His words hang in the absolute darkness between us. No. I don't think I will.
It's not a command. It's a confession. A raw, ragged admission that strips away every layer of his power, his money, his control, leaving behind something terrifyingly human. A man who wants something and has decided to take it.
And that something is me.
My heart isn't just pounding anymore. It's trying to claw its way out of my chest. My breath is a trapped thing, burning in my lungs. He has me pinned against a shelf of classic poetry, his body a cage of muscle and heat. The darkness is a blanket, smothering my senses until the only things that exist are him. The clean, masculine scent of his skin. The solid wall of his chest against my hands. The ghost of his breath on my cheek.
"This isn't happening," I whisper, the words meant for me, not for him.
"Isn't it?" His voice is a low growl, vibrating through his chest and into my palms. His grip on my arms tightens, not painfully, but possessively. A gesture that says mine. "This is the only thing that's been real for weeks, Elara. This fight. This… energy. You feel it too."
Yes. God help me, yes. I feel it. It's a terrifying, electric hum under my skin that started the day he walked in and has only gotten stronger. It's the reason I've felt more alive in the last three weeks than I have in the last six years.
But admitting that feels like surrender. And I do not surrender.
"What I feel," I hiss, trying to inject venom into a voice that wants to tremble, "is fury. I feel you trying to destroy my life, my legacy."
"I could have destroyed it a dozen different ways from my office downtown," he murmurs, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. A bolt of pure, liquid fire shoots down my spine. "I didn't need to move in for that. I didn't need to learn the sound of your footsteps or the smell of your god-awful kimchi. I came here for this."
His head dips lower. I can feel the shape of his mouth, the promise of it, hovering a millimeter from my own. My mind screams at me to turn away, to knee him, to do something. But my body is frozen, transfixed, waiting. A traitorous part of me wants to know what it would feel like.
And then, a flicker.
A single, weak, orange glow from a streetlight down the block cuts through the window. Then another.
The spell is shattered by a sudden, violent buzz. The lights in the bookstore flicker on, one by one, a series of harsh, fluorescent pops that feel like a physical assault. The old cooler in the back roars back to life.
The world comes rushing back in all its unwelcome, brutal clarity.
We stare at each other, caught. His face is so close. His grey eyes are dark, stormy, pupils blown wide with an emotion I can't name. I see the raw, unguarded hunger there. I see him seeing me—my flushed face, my parted lips, my wide, terrified eyes.
He recoils as if he's been slapped. He drops his hands from my arms and takes a staggered step back, the loss of his heat leaving me instantly cold and shaky. The mask of the ruthless CEO slams back into place, but it's sloppy this time. The edges are cracked. I can see the effort it takes him.
He looks from me to the bookshelf I'm leaning against, to the ordinary, brightly lit space around us. He looks like a man waking from a dream, horrified by what he finds in the real world.
"The power's back," he states, his voice clipped and rough, all business again. It's a pathetic attempt to pretend the last five minutes didn't happen.
"So it is," I manage to say, my own voice a weak, reedy thing. I push myself off the bookshelf, my legs feeling like overcooked noodles.
He doesn't look at me again. He turns on his heel, his movements stiff and angry, and stalks towards the alley door. He doesn't say goodnight. He doesn't make a threat. He just leaves, the door swinging shut behind him with a quiet, final click.
I stand there, alone in the buzzing, overlit silence of my store, my hand pressed to my mouth. I can still feel the heat of his body, the ghost of his breath on my skin.
He said he hasn't felt anything this real in a decade.
The terrifying part? Neither have I.
I spend the next hour on autopilot, locking the doors, turning off the lights—the ones I can control, anyway—and making my way to my small apartment at the back of the store. My mind is a whirlwind of shame and fury and a dizzying, terrifying thrill.
He didn't just cross a line tonight. He obliterated it. He took our war of noise and smells and petty sabotage and dragged it into this… this dark, intimate, dangerous territory. And I, God help me, I let him. For a moment there, in the dark, I wanted him. My enemy. The man trying to ruin me.
