45. CHAPTER 42
Léonie
It had been weeks since I signed the contract and had Blaise send it back to the Kade lawyers. I’d had half a mind to hand it to Orion personally, but I was resisting the temptation to speak to him.
I saw his efforts—the thoughtfulness, the gifts, the way he moved through the house as if trying to take up less space.
I needed him to stew. I needed to know the man who ruled everything could handle a world he couldn’t control.
Even if I was miserable without his touch and had to pretend I felt nothing whenever he walked into a room, and had to school my face into a mask of indifference.
My heart recognized what he’d done. He’d carved open his own power and left the pieces on the floor for me.
It didn’t erase the original clause. It also didn’t erase the feeling of being a transaction.
But today in the garden, watching him with his father, the axis of my world finally tilted back into place.
The fact that he was careful to touch me when our fingers met, without crossing a line, not because he couldn’t…
it thawed the remaining part of me I was trying to keep frozen.
At dinner, my heart was a riot. I wanted to reach across the table and take his hand, to share the weight of the sorrow I’d seen in the terrace, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t ready to let the walls down…yet.
I went to my room, but by midnight, staring at the ceiling, I knew two things for certain.
One, I missed my husband so much I could barely breathe.
Two, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life punishing him for the version of himself he was trying not to be anymore.
I got up before I could talk myself out of it. I padded down the hall, and stopped outside his office. My hand hovered, knuckles inches from knocking. What if he doesn’t want me here?
I pushed the door open anyway.
I found him in tears—the same violent wreck of a man I’d heard that night months ago. But this time, I didn’t stay behind the door, I walked to him, my heart beating faster as I approached.
My poor baby.
He looked up, and the raw confession that spilled out of him—that he loved me, that it terrified him, that he was wrecked—was the final blow to my resolve.
“I love you too,” I heard myself say in return. My voice was barely mine.
I’m not sure I even finished the thought because he went completely still.
For one stunned second, he just looked at me, as though the words had struck somewhere too deep for him to recover from properly.
His lips moved but no words came. His hand came up to my face with a reverence that undid me, his thumb swept once over my cheek, his eyes searching mine as if he needed proof this moment was happening..that I’d actually said those words.
“Léa,” he said, his voice ruined.
Everything about that moment felt intense, except for the way he held me, gently, as though he was trying not to break the very thing he’d been starving for.
The next thing I knew, his mouth crashed over mine with weeks of restraint burning through it, rough, desperate and deep enough to steal the air from my lungs.
I made a sound in response, and he moved his hand to the back of my neck, holding me firmly while he kissed me harder, unable to stop himself.
It was hunger and relief and a feeling so close to worship, all crammed into a few devastating seconds. And I melted into it. I was tired of fighting him. Tired of fighting my feelings. I needed the silent battle between us to end.
He pulled back just an inch, our foreheads resting together. “Don't leave,” he rasped, his voice a broken wreck. “Don’t ever use that dissolution clause, Léa. Burn it. Bury it. Just stay… stay with me, please.”
I looked at him, his eyes wide with a love that looked raw and overwhelming. “I'm not going anywhere, Orion,” I whispered, my hands sliding up to cup his neck.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
He groaned, a sound of pure, agonized relief, and claimed my mouth again.
He pulled me into him, and I moaned into his throat, feeling the hard planes of his chest and the desperate, rigid length of him on my thigh.
His hand found my waist, hoisting me up, and I wrapped my legs around him instinctively.
My back hit his office desk. He lifted me and he placed me on it, deepening the kiss until I was grinding against him, searching for friction, searching for him.
He tore his mouth away, breathless. “There are things I need to tell you,” he panted. “Before anything else.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “Is it about the board? I’m sure they didn't take the amendment well.”
His mouth tilted, humorless. “Like I’d dropped blood in shark-filled water.”
“And your mother?”
A glimpse of something mean and wounded crossed his face. “She thinks I’ve handed you a loaded gun. And that you don’t understand where it points.”
“She’s wrong. I’m very clear where it points.
” I held his gaze. “I read it all, Orion.” Like I was studying for a big exam with pens and highlighters.
“I went through them with a lawyer who isn’t yours.
And also with Céleste and Isolde. I understand exactly how you dismantled your entire world and placed your empire at my feet. ”
He nodded. “You did good.” A sense of pride threading his voice.
