handed her back a piece of herself she wasn’t sure she even wanted. He just sat there, calm, steady, making her feel like maybe she wasn’t such a wreck after all.

And traitorously, all she could think was how Harry would’ve twisted the same moment into a chess match. His move, her move. Strategy, leverage, pressure. He would’ve cut her open with precision, told her exactly what she wanted to hear, and roped her right into the storm.

And she preferred the storm to the calm.

She rubbed at the corner of her eye, careful not to smudge her liner. “Thanks,” she muttered.

Jack tipped his head, tugging his ear playfully. “Say again?”

She looked up and flashed him a grin. “Thank you, I needed to hear that.”

“There it is,” he sighed, pleased. After a beat: “Now tell me somethin’. You sittin’ here with me—was this all just to get under his skin?”

“No...” She nipped at her chopsticks, then dumbly added, “Though I should’ve. He’s the jealous type.”

His gaze flicked from her lap back up to her face, unhurried, evidently checking her out. “Can’t say I’m surprised. If I were him, I’d be, too.”

The line pricked her pulse. She reached out, let her finger trace down the side of his temple, testing. “Maybe you should give me a reason not to go back.”

His hand caught her wrist. “Not really my style to poach.” His thumb brushed her skin before he set her hand back on her lap. “But I don’t hold back what’s already halfway out the door.”

She gave a breathy little laugh. “I’m not leaving you, Jack.”

He arched a brow, that knowing patience lingering in his face. “I think you oughta.”

Friday, midnight.

Another revelation, filed under fucked-up feminine facts: women weren’t naturally guiltier creatures—it’s that they’re expected to carry everyone else’s feelings like these unpaid emotional sherpas, and guilt was the bill that came due when they refused.

Still, she couldn’t quite tell if it was guilt that dragged her out of her tangled sheets tonight—or that other beast, the restless, obsessive, volatile appetite she didn’t recognise in herself. She wasn’t supposed to be like this, not after everything, with that sick, sparking restlessness she’d never allowed herself over any man. And certainly not this man.

There hadn’t been a single hour since she’d met him that he hadn’t threaded through her. She ate with him in mind, slept with him in mind, lied, improvised, breathed with him lurking in the margins. Every ridiculous stunt and mask she’d pulled lately felt accelerated, amplified, warped by him, as though the whole messy orbit of her life had started revolving around Harry Castillo.

She hated it. And she wanted more.

So if she was about to meet him—meet the man who wanted her so badly he could choke on it—she might as well make it sting. Give him a tease, a dare, something to chew on. She had to be unforgettable.

She wore the old, wine-red Agent Provocateur set—hot sin cut into lingerie fabric, tucked under a black satin number scavenged from some thrift rack with a floor-grazing hem and a threateningly long slit. The draped bodice flashed a single cutout at the ribs—straight out of Harry’s space-is-a-suggestion fantasies. Warby Louboutin red soles to match her mouth, lashes curled, hair pinned up in a deliberate mess, loose strands softening her face. No jewellery, the only thing she wanted gleaming tonight was him looking at her.

Dress with reason, dress to win—and she was a winner. (Also, she wanted to fuck him. Badly. Pathetically.)

One glance in the mirror, though, and she cringed. Now, who the fuck was that?

That desperate, weak-willed, forsaken thing of beauty. So much for dignity and steel traps. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

By the time she hit the street, the midnight metropolis reminded her of its usual kindness: lewd catcalls curdled into “oh, you too good to talk?” then “bitch” before the traffic light even changed. New York City always had a way of stripping women down without laying a finger on them, with glass ceilings overhead, chewed-up sidewalks underfoot—an equal-opportunity battlefield.

She shoved past it all and flagged a cab, which was salvation enough. Sinking back against the torn vinyl, she let her mind leap ahead.

If her real estate snooping hadn’t failed her, Harry wasn’t bluffing when he’d hinted about property (plural). The man collected space like power—whole buildings, apartments, rumour had it even a defunct supermarket on a dumb dare.

But she was betting on the Tribeca penthouse. Mid-century modern, herringbone floors, lacquered ceilings, and symbolic “quiet luxury”—Architectural Digest salivated over it two years ago. All temptation and distance, curated down to the grain. She’d seen the photographs, and, most importantly, the artisanal headboard on a California King she was determined to bang his neutral wall against tonight.

