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“Name them.”

“No sleepovers,” she says. “We do what we came for, and we leave.”

“Agreed.”

“No office. Not here. Not ever. In this building, we’re professionals.”

“Agreed.”

“No one finds out. Not your brother. Not my sisters. No one.”

“Agreed.”

“When this job is over, we’re strangers again. No lingering. No one last time. No late-night calls.” She lifts her chin. “And no feelings.”

“No feelings,” I agree, and hold out my hand. “Purely physical.”

She looks at my hand. Then at me.

“This isn’t really about sex,” she says slowly. “It’s about control. Me deciding what happens to me, for once.”

“Then you decide.”

She takes my hand and shakes it firmly. A deal. I’ve signed a thousand of them. None of them ever made my pulse do this.

“No sleepovers,” she says again, gathering her bag. “No office. No feelings.”

She heads for the door, then glances back at me over her shoulder, rain-streaked light on her face, a wry smile tugging at her mouth.

“Then we’re already in trouble,” she says, like it’s a joke.

I don’t laugh.

I grab my jacket and follow her out into the rain.

11

SEBASTIAN

The storm has passed.

I open my eyes to see the morning light streaming in through windows that are not mine, framed by patterned blue curtains.

I lie perfectly still, staring at the ceiling, tracking how the light carves symmetrical lines across it. My heart beats steady, nearly matching Isabella’s breathing beside me.

The first rule was no sleepovers, which we’ve broken spectacularly on night one. Not that it was a conscious choice. After the sheer exhausting intensity of the last few hours, sleep hadn't been an invitation, it had been a command.

We had collided with a desperation that left us both breathless and hollowed out, and by the time the adrenaline ebbed, neither of us had the strength to find our clothes, let alone call for a car.

My phone lights up with a text from Aaron. It’s 6:14 a.m.

I need to get out of here, not because I want to leave—I don’t, and that’s a problem in and of itself—but because the longer I stay, the more of that control will evaporate. If she wakes up and we share a moment of post-sex vulnerability, we’ll breach the contract before the imaginary ink is even dry.

I sit up slowly, the cool air hitting my bare chest. My muscles ache, reminding me how Isabella lost her voice screaming my name, and I feel small streaks of fire on my back where her nails dug into my skin.

I suppress the urge to look at her. I am a man of discipline, a man who runs a multinational corporation, with a will of steel developed over a lifetime. I am worth billions because I do not succumb to impulse. I can get up, get dressed, and make it as though I had never been here.

“Sebastian?”