The car from Le Bourget slid through the Parisian night like a silent shark. Ariyah watched the City of Light blur past the tinted windows the glowing river, the grand monuments but it felt like a painting. The real world was the six inches of leather seat separating her from her husband.
Husband.
The word echoed in the hollow, jet-lagged space behind her ribs. The man beside her was a silhouette against the passing streetlights, his profile carved from stone. For two years, he'd been a ghost in her dreams. For ninety days, a negotiator across a steel desk. For a few hours today, a king at an altar, looking at her as if she'd hung the moon.
Now, he was just a man. And she was utterly, terrifyingly alone with him.
Wayne's POV
The apartment on Avenue Montaigne wasn't a hotel. It was a sanctuary, and a trap. He owned the entire floor. As the private elevator ascended, he felt the weight of the ring on his finger a band of gold with their initials. A brand. The silence between them was a physical thing, thick with everything unsaid: the club, the jealousy, the awe at the altar, the crushing need he'd carried since the moment he saw her laugh two years ago.
The doors opened directly into the grand salon. A wall of windows framed a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, glittering like a kept promise. Fresh white orchids filled the room with a scent that was both pure and erotic. A bottle of '98 Krug sat in a silver ice bucket.
A discreet housekeeper appeared, then vanished after showing them the layout.
"Your room is through there," Wayne said, his voice sounding rough even to his own ears. He gestured to a set of double doors off the main salon. "Mine adjoins. There is a connecting door." He didn't look at her as he said it. That door felt like the most dangerous object in Paris.
He saw her take in the staggering opulence, the isolation. This is where I win her or lose her forever, he thought, the pressure a vise around his lungs. The clause in the will produce an heir loomed in his mind like a vulgar guest. He would not let that be the reason. He could not.
"Goodnight, Ariyah," he forced out, and retreated into his own room before his control cracked. He closed his door, leaning his back against it, listening to the silence of her presence just feet away. He was a man who commanded boardrooms and markets, and he was trembling.
Ariyah's POV
The master bedroom was a fantasy of cream silk and dark wood. A nightgown of ivory lace was laid across the duvet. It was beautiful. It was a costume.
Ariyah ignored it. She walked to the ornate connecting door. It was solid, heavy, locked from her side. She pressed her palm flat against the cool, polished wood.
He's right there.
The fear from the lawyer's office was gone. The humiliation from the club was burned away by the look in his eyes when she'd walked toward him. She had seen his want, raw and undisguised. The power of it sang in her blood.
A slow, determined smile touched her lips. She had loved a ghost for two years. She had married a king today. And she would not be returning to Atlanta a virgin.
The game had changed. The seduction began now.
The First Morning
Ariyah's POV
She chose her armor with care. Rummaging through the walk-in closet stocked with the delivered wardrobe she found it. A simple, grey silk shirt from Brunello Cucinelli. It was his style, his essence. She slipped it on. The fabric was cool and heavy, smelling faintly of sandalwood and new money. It draped on her, falling to mid-thigh. She left it unbuttoned just enough that the deep V plunged between her breasts, and left it untucked. She brushed her curls out wild and free, applied a tinted gloss.
She found him in the salon, bathed in the soft, Parisian morning light. He was at a table, tablet in front of him, already working. He wore charcoal trousers and a rumpled white linen shirt, sleeves shoved to his elbows, revealing the corded strength of his forearms. He looked more human than she'