Twenty-Four
I sigh, staring at my reflection in the dressing room mirror, completely overwhelmed.
Why is shopping so stressful?
Against my better judgement, I take out my phone and call Nathan, praying I’m not interrupting some important business deal or whatever it is CEOs do in the middle of the day.
He answers on the third ring. “Miss me already?”
I roll my eyes, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “I’m at the store.”
“Good to know.”
I huff. “Shopping for a dress. For this fundraiser. I have no idea what the dress code is or what to buy. I’m stressed, Nathan.”
There’s a pause before he says, “You’re at a store?”
“Yes.”
“Looking for a dress?”
I clench my jaw. “That is what I just said, yes.”
“You’re stressed out about it?”
“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
“It’s black tie.”
I groan, dragging a hand down my face. “Ugh. I have a dress that would be perfect for this, but it’s in New York. I bought it a couple of months ago when it was on sale, just because, and I’ve never even worn it.”
Nathan hums like he’s considering the logistics of chartering a plane to retrieve a single dress.
Then, in a voice too smooth for my current level of distress, he asks, “Where are you?”
I frown. “Why?”
“Because I’m coming to you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Text me the name of the store.”
“Nathan—”
“I’ll be there in ten.”
The line goes dead.
I blink at my phone.
Well, okay then.
∞∞∞
Rubbing my temples to soothe the headache beginning to bloom behind my eyes, I scan the dresses again, hoping that something will jump out at me and say, “Here, wear this.”
No such luck.
It’s not helping that I accidentally tripped and fell into the designer store across from the one with the reasonably priced dresses.
“Struggling that much, huh?”
I jump, spinning around to be met with those stormy eyes while he looks far too at ease in a tailored navy suit, standing in the middle of a department store like he owns the place.
After what I found online, he probably does.
The thought slips out before I can stop it. “You don’t own this place, do you?”
His brows lift before he glances around.
Christ. He’s thinking about it.
“Not that I know of,”
he muses, looking almost uncertain. “Why?”
I shift, suddenly regretting bringing it up. “I Googled you.”
Nathan’s lips curve slightly. “Is that so? And what did you find?”
I cross my arms, staring at him. “Enough to know that you’ve been featured in Most Eligible Bachelors lists, that your net worth has more zeros than I care to count, and that somehow, you have time to run multiple businesses and still show up looking like you stepped out of a GQ spread.”
He puffs out his cheeks. “Sounds exhausting.”
I narrow my eyes. “I imagine being wildly successful is tiring.”
He shrugs, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Success is relative,”
he says. “I built something from the ground up, but at the end of the day, it’s just a job. It doesn’t change who I am when I go home.”
I pause.
That’s not the answer I was expecting.
No arrogance. No smugness. Just straightforward honesty.
“And who are you when you go home?”
I ask before I can stop myself.
“That depends,”
he says. “Are we talking about my actual home or the one I check into with a key card?”
My stomach flips. No smirk, no cocky remark, just a quiet truth. A sliver of something I wasn’t meant to see. For the first time, when I look at him, he almost looks tired. As if he’s not as put together as he seems, and for a second, he’s not the man in the articles I read about.
I have no idea what to do with that, so I don’t try to force it. “Can you help me find a dress now?”
“It’s a dress. What’s the issue?”
“Everything.”
“That specific?”
I shoot him a look. “Are you going to be helpful?”
Nathan pretends to consider. “I think I’ll judge.”
I cross my arms. “Judge?”
He gestures toward the dressing rooms with a lazy flick of his wrist. “Pick some dresses. I’ll rate them.”
“You are not serious.”
“You’re indecisive. I’m providing you with expert input.
“Expert? At women’s fashion?”
His voice drops low as he leans in. “I know what looks good.”
I roll my eyes instead of shivering because giving this man any tells as to what he does to my body is not good. Not good at all.
“Fine,”
I grumble, grabbing a handful of dresses. “But if you make this worse, I’m walking out of this store and straight into traffic.”
Nathan says nothing. He drops into the plush chair like a king waiting to be entertained.
