I hear his footsteps before his voice. Confident, measured, expensive Italian leather against stone. Everything about Damien Cross is expensive, calculated, precise.
Including the way he owns me.
I'm still wrapped in the towel when he appears in the bathroom doorway, and for a moment, neither of us speaks. He's dressed in a charcoal suit that fits him like it was crafted by angels which it probably was, knowing his tailor. His dark hair is slightly mussed from travel, his tie loosened just enough to suggest he's been working since before dawn.
He looks like a power incarnate. Like the kind of man who could buy and sell governments in a sitting.
Like the kind of man who did buy me.
"You're awake early," he says, his voice carrying that hint of an accent I've never been able to place. Old money, expensive schools, the kind of breeding that turns syllables into weapons.
"So are you." I tighten my grip on the towel, hating how exposed I feel. Not just physically. Standing nearly naked in front of the man who owns you doesn't just strip away dignity; it strips you bare emotionally. Like he can see straight through to the parts of me I'm trying to keep hidden.
The parts that miss him when he's gone.
"Tokyo doesn't sleep on East Coast time." He loosens his tie slowly. "The Yamamoto deal required... personal attention."
"I'm sure it did." The words come out sharper than I intended, carrying three months of resentment and something else I don't want to name. "How many other personal acquisitions did you oversee while you were there?"
His eyes gray like stormy clouds, like steel, like the color of my future. "Are you asking if I was unfaithful, Elena?"
The question hangs in the air between us, loaded with implications I'm not ready to examine. Because caring about his fidelity would mean admitting things I'm not prepared to admit. Like the fact that the thought of him touching another woman makes me want to break something expensive lol….
"I'm asking if you conduct all your business the way you conducted ours," I said instead, meeting his gaze through the reflection. "With contracts and coercion."
"No." He steps closer, until I can smell his cologne, something dark and woodsy. "Most of my business partners aren't nearly as beautiful. Or as stubborn."
"I'm not your business partner. I'm your….."
"What?" The word is a challenge but soft and dangerous. "What are you, Elena?"
I want to say prisoner. Want to say victim. I want to say a dozen things that would put distance between us, that would remind us both of the ugly transaction that brought me here.
Instead, I face him directly, letting the towel serve as the only barrier between us. "I don't know what I am to you."
"Don't you?"
He reaches out, his fingers finding the edge of the towel where I've tucked it above my breasts. Not pulling, not demanding. Just... touching. The contact sends heat racing through my veins….omg… and I hate myself for it.
"You could have had anyone," I said. "Any woman in the city would willingly fall into your bed. Why did you need to buy one?" Why did it have to be me? Why?
Something sparked across his face like pain or regret. It's gone so quickly I almost convince myself I imagined it.
"Because willing isn't the same as understanding," he says quietly. "And you understand me, don't you, Elena? Better than you want to."
"I don't understand anything about you." But even as I say it, I know it's a lie. I understand the way he takes his coffee black with no sugar like his soul. I understand that he works eighteen-hour daily because stopping means thinking, and thinking means remembering whatever it is that turned him into this. I understand that he touches me like I'm something precious even though he bought me like I was some commodity.
"You understand that I could have taken you by force that first night," he continues, his thumb tracing the edge of the towel. "But I didn't."
"That doesn't make you noble" I cut in!
"It makes me careful." His hand moves to my chin, tilting my face up until I have no choice but to meet his eyes directly. "Do you know what careful men do, Elena? They wait. They watch. They learn what their acquisitions need."
"And what do I need?" The question is barely a breath.
"To be seen. To be valued. To matter to someone who has the power to destroy you but chooses not to." His thumb brushes across my lower lip, and I shiver. "Your father saw you as a bargaining chip. I see you as... more."
"More what?"
"More than he deserved to have." The words are rough, carrying an edge of something that sounds almost like anger. But not at me. "More than I deserve to own."
There it is. The word that's been hovering between us for three months. "Own". Not love, not cherish, not even want. "Own".
