"Stop." His voice is low and controlled and furious underneath both. "Whatever you're doing in there the books, the reading, the tucking in — stop."

"They asked me to read to them," I say evenly.

"I don't care what they asked." He takes a step toward me and I hold my ground, which seems to make it worse. "You've been here for just less than two weeks, and you're already in Dorian's room, touching his things, letting them climb all over you like you're" He stops, jaw tight. "You're not their mother. You're on a twelve-month contract."

"I'm aware of what I am," I say.

"Are you?" Something sharp enters his expression. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like a woman playing a very long game. Soften up the children, charm the staff, make yourself indispensable — and then what? You think I don't see it?"

Something cold moves through my chest, but I keep my face neutral. "You think I'm doing this to get to you."

"Aren't you?" He says it like it's obvious, like I'm naive for pretending otherwise, and the contempt in it is so clean and practiced that for one second I almost believe I deserve it. "You should wake up from that delusion. Whatever you think you're building here — it won't work, you will never have me."

He moves before I register it, closing the distance between us in one smooth step, and then his hand is at my neck, warm and deliberate, his thumb pressing lightly against my pulse like he's checking whether I'm afraid, and the answer my body gives him is humiliating.

His mouth drops to the curve of my neck and shoulder, not rough — slow, purposeful, his lips dragging against my skin like he has all the time in the world and knows exactly what he's doing with it, and I shudder despite everything I know about this man and this moment and exactly what he's trying to prove.

"This," he murmurs against my skin, his voice low and terrible and close, "is all you'll ever get from me."

*********
Sloane Carter had her work stolen, her body broken, and her heart shattered in pieces.  

Then a truck ran her off the road on a rainy night, and she woke up inside the worst romance novel she had ever read.

Wrong century, wrong country. Wrong body. Twelve-month contract marriage to a man carved from ice, three feral six-year-olds, and a dead man's secret buried so deep the whole empire is rotting from the root.

In the novel, the heroine smiles gently, loves quietly, and dies before anyone notices she was worth saving.

Sloane has bruised ribs, a stolen career, years of swallowed rage and absolutely no intention of following the original script.

The cold CEO didn't bargain for a woman who'd already survived the worst he could ever be. Neither did the man who put her in that car.

He thought killing Sloane Carter would silence her. He had no idea it would set her free.

They grin back at me, their faces full of trouble.


Later in the day at the office. I spend the day at my desk, and the dynamic has shifted. We aren't just identifying errors anymore; we're dissecting them.


After I send my first batch of notes, he emails back almost immediately, asking me to explain.


We trade messages all afternoon. I'm sharper than I've been in a while, my Business Analytics degree finally being put to use on a problem worth solving. He is terse and precise, and for a few hours, the work is the only thing that exists.


Then his latest reply hits my inbox: I see what you're doing with the Arc-Light figures. Explain the discrepancy in the holding fees..


My brain betrays me instantly. Instead of the spreadsheet, I'm back in the bathroom, feeling Caelan on his knees, his mouth buried between my thighs and his fingers curled inside me.


Chapter 14 - Chapter 14: For The Discerning Woman