Asshole.
I change into the first dress, take a deep breath, and step out.
Nathan barely glances. “Ten.”
I blink. “Ten? You didn’t even look.”
He tilts his head, eyes dragging down my body in one slow, lethal pass. “Oh, I looked.”
I turn, inspecting myself in the mirror. “Really? Because I think it gives my ass a weird shape.”
“Your ass in that dress is the reason men will forget their wives exist.”
My mouth pops open. “Excuse me?”
He leans back, arms crossed. “You heard me.”
I snap my jaw shut, heat licking at my spine.
Okay. Fine. Round two.
I change into the second dress. Step out.
“Ten.”
I glare. “Nathan, you can’t rate everything a ten.”
“I absolutely can.”
“This one’s way too tight.”
He hums. “Yeah. That’s why it’s a ten.”
I bite down on my lip so hard it might start bleeding.
Why is it suddenly hot in here?
Dress three.
I step out.
Nathan lifts a brow. “Ten.”
I throw up my hands. “Oh, for—Nathan!”
His smirk is fucking lethal. “What? You wanted my input.”
I glare at him. “Your input is useless.”
“Disagree,”
he says smoothly. “You’re the one who’s flushed.”
I cross my arms. “I’m not—”
“And before you argue,”
he continues, his voice dropping. “You should probably know that you’re not stepping back into that dressing room without me noticing exactly how turned on you are.”
I forget how to breathe.
My entire body locks up.
He doesn’t even blink.
“You keep making me rate them, sweetheart, but you already know which one I like best.”
His voice is all heat and amusement, a slow, deliberate taunt.
“Which one is that?”
I ask, breathless.
His eyes are all over me now, scanning my body like he’s picturing all the ways he’d take me out of this dress.
He drags his thumb along his jaw. “The one that makes you look like trouble.”
My pulse jumps into my throat.
I should say something. Something snarky, something defiant.
My pulse is a frantic, traitorous thing in my throat. Heat licks up my spine, my breath shuddering. I need to rein it in before I do something incredibly stupid.
“Stop it,” I blurt.
His brow lifts, pure amusement flickering in his stormy gaze. “Stop what?”
Crossing my arms, I shift my weight to ease the ache low in my stomach, fully aware that I look like a petulant child, but screw him and his smug, devastating face.
“Stop trying to...”
I trail off, gritting my teeth before nearly stomping my foot like an actual five-year-old. “Make me flustered.”
A quiet laugh escapes him under his breath.
He’s enjoying himself.
Before I can retreat, he pushes up from his seat, crossing the space between us in three slow steps.
My body locks up, every nerve ending sparking. He’s close now. Towering over me in all the best ways.
Flashes of our night together slam into me. His hands gripping my hips, his mouth dragging over my skin, his voice, rough and wrecked, groaning my name into my throat.
I try to breathe past it and fail.
Nathan lifts a hand, his fingers brushing my cheek before tucking a loose piece of hair behind my ear. The trail he leaves burns my skin.
Leaning in, his breath grazes my jaw, his voice a whisper meant just for me.
“Tell me, Sienna.”
The way he says my name is like a promise and a sin in one breath, and it nearly sends me spiraling. “If I were to take you into that dressing room, strip you out of this dress, and press my fingers between your legs...”
His lips brush the shell of my ear.
“...would I find your pussy wet for me?”
I almost choke, but that involves breathing, and I’m pretty sure my lungs have stopped functioning.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t touch me beyond what he already is, but his words snake around my throat, my spine, my thighs. I can feel them like hands on my skin.
I stagger back, my body tight and desperate for relief that I refuse to acknowledge. My chest rises and falls in frantic, uneven breaths.
“I was serious about the no sex,”
I whisper.
Lie.
Weak.
Every part of me is screaming at me to shut the hell up and let him ruin me all over again.
He watches me with a tilt of his head. And that look—like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, exactly how close I am to snapping—is infuriating.
But he doesn’t call me out on it.
He doesn’t press.
Instead, he pressures his thumb against my lower lip and says, “I know.”
