26
── ? ──
EVANDER
I'm out of my seat before the wheels fully stop rolling. Marcus has already coordinated ground transportation—a sleek black SUV waiting on the tarmac, engine running, driver ready.
The one-hour estimate I gave Aurora was optimistic. We made it in forty minutes.
I texted her from the plane. Told her I was coming. Told her to make sure Liam was settled with Mrs. Calloway for the night because when I got there, I wasn't leaving until morning.
Her response was immediate: He's asleep at Mrs. Calloway's. I'm waiting.
Those two words—I'm waiting—have been running through my head for the past hour. Making my blood run hot. Making it impossible to sit still. Making me count every minute, every second until I can touch her again.
Until I can prove to myself that she's real. That she's mine. That my mother didn't succeed in destroying the only thing I've ever cared about.
The SUV cuts through the city. Past the polished districts and industrial rail yards and out toward neighborhoods where the streetlights work less than half the time.
Boarded windows. Cars on blocks. Groups of men on corners who watch the black SUV pass with faces that are half hostile, half calculating.
This is so different from the world I'm used to. From sterile penthouses and executive floors. From the parts of the city where money buys the illusion of safety.
This is Aurora's world. The place she came from. The life she was trying to escape when I trapped her at Ardencrest.
The driver pulls up in front of a four-story building at the end of the block.
Crumbling brick. Rust-stained fire escapes.
Half the windows lit at odd angles, some covered with cardboard where the glass used to be.
The kind of place where "home" is a word people use because they don't have another one.
The kind of place that costs less per month than my monthly penthouse fees.
Aurora is sitting on the front stoop. Waiting. Just like she said.
She's wearing the same clothes from the courtyard—jeans that are worn at the knees, an oversized gray sweater that hangs off one shoulder, her hair pulled back in a messy bun with strands escaping around her face. She looks exhausted. Wrecked. Her eyes are red-rimmed like she's been crying.
Beautiful.
So fucking beautiful it makes my chest ache.
The sight of her—alive, real, here—makes something crack open inside me. All the control I've been maintaining since I left my mother's office, all the cold calculation that got me through threatening her and walking away from Laurent Global, all of it shatters.
The SUV hasn't even fully stopped before I'm opening the door. Stepping out into cold night air that smells like exhaust and rain and something faintly rotten a few doors down.
She stands up. Slowly. Like she's not sure if I'm real or if she's dreaming.
We stare at each other across ten feet of cracked sidewalk. Neither of us moving. Neither of us speaking.
All I can think about is the courtyard. The way she looked at me with those empty eyes. The way she handed back my necklace like it meant nothing. The way my entire world shattered in the space between her words.
I felt nothing. You were convenient.
All lies. All performance. All because my mother—my own fucking mother—threatened the one thing Aurora values more than her own happiness.
The rage that's been simmering since I left my mother bleeding and terrified on her office floor flares hot and immediate. Not at Aurora. Never at Aurora.
At myself. For not protecting her. For not seeing this coming. For not destroying my mother years ago when I should have. For being so focused on controlling Aurora that I didn't anticipate someone else trying to control her too.
"Evander—" Aurora starts. Her voice is rough. Broken.
I cross the distance in four strides. Don't give her time to finish whatever she was going to say. Just grab her face in both hands—feeling the warmth of her skin, the realness of her—and kiss her like I'm drowning and she's oxygen.
She makes a sound—surprise or relief or both—and then she's kissing me back just as desperately. Her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer, trying to eliminate any space between us.
She breaks it just long enough to breathe against my mouth: "Upstairs."
She grabs my hand. Pulls me through the door. The entryway smells like mildew and something I don't want to identify. Peeling paint. Tags going back years. Fluorescent lights flickering in the same broken pattern I remember from the fever night — same building, same stairs.
Three flights. I take them two at a time. She's ahead of me, then I'm ahead of her, and at the third-floor landing I catch her against the wall — kiss her again, harder — before she pushes me back and pulls me down the hall.
The apartment at the end. Her father's door. Her door.
It's unlocked. She pushes it open and I walk her backward through it, my hands already back on her — her jaw, her throat, her waist through that oversized sweater.
