Chapter 9 Nolan
The shower water is scalding. I know because my skin has flushed an angry pink across my shoulders, but I can’t bring myself to turn the dial. The heat feels deserved somehow—punishment for every filthy dream that’s kept me awake since that wedding kiss.
Erik Nilsson is moving in today.
I press my forehead against the cool tiles and let the spray hammer the back of my neck. Three weeks I’ve lived in this apartment, and it still doesn’t feel like mine. It never will. Not when I keep finding traces of him everywhere.
I let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. My husband. I’m married to Erik Nilsson.
Sara’s message came through at six this morning, yanking me from a dream I’d rather forget—one where Erik’s hands were doing things that made me wake up hard and furious at my own body’s betrayal.
Cohabitation arrangement approved. Press release temporarily on hold. Bureau compliance requirements attached.
The compliance requirements are ridiculous: daily check-ins through their app. Joint selfies on demand, GPS-verified. Random overnight pings between ten and six to prove we’re in the same location.
I can picture it now. The two of us standing stiffly in this cramped hallway, phones at arm’s length, fitting our faces into the frame while carefully not touching. The Bureau will compile a lovely collection documenting our mutual contempt. Maybe they’ll make a calendar.
I rinse my hair and turn off the water, standing in the steam for a moment.
I’ve grown comfortable here these past weeks—walking around in boxers, eating cereal over the sink, sprawling across the entire bed that still smells faintly of him despite fresh sheet and despite the scent blocker I have been spraying everywhere. My peace ends today.
I grab my towel and wrap it around my waist. My clothes are in the bedroom because I wasn’t expecting company until noon. Sara’s message said Erik would arrive then to settle in before the first official check-in tonight.
That gives me plenty of time.
I push open the bathroom door and walk straight into a wall of alpha pheromones.
Erik Nilsson is standing in my living room.
We both freeze.
He’s got a laptop bag slung over one shoulder and his phone in his hand.
A large suitcase sits beside him. His dark hair is disheveled and there’s a tension in his jaw that speaks to hours of grinding his teeth.
He looks exhausted and irritated and unfairly, devastatingly handsome in a charcoal suit.
And he’s staring at me like I’ve just walked in naked.
Which I sort of have.
The silence stretches between us, dangerous and crackling.
I become painfully aware of every detail: the too-small towel barely covering me, water droplets sliding down my chest and stomach, my hair dripping onto my shoulders. My skin is still flushed from the heat.
I watch his eyes track a water droplet as it slides down my collarbone, past my chest, disappearing into the trail of hair below my navel. His throat moves as he swallows.
Something hot and electric sparks low in my belly. I tell myself it’s embarrassment.
It’s definitely embarrassment. It’s not the way his gaze feels on me. Not the way my cock twitches with sudden, unwanted interest. Not the way my grip on the towel has gone white-knuckled because some traitorous part of me wants to let it drop and watch his reaction.
No. This is Erik Nilsson. This is the enemy.
I force my voice to work. “You’re early.”
He blinks and visibly collects himself, straightening his spine and lifting that arrogant chin. “I assumed you’d be expecting me.”
“At noon. It’s barely half nine.”
“I had a gap in my schedule.” He sets his bag down by the couch—the couch where he’ll be sleeping. “I thought it would be more efficient to get settled before my eleven o’clock call.”
I’m still standing in the hallway, dripping water onto the hardwood floor. The puddle around my feet is growing. His gaze drops to it, and his expression shifts into something that looks a lot like disapproval.
“You’re getting water everywhere.”
The spark in my chest flares hotter. “I had a shower. People shower. Water happens.”
“That’s hardwood flooring. Water damage will warp the planks.” He says it like he’s explaining something to a particularly slow child. “Surely you know to dry off before walking through the living space.”
I stare at him. “Are you seriously criticizing my post-shower routine right now?”
“I’m making an observation about my property. I like to look after my assets.”
“Yes, I know. You took mine.” The words come out sharp enough to cut. “Forgive me if I’m not particularly concerned about the planks.”
His jaw tightens. “I won’t have this argument again.”
“Of course you won’t. Because you never had it in the first place. You just had your lawyers crush me until I couldn’t afford to fight back.”
