Chapter 5
* * *
Sloane stepped off the elevator onto the sixteenth floor with Draven beside her, his hand resting at the small of her back the way it had every day for weeks now, except this time it felt different under the weight of so many eyes.
Conversations near the reception desk dropped to a hush as they passed, a few assistants glancing up from their monitors with the particular kind of curiosity people tried badly to disguise as not looking at all.
“Everyone’s staring,” she murmured, keeping her voice low as they walked toward his office, aware of her own slightly rounded middle beneath her blouse, aware that whatever this was between them had apparently stopped being a secret without anyone formally announcing it.
“Let them stare.” He said it without breaking stride, his hand never leaving her back. If anything he seemed to stand a little closer, his pace slowing to match hers, making it impossible for anyone watching to mistake what they were seeing.
She glanced sideways at him, half amused despite her own nerves. “You could at least pretend this is normal for a man who runs the entire company.”
“I don’t pretend things that aren’t true.” He glanced down at her, something steady and unbothered in his expression, a faint heat underneath it that had nothing to do with the hallway full of witnesses. “You’re mine. I like that they know it now.”
“Careful.” Her mouth tipped despite herself. “Keep talking like that and I won’t make it through this folder review with a straight face.”
“Good.” His voice dropped, low enough that it was meant for her alone. “I’d rather have your attention than your composure.”
They reached his office, and his assistant had the project files already organized on the corner of his desk, the nonprofit’s outreach data bound into a folder thick enough that Sloane felt a small thrill of ownership just looking at it.
He handed it over, his fingers brushing hers a beat longer than the handoff required, and she flipped through the first few pages while he gathered a second folder, both of them quiet for a moment in the privacy of the closed door.
“You alright?” he asked, glancing up when she didn’t say anything for longer than usual.
She set the folder down slowly, surprised to find her own throat a little tight.
“I’m fine. It’s just strange. Being watched like that.
” She wrapped her arms loosely around herself.
“I spent the first part of this year being the woman everyone whispered about because her fiancé humiliated her in a freezer. Now I’m the woman everyone whispers about because the CEO won’t stop touching her in the hallway.
” A short, tired laugh. “I guess I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon, for a different reason. ”
Draven came around the desk and pulled her gently into him, his arms settling around her with nothing demanding in it for once, just steady and close. She let herself lean fully into his chest, surprised by how much tension she’d been carrying without realizing it.
“Nobody in this building is laughing at you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his hand moving slow along her back.
“They’re watching because they’ve never seen me look at anyone the way I look at you.
Most of them have worked here for years.
” He pulled back just enough to find her eyes, his thumb brushing her cheek.
“There’s a difference between being talked about and being wanted, Sloane.
You’re not the first. You’re just the only one that’s ever mattered. ”
She exhaled slowly, something in his voice doing more to settle her than the words themselves. “Okay.” A small, steadier smile. “Let’s get out of here before the coffee station runs out of things to whisper about.”
He laughed, low and warm, taking the second folder from her hands so she wouldn’t have to carry both, and guided her back out with his hand once again settled firm at her back.
* * *
Three days later, Draven told her to pack a bag and said nothing else about where they were headed. By the time the car turned off the main road and through a private gate, Sloane had stopped asking.
Draven stood at the base of the stairs leading up into the cabin, watching Sloane take in the plane parked on the private tarmac with an expression he recognized immediately, the same careful stillness she got whenever something forced her to recalculate exactly who she was dealing with.
“You didn’t tell me where we were going,” she said, eyes still on the fuselage. “You just said pack a bag.”
“I wanted to see your face when you figured it out.” A faint curve touched his mouth. “We’re flying to see your mother. You said this weekend. I’m making sure it happens.”
“This is yours.” Not quite a question.
“It is.” He took her bag from her, his hand finding the small of her back to guide her forward when she didn’t move right away. “Go on up. It’s warmer inside.”
She climbed the steps ahead of him, and a flight attendant greeted them both at the top, taking their coats and gesturing toward the main cabin.
Sloane paused just inside the doorway, taking in the leather seats, the polished wood paneling, the quiet expense of every detail.
He knew that look, had seen versions of it cross plenty of faces over the years, though none of them had ever mattered to him the way hers did now.
He settled into the seat across from her once they were buckled in and the plane began its taxi, watching her stare out the window at the tarmac sliding past. “You’ve gone quiet,” he said.
“I’m just thinking.” She turned to look at him, something guarded creeping back into her eyes despite the months of work they’d already put into dismantling it. “I knew you had money. I didn’t realize it was this kind of money.” She gestured loosely at the cabin, then looked back out the window.
She didn’t say the rest of it. She didn’t have to. He’d learned the shape of her silences by now, the particular quality of the ones that meant she was doing math she didn’t want him to see.
Once the seatbelt sign clicked off, he stood and held a hand out to her. “Come with me.”
She slipped her hand into his, letting him pull her up and lead her toward the back of the cabin, past the galley, toward a narrow door that opened into a private room with a low bed built into the wall and a window shade drawn halfway against the glare of the clouds outside.
He closed the door behind them and turned her gently to face him, his hand catching her chin when she tried to look anywhere but at him.
“You’re wondering if this is the kind of thing that lasts.” It wasn’t a question.
“I didn’t say anything.” Her breath caught at the closeness of him.
“You didn’t have to.” His thumb dragged slow along her jaw, his voice dropping lower, rougher.
“I’ve trusted my instincts in every part of my life that’s ever mattered.
Business. Family. Every decision that built the empire you’re standing in the middle of right now.
” He held her gaze and didn’t let her look away.
“My instincts told me you were mine the second you walked onto that rooftop, and I have never once been wrong about something I wanted that badly. A plane isn’t going to change that. Nothing is.”
She studied him a long moment, something in the sheer certainty of him finally loosening the tight set of her shoulders.
He didn’t wait for her to answer with words.
He pulled her flush against him instead, one hand settling firm against the back of her head, careful of her braids, the other locking hard around her waist, and kissed her like he intended to argue every doubt straight out of her body instead of with anything he could say.
She gasped against his mouth, hands flying to grip his shoulders, and he felt the exact moment she stopped thinking and simply gave in to him completely.
“Mine,” he said against her lips, low, possessive, no softness left to disguise it. “Every part of you. I don’t share, and I don’t let go of what’s mine.”
He undressed her slowly despite the hunger clawing through him, deliberate, savoring every gasp and shiver he pulled out of her with his mouth and his hands, refusing to rush even while every instinct in him screamed to claim her entirely.
He laid her back across the bed and settled over her, pinning her wrists lightly above her head with one hand while the other traced slow down the line of her braids, mapping every inch of her like he meant to brand the memory of it into both of them.
She arched up into him, breathless, his name breaking soft and wrecked against his ear, and he drove into her unhurried but absolute, watching her face the entire time, making certain she felt exactly how thoroughly she belonged to him with every slow, deliberate thrust.
Outside the door, the flight attendant moved quietly through the galley, refolding linens that didn’t need refolding and rearranging a tray of glasses with far more focus than the task required, the soft sounds carrying faintly from down the short hallway impossible to entirely miss.
She kept her eyes on her work and a small, knowing smile to herself, in no hurry at all to interrupt whatever was happening behind that closed door.
“Tell me you’re mine,” Draven growled against Sloane’s throat, rougher now, his control fraying at the edges.
“Yours.” The word tore out of her, desperate, certain, and it was all the permission he needed to finally let go of the last of his restraint, driving into her harder, deeper, until she shattered beneath him with a cry he swallowed against her mouth, following her over the edge a moment later with his name twisted into a low, satisfied growl against her skin.