Chapter One
Sloane
The air in the executive suite on the sixty-first floor is recycled, chilled to a precise sixty-eight degrees, and smells faintly of expensive floor wax and filtered oxygen. It is a sterile, high-altitude cage. Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass, Manhattan is a blurred mosaic of grey and gold, but inside, the world exists only in the sharp lines of Vane Sterling's silhouette.
"The midday briefing was inadequate, Sloane."
Vane doesn't look up from his monitor. He doesn't have to. His voice is a low, resonant frequency that vibrates in my very marrow, sparking a traitorous warmth I fight to extinguish. The blue light of the triple-monitor setup reflects in his irises, transforming his eyes into shards of deep-sea ice—beautiful, frozen, and capable of slicing through anything they touch.
He is a man constructed of clinical precision. His suit, a midnight-charcoal weave, fits him with a violence that suggests it was stitched onto his frame. His jawline is a jagged edge carved from something much harder than bone. To the rest of the world, he is the savior of the Dow, the shark of Wall Street. To me, he is the owner of my next twenty-seven days—and the source of a shame that tastes like iron in my mouth.
"I have the updated projections in the second folder, Mr. Sterling," I say.
I take pride in my voice. It is a practiced, steady neutral—a dial turned to zero. I stand with my heels clicked together, my posture a rigid line. In this office, I am not a person; I am a function. I am the silence that follows his storms, praying he doesn't hear the way my heart thunders for him.
"I didn't ask for folders, Sloane."
Finally, the mechanical whir of his leather chair breaks the silence as he turns. The movement is slow, predatory. He leans back, crossing one long leg over the other, his gaze raking over me not as a woman, but as a malfunctioning piece of equipment. The air in the room suddenly feels thin, and I hate myself for the way my lungs ache to breathe him in.
"I asked for a solution to the agitation in my chest," he continues, his voice dropping an octave. "The market is volatile today. Zurich is hemorrhaging, and my patience is thinning along with their margins. I find myself needing a different kind of focus. Something... visceral."
He stands. Vane is a towering presence, a monolith of power that makes the sleek, modern furniture look like dollhouse accessories. He is a predator in a thousand-dollar cage, and as he begins to walk toward me, the primal instinct to bolt flares up in my chest, tangled with a sickening urge to step closer.
I force my feet to remain rooted to the plush carpet. I do not flinch. I do not blink. To retreat would be a sign of resistance, and Section 1 of the Sterling-Vance Agreement is very clear: Resistance is a breach of contract. I use the legal language to anchor myself, to hide the fact that I am already half-ruined by his presence.
He stops inches away. The heat radiating from him is a direct contrast to the coldness of his eyes. I can smell him now—the sharp, botanical notes of expensive gin, the metallic tang of the city, and the faint, haunting scent of rain on his skin. It is the smell of a storm approaching, and God help me, I am a moth begging for the lightning.
"Do you remember Section 4, Clause B, Sloane?"
His voice is right at my ear now. I can feel his breath, a ghost of a touch that makes my skin burn with a need I despise.
"I do, Sir," I whisper, my throat tight with a mix of fear and a dark, heavy anticipation. "Total compliance with physical regulatory needs. At the discretion of the Employer. For the duration of the term."
"Good."
He reaches out. His fingers are long, elegant, and deathly cold as they brush against the dip of my collarbone, just above the silk neckline of my blouse. The contact sends a shiver through me that I can't quite suppress. He notices. A ghost of a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth—not a smile of warmth, but a tally of a victory. My body has always been a traitor to my mind.
"I have a conference call with Zurich in ten minutes," he murmurs, his thumb tracing the line of my throat, feeling the frantic, thirsty beat of my pulse. "I want to be relaxed when I tell them I am liquidating their assets. I want to feel their ruin while I feel your submission."
He gestures toward the massive mahogany desk behind him. It is a slab of dark wood that looks like an altar.
"Go under the desk."
The command is quiet, yet it carries the weight of a physical blow. This is the duality of my life: the high-stakes world of finance above the wood, and the raw, transactional reality beneath it. I tell myself I am a victim, even as my blood sings at the prospect of belonging to him for even a second.
I move. My movements are fluid, robotic. I have learned to compartmentalize the shame until it is a small, hard stone buried deep in my gut, but the stone is glowing white-hot. I sink to my knees, the silk of my skirt bunching, and crawl into the dark, carpeted shadows of the footwell.
It is a different world down here. It smells of leather and the faint ozone of computer towers. I am hidden. I am a ghost in the machine, and in the dark, I don't have to pretend I don't want this.
Above me, I hear the soft, expensive click of the speakerphone.
"Sterling here," Vane says.
His tone has shifted instantly. It is smooth, authoritative, and utterly devoid of the dark hunger that was in his voice seconds ago.
"I've reviewed the Zurich proposal," he continues, and I hear the sound of his weight shifting in the chair. "It's pathetic. If you want my capital, you'll have to do better than four percent."
I reach for the buckle of his belt. My hands are steady—they have to be. I am an extension of his will, a tool he uses to sharpen his focus, no different than the gold fountain pen he uses to sign death warrants for struggling companies. I hate the way my fingers crave the touch of him, the way I am more alive beneath this desk than I have ever been at it.
As I work, the speakers fill the room with frantic, tinny voices. Men in expensive offices thousands of miles away are pleading for more time, for a better deal, for mercy. They don't know that their fate is being decided while the man they fear is occupied with the most base of distractions.
Vane ignores their desperation. His hand reaches down, his fingers tangling in my hair. His grip is firm, possessive, anchoring me to him. He isn't being gentle; he never is. He is using me to ground himself, and I am using him to feel anything other than the hollow emptiness of my own life. My movements match the calculated coldness of the words he speaks into the phone, a rhythmic penance for a desire I can't name.
"Three percent," Vane says, his voice tightening just a fraction as I increase the pressure, testing the limits of his composure. "And I take the patent rights. That's my final offer. You have thirty seconds to decide before I hang up and buy your debt out from under you."
I can feel the tension in his thighs, the way his body is coiled like a spring ready to snap. Above me, he is destroying a legacy; below him, he is eroding my dignity. And the worst part—the secret I keep locked away even from myself—is the intoxication of it. The power he wields is a drug, and I am a desperate addict, hating the dealer but craving the hit.
"Done," the voice on the phone crackles, sounding defeated and small.
Vane doesn't celebrate. He doesn't even smile. He simply clicks the phone off. The silence that follows is deafening. He leans back, his hand still heavy in my hair, forcing my head back so I have to look up at him through the shadows. I am disgusted by the longing I see reflected in his cold, silver eyes.
"You're late on the intake, Sloane," he murmurs, his eyes scanning my face for any sign of a crack. "That's a five-minute penalty. You'll stay after the 10:00 PM briefing tonight to make it up."
He releases me, and I emerge from the darkness of the desk like a secret being dragged into the light, shivering from the cold air and the heat of my own self-loathing.