Chapter 15
15
Pia
T he sheets are warm and rumpled, tangled around our legs like they’re trying to keep us here, exactly like this, where time doesn’t move and nobody expects anything from us except breath and skin and closeness.
I’m still lying on my side, facing him, heart slowly drifting back down from wherever it’s been floating in the clouds.
I can feel my thigh pressed against his, the soft scrape of his stubble as he leans in to kiss my shoulder, and the way his hand doesn’t stop moving.
Just soft, slow strokes over my hip, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of me through touch alone.
I can’t believe it actually happened. That I’m not dreaming.
That Ethan finally broke and gave me what I wanted. What we both wanted.
His care, his attention. Mon dieu , that monstrous, delicious cock of his and the pleasure it brought me.
I still feel him, deep inside me even though he’s no longer inside me. But alongside that throbbing, there’s the tiniest ache of missing him, even though he’s right here, next to me.
It’s an ache I’m terrified will only get worse…
“You’re quiet,” he says, voice low, rough from sex and sleep and… something. “Are you okay?”
I blink up at him. The corners of his mouth are lifted just a little, like he’s teasing—but he’s watching me too closely for it to be casual.
I nod, too fast. “Yes. I’m just… thinking.”
“Uh-oh.” He brushes my hair back from my face. “Thinking’s dangerous.”
I huff a soft laugh. “Not as dangerous as what we just did.”
He groans, letting his head fall back against the pillow. “Don’t start. I’m barely holding on here, Pia.”
But I know he doesn’t regret it. I know. I can still feel the way his body shook with pleasure. The way he slowed down, and then didn’t, because we both needed it to feel real and raw and like it mattered.
Because it did.
It mattered.
“Do you feel any different?” he murmurs, and there’s a twinkle in his eyes now. “Like you’ve leveled up or something?”
“You’re impossible,” I say with a laugh, burying my face in the pillow.
But the truth is, yes. I do feel different.
Not in the way girls in movies say they do. I don’t feel “like a woman,” whatever that means. But I feel known . Claimed, maybe. In a way that makes me ache and bloom at the same time.
He saw me. He wanted me.
And now he’s lying here, propped up on one elbow, looking at me like I’m some kind of miracle he accidentally stumbled across and doesn’t quite know what to do with.
“How do you feel?” I dare.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Starving. Proud of you. Terrified. Mostly hungry, though.”
I laugh, but part of me tenses at the word terrified .
I know he doesn’t mean it like that. Not that kind of fear. I may have only known Ethan Villiers a short time, but I know he’s a bold maverick, a daredevil in the boardroom who gets his way every single time.
Watching him land that Japanese deal last night had been so hot my panties were soaked by the time I got up to make the copies.
The ache it’d created was why I’d had the risqué thought of taking them off, then dropping my panties in his lap, making him break.
I don’t regret a single thing that brought us to this point.
But still, the word he just uttered slides in like a splinter under my skin.
Maybe because I’m scared, too.
Not of him. But of what happens next. Because I only planned things up to this point. And now I’m not sure what to do. What he will do.
I roll onto my back, staring up at the ceiling, his fingers still brushing lightly along my skin.
Right now, it’s just us. This bed. This moment that feels like it could stretch on forever if I don’t breathe too hard.
But we were living on borrowed time even before this thing started.
Eventually, Uncle Phil will return from St. Lucia.
Mother might eventually grow tired of her partying and remember she has a daughter whose life she can meddle in to alleviate her boredom.
Hell, I’ll have to decide what to do with my life now that I’ve graduated with a marketing degree in my back pocket.
My main immediate concern though is Uncle Phil.
He won’t need office gossip to know what’s going on between Ethan and me. He’ll only need to be in the same room to see the way Ethan looks at me like he can’t stop, like I’m the thing he didn’t know he needed and now can’t imagine doing without.
I’ve heard the whispers.
I know Ethan’s not just a name-partner-in-waiting. He’s the firm’s future. The firm Philip Hyde and Mason Tucker built. He’s everything Uncle Phil spent the last decade grooming to step into his shoes.
My uncle isn’t unreasonable, but he’s fiercely protective of his family and his reputation. It’s why he’s given Dad chance after chance to get clean.
So this—me and Ethan—I can’t see how he won’t take it badly.
But I don’t want this to end. I can’t.
I turn my head to look at Ethan again.
He’s still there, watching me, touching me like he doesn’t want to stop. And in that moment, I realize something with a quiet, terrifying certainty.
I’m falling for him.
Fast.
Hard.
Too deep to pull back now.
I don’t know how it’ll work. I don’t know what we’ll do when the world starts asking questions we can’t answer. But I do know this. I want more.
Of his mouth. Of his hands. Of his maddening restraint and the way he breaks it just for me.