Call her obsessive or a stalker, she’d take it. It wasn’t like her internet rabbit holes compared to what he had on her. His dirt was bought, and it was definitely illegal. Hers was a little Google, a little impulse. Free and innocent by comparison.

Still, doubt gnawed at her as she fished today’s New York Times from the seat flap. What if he were still at that gala, smiling, interviewing, being elusive? What if she had the wrong address entirely? What if he sends her back without so much as a glimpse? Would he be mad at her for standing him up? For inadvertently pocketing his credit card?

It didn’t matter. Intuition pulled her forward like a leash. She was going to do something about Harry tonight, even if it took three more cab rides.

She just wanted to see him. That was in no way proving that she missed him. Obviously not. How tacky. She only needed to see him like an exit wound... or a warning label.

The cabbie’s voice cut through her spiral. “You sure about this, miss?”

She smirked, eyes still on the city blur outside. “Closure or chaos. I’ll take whichever comes first.”

“Nah, I meant the address.” He tapped the brakes near the curb. “Security’s thick around there. Don’t want nobody pokin’ flashlights through my windows.”

She blinked, dragged back to reality. “Uh. Curb’s good, thanks.”

He nodded, threw the gear into park. “That’ll be twenty-eight fifty.”

She shoved bills through the gap, lips twisting to a grimace. Yeesh, nearly thirty bucks for this gamble. That son of a bitch better be upstairs.

Every click of her heels ricocheted through the cavernous lobby like gunshots, a declaration of war in Louboutin artillery, chandeliers dripping with crystal light, a small reminder of just how inadequate she was. She kept her chin high anyway, slicing across the marble floor toward the concierge.

Sure, she could’ve slipped in through some side door, played ghost. But tonight she wanted to behave. Or at least, look like she was.

“Hi, there.” She painted on her best, winning smile. “Eve, here to see Harry Castillo. He’s not expecting me.”

The girl behind the desk blinked, then flustered. “I’m sorry, Mr Castillo doesn’t take visitors after eleven—I really shouldn't...”

A fifty slid across the counter, her nails tapping it once, a wink thrown in for good measure. “Make an exception, darling. He’ll know why.”

The hesitation lasted a single gulp when she added the next fifty-dollar bill and grinned. Then money did what it always did—it smoothed the world open. The girl dialled, said ‘Eve’ into the receiver with some Charlie-Brown-esque murmurs, and within moments was escorting her to the farthest elevator, slipping a key into the panel. Key turned, button pressed, penthouse access granted.

Funny how easy it all was, appalling how pliable life got when you looked expensive.

But when the doors shunted shut, the panic set in. It surged, stomach-twisting—such a strange, foreign sensation. She’d spent years perfecting numbness, skating above consequence. Now she was on her way to it, heart slamming against her ribs, drowning in her horrible choices.

Who am I kidding, this is a terrible idea. She’d rather torture herself with hypotheticals than face him. Her finger hovered over the panel, tempted to hit the ‘stop’ button.

StopstopstopstopwhatthefuckamIdoing—

The elevator halted and slid open straight into his apartment.

Too late.

She might’ve been a mess, a flirt, even an idiot sometimes—but never a loser. So she exhaled, steeled herself, and stepped onto his floors.

You can tell a great deal about a person by the way they live. Harry’s dim, rich man dwelling told her what she already knew: a man who understood value and control. Every surface was tailored into sharp lines and polished wood. The ceilings stretched high enough to accommodate a minor god complex, designer lighting humming softly from within, bespoke furniture sculpted, and elegant wall fixtures gleaming with Italian elegance. It was immaculate, intimidating, with no clutter or personal mess. Exquisite, and so, so—empty.

So, where was Harry Castillo’s softness? Where the hell was he in all this?

She’d always worked hard to fake her way into rooms like this, but here, his space dwarfed her. Yet still, she noticed the open cracks in his exemplar. His pitch-black blazer from the earlier event was draped over a beige couch. A MacBook was left open on the coffee table, ticker lines of stock markets racing across the screen, and his Audemars Piguet was strewn beside it, a sinfully sleek reminder of how they first met. A half-drunk lowball was sweating amber. Whiskey or bourbon? He was a whiskey guy.

