9. Cassie
CASSIE
The kiss haunts me for three full days.
By the second day, the weather turns.
The sky over Azure Cay loses its clarity—sunlight thinning into a dull haze that hangs over the water like something unfinished.
Not because I want to forget it—but because I can't stop replaying every single second.
The pressure of his mouth against mine. The way his hand has fisted in my hair like he is drowning and I am the only thing keeping him above water.
The sound he makes, low and desperate, completely unlike the controlled billionaire everyone else knows.
I bury myself in work instead of thinking about it. Spreadsheets. Vendor contracts. Executive schedules so packed nobody can breathe. I organize, coordinate, and problem-solve until my eyes burn and my phone battery dies twice before lunch.
It doesn't help.
Gideon attends every meeting I coordinate.
Every presentation, every investor call, every tedious strategy session that should be delegated to someone half his pay grade.
He sits at the lead of conference tables with that icy expression, signing documents, issuing commands, making grown executives stammer—and his attention keeps finding me.
Across crowded rooms. Through glass walls. Over the shoulders of people trying desperately to explain quarterly projections.
I feel his gaze like a physical touch. Like fingers trailing down my spine. Like lips brushing the rear of my neck.
Stop it.
I adjust my sundress—one of the few casual outfits I've packed for island life, deep gold with thin straps that leave my shoulders bare—and try to focus on the resort staffing report facing me.
The executive team has dispersed after dinner, leaving the beachfront conference villa quiet except for the distant crash of waves and the soft hum of air conditioning.
I don't hear him approach.
But I feel him.
"Working late."
Gideon's voice rolls through the villa office like distant thunder, low and rough in a way that makes my stomach tighten.
I look up from the tablet in my hands to find him standing in the doorway, still wearing the dark button-down he wears to dinner, sleeves rolled to his elbows, top buttons undone in a way that feels deliberately unfair.
"You're one to talk." I set the tablet down and refuse to acknowledge how fast my heart is beating. "Don't you have investors to charm?"
"I sent them to the resort bar." He steps inside and closes the door behind him. The click of the lock echoes through the small office space, deliberate and unmistakable. "I need to talk to you."
I wrap my arms over my chest, suddenly very aware that we are alone. That the villa is separated from the main resort buildings. That nobody will hear us if?—
"We've been talking for three days." I hold my tone steady. "About the acquisition. About the retreat. About work."
"We haven't been talking about what happened on the beach."
My breath catches. He says it so simply. So directly. No deflection, no corporate spin, no careful distance. Gideon Carrington, master of emotional avoidance, has just walked into my office and named the thing we've both been pretending doesn't exist.
"What is there to talk about?" I stand, because sitting while he towers over me makes me feel too vulnerable. "It was a mistake. We were both?—"
"Don't." He moves closer, and I step back automatically. My hips hit the margin of the desk. "Don't stand there and tell me you didn't feel it."
"Gideon—"
"I've been fighting this for two years." His voice cracks on the admission, raw and honest in a way that makes my chest ache. "Two years of watching you smile at everyone else. Two years of wanting to fire every man who looks at you too long. Two years of lying to myself that I can control it."
My heart slams against my ribs. "You never said anything."
"Because you work for me." He braces his hands on the desk on either side of me, caging me in without quite touching.
His moonlit gaze burns in the dim office light, dark with something that looks like pain.
"Because I spent my entire life watching my father destroy everything he loved with his inability to control himself.
Because I told myself wanting you was weakness. "
"It's not weakness to feel something."
"It is when you're supposed to be untouchable." His mouth flattens into a thin line. "When everyone watches for the moment I slip. When the board will destroy you just to get to me."
I should be afraid. Any rational woman would be afraid, cornered by a man who controls billions, who builds an empire on being feared, who is taking me in as if he wants to devour me whole.
Instead, I reach up and touch his face.
His eyes close. His whole body shudders, just once, like my palm against his jaw has broken something loose inside him.
"You're not your father," I whisper.
"I know." He turns his head and presses his lips to my palm. "But I didn't know how to want something without needing to own it. And I didn't trust myself not to ruin you."
"What changed?"