Then he leaned closer, flexing his fingers on the wood of the desk. “I meant every word you read. I can’t undo the past, but I can make sure you never suffer for my ambition again.”
I looked at the new strain around his eyes. Maybe from how much he had cried, but tired lines were there too, ones that hadn’t been there before. It made me wonder how much he had slept in the past weeks. I was tempted to ask, but didn’t.
“You’ve been proving it for ten weeks now,” I said in reply to him. Not that I’ve been counting.
“I’ll do it for ten more,” he said. “Or thirty. Whatever it takes to prove to you that I can be trusted with your heart.”
“I know,” I whispered. I held onto his shirt, our faces so close I could taste the salt of his tears. “Tell me something, Orion,” I breathed. “Something no one in this house knows.”
It was rare to catch my husband in a vulnerable moment. Now that we were here, I wanted to hear the truths he never said out loud.
He went still. I watched the calculation flicker in his gaze. The instinct to give me a safe version of the truth.
“Severin knows most of my sins.”
Sins. I almost chuckled at the word, but held back. I didn’t want to ruin his honesty with amusement.
Searching his eyes, my fingers caressing the stubble on his handsome face. “Then let’s start with what Severin knows, that I don’t.
He held my gaze for a long second, and I could see the hesitation there. The old instinct to protect himself fighting with the new one that wanted to give me what I asked for. Then he lowered his guard.
He told me about the surveillance. About the cameras and the ring tracker. And how he had watched me even when it wasn’t about safety, but because he was restless without seeing me.
My mouth went dry. “You watched me in my old house? When I thought I was alone?”
“Yes.”
When he said sins, I wasn’t sure what I expected to hear.
“Is this the thing you wanted to talk about?”
“Part of it,” he said holding my gaze. “I don’t want you trusting a version of me that only exists because I edited out the worst parts,” he said, his voice roughening. “If you’re going to stay, I’d rather you stay knowing exactly what you’re choosing.”
The confession sat heavily between us, but I forced myself not to look away.
Before I could press further, he continued. He told me about his circle. Their rebellion. The pact. The games they played, the orgies, the wild parties. My stomach dipped with a hot, ugly jealousy, but his voice was blunt, almost disgusted with himself at some point, in between.
“I haven’t touched anyone else since the contract was signed,” he said. “But I went back at first. To prove to myself that you hadn’t… infected me.”
“And?”
“It made me sick," he admitted, shaking his head. "I sat in the car and couldn't make myself go back in. I'd rather watch you go about your day than be inside a room with a dozen women willing to give me anything I asked for. You're the only thing I've ever truly needed, Léa.”
My heart lurched. It was too much, yet it was exactly what I needed—the ugly, unvarnished truth.
“I hate what you did,” I said outright, my fingers gripping his shirt. “The clause. The watching. The running. I hate how it made me feel disposable.”
“You weren't,” he said, his jaw ticked. “Maybe at first. But not for a long time.”
“I know,” I said. “Because you wouldn't have gone to war with your board for a mere transaction. And I know you’re trying. You’re infuriating and you still default to control, but you’re trying.
And I don't—” My voice frayed. “I don’t know how to turn off what I feel for you just because I’m scared. ”
His eyes closed, as if to absorb every bit of my words. When he opened them, they were dark and burned with a fierceness so intense, my knees felt weak.
“So what do you want?” he whispered. “Right now. No contract between us. No obligations…tell me what you want.”
I pulled him closer, feeling the heat of him radiating through my nightshirt.
“I want you to stop running,” I said, my voice dropping to a slick command. “And I want you to never stop touching me.”
His hands found my waist, drawing me closer. One stroked the exposed skin at the small of my back where my nightshirt had ridden up. I felt the faint tremor of his fingers as they moved.
“Léa.”
His breath came out uneven, warm across my face, and I felt my own breathing start to match his.
“What’s on your mind?” I breathed, the question barely more than air between us.
His throat worked, his gaze dropping to my mouth with a heat that made my skin buzz.
“I want to take you upstairs and spend the night on my knees,” he whispered, the words, a dark vow. “I want to strip away every doubt until you feel exactly how much power you have over me. I don’t want terms between us, Léa. I want to belong to you. Completely.”