Chapter 11
POV: Camille ?
A few hours later….
The moment my phone buzzed in my hand, I knew who it had to be.
Michael.
And as I looked down at the message, my hand shook, seeing the words pop up on the screen.
“My penthouse in an hour.”
Who did he think he was to send me a message so…blunt? So controlling? So presumptive?
But I found my body wanting to obey.
The way my head shook. The way my lip quivered. The way I wetted from the very thought of seeing him…again.
And when my palm rapped on his penthouse door, I found myself imagining events before they unfolded.
Clothes discarded. Moans echoing. His cock inside my mouth.
I shouldn’t be thinking this. I shouldn’t be considering this as anything else but a mere transaction…but I was. I was and I half hated myself for it, for making it something else than what it was.
His eyes immediately landed on mine and I felt the steady connection between us pulling me towards him like a magnet.
“Michael.”
A smirk tugged at his lips. “Camille.”
He waved his hand over the threshold, urging me inside and I felt my heart literally kip a beat.
I spun around on my heels, my eyes meeting his then our lips falling into each other.
I gasped as he kissed me, as he pushed me against the wall, as his thumb lingered along my side, and his palm roughly caressed my ass. I gasped into his mouth.
Then before I could speak another word—he began unzipping my dress, splaying the skin of my back open for him, and twisting me around and pushing my chest into the wall.
This was primalistic, fast and feverish, like a mating call in the wild.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
His palm pushed my dress up, then tugged my underwear to the side, the white lacy though I had worn especially for him, for this very moment. I wasn’t prepared for the way his other palm gripped his swollen cock or the way he slid on a condom. I wasn’t prepared for him—for what he felt like.
But when his tip nudged at my walls, I almost collapsed right there against the wall.
And when he pushed inside of me, twisting my hair in his palm, pushing my chest further against the wall, I wasn’t prepared to see the emotion deep in his gaze.
The way he looked at me like I was more than a simple contract.
The way he watched me as he fucked me, thrusting controlled and slow, pulling my mouth closer to kiss me.
I moaned into his kiss, giving him every part of me—physicallly and mentally.
“Fuck, Camille,” he muttered, thrusting into me again, causing my knees to wobble.
“Michael,” I murmured, half in a whisper and half in a plea.
Then his lips enveloped mine again and he kissed me harder, more passionate this time.
“Camille,” he whispered back, reaching down to work my clit as he prodded inside of me again.
I felt my orgasm near, scratching at the surface, as my eyes fluttered closed and my forehead pressed into the cold wall. “Michael.”
That was the last thing on my lips as I came around his cock, and he came around me.
The orgasm floored me, it nearly made me collapse, and everything—all of the emotions I shouldn’t have, came flooding back.
“Michael,” I whispered again as I felt him remove himself from me and take a step back.
It took everything in me to find the strength in my body to turn around, pressing my back against the way and looking at him with half hooded eyes. “That was…”
He just stared at me with his dark, consuming gaze.
“I feel like maybe that wasn’t what you planned?”
He looked at me, his eyes softening as he took in my smeared lipstick, flushed cheeks and wrinkled dress.
“It wasn’t,” his jaw tightened as thewords left his mouth.
Then he walked away, leaving me standing there, shocked and confused.
I stared at the window, at the world before me. The city glowed beneath us like a constellation of restless stars.
From Michael’s penthouse, the skyline stretched wide and endless, but instead of feeling expansive—it felt heavy.
It had been a blur—intense—searing and everything you imagine when you imagine and define the word ‘passion’.
But it wasn’t the sex.
It was him. And I knew it.
I stood near the window with my arms wrapped tight around myself, watching the yellow lights of taxis scatter across the road like fireflies. My reflection hovered faintly on the glass—blue eyes too wide, lips parted and swollen from kissing, and blonde wavy hair spilling over my shoulders.
Behind me, I heard the quiet clink of crystal as Michael poured two glasses of scotch.
“You’re quiet,” he said, his voice smooth as honey.
I turned, catching him in that glow of his apartment or maybe it was just his natural aura.
He looked devastatingly beautiful as always, his ddark hair perfectly in place, even after the passionate sex, sculpted jaw clean shaven and perfect skin to match but there was something else that lingered in his gaze tonight.
There was a weight in his posture, a tension in his eyes that wasn’t just control… it was something else.
“I have a lot on my mind,” I admitted, accepting the glass that he handed me.
He studied me for a moment, his gaze lingering in a way that made me feel like an open book to him.
“Say it,” he said finally.
I hesitated.
But the truth had been burning in me for days, clawing at me every time he brushed my hand in the office and every time I remembered the feeling of his mouth hard against mine.
“Why?” I whispered out in a squeak. “Why the contract, Michael? Why all of this? You told me it’s to protect yourself from greedy women but there has to be more than just that…”
For a moment, I thought he’d deflect the question or that he’d smirk and change the subject then pour me more scotch until I forgot about what I even asked.
That was his pattern: control the narrative and control me.
But instead, he set his glass down on the countertop and leaned against it. “Because I can’t afford not to.”
