Chapter 10 Jessica
Jessica
Rurik’s suite feels different from the office. Less exposed. More intimate. The lighting is low and the city is muted behind thick glass like it’s been pushed back on purpose.
“So,” I say carefully, turning to face him. “You planned this.”
He doesn’t deny it. I didn’t expect him to.
“I needed you here,” he says simply.
The honesty stings more than a lie would have.
I fold my arms across my chest, grounding myself. “You could have asked.”
“No,” he replies. “You would have said yes. And then you’d spend the entire time wondering why.”
I hate that he’s right.
Anger sparks anyway, sharp and immediate. The realization settles in that he manoeuvred me here the same way he manoeuvres everything else. Doors opened. Paths narrowed. Choices arranged so the outcome felt inevitable even when it wasn’t.
“I don’t like being handled,” I tell him.
“Nobody does,” he says.
I look away, my gaze catching on the view, the Strip glowing below like a living thing. This should feel like a trap. Like I’ve been lured into a gilded cage by a man who decides outcomes for a living.
But my body feels steady. Anchored, almost. Like I’ve been pulled into a harbour after a storm I didn’t know I was in.
!I don’t understand this,” I murmur.
“I don’t either, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right,” he says.
“I didn’t plan to feel like this,” I add quietly. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“I think that’s to be expected,” he says, moving into the main part of the hotel suite that’s all him. “Lets just relax into it and see what happens.”
The television mounted along the far wall clicks on as he settles into a plush sofa, arm spread out over the back of it.
“We could watch a film,” he suggests like what happened between us this afternoon is the most normal thing in the world.
The muted sound bleeds into the room as he cycles through the channels. I barely notice at first, still caught in the gravity between us.
“What kind of films do you like?” he asks, glancing up at me.
I shrug, open my mouth to reply when his attention is pulled to the television screen.
Then the familiar voice of a popular news anchor fills the space.
“…a surprise ceremony late last night in Las Vegas, where gubernatorial candidate—”
I freeze.
Rurik leans forward like I predator spotting prey.
The camera cuts to footage outside a chapel, bright lights and smiling faces. A man I recognize from billboards and news clips stands beaming; arm wrapped possessively around a woman at his side.
My breath leaves me in a rush.
She’s elegant. Poised. Her hair is lighter now, styled carefully, her face softened by makeup and good lighting. She looks like money. Like legitimacy. Like a woman who belongs exactly where she’s standing.
But I know those eyes. That face.
I’d know her anywhere.
My heart slams so hard it hurts.
“No,” I whisper.
Rurik doesn’t move, but something in him goes very still.
The reporter continues, cheerful and oblivious. “The bride, who has largely avoided the spotlight, is said to be a private consultant—”
The name they use isn’t hers.
But it doesn’t matter.
“That’s my mother,” I say, the words barely making it past my throat.
Not for the first time today, the room tilts.
A decade of absence. Ten years of silence. Now she’s here, in Las Vegas. Married to a man who wants to be governor of Nevada. Smiling like she didn’t leave a trail of wreckage behind her when she vanished.
“Did you know she was back?” I ask, sinking onto the edge of the sofa before my legs give way completely.
“I suspected,” he says, frowning, and I know he means it. “Michealsson was keeping quiet about a consultant he had been working with, and I’ve spent most of the last forty-eight hours trying to convince him to clean up his image. Marriage is the quickest, easiest way to do that for a man like him.”
“She has been here all along?” I ask.
He spreads out his hands. “Possibly. But Michaelsson lives in Carson City, so I imagine she has been up there for a while.”
“When I saw you yesterday, I didn’t expect to feel the way I did, but you seemed familiar. You share her eyes. The shape of your face is similar, but I think she has had work done…” he trails off. “This doesn’t change anything between us.”
“Doesn’t it? I came back to meet you in good faith.
You said you wanted to see me again, alone, because you wanted to figure out if we both felt this…
whatever this is…then you ambush me about my mother, screw me absolutely senseless in your office, drag me up to your suite, and tell me you suspected my mother was back all along? ”
I take a breath, trying not to let the confusion turn to hurt.
“My head is spinning. Nothing makes sense. Do you want me or do you just want a way to my mother?” Energy drains from me.
All the exhaustion I’ve been staving off with bad coffee and “just one more meeting,” has finally caught up with me and I slump onto the sofa opposite him, the news anchor still talking in the background.
“All of it is true, apart from wanting to use you to get to your mother. The moment I saw you something switched inside me. It wasn’t love, or lust, it was more primal than that. You were all I could think about every single second after I forced myself to walk out of the office.
It’s an obsession that’s eating me from the inside. I’ve just had you, taken you, twice and still all I can think about it the way you feel on me, against me…the way you sound. And it’s not even just about the sex. I want to be able to see you every minute of every day for the rest of my life.”
He heaves a breath, his eyes not leaving mine.
“It’s insane, but I want you forever. Every part of you, even if that means accepting who your mother is. I want the world to know you belong to me and I’ll burn it down before I let another man anywhere near you.”
Silence falls between us but for the television on low in the background.
Finally, he says, “I can’t even call it ‘love,’ because I don’t know what romantic love feels like. And how can I expect you to love me after only a day? But I know I want to worship you, over and over and over until you forget every bad thing and in its space is me.”
“Don’t,” I say. I’m so confused and the heat that bloomed between my thighs at his words won’t help matters.
“Please, Jessica. Let me.”