Of course, he was such a man. He was the man.

She swallowed, unsettled at how much she wanted him just from his absence. His home reeked of mastery, of appearances perfected, of power flexed in stillness.

Art and sculpture flanked the walls, pieces too intentional to be lived with, and they vanquished her bravery. She shook her head at them, trying to remind herself she wasn’t from this polished world. She was just unaccustomed to it. No sense of belonging here.

Then she heard the music. Oh, good, maybe that would calm her nerves.

A soft croon, grainy sixties vinyl floating through the air: “Our love, yeah, is slowly goin’ on the rocks now… Tell me, tell me, baby… what you gonna do ’bout it?”

Her lips parted. Heat crawled up her spine.

Oh, he was definitely doing this shit on purpose. Of course, he was. Setting the stage, pulling her deeper, testing if she’d walk straight into his little snare. What a grade-A prick.

She scowled at the long, sweeping windows where Manhattan still continued to gleam like a diamond with blood on it—all shine, no guilt. It didn’t care about girls like her; it only swallowed them, crushed them, and coughed them out somewhere along the F line, nameless and none the fucking wiser.

But the thing about New York is that it loves a good comeback story.

Hers emerged from the corridor, finishing the buttons on a white shirt he clearly had no intention of wearing all the way.

“There she is. My favourite sin,” Harry's baritone wrapped her in a silken caress.

Her dignity cracked in half. Every wisp of seduction she’d prepped went poof.

Leaning against the wall like the six-foot masculine embodiment of bad timing and better genetics, that ruinous crooked smirk carved between cheekbones and selvedge of a beard, looking so heartbreakingly Señor Castillo she nearly burst into tears on the spot.

I missed you. I missed you, I missed you. Did you miss me? All unintentional mental reviews. Hopefully.

His dark hair curled, tousled—effortlessly, unfairly—somewhere between ‘fuck-me’ and ‘just-fucked’, and he began rolling back his sleeves, showing her the veins on his forearms as though he knew exactly how much it turned her on.

Her eyes dragged over him involuntarily, starting from that impossible bulge—the stupid, distracting, beautifully arrogant outline of him straining against his trousers—up to his chest, his broad shoulders, his perfect mouth, those limitless eyes.

And Jesus, she ached. She unfortunately missed him so much that it made her nauseous, gnawed at her ribcage, how seeing him now, when she had dolled herself into clearance-rack Venus, made her heart quiver and quake in ways a half-starving grifter couldn’t really afford.

Because, of course, life wasn’t done dragging her through the emotional shit gutter.

“Hi,” was what she meant to say, but came out as a pathetic, “Ha.”

Harry’s gaze swept over her, laser-focused, lingering just a second too long on her, jaw hardening. He swallowed, made a noble, failing attempt to cool the burn behind his collar. Ooh, mama, the dress was working overtime.

“Another fortuitous date tonight?”

The line dropped from his mouth like a stone in water, shattering every anticipation she’d stacked this night upon. Strike one.

She rolled her eyes and started for the elevator, heels echoing. “Guess hellos are out of style. Asshole.”

“C’mon,” he called after her. “What else am I supposed to assume when you show up at my place dressed like that?”

She spun on him. “If I wanted judgment, Harry, I’d have called my father.”

He shrugged lazily. “Enlighten me, then. Why are you here?”

Well, she was still asking that herself. What possible reason? To get fucked, physically and emotionally, like a masochist? To play moth to the flame she kept swearing off?

The truth was uglier: she was tired. She was frayed. Tired of pretending she wasn’t frayed. Tired of pretending she didn’t light up like a gaudy fucking Christmas display every time Harry strolled into her head—smug, composed, and pared from everything she’d sworn never to want again: love and potential.

“Definitely not for conversation,” he said, scanning her, head to toe. She had never felt more nude. “So what is it—are you desperate? Bored? D’you want a good fuck? Not sure if I should be flattered or disappointed.”

Her laugh came out sharp. “Why do you always assume the worst about me?”

He cocked his head, unbothered. “I could ask you the same.” His arms crossed, muscles straining through the shirt, eyes pinning her, each word enunciated. “So. One more time. Why did you find me tonight?”