The words hung there, cryptic and unsatisfying. But the look in his eyes told me that this was a confession.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away, he avoided my gaze for a moment before it eventually landed on me, steady and unflinching. “You’ve seen the headlines. Forbes, The Times, every business magazine in the country.”
I nodded. Of course I had.
Michael Vanderbilt: billionaire tech titan and golden boy of Wall Street. He’d been on magazine covers since before I’d finished high school.
“They’ve built me into a myth. The perfect gentleman and the flawless CEO. But myths don’t make mistakes. And if they do, the world devours them.”
I gripped my glass tighter. “So you…what? You created a system to protect yourself?”
“Yes.” His answer was immediate. “I don’t date and I don’t gamble on chance or trust strangers with pieces of me they could sell to the press, either, so I write contracts. Controlled, precise, clean without misunderstandings. I don’t do scandals or leaks.”
I didn’t know what to say. “That’s…cold.”
“It’s necessary,” he replied, as if it was normal.
And for the first time, I saw something crack in him, not his exterior—he still stood tall and composed but in his eyes.
“What happened?” I all but blurted out.
He didn’t respond, instead he pushed off the counter and began to pace.
Then he finally spoke, breaking the silence between us.
“When I was 27, I trusted the wrong person–a woman. She worked in PR, we dated for 6 months. I thought…”
He broke off, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. She sold the story, every detail, every photo, every private word I ever said. My personal life was ripped open across headlines for weeks and my board members questioned my judgment,
some of my shareholders even threatened to pull out. I nearly lost everything I’d built because I let someone in.”
He stopped pacing, his eyes locking onto mine.
“I learned my lesson. No more risks and no more surprises. If someone wants me, they sign the contract. If I want them, I control the terms of the contract.”
I’d never heard him like this—not at the office— not at dinner and not even in his bed. But now, I saw the man beneath the myth. The real Michael Vanderbilt.
I set my glass down and crossed the room slowly towards him. “Michael…”
He looked away, as if ashamed of what he’d just revealed.
I touched his arm in comfort. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
His laugh was empty. “Yes, I do, Camille. That’s the cost of being me.”
I understood, in some small way. I understood the pressure of expectation–the weight of debt—mine financial and his reputational. But contracts? Controlled relationships? That was more than coping—that was trauma.
“Michael, you can’t live your whole life like this,” I told him.
A cold smirk lined his lips. “And yet, here you are. Signed, sealed, and sitting in my penthouse.”
The reminder hit me like a slap.
I was part of the system. I was one of the signatures.
But was that all I was?
The kiss in the hallway. The look in his eyes when he admitted he couldn’t stop. The way he just took me against the wall.
Those moments hadn’t felt contractual—they’d felt real.
So why did it sting so much to hear him reduce me to a contract?
I stepped back from him, taken aback from his words. “You don’t trust anyone? You don’t want to trust anyone, do you?”
His silence was answer enough.
The realization gutted me.
Because how could I think of falling for a man who would never really let me in?
And yet—God help me—I think I was already falling.
Part of me wanted to scream and to demand more and to tell him he wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt or who’d been burned by people. But another part of me wanted to close the distance again—to hold him and to tell him he didn’t have to do this alone.
But I was terrified.
Because in that moment, I realized something I hadn’t let myself admit before.
I didn’t just want the money….I wanted him.
And I didn’t know if he would ever let me have him.
Michael finally broke the silence with his smooth voice. “Now you know everything.”
I nodded.
He stepped closer as his hand brushed mine briefly before pulling away again as though even that touch was too risky. “Don’t mistake this for weakness, Camille. I don’t let the world see this part of me for a reason.”
“Then why me?” I whispered.
“Because you asked. And because…” He hesitated, then exhaled deeply. “Because you’re not like the others.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t look at me like a billionaire. You don’t measure me in dollar signs. You challenge me and you don’t flinch when I push. You’ve suffered and I can see it in your eyes. You know what it’s like to fight for air when the world wants to drown you.”
No one had ever said something like that to me.
I reached out to grab him but decided not to, in awe–in shock—in who knows what. “Michael…”
“That’s why you’re dangerous, Camille. Because I can stop pretending around you.”
I reached for him before I could stop myself again and my fingers brushed his jawline. “Maybe you don’t have to pretend at all.”
For a heartbeat, he closed his eyes but when he opened them again, something else lingered. Hope. Fear. Hunger. Who knows.
He leaned down to kiss my palm. “Careful, Camille. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Maybe I do.”
His grip tightened on my hand. “I don’t know how to do this any other way. This—us—it was supposed to be a contract. It is a contract, Camille.”
We stood there in silence. In complete silence.
I didn’t know what would happen next. I didn’t know if his walls would come back up or if he would retreat into control and contract again.
But for that moment I saw the man beneath—the real Michael Vanderbilt.
That night as I laid awake in his bed, pressed near to him, I couldn’t sleep.
I thought about the woman who had betrayed him and about the contracts lined in the drawer. And I thought about myself.
Who was I to him, really? A name on a page? Or something more?
I wanted to believe there was more. But belief alone might not be enough.