Chapter Eleven
Sloane
I do as he says. I have no choice.or that's what i tell myself.
I rest my cheek on the cool, high-thread-count silk of the mattress, mere inches from Vane's hand. The proximity is a different kind of torture. Out on the cliffs, the wind and the adrenaline gave me a shield, but here, in the suffocating silence of his bedroom, there is nowhere to hide. I can feel the heat radiating from his skin. I can hear the steady, calm rhythm of his breathing—a predator at rest.
He goes back to his typing, his eyes fixed on the glow of the screen, but his free hand reaches out.
His fingers begin to move through my hair in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. It isn't a caress; it's a claim. It's the way a man might stroke a loyal hound he has just finished breaking. He's testing the leash, feeling the way I tense and then, inevitably, go limp under his touch.
The worst part—the part that makes me want to scream into the silk—is that it feels good. My body, exhausted and battered by the night, seeks out his warmth like a flower turning to a dark sun. I find myself leaning into his palm, my eyes fluttering closed for a heartbeat before the sheer terror of the "double penalty" forces them open again.
"Thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred and eighty," I murmur, my voice muffled by the bedsheets, sounding like a ghost's confession. "The Nikkei is dropping. Tokyo is failing."
"Let it burn," Vane rasps. He doesn't even glance at the screen. His hand moves from my hair to the nape of my neck, his grip tightening just enough to pin me to the edge of his bed. "I'm watching a much more interesting collapse right here."
The night crawls on. The stars shift outside the window, cold and indifferent to the transaction happening in this room. Above me, the man I hate continues to build his empire with clinical precision. Below him, I continue to lose mine, one inch of pride at a time.
In the silence of The Monolith, with only the sound of the waves and the rhythmic clicking of keys, the "No Emotion" clause feels like a joke. A lie written in ink that has already washed away.
I don't just feel an emotion. I feel a catastrophe.