Her hand moved before her brain could stop it, wrestling inside her clutch. She pulled out the gleam of his Centurion black card—the one she’d kept far too long, excuse and anchor all at once. As much as she wished she could’ve used it, ethicality obliterated all sense.

Finally. Something resembling a reason, or that might salvage what little integrity she had left.

She strode forward and slapped the card beside his open laptop. “For that. Congratulations—you’ve been returned your precious plastic. Not a penny shy.”

He scratched at his jaw to hide the grin—too late. She’d already clocked the twitch of it, the tell. He always gave himself away with that one corner that never quite behaved. Infuriating. Adorable. Kissable.

“Anything else?” he murmured. “The Hublot? A couple of hundreds? Maybe a pair of studded cufflinks?”

“Jesus.” She pressed a hand to her temple. “This was such a stupid idea. I’m done here.”

She angled toward the elevator, but her body refused to obey. She just stood there, wishing the floor would swallow her whole and save her the humiliation.

“Stay,” he said, without missing a beat.

Though his hands stayed buried in his pockets. A pity—she wanted them on her. She wanted proof that he wasn’t as untouchable as he looked. But no, he continued to stand there, watching, while she gathered up the shreds of her pride, forced her legs to move, heels clicking on the floor. She made it five steps past him before his hand finally sealed around hers.

“Hey-ey, hang on. That wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry.” His voice had shifted, become low, roughened. “C’mere. Lemme hold you for a bit.”

Maybe it was the blood rushing to her head, maybe it was the fact that Harry Castillo could tilt the ground under her in a single sentence, but she let him pull her back into his orbit.

His palm skimmed her waist, drawing her into him until she was tilted up against the breadth of his chest. Warm, warm, until his nose brushed hers, his mouth hovered maddeningly close, ghosting kisses too hot.

His eyes narrowed, dark, searching, fingers grazing down the slope of her neck. “Did someone do something to you? Did you get into trouble? Whatever it is, tell me—I’ll take care of it.”

She went breathless, tight with a sudden shyness in her throat. He made her feel so much like an innocent, blameless girl—bare, unarmoured, seen. And that scared her more than anything, how good it felt to be asked. To be believed. To be protected.

He only continued, “Just give me a name. I’ll bury the asshole in litigation so deep he’ll forget what daylight looks like.”

So, she managed a nervous laugh. “Yes, I came here because nothing says emotional safety like you.”

His lips twitched, relief flooding his face momentarily. “You knew what this was when you knocked on my door.” He sighed. “You're okay?”

She nodded softly. “Yeah.”

She caught his jaw in her hand, thumb brushing over the faint stubble on his cheek, the warmth of him a narcotic. She parted her lips, ready to surrender, to slot against his, but he pulled back just enough to laugh softly against her skin.

“Tell me why you came to me then.”

“You know why,” she murmured, trying for his lips again.

He dodged, brushing a kiss across her chin. “For sex?”

Her teeth caught her lip; she nodded. Please, she wanted to say. Please fuck me. On your floor, against that window, that wall, that counter...

Really, her attraction to him had nothing to do with reason, not one bit. Want pooled in her stomach, a single syllable too small for the ache spreading through her. She wanted his arms, his mouth, his everything—wanted, wanted, wanted, until the word itself felt miserable.

His gaze flared, then softened into that unbearable smirk. “Truly are the prettiest liar I have ever seen.”

She scoffed. “Is your ego that fragile, or am I just that unbelievable?”

“No, I just know you too well to think sex is all you came for.”

Truth, meet forehead. How could he do this to her—slip past her armour with the precision of someone who already knew where the cracks were? She was starting to believe she had turned out all her tricks, and he’d built up an immunity.

“Fine then, Mr Man.” She dragged the words, testing him. “Tell me why I’m here.”

His eyes narrowed. “You want me to carry the sole blame for wanting you?”

Her lips drooped downward. “You’re such a shitty chore.”

He grinned wide, brushing his nose against hers, lips not quite touching, aching. “I’m a mirror, sweetheart. I don’t make the picture, I show you what’s there.”

“And what’s there is a greedy fuckable thief.”

He shook his head, grinning. “Not in the least.”

She pushed her bottom lip out. Hm, she was being truthful that time.