Something dangerous flickers in his eyes. He takes a step toward me, and every instinct I have screams contradictions—flee and fight and something else, something that wants to meet him in the middle of this room and—
The alpha pheromones rolling off him have shifted, edged with something darker than irritation. Fury. And underneath it, barely leashed, something that smells like want.
My body responds before my brain can catch up. Heat pooling low. Skin prickling with awareness.
“I’m not going to stand here and be insulted in my own home,” he says.
“Your home?” I let out a harsh laugh. “You’ve been here thirty seconds. I’ve been living here for three weeks.”
“The only reason you’re here is because the Bureau required cohabitation, and I was generous enough to give you somewhere to live.”
“Generous.” I take a step toward him, closing the distance. “You call ruining my life generous?”
Something shifts in his expression.
“That research was legally acquired—”
“From my ex-fiancé who stole it from me.” I’m close enough now to see the individual flecks of gold in his blue eyes.
Close enough to feel the heat radiating off him.
“I earned that work through years of my life. You just took it. And you have the audacity to stand there acting like I’m the one who did something wrong. ”
His breathing has changed. His chest rises and falls too fast, and I can see his pulse jumping in his throat. His hands are clenched at his sides, knuckles white, every line of his body coiled tight.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he says, and his voice has gone rough, lower than before. “You don’t know what I’ve built. What I’ve sacrificed.”
“I know enough.” I’m so close now I can feel his breath on my face. His scent fills my lungs—expensive cologne and underneath it, pure alpha, dark and commanding and making my hindbrain want to roll over. “I know you’re a man who profits from other people’s work and tells himself he earned it.”
Something shifts in his expression. Then his jaw sets and his eyes go hard and he’s reaching for me.
I don’t know who moves first.
One second we’re standing there, the air between us crackling, and the next his mouth is on mine and my back is hitting the wall and I’m kissing him like I want to consume him.
His hands are in my hair, tilting my head back, and I’m grabbing fistfuls of his expensive suit jacket and hauling him closer even as every rational thought screams at me to stop.
The kiss is savage. His teeth catch my lower lip and I make a sound I’ve never heard from myself before—something between a moan and a snarl. I bite back and he presses me harder into the wall and my towel is slipping and I can’t bring myself to care.
I should stop this. I should shove him away and tell him to go to hell and lock myself in the bedroom until I can think clearly. But his hands are sliding down my sides, thumbs pressing into the grooves of my hips, and the friction of his suit against my bare skin is making me dizzy with want.
“I hate you,” I gasp against his mouth.
“The feeling is mutual.” He bites down on my jaw, just below my ear, and my knees actually buckle. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
“Nothing,” I agree, yanking at his tie, loosening it enough to get at his buttons. “Absolutely nothing.”
His laugh is dark and breathless against my throat.
The towel finally surrenders and pools at my feet. Erik pulls back just far enough to look at me, and the naked hunger in his expression makes something deep inside me clench. He’s still fully dressed—pristine, polished—and I’m completely bare, panting and pinned against his wall.
I should feel vulnerable. Exposed.
Instead, I feel powerful. Because he’s looking at me like I’m the most desirable thing he’s ever seen. Like every ounce of his legendary control is seconds from shattering.
“Well?” I challenge. “Are you going to do something about it, or just stand there?”
His eyes flash. Then his hands are on me again, lifting me like I weigh nothing, and I’m wrapping my legs around his waist.
We don’t make it to the bedroom. We barely make it to the wall.
His hands pin my wrists above my head, and I arch into him, my body betraying every promise I’ve made to myself about keeping this man at arm’s length.
He’s still fully dressed. The power imbalance should bother me, but instead it makes everything more intense—the drag of his wool trousers against my bare thighs, the cool metal of his belt buckle pressed against my hip, the way his dress shirt rasps against my chest when he leans in to sink his teeth into my collarbone.
“You’re impossible,” he growls against my skin. “Infuriating.”
“Back at you.” I hook a leg around his hip and grind against the unmistakable hardness straining at his fly. “Are you going to do something about it, or just complain?”
For one moment, I think he might actually walk away and leave me wanting.
Then he drops to his knees.
The sound I make is embarrassing. I’d be mortified if I had any capacity left for shame, but his mouth is on me and my brain has whited out completely.