Chapter Eight #3
Her mouth follows the path of her hands, hot and wet, driving me to the edge.
I grab the sheets, every muscle straining as she devours me like a woman starved.
When I drag her up and flip her beneath me, her thighs part with a desperate little sound that makes my blood burn.
Sliding into her is heaven and hell at once—the clench of her body around mine, the arch of her spine, the way her nails dig into my shoulders.
And still, the image won’t leave me.
Her belly rounded, breasts heavy, her body made even more lush with pregnancy. My child inside her. My mark made permanent in a way no man can erase. The thought shreds me, scorches me, because I know it’s madness and yet somehow I crave it.
I thrust harder, claiming her, my jaw clenched against the guttural sounds tearing out of me at the thought of another man’s child growing where mine should have four years ago.
The very idea makes me fierce in my need, makes me bend my head to her throat and bite until she gasps my name. She pulls me closer, hips bucking to meet mine, and still the image claws at me. Her swollen with life. Swollen with me. Not anyone else.
I don’t stop until she’s crying out beneath me, until my own release rips me apart. But even in the blinding haze of pleasure, the thought lingers, poisonous and inescapable.
Tessa Rockson will not belong to another man.
Not in the ways that matter most.
Tessa
I should feel relieved. I told him the truth.
I finally bared my scars, my longing, and somehow still managed to hold onto him for another month. A reprieve, not an ending. But relief doesn’t come. Instead, unease coils tighter with every hour I spend in Theo Biney’s bed.
Because my feelings aren’t clear-cut any more.
They were before we started this again. Before I let him kiss me, touch me, slip back into my bones like he belonged there. Now, too often, I catch myself wondering what if.
What if he were the father of my child? What if those heated glances, those stormy words, those tender gestures meant more than lust and rivalry?
But then I see it. That quiet taunt each time he presses a condom into my palm. As if daring me. Daring me to what? Scream that I don’t want it? That I want him, bare, reckless, without protection between us? Surely, I’m not that insane.
And yet the voice won’t quiet.
It gnaws at me even as he strolls back into the suite one evening and announces, as if it’s already decided, ‘We’re not leaving South Africa just yet. I can work on the Obibini plans from here. And if you need to be here anyway, we’ll stay at the Clifton house.’
The plans. The way he says ‘we.’
And the majesty of Theo Biney’s house. A house I fall in love with even before I’ve stepped a single foot inside.
Elysium House clings to the cliffs of Clifton like something conjured rather than built, its glass and steel facade suspended between ocean and mountain.
My breath catches at the first sight of it.
Panoramic windows turn the Atlantic into a living painting, while the jagged peaks of the Twelve Apostles loom in majesty behind.
It’s way more than a house. It’s a declaration of intent.
The stamp of an iconic hand that dares anyone to doubt Theo Biney’s raw, undiluted talent.
Every angle, every sweep of concrete and stone, screams power, permanence and the kind of wealth that doesn’t bother to explain itself.
Inside, light rules.
Floor-to-ceiling glass walls dissolve the line between horizon and home, flooding double-height living spaces where wood, stone and polished concrete meet in bold contrast. The living room opens onto a sculptural pool that seems to spill straight into the sea, its surface catching fire as the sun lowers.
A private cinema, spa and games lounge whisper of indulgence, while art installations punctuate the walls like carefully placed exclamation marks. Even the bedrooms feel less like rooms than sanctuaries—six en-suites strung along the cliffside, each angled to command its own slice of ocean.
Everywhere I look, I feel both dwarfed and dazzled. This place wasn’t designed just for comfort, but for awe. And for Theo, it’s his only natural habitat—an empire of glass and stone, balanced precariously above the world being dared to fall.
I feel every inch the queen he still calls me in that gravel-rough drawl I’ve come to long for, when I strut through his masterpiece.
Whether I’m dressed in a simple bikini that makes his breath stall, or in a gown to join him on the infinity terrace to watch another spectacular sunset, fingers of one hand each intertwined, the other sipping at Stellenbosch’s best offerings.
For the next two weeks, his strategy becomes unmistakable and clear.
Spoiling me rotten. Plates of exquisite food delivered as if the chefs compete for my favour.
Wine so rare it gleams like jewels in my glass.
Luxury gestures at every turn—silk robes, flowers, afternoons that end with sunsets painted just for us.
And the kind of sex that makes me see deities among the stars.
It’s a charm offensive and he does nothing to hide it.
And yes, I hate him for it. Just as badly as I yearn for it all to be true.
Because I’m beginning to realise this isn’t just about sex. Perhaps it never was. Not four years ago. Or a month ago.
Most definitely not now.