He continued to shake his head and say, “That you like me, and you missed me so bad...” His mouth ghosted her cheek, close enough she felt the words more than heard them. “...you’d rather stalk me, seduce me and lie to my face than admit it.”

Goddamn him. “What if I just like wearing a nice dress for you?”

“Then,” he murmured, thumb journeying down the curve of her jaw, “leave it on. I’ll still prove myself right.”

Her pulse strumbled, the traitorous bitch. She tilted her chin, masking the flutter with a terse smile. “That I’m easy? Obsessed? Tragic?”

His eyes gleamed, unbothered. “I despise repeating myself.”

Oh, her grin was idiotic. Giddy, giddy thief gooey over a rich man. That never happens.

Inside, the truth pressed like splinters against her ribs: I have nothing real to give you. I don't even know what I am anymore. But she’d sooner walk barefoot over broken glass than hand him that. Rather, she leaned back on one hip, gesturing a bitter flourish down her own body, like the Vanna White of wrong decisions.

“You want this. That’s all there is.” The silk slit, the painted lips, the performance of allure. “The getups, the masks, my body, my gimmicks.” Her smile curved more viciously than she felt. “The inventory’s not deep. So, you’re not exactly starving.”

For half a second, she thought he’d smirk, call her bluff. Instead, he leaned closer, voice low enough to drop the ground beneath her feet.

“If that’s all you were—a sexy, gorgeous body—I’d have forgotten you already. Again, I don't waste my time on material assets.”

Her throat tightened, but she kept her expression smooth. As if it hadn’t just landed like a blade.

Then his thumb was on her jaw, sliding down to her throat, the touch both caress and chokehold. “You think you’re a constant. Immovable. That’s your lie.”

Constant? She wanted to scoff, tell him she was a statistical error, a fucking anomaly—but the word knotted in her gut, uncomfortably right.

“I didn’t waste my nights on a constant,” he went on. “I put my time—my money, my patience—into exponents. The volatile accruals.” His mouth hovered over hers, infuriatingly close. “The ones that can ruin me or double me.”

Her laugh came out crooked, a calculated dodge. “You’re flirting with math now? Want me to whip out a calculator?”

“Look,” he said, softer, sharper. “I’m reminding you for the hundredth time: I back what pays.” His lips ghosted her skin. “And you’re my high-risk, obscene return.”

Her chest tightened; she pushed back the ache with sharpness. “And what’s the disgusting ROI on heartache?”

He laughed low, deep—like it came from somewhere inside her. “Depends on how much you put in.”

There lay the problem: she always put everything in. Even now, with one foot out the door and her pride zipped up to her throat, she was still estimating his impact.

She bit her lip, forcing the scales to balance in her favour. “Then maybe I’ll short you.”

“Sweetheart...” he murmured, showing her his fist, curling it tight—the same fist he’d once promised her held the whole world, and that she should never be afraid of it.

It was simple—“You’re the only one who gets to break my world.”

She stared at his fist without any rings or embellishments, at the supposed planet trapped in his palm. Funny how small it looked from here; attainable, stealable, hers.

Her fingers spread over his hand, comparably tinier, tracing the ridges of bone and vein. Childlike, almost—but she was no child anymore. She was casing him like she’d case a mark, cataloguing. A knuckle became Edinburgh in winter, stone and smoke. The line of a vein—Maceió at dawn, gold on water, sun-speckled, warm. She’d always claimed the world sideways, like a rumour, never the headline. She existed between stories, on rooftops and in slipstream shadows.

But here it was, the world tilting toward her, clicking into place under her fingertips. And if the world was in his hand, what did that make her?

A slow, triumphant smile loosened at her lips. She inhaled deeply and could feel the heat of the living room around her—the fragrance of pretension.

“Looks smaller than advertised,” she murmured.

He only returned her a wolfish grin.

She lifted his hand to her lips, brushing a kiss on his knuckles. “But I get to decide how it breaks.”

“Deal.”

The word was barely out before his hand cupped the back of her neck, dragging her mouth to his, pulling her deeper into the living room with too many fucking shelves. His kisses—always his goddamn kisses—spread hot, consuming, greedy, wanting to strip her down to proof of purchase, itemised desire. She let him take, let him steal, until her laugh cracked between them, muffled against his teeth.