I want to wake up to him cooking eggs in his boxers and telling me to get back in bed because he’ll bring the coffee. I want to know what he looks like on a Sunday morning and what it sounds like when he says my name while we’re fighting and how he’ll break when I call him daddy when we make up.
I want the mess. I want him.
And if I have to fight for it—if I have to grow sharp around the edges and challenge everyone who says this isn’t allowed—I’ll do it.
Because I don’t think you walk away from something like this.
Not when it feels like the start of everything.
Even though I see shadows of a forked road ahead, one that might not lead where I want it to.
* * *
Ethan takes me to dinner on Saturday night.
I would've preferred we stay in, but he insisted and, well, I loved the idea of dressing up, being on the arm of the hottest guy in Philly.
The restaurant is dim and expensive, with gold-dipped lighting and candle flames flickering like secrets between us. The kind of place where everyone talks quietly and the waiters glide instead of walk.
In the booth next to me, he smiles, watches me, sniffs my neck and tells me how great I smell, compliments me on the dress I'm wearing—one of the outfits that made his eyes go dark and his nostrils flare when I tried it on for him last weekend.
But he can't hide the fact that he's tense.
His jaw ripples with it every few minutes.
He hasn't taken his arm off the back of my seat since we arrived.
Every time a guy so much as glances in my direction, his hand on my shoulder tightens—subtle, but unmistakable. A thumb pressed deeper into my skin. His fingers trailing the nape of my neck.
Every proprietary little gesture saying: Mine. Mine. Mine.
I should be annoyed. I'm not. I... like it. Hell, who am I kidding?
I love it.
His other hand hasn't let go of mine since we sat down. Not even when the menus came. I had to awkwardly use my free hand to order while he calmly held onto me, thumb stroking the center of my palm like he was keeping me tethered.
"You're staring again," I murmur, smiling behind the rim of my water glass.
"I'm aware," he says darkly, eyes still fixed on the man two tables over who definitely took a second look at me when he walked past five minutes ago.
"Ethan," I say softly.
He looks at me. That focus—sharp and heavy and hot—lands fully on my face now. My chest tightens.
"You wore this dress on purpose, didn’t you?" he asks, voice low. "You like knowing every man in here wants to fuck you?"
My cheeks go nuclear. " Non! I wore it for you! "
That stops him.
His expression shifts. It's not softer, but it's... something else. Possessive in a way that feels darker, more intense.
"I know," he says. "Maybe that's the problem."
I bite my lip and look down at my plate, heart thudding in my ears.
The food is beautiful—some elegant arrangement of seared scallops and champagne foam—but I can barely taste anything. My appetite left the second his hand slid along my thigh under the table and stayed there.
After a while, I gather the nerve to ask. "Have you... um. Have you spoken to my uncle since he went on vacation?" Or specifically since we fucked on Friday night?
Silence. I glance up.
Ethan's expression doesn't change, but the air around him tightens like a storm cloud. "No," he says. Then lifts his wine glass and adds,
"And we're not talking about Philip tonight."
"But—"
"You're moving in with me."
I blink at the abrupt change of subject. "What?"
"You eat all your meals at my place, you're sleeping in my bed now, and the last time I saw your fridge it was still holding one sad carton of oat milk and half-melted ice cream."
My mouth opens. Closes. "That's not?—"
"You live with me already," he says simply. "You just haven't accepted it yet."
I stare at him, heart thudding. "You can't just—decide that. What if I like my space?"
He lifts one brow. "Do you?"
I hesitate. Then shake my head. "No. I like your space."
His smile is slow and satisfied and completely infuriating.
I roll my eyes, but my heart is doing somersaults. Still, I try again. Gently this time. "But my uncle..."
Ethan puts down his fork with precision and leans in, close enough for his words to land straight against my lips.
"I'll take care of it, Pia."
I frown. "But?—"
His voice drops, soft and lethal. "I said I'll take care of it."
My breath catches.
It's not a suggestion. It's a vow. A promise wrapped in steel.
I nod, because I don't know what else to do. Because the look in his eyes tells me the subject is closed.
But, as the waiter comes to clear our plates and Ethan orders dessert for me without asking—because of course he knows what I like—I can't help but feel the little prickle of fear under all the heat.
Because if he takes on my uncle the way he does everything else—ruthless, strategic, unstoppable—what happens if it doesn't go the way he plans?
What happens to us?
But then Ethan's hand slides under the table again, resting warm and sure on my bare knee, inching up, up, up, the promise in his dark eyes telling me everything he has planned for me... for us later.
"Eat faster, baby. Daddy needs his dessert, too," he whispers in my ear.
With a shiver, the question floats away, lost in the flood of everything else I'm feeling.
Because tonight, and for the precious, possibly finite nights ahead, I'm his.
And I don't want to be anywhere else.