I splash cold water on my face, staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The woman looking back at me is a stranger. Her eyes are too bright, her lips too red. She looks like a woman who has just been thoroughly, expertly kissed, even though she hasn't.
This has to stop. I can't win a war like this. He's richer, more powerful, and, as it turns out, my body is a complete and utter traitor when he gets within five feet of me. Fighting him on his terms is a losing game.
So I have to change the rules.
I go back to my laptop, my resolve hardening into something cold and sharp. I pull up all the research I've done on him. Financial reports, past projects, board members. I was looking for a weakness. A scandal. But that was the wrong approach. A man like that doesn't have scandals. He has strategies.
So I need a new strategy of my own. Something he won't see coming. My eyes fall on a name on the board of directors for his last major project. A name I'd glossed over before.
Isabella Rossi. A famous, old-money philanthropist. A passionate advocate for historical preservation. She'd publicly opposed one of his earlier projects until he'd made a massive, last-minute donation to her foundation. He bought her silence once.
Maybe, just maybe, she'd be interested to know he was up to his old tricks again.
It's a long shot. It's a desperate, insane Hail Mary. But it's not a battle fought with my body. It's a battle fought with his reputation. And for the first time in weeks, a flicker of genuine, dangerous hope ignites within me.
I am not just the defender of this bookstore anymore. I am going on the attack.
Alistair
I stand in the center of my stark, half-finished living room, the city lights of my kingdom glittering like shattered diamonds below. The room is cold. The air is sterile. My hands are clenched into fists at my sides, so tight my knuckles are white.
I can still feel the softness of her skin under my thumbs. I can still smell the scent of old books and righteous fury that clings to her like perfume.
What the hell was that?
I lost control. For the first time in my adult life, I completely and utterly lost control. I, Alistair Blackwood, a man who moves markets with a single phone call, who orchestrates billion-dollar deals without his heart rate ever climbing above seventy, was reduced to a primal, wanting animal by a stubborn woman in a dusty bookstore.
I'd backed her against a shelf. I'd all but confessed my obsession to her. I had been seconds away from taking her mouth with mine, consequences be damned. The thought sends a jolt of pure, white-hot fury through me. Fury at her for making me feel this way. Fury at myself for my own weakness.
This was supposed to be a simple transaction. A strategic application of pressure to remove an obstacle. It was business.
But it isn't business anymore. It stopped being business the moment she looked me in the eye and said no. It became a game. A challenge.
And tonight, in the dark, it became something else entirely. An obsession.
I look around the empty, cavernous space. This apartment was meant to be a tool. A weapon to break her. But it's becoming my own prison. I find myself listening for her, for the sound of her opera, for the faint murmur of her voice. She is a virus in my system, disrupting my logic, overriding my control.
I walk to the floor-to-ceiling window and press my palm against the cold glass. I own everything I can see. And none of it feels as real as the five minutes I just spent with her in the dark.
This has to end. The game has become too dangerous. The stakes are too high.
But ending it doesn't mean walking away. It doesn't mean admitting defeat.
It means winning. Absolutely. Decisively.
The old tactics aren't working. The noise, the pressure—it only makes her fight harder. It only draws me closer to her fire. I need a new strategy. I need to get her out of her fortress. I need to face her on my own terms, on my territory.
I pull out my phone, my movements sharp and precise again. My mind is clear now, my objective solidified. The fury has cooled into a diamond-hard resolve.
I find the number for my personal assistant. I don't call. I send a text, the blue light of the screen illuminating my face in the dark room.
Cancel my 10 a.m. tomorrow. And draw up a formal invitation. I want Elara Vance in my office at Blackwood Tower. 10 a.m. sharp. Make it clear this is not a request.
I hit send.
The game is changing again. No more petty wars fought through floorboards. It's time to bring the queen of the castle into the lion's den.