Momentum toppled them in a blur of heat, friction, limbs—until her back hit the Chevron floors, his big hand protecting her head before the fall, whispering a soft “got you.” The smack of bone on wood made them hiss, then laugh again, louder this time, ricocheting off his Philippe Starck lamps and cheapening his Noguchi piece. Goodbye, curated silence, so much for perfection.

“Just one look, and I fell so ha-a-ard,” Doris Troy belted out, “In love... with you, oh-oh, oh-oh...”

Yes, Doris. Exactly. Rub it in.

He tore her heels away, silk rucked up her thigh, red panties flew somewhere behind a Milo Baughman chair, fingers feeling up the soft skin like it was his own acreage, while she ripped right through his half-buttoned shirt, smoothing her palms down the planes and contours, the warm bristle of his chest. When he pushed a leg of hers onto his shoulder, hitching the other around his hip, she thought—not for the first time—that Harry’s entire home was all façade. Perfect lines, ideal light, every piece in its place. Beautiful, impenetrable, a fortress of taste.

“If I’d known you’d come, looking like this,” he hummed, and kissed the inside of her ankle, “I’d have met you at the door on my knees. Beautiful girl.”

“I knew it,” she laughed up at him. “You fuck like your house looks.”

“I haven’t even made you come, and you’ve lost it already?” He clicked his tongue, running a palm down her calf on his shoulder. “Goddamn, I am that good.”

“Oh, yeah. Dangerously addictive. Screwing a tax write-off and all.”

“Working on it.” He reached down to pinch her bottom lip. “I really missed filling up that smart mouth.”

Her giggle broke off to a gasp, scandalised to the nth degree. “Harry!”

He winked. “Little louder, sweetheart. You ready for me?”

“Been waiting for you to catch up,” she panted, pulling him closer by his biceps.

And then, kneeling before her between her knees, he was inside—no patience, no mercy, that first brutal push of all those handsome inches that made her spine arch like a live wire. Every curve of him, every inured part, stretched open, welcoming him home, serving him with that particular brand of invasion that felt like theft, like surrender, like victory all at once.

Her body clutched at him in betrayal, starved, insatiable, tightening around his length, waiting too long (read: eight days.) He pushed in, hips snapping hard enough that the parquet groaned under them, his hips rhythm quick, tenacious. And the sick piece of shit she was, loved being pinned under him, fucked into his pristine floor, spoiling it, marking his museum with her fingerprints, until his perfect fortress cracked around the edges. The lines blurred, the air became a presence.

His mouth was on her throat, biting now, brutal as his thrusts, pushing her with loud slaps of skin, deeper, deeper, harder. She felt herself shatter and stretch at once, ecstasy sting up her spine, hands racing to find more of his skin, clawing his back, her mind splintering into fevered pieces: what is he thinking, does he see how terrified I am, how hopeless I am, how I have no step forward without him, how I’ll never forget him, and oh, please, please, let him never forget me.

Her hips bucked up into him, shameless, answering every drive with her own. Silk bunched at her waist, his shoulder forcing her leg higher, deeper, in, in until her vision blurred.

She was helpless to her hips lifting, her pleas, to resist, to want. She wanted him. She missed him. She truly forgot to despise him.

And through the wreckage of thought, through the wet thumps of bodies, his breath breaking at her ear, she arched under him, nails carving his back, a moan breaking again on a gasp. “Harry, please. Please.”

He held her to him—pinned, breath shared, skin hot—rocking into her with a slow, devastating grind that made her toes curl against his back.

“Dibs on you, sweetheart,” he whispered between grunts, a hand sweeping hair off her face. A kiss on her eye, her nose, her lips, her jaw. “Dibs here, dibs here, dibs on this...”

And she, who had made a career of cracking lies wide open, felt a tear slip out of her eyes, even as his mouth closed hungrily over hers. Because cracks weren’t weaknesses to her.

Cracks were pressure points.

And Harry Castillo—his palatial home, his body driving into hers, swallowing her whole on his floors—was finally giving her something worth breaking. Unravelling for her, right then, right there, on his perfect floor.

She’d cracked open for him, and he was breaking right back.

Saturday, 2 a.m

Teeming in a great, big O.

