Chapter Six #2
Aurelia let out a muffled gasp of shock, her hands flying up to push against his chest. But the moment his mouth claimed hers, a violent, electric shockwave tore through her nervous system.
It defied all logic. It defied all reason.
She had barely spoken ten words to this man in her entire life, yet the taste of him, the desperate, crushing weight of his embrace, felt like a memory carved into the deepest marrow of her bones.
The heat radiating from his body was intoxicating. Cameron didn't kiss her like a stranger; he kissed her like a starving man finding water in a barren desert. It was possessing, a bruising, desperate demand that bypassed her mind and spoke directly to her soul.
Aurelia’s hands, which had been pressing against his chest to push him away, slowly curled into the fabric of his shirt. A soft, yielding whimper vibrated in her throat. She wasn't fighting him. God help her, she was pulling him closer.
Cameron groaned, the sound raw and animalistic, as he felt her surrender.
He twisted his body, his immense strength easily shifting their weight until her back hit the plush carpet.
He hovered over her, his chest heaving, his dilated eyes burning with a dark, consuming fire as he looked down at her flushed face.
"You're mine," he whispered against her lips, the words feverish, disjointed, fueled by the drug and the overwhelming weight of two lifetimes of devotion. "You were always mine."
He didn't give her time to process the strange declaration.
His mouth descended again, the kiss deepening into something feral and devastating.
Aurelia's world narrowed to the scent of cedar and expensive cologne, the dominant weight of his body pressing her into the floor, and the scorching heat of his hands tracing the curve of her waist.
The pull was catastrophic. It was a magnetic, undeniable force that drowned her rational thoughts.
She didn't know why she was letting the CEO of the company touch her.
She didn't know why her own hands were frantically threading through his dark hair, pulling his head down.
She only knew that if he stopped, she might shatter into a million pieces.
Cameron’s lips left her mouth, dragging a blazing trail of fire down the line of her jaw.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet, familiar scent of vanilla that had haunted his nightmares.
His restraint was gone. He kissed the sensitive skin of her throat, his teeth scraping gently against her collarbone, leaving a bloom of deep, dark bruises in their wake.
"Cameron," Aurelia gasped, her back arching off the floor, her fingers digging into his broad shoulders.
The sound of his name on her lips pushed him over the edge.
The empty corporate suite faded away. The hurricane of the past, the scheming of his sister, the wrath of Harper—it all vanished.
There was only the heat of her skin, the desperate rhythm of their breathing, and the world-ending collision of two souls that destiny refused to keep apart.
Their lovemaking was intense, bordering on brutal in its raw, unfiltered emotion.
It was a desperate language of skin and heat, a frantic shedding of clothes in the dim moonlight.
Cameron touched her with a reverence that bordered on religious devotion, even as the narcotic fueled a dark, unyielding dominance.
He worshipped every inch of her, his hands mapping the curves of her body as if he were committing them to memory all over again.
For Aurelia, it was a beautiful surrender. She gave herself over to the overwhelming tide, matching his desperate intensity with her own unexplainable hunger, crying out his name in the shadows of the empty glass tower.
The aftermath was a choking silence, broken only by the sound of their ragged breathing.
Cameron lay on his back against the carpet, his chest rising and falling heavily, his forearm thrown over his eyes. The drug was beginning to metabolize, the feverish haze slowly giving way to a chilling, horrifying clarity.
He moved his arm, staring up at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling.
How?
The question hammered against his skull.
He had bypassed the gala. He had avoided the hotel.
He had locked down the food and beverage protocols on the executive floor.
He had done everything in his power to rewrite the timeline, to ensure that Aurelia Sinclair never had to witness him in a compromised, pathetic state.
And yet, fate had simply rerouted the river. The trap had sprung, not in a luxury hotel suite, but here, in the shadows of her own department. The universe had forcefully, violently realigned itself to ensure that the inciting incident remained intact.
But as he turned his head to look at the woman scrambling to pull her clothes back on, he realized something.
He didn't regret it.
He couldn't. Not when the lingering scent of her was still wrapped around him, not when the ghost of her touch was still burning on his skin. He had his wife back in his arms, even if it was born of a poisoned circumstance.
"Aurelia," Cameron murmured, his voice hoarse. He pushed himself up onto his elbows.
Aurelia flinched as if he had struck her. She was sitting a few feet away, her hands shaking so violently she could barely manage the buttons on her blouse. Her hair was a tangled mess, her lips swollen.
The reality of what she had just done was crashing over her like a tidal wave of ice water.
She had just slept with the CEO of the Langsford Conglomerate on the floor of an empty office.
She had lost her mind. She had surrendered to a moment of madness with a man who was practically corporate royalty.
"Don't," Aurelia whispered, her voice cracking with terror and shame. "Please, don't say anything. I... I have to go."
"Aura, wait. Please, you have to understand—"
"I have to go!" she cried out, tears spilling over her lashes. She snatched her coat and her canvas bag from the floor, not looking back as she bolted through the mahogany door, fleeing down the corridor toward the elevators as fast as her legs could carry her.
***
The corporate apartment was warm, smelling faintly of the pasta Harper had boiling on the stove.
Harper was standing by the kitchen island, tapping her phone impatiently against the marble countertop. Aurelia was two hours late. She had texted earlier saying she was wrapping up a rendering, but the silence since then was setting off Harper's hyper-vigilant alarms.
The digital lock on the front door finally chimed, the door swinging inward.
"Aura, finally," Harper said, turning around with a relieved sigh. "I was about to call building security to go check the sixteenth floor—"
The words died in her throat.
Aurelia stood in the entryway, looking like she had survived a shipwreck. Her coat was misbuttoned, her blouse untucked. Her dark hair was wildly disheveled, her eyes bloodshot and brimming with tears.
But it was the marks on her skin that made the breath freeze in Harper’s lungs.
Clearly visible above the collar of her shirt, blooming darkly against the pale skin of her neck and throat, were the distinct, bruised impressions of a man's mouth.
The wooden spoon in Harper’s hand clattered to the floor.
Aurelia dropped her bag, letting out a shattered sob, and buried her face in her hands, sliding slowly down the wall until she hit the floor.
Harper didn't ask what happened. She didn't need to. The agonizing, indisputable truth was written across her sister’s trembling frame.
Despite the warnings, despite moving into the high-rise, despite Harper standing like a fortress between Aurelia and the Langsford empire...
the timeline had corrected itself. The exact same catastrophic collision had occurred.
The drug, the rescue, the undeniable, magnetic pull that had trapped them in the first place—it had all repeated with horrifying precision.
Harper dropped to her knees, pulling the sobbing woman into her arms, wrapping her fiercely in a protective embrace.
"I'm sorry," Aurelia wept into Harper’s shoulder, broken by the inexplicable shame and confusion. "I don't know what happened to me, Harps. I don't know why I didn't stop him."
Harper closed her eyes, a single, burning tear carving a path down her cheek. She didn't blame Aurelia. She didn't even blame Cameron; she knew the devotion in his heart, knew that he would rather die than intentionally hurt the woman trembling in her arms.
But as she stared at the dark, bruising marks on Aurelia’s neck, a cold, bitter fury ignited in her soul.
She cursed the universe. She cursed the cruel, unyielding architecture of fate that refused to let them escape. What was the point of a second chance if the board was rigged? What was the point of remembering the nightmare if they were doomed to walk the exact same path?
It was unfair. It was incredibly, agonizingly unfair.
Harper tightened her grip on her best friend, staring blankly at the wall of the luxury apartment, realizing with clarity that the war hadn't been avoided. It had just begun all over again.