Move, Sienna. Turn around and return to the dressing room. And for the love of God, don’t drag him in there with you.
So I do. I pull the curtain closed and press my hands against the wall before pulling off the dress like it’s attacking me.
He’s right. I am wet, and now I have an uncomfortable throb between my legs.
Dresses. Focus on the dresses.
I’m running out of options, already debating whether I can fake a sudden illness to escape this ordeal, when I hear his gravelly voice. “You decent?”
I peek out, half-covering myself with the curtain like he hasn’t seen me naked and doing the spread eagle before. “Define decent.”
He holds up a dress, but not just any dress.
The dress.
The one I admired on the way in. The one I pretended didn’t exist because I knew better.
It’s sleek, deep emerald with a subtle shimmer that catches the light, and I’m pretty sure it’s from a designer I can’t even pronounce.
I gawk at him. “Nathan.”
He raises a brow. “Sienna.”
I point at the dress. “Do you know what that is?”
“Fabric?”
“I’m fairly certain I could build my dream home for the cost of that dress.”
He holds it at arm’s length. “Just try the damn thing on.”
“Absolutely not. It’s too much. Do you want to know how I know it’s too much?”
I answer before he gets a chance, “Because it doesn’t even have a price tag.”
“Take it, Sienna.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue, but the argument gets lost when he doesn’t move, so I grab it through the slit in the curtain and try it on.
Shit.
It’s perfect.
I swear it was made for me.
It’s dangerous because I know there is no way on God’s green earth that I can afford this.
I’m still staring at myself in the mirror, half in love and half mourning, when he says, “Did you try it?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I can’t come out.”
“Why?”
I sigh dramatically, fake crying into the air. “Because you’ll fall in love with me.”
Nathan’s returning laugh is unfairly attractive.
I take a breath.
Then another.
Turning back to the curtain, I step out, and he’s right there waiting.
He goes silent, and all I notice is how his jaw tightens.
“Christ,”
he whispers.
The air between us shifts and thickens.
Nathan’s gaze drags over me, slow and heavy, like he’s memorizing every single inch.
Not just looking. No, he’s devouring.
With a slow inhale, he steadies himself, like if he moves too fast, if he exhales too hard, he might lose whatever control he’s still holding on to.
That makes both of us.
His tongue drags across his bottom lip, the muscle in his jaw ticking as his fingers flex, like he wants to touch, wants to see if I feel as good as I look.
I should say something. Tease him, push back, remind him this is just a dress, but my words are caught somewhere between my chest and my throat, lodged tight beneath the weight of his stare.
“Would you like us to deliver it to your hotel, Mr. Calloway?”
comes from the shop assistant who has entered our bubble just in time.
I freeze.
Nathan doesn’t even blink, but he tilts his head and cocks a brow, challenging me again.
Should he get it delivered to his hotel?
Why am I even thinking about this?
No. Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea.
“No,”
he says smoothly. “We’ll take it with us.”
I gape at him. “You bought this?”
“I saw it on the way in. Thought it looked like you.”
Oh God.
I think I might cry.
“Nathan—”
“Sienna, if you’re about to argue with me about buying you a dress, then don’t.”
His voice is firm but not sharp.
Final.
He’s already decided, and there’s no point in me wasting my breath.
“Why?”
I ask, softer than I mean to.
He holds my gaze. “Because I wanted to.”
That’s it. No strings. No expectations.
Before the heat can settle and I can bask in this rare moment of softness, he adds, “We also need to impress the investor tonight.”
It’s like a bucket of ice water to my feverish skin.
Reality slams back in.
Right. This isn’t personal. It never was.
I grip the dress a little tighter, reminding myself that this is a role I’m playing, nothing more.
Nathan watches me, eyes flicking over my face, picking up on my shift in mood.
He steps closer, his voice dropping low. “Still, I’d rather you wear something that makes me want to keep you in my lap all night instead of making me think about quarterly reports. This dress does that.”
His dangerous stare flicks to mine. “So do you.”
And just like that, I’m burning all over again.