That was the only appropriate headline for what had just detonated inside her wrecked body. If the Times ran an evening edition dedicated to orgasms, she’d happily submit the copy herself: Rip-roaring, thundering, five-star climax leaves woman in state of religious fervour. Short film at three.

She already wanted another one. Again, and again, and again. A sex marathon, a pilgrimage, a straight-up preoccupation. It was pathetic, honestly. She’d fucked people, walked away from plenty, and yet this one—smug bastard with the jawline of a Greek coin—had managed to wire her nervous system into his stock portfolio. Every touch, every thrust, compounding interest.

Somewhere from within the recesses of his apartment, Doris Troy continued, the vinyl probably on its second rotation, crooning out, “Draw me closer, the time is right... draw me closer to your arms tonight...”

Unfortunately, her rich boy was out cold in his post-sex stupor, a powerful leg wedged between hers, satin dress still bunched around her waist. His clothed knee brushed against her well-fucked places with every shiftless flex, teasing her on autopilot.

Not that it stopped her from admiring the view. Harry, sprawled beside her, head propped on a bent arm, half-lidded, so handsome. Every so often, he leaned forward to kiss her bare shoulder, or dragged her hand to his mouth to kiss her wrist, playing with her fingers, as though even half-asleep he couldn’t quite stop touching her.

“We should move to your bed,” she said, faking expedience.

“Mm.”

“Christen it. Preferably with me back on top.”

“Mm.”

Might've spoiled her man too much.

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling, parquet digging into her shoulder blades. “Investor of worlds, breaker of wills, and all you’ve got for me is a consonant? I deserve good sex on a mattress, Harry. A goddamn bed made of Egyptian cotton.”

“Mm,” he repeated, thumb grazing down her arm.

“Don't ‘mm’ me.”

He kissed her palm, stubble scratching at her skin, and hummed again—different this time. Answer-adjacent.

She blinked at him, touched despite herself. “Oh, I like this,” she murmured, smoothing a hand down his jaw, over the uneven scatter of dark stubble. “Think you could keep it for me?”

That earned her a deep laugh, finally, his voice coming through in a coarse whisper. “If I keep it, you’ll soon have me applying to the Hoary Society.”

She raised her brows. “Spelt with an H or a W?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“But it feels so good,” she said, letting her fingers linger, “when you kiss me here…” she brushed her lips, “and here…” her breasts, “and here…” She dragged her hand lower, past her stomach, to press against the exact spot his knee was nudging, insistently, against her soaked skin. “Especially here.”

That snapped his gaze awake, the lazy veneer burning off in a flash.

He nodded, his tongue pushed against his cheek, amused. “Point made. It's staying.”

Grinning in her victory, she disentangled her legs from his, rolling onto her front, and propped her chin on her palms. The parquet stabbed into her ribs, and she made a mental note: next time, he was buying a rug. Preferably Persian and four inches thick.

Sure enough, chromosome Y powered right up—his eyes lowered, magnetised, to the slip of lace revealed where her thin strap had skated down her shoulder. His fingers followed, brushing the strap, checking if it was real. The twitch in his lips, the bob in his throat—oh boy, he was short-circuiting, and she hadn’t even said anything yet.

“Jesus, sweetheart. Warn a man at least.”

She let the smile spread, slow, feline. “I wore it for you. Everything. I thought you might appreciate it.”

His eyes snapped to hers to murmur, “First time.”

The smile faltered into confusion. “For what?”

“You’ve never worn anything for me,” he murmured, voice gone low, reverent. “It’s always been… for someone else. For whoever you were playing that night.”

Always for the show, for the mask. Old Billings. Max. Dave. Hell, even Jack, just earlier tonight. She could picture every man she’d dressed for like costumes on a stage, a disguise, a character, each one believing he had the starring role. Harry wasn’t wrong—she’d never actually dressed for him. He just got the leftovers of whatever persona she’d picked that night, and still saw her through every weaponised guise.

And now, her rich man was cataloguing firsts, collecting epiphanies. Nothing else had ever made her more like a monster.

“I’ve never argued like that in the middle of a street,” he continued, bemused, mouth ticking up to a smile. “Never wanted to raise my voice just to keep someone from leaving. Never been burglarised and laughed about it later.”