Somewhere in the small apartment behind her I can smell what her father has done to it — stale beer, cigarettes, the ghost of whoever used to keep the place clean.
Underneath all of it, faint but there: her. Just her. Just Aurora.
The door slams shut behind us. I reach back blindly, find the lock, twist it.
And then there's no space between us. No air. No room for anything except this desperate, consuming need to feel her, touch her, prove to myself that she's real and here and mine.
I push her against the door. Hard. The impact makes the hinges rattle, makes her gasp against my mouth. My hands are everywhere—cupping her face, sliding down her throat where I can feel her pulse hammering, gripping her waist through that oversized sweater
"I'm sorry—" she gasps between kisses. "Evander, I'm so sorry for what I said—"
"Don't." I bite down on her lower lip. Hard enough to sting, hard enough to make her whimper. "Don't apologize. You did what you had to do."
"But I hurt you—" Her voice cracks. "I saw your face in that courtyard. I watched you break and I—"
"You saved Liam." I pull back just enough to look at her. To really see her. Her eyes are wet, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, her lips already swollen from my mouth. "That's all that matters. You protected your brother. I understand that."
"I didn't mean any of it." Her hands are trembling as they cup my face. "The things I said. That you were just convenient, that I felt nothing—none of it was true. None of it."
"I know." I wipe her tears with my thumbs. The gesture is gentle despite the violence thrumming through my veins, despite the desperate need to claim her that's making my hands shake. "I know, Aurora. Tristan figured it out. You were performing. Following a script."
She lets out a sob. "She said if I didn't break your heart, she'd have Liam declared unsafe. Put him in some state facility where I'd never see him again. She had documents. Legal papers. She said she owned the judges—"
"She does." I cut her off. Because hearing the details of how my mother threatened her is making the rage spike hotter. "She owns everything. Everyone. That's how she operates."
"I didn't know what else to do—"
"You did exactly the right thing." I lean my forehead against hers. Close my eyes. Breathe her in. "You protected Liam. That's what matters."
She pulls me down for another kiss. This one slower. Deeper. Like she's trying to apologize with her mouth instead of words, trying to pour everything she's feeling into this connection between us.
I let her. Let her kiss me like she's trying to crawl inside my skin. Let her hands roam over my chest, my shoulders, my back. Let her take what she needs.
And then the gentleness shatters.
Something primal takes over. Something that's been building since I watched her walk away in that courtyard. Since I threatened my own mother. Since I realized how close I came to losing the only person I've ever loved.
My hands go to her sweater. Yank it over her head in one rough motion. The fabric catches on her bun, pulls strands of hair loose. I don't care. Just throw the sweater somewhere behind me and look at her.
She's not wearing a bra underneath. Just bare skin and freckles scattered across her collarbone, between her breasts, disappearing down her stomach. Her nipples are already hard—from arousal or the cold air or both.
"Evander—" My name comes out breathless. Desperate. "Please—"
"I need you." The words are rough. Raw. Everything I'm feeling stripped down to bare truth. "I need to feel you. Need to know you're real. Need to prove to myself that you're still mine."
"I'm real." She's already working my belt with trembling fingers. Fumbling with the buckle. "I'm here. I'm yours. I never stopped being yours."
The belt hits the floor with a heavy thud.
She shoves my slacks down my hips. I kick them off along with my shoes, my expensive leather shoes that cost more than her monthly rent.
My shirt follows. Everything stripped away until there's nothing between us except skin and heat and desperate, aching need.
I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist automatically, her arms going around my neck. She's lighter than she should be—still not eating enough, still carrying the stress of the past few weeks in the sharp edges of her hip bones pressing against my sides.
I'll fix that. Will make sure she eats. Make sure she's taken care of. Make sure she never has to choose between me and Liam again.
Her back hits the door again and I'm already positioning myself. Already pushing her jeans and underwear down just far enough. Already so hard it hurts, my cock pressing against her entrance.
"Wait—" she gasps. "Shouldn't we—the bed—"
"Can't wait." I bite down on her throat. Right where her pulse is hammering. "Need you now. Need to be inside you right fucking now."
I push inside. One hard thrust that buries me to the hilt.