His eyes open. "You left the beach. You walked away, and I realized I'd rather ruin everything else than lose the chance to have you."
I stop pretending.
My fingers curl into the front of his shirt, and I pull him forward. Close the distance between us. Press my mouth to his like I've been dying to do since the moment he kissed me on the shore.
Gideon makes a sound—half growl, half groan—and his restraint shatters.
His hands grip my waist, lift me onto the desk, and he steps between my thighs in one fluid motion.
His dick presses against the thin fabric of my sundress, and I gasp against his lips at the heat of it.
At the size of his dick. At the way he is already so obviously affected, straining against his trousers like he has been hard since he walked through the door.
"I need—" He breaks the kiss, breathing ragged, forehead pressed to mine. " I have to be inside you. I can't—I won't last if we?—"
"Then don't." I pull at the buttons of his shirt, desperate to feel skin. "I don't want gentle. I don't want careful. I want you to stop thinking."
You can feel the restraint leaving him piece by piece.
Not all at once.
Slowly.
Dangerously.
Gideon catches my wrists and pins them lightly against the desk behind me, his forehead dropping to mine as he breathes hard through his nose like he is fighting himself with everything he has left.
“Do you know what you do to me?” he asks roughly.
His mouth drags down my throat before I can answer, lips hot against my pulse. I gasp when his teeth scrape lightly against my skin, the sting chased immediately by the slow sweep of his tongue.
“Gideon—”
“I've spent two years imagining this.” His hands slide down my body, slow enough to make me shake. “Two years wondering what sounds you'd make for me. If you'd fall apart this easily when I touched you.”
Heat floods straight between my thighs.
His fingers trace beneath the thin strap of my dress before sliding lower, grazing the sides of my breasts through the fabric. My nipples harden instantly, and the low sound he makes in response nearly destroys me.
“You're sensitive,” he murmurs.
“Whose fault is that?”
His eyes darken.
Then he drops to his knees.
The movement is so unexpected I stare at him in shock as his large hands slide up my thighs, pushing my dress higher and higher until cool air brushes against the damp fabric between my legs.
“Gideon,” I breathe, trembling.
“I need to taste you first.”
The words hit me like lightning.
His mouth presses against the inside of my thigh, open and hot and unhurried, and I swear my knees almost give out. He kisses higher. And higher. Pulling my panties to the side and tasting me. Slow enough to make me ache for every inch.
“You're already soaked,” he says against my skin, sounding wrecked by it.
I thread desperate fingers through his hair when his mouth finally presses over me, the pressure making my entire body jerk.
“Oh my God?—”
“That's it,” he murmurs. “Let me take care of you.”
Something shifts in his expression. The last wall comes down. He steps back just long enough to pull his shirt over his head, and I watch muscles shift across his chest and shoulders, all that power barely contained beneath tanned skin and dark hair. My mouth waters.
I stand and let my sundress fall.
The gold fabric pools around my feet, leaving me in nothing but a thin lace thong. Gideon's eyes trace down my body like he is memorizing every inch—the curve of my breasts, the dip of my waist, the dark wetness already soaking through the scrap of fabric between my thighs.
"You're beautiful," he says, rough and wondering. "God, you're so perfect."
Heat floods my cheeks and something deeper, something that makes me ache. I step out of the dress and reach for his belt, working the leather free with trembling fingers. His hands cover mine, helping, and then his trousers are open, and I push them down his hips along with his boxers, and?—
Oh.
My breath leaves my body in a rush. He is thick and long and so hard the head of him is already slick, already straining, already everything I've imagined in my darkest fantasies and more.
"Cassie." His voice is wrecked. "If you keep watching me like that?—"
I grab his hand and pull him toward the bed in the corner of the villa office. The small one reserved for late-night work sessions, meant for naps, not this.
He settles over me on soft white sheets while I spread my thighs and guide his dick to my soaking wet entrance.
"We don't have time for foreplay," I breathe against his mouth. "I'm already ready. I've been ready since you walked through the door." I add.
His eyes flare. "Tell me you want this." He says, his piercing cold eyes locked on mine.
"I want this. I want you. I've wanted you for two years, Gideon. Now stop asking and—" I can not continue speaking.
I pull him closer to me.