Her playful brow arched. “That’s a lot of firsts for one girl with sticky fingers.”

“And more.” He brushed the strap again, thoughtful. “Never wanted to keep a thief around long enough to see what she’d take next. Never been worth selfishness.”

Her laugh was quick, defensive, cutting. “Maybe you just never noticed.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. His fervent gaze crept over her face, uncomfortably single-minded. “Never wanted someone to stay just so I could lose another fight with her. Never chased. Never thrilled in sex. Never bided my time. I don’t…” His lips curved higher, pained and amused. “I don’t do this.”

She tilted her head, pouting. “Have a little fun?”

“This,” he echoed. “Letting someone make me come apart, one first at a time.”

Her usual instinct was mockery, denial, a sly change of subject to remind him she wasn’t an undertaking or an experiment. But the words punctured that growing artifice, caught somewhere behind her teeth. Because if Harry Castillo was finally bleeding honesty into the room, she had no business pretending she wasn’t tempted to lick it clean.

Dangerous territory.

This was playing house in the lion’s den. This was trespassing on the version of her that wanted to be kept with him. She appeared as if she belonged in his apartment, in his life—worse, she felt like she belonged here. And that sentiment was the real con.

And this—her half-naked, tangled-limbs, satiny-sex-in-lingerie self—was the exact visual that got women killed by their own bad judgment. It was the prelude to, ugh: feelings. Vile, ruinous, brain-rotting feelings. Regrettable intimacy with a price tag she couldn’t afford.

So she did what she always did when standing on the cliff-edge of sincerity... she jumped sideways.

“Hey,” she whispered, crawling forward to cup his cheeks. “You wanna eat my pussy, baby?”

He blinked, recalibrating. Then sighed like a man trying so hard to act civilised. “Have you ever tried pillow talk that doesn’t sound like a stick-up?”

“That was me being polite.”

He smiled a lazy one. “At least let a man cook for you first.”

Her eyes darted to the kitchen beyond the corridor wall—that temple of brushed steel, imported marble, stoic appliances that had never known failure, and stainless-steel judgment. And what the hell, maybe his private chef unionised or something.

She groaned. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re nesting. What’s next—matching aprons?”

“You’ll find I can cook,” he said, straight-faced, “very well.”

And there it was again. That tiny, unreasonable pang of irritation. It wasn’t rational, but suddenly, she wanted to trip him with her bare foot.

He went on, happier. “Also, matching aprons? Really?”

Why did it bother her that he could cook? Probably because he did everything well. Suspiciously well. The suits, the smirks, too much, too accomplished, too sexy—it was all too put-together. He probably made risotto on weeknights and flossed without being asked.

Meanwhile, the last time she “cooked,” it was because she’d made ramen on the induction. Two weeks ago, she had cereal in complete darkness. Her culinary repertoire was: buttered noodles, emergency toast, and around-the-clock instant coffee.

But here was Harry. Still perfect, sleeves barely rolled, staring up at her like she was some starved stray in need of a home-cooked meal and not… whatever she actually was.

A feral cat in heat, maybe.

So—deflect, always deflect. “Alright, Barefoot Contessa. Impress me.”

Saturday, 3 a.m.

Seeing Harry Castillo cook put a lot more things into perspective.

You know how some people find solace in playing music, painting, or meditating to feel more human? Well, this was his version. Amazing arms and a cast-iron skillet. Cooking became spiritual, meditative. Sexy in a way that had absolutely no business being sexy.

Because when someone’s really good at cooking, they’re not just feeding you—they’re proving they know how to be with themselves. No rush, fumbles or needing to double-check or second-guess. It’s like they’ve made peace with their own company, learned to live in the quiet. Stir the silence, season the ache.

And Harry—ooh, Harry was stirring all kinds of things tonight.

He was sex on legs, in work slacks. Forearms that flexed every time he twisted the pepper mill into his Nuit Le Creuset, the way his veins sprang up as he diced, the way his platinum bracelet slid down his finger only for him to push it back up with his knuckle—it was unfair how it got her off more than any dirty text from any other sucker. He brushed salt off his brow, then answered a short call with one hand, without missing a beat, something about a contract extension and shipping delays, the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear as he grabbed crocks from a shelf.