"Then let me go," I whisper.
"I can't do that."
"Can't? Or won't?"
He leans closer, until his forehead nearly touches mine. Until I can feel the warmth of his breath against my skin. "Do you really want me to answer that?"
No. God, no. Because I'm terrified of what the answer might be. Terrified that he might actually let me walk away, and even more terrified of what that would mean about the woman I've become in his bed.
Instead of answering, I do something that surprises us both. I reach up and loosen his tie completely, letting the silk slip through my fingers. "You're overdressed for a homecoming."
His eyes darken, but he didn't move. Didn't take what I'm offering, didn't push for more than I'm willing to give. It's maddening, this restraint of his. This way he'll like me to come to him.
"Elena." My name is a warning.
"What? You own me, remember? Shouldn't I be... available?".
"Don't." The word is sharp enough to cut.
"Don't what?
I should not touch you? I should not want you?" I start working on the buttons of his shirt, my fingers steady despite the chaos in my chest. "I guess you don't want me to admit that somewhere along the way, this stopped feeling like punishment?"
He catches my wrists, stopping my progress. His grip is firm but gentle, and I can feel his pulse racing under my fingertips.
"Is that what you think this is? Punishment?"
"Isn't it?" I look up at him, really look at him, and see something I wasn't expecting. Vulnerability. Raw and carefully hidden, but it's there. "You destroyed my family, took everything we had, and then you took me. If that's not punishment, what would you call it?"
"Justice." The word falls between us like a blade. "But not for you."
Before I can ask what that means, his lips are on mine. Not gentle, not careful, but hungry. Desperate. Like a man who's been starving and finally found sustenance.
I melt myself into him, despite everything. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer as he backs me against the marble vanity. The edge digs into my lower back, but I don't care. I dont't care about anything except the way he tastes like coffee and sin and something that might be regretful but first let me enjoy the moment.
His hands frame my face, thumbs stroking along my cheekbones as he kisses me like he's trying to say something he doesn't have words for. Or maybe he's trying to apologize for something he can never take back.
When he pulls away, we're both breathing hard. His suit is wrinkled, his hair mussed, his carefully constructed armor showing cracks.
"I missed you," he says quietly, and the admission hits me so hard.
"You were only gone two days."
"I know." He rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. "I know exactly how long I was gone, Elena. Every hour."
This is what I can't wrap my head around, the tenderness in his voice, the genuine emotion in his eyes, the way he holds me like I matter. How can the same man who bought me from my father touch me like I'm something to be cherished?
"Why?" The question slips out before I can stop it. "Why me? Why this? You could have destroyed my family without involving me."
His eyes open, meeting mine, and for a moment I see straight through to something that looks like pain.
"Because some things are personal whether we want them to be or not." He steps back, putting distance between us, and I immediately miss his warmth. "Get dressed. We have dinner tonight."
Just like that, the moment is over. He's the Master of the House again, and I'm just his latest acquisition.
"What if I don't want to go to dinner?"
He pauses in the doorway, not turning around. "Then you fvcking go anyway. Because that's what companions do, Elena. They accompany me."
"And if I refuse?"
Now he does turn, and his smile is sharp enough to cut glass. "Then I remind you that you signed a contract. And I always collect on my contracts."
He leaves me standing there in my towel, pulse racing and lips swollen from his kiss, trying to figure out which version of him is real. The tender man who missed me for forty-eight hours, or the cold businessman who owns me for the next thirty-three months.
Maybe they're both real. Maybe that's the most terrifying thing of all.
I look at myself in the mirror at the woman with wild hair and kiss-bruised lips, at the woman who just melted in her captor's arms and wonder when I started looking forward to his return.
When I started missing him too.
The golden chains are getting heavier or maybe I'm just getting used to the weight.
Either way, I have a dinner to prepare for, because he's right about one thing, I signed the contract.
And Damien Cross always collects.