Chapter 3

Two weeks after that dinner, I stood outside Adrian's bedroom door with my heart slamming against my ribs.

He'd been avoiding me. Not obviously, not in a way anyone else would notice, but I noticed. He answered my texts an hour later than he used to. He cancelled dinner twice, citing meetings that felt a little too convenient. When I showed up at his house uninvited that night, his assistant let me in and told me he was upstairs, and I climbed those stairs knowing exactly what I was doing.

I pushed his bedroom door open without knocking.

Adrian was standing by the window, tie already loosened, jacket thrown over a chair. He turned and his whole body went still when he saw me standing in his doorway.

"Elena." My name came out flat, controlled. Warning. "You shouldn't be in here."

"I wanted to see you." I stepped inside anyway, closing the door behind me. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"Bullshit."

His jaw tightened at that, but he didn't deny it again. He just watched me cross the room toward him, and something in his eyes shifted from careful to something darker. Something that made my skin prickle.

"You need to leave," he said quietly.

"Why? Because you're scared of what happens if I stay?"

That got a reaction. His eyes narrowed, and he took a step toward me instead of away, close enough that I had to tilt my head up to keep looking at him.

"You think you know what you're doing," he said, voice low. "You don't. You want to use me to punish Ryan, and you've decided the fastest way to do that is to get me into bed. You think I haven't noticed the dress the other night? The way you keep finding reasons to touch me?"

My cheeks burned, but I didn't back down. "Maybe I have noticed you watching."

"I'm dangerous, Elena." He said it plainly, no arrogance in it. "Not the way you think. I know exactly how to make a woman want things she'll regret in the morning. I've done it more times than I can count. If you stay in this room, I promise you, you won't walk out of it the same person who walked in."

"Maybe I don't want to walk out the same person."

Something flickered across his face. Frustration, maybe. Or something closer to concern.

"Take off your bra."

The words landed in the room like a slap. My breath caught. For a second I thought I'd misheard him.

"What?"

"You heard me." His voice was steady, testing me, daring me to prove him wrong about exactly what kind of woman I was pretending to be. "If you're so sure about this, prove it. Take it off."

I should have walked out right then. Every rational part of my brain was screaming at me to leave, to laugh it off, to tell him he was insane. Instead, my hands moved to the back of my dress with a steadiness that surprised even me. I reached beneath the fabric, unhooked the clasp, and slid the straps down until the bra dropped to the floor between us.

Adrian's eyes darkened, sweeping over me once, slow and deliberate, and for a moment I thought I'd won. I thought this was it, the moment he finally stopped fighting whatever this was between us.

He stepped closer. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, close enough that my whole body went taut waiting for what came next. His hand came up, fingers brushing along my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.

I closed my eyes.

I waited for the kiss I was sure was coming, my heart pounding so loud I was certain he could hear it.

"Put it back on."

My eyes flew open. He'd already stepped back, putting distance between us again, his expression unreadable except for the muscle working in his jaw.

"What?"

"I'm not going to do this." His voice was rough, but controlled. "Put your bra back on, Elena."

Humiliation crashed through me first, hot and fast. Then confusion right behind it. I bent down, snatched my bra off the floor, and turned my back to him while I put it on with shaking hands, my face burning.

"You're unbelievable," I said, my voice cracking despite myself.

"I told you I was dangerous." He said it quietly, no satisfaction in it at all. "This is me proving it. Not by taking what you offered. By showing you how easily I could have."

I grabbed my purse and walked out of that room without looking back, my whole body still humming with something I couldn't name, something that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the fact that he'd looked at me, wanted me, clearly wanted me, and stopped himself anyway.

Ryan never once stopped himself from anything. Not with Sophie. Not with anyone.

I lay awake that night replaying the moment his hand touched my jaw, the way his eyes had gone dark right before he pulled away. What kind of man did that? What kind of man had a woman standing half undressed in front of him and chose to walk away instead?

By the following week, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I started dreaming about him, the same dream coming back three nights straight, always picking up exactly where reality had stopped.

In it, Adrian didn't step back. His hand stayed on my jaw, and instead of telling me to put my bra back on, he pulled me hard against him, his mouth crashing down on mine, nothing careful left in it at all. I felt the low, rough sound in his chest when I gripped the front of his shirt, felt his hands finally moving where they'd refused to go, sliding down my bare back, dragging me flush against him like another inch of space between us was unbearable.

He walked me backward until I hit the edge of his bed, his mouth trailing from my lips down my throat, his hands working at the zipper of my dress with none of the restraint he'd shown for real. It fell away, and this time he didn't stop there. His mouth closed over one bare breast, tongue circling slow, and I arched into him with a sound I barely recognized as mine.

"Tell me to stop," he said against my skin, voice wrecked.

I didn't. His hand slid down my stomach, past the edge of my underwear, and when his fingers found my clit, slow and certain, circling exactly where I needed him, I felt it like fire licking up through my whole body. My hips chased his hand on their own, desperate, shameless, a moan breaking out of me that I didn't recognize as my own.

"Fuck, Adrian..."

"I've got you." His voice was rough against my ear, two fingers sliding into me now, curling deep, his thumb still working my clit in slow, deliberate circles, my thighs shaking, my back arching hard off the bed.

He pulled his hand away only to yank my underwear the rest of the way off, and I heard the low, ragged sound he made looking at me spread open beneath him, completely undone already. He settled his weight over me, and I felt him, hard and thick against my thigh, felt him drag the head of his cock slow through my wetness before finally pushing into me, one long, unbearable inch at a time, stretching me around him until I couldn't breathe.

"Look at me," he said, voice guttural, hips rolling into mine slow and deep. "I want you to look at me when I make you fall apart."

I did. I held his gaze while he moved inside me, deeper with every thrust, his mouth catching mine between broken breaths, my nails dragging down his back, both of us chasing the same building, unbearable pressure. His hand found my clit again, matching the rhythm of his hips, and I felt myself right on the edge, right there, his name breaking out of me over and over—

I woke up gasping, tangled in my own sheets, soaked through with sweat, my whole body still throbbing with an ache that had nowhere to go. My heart pounded so hard it took a full minute to remember where I actually was.

Alone. In my own bed. Three weeks after a man had looked at me half naked and chosen, deliberately, to walk away.

I lay there in the dark afterward, furious and aching and disgusted with myself in equal measure, my hand pressed flat against my own stomach like I could somehow will the feeling out of my body through sheer force.

I told myself it was still about Ryan. That getting Adrian into bed would still be the ultimate revenge, still be the thing that finally made Ryan feel an ounce of what I'd felt walking into that room three weeks ago.

But somewhere in the space between that lie and the truth, I'd stopped noticing the difference.

I just knew I needed to get revenge on Ryan, and standing at the edge of that need, I already understood something dangerous.

If a dream could do this to me, I had no idea what the real thing was going to cost me. And some reckless, shameless part of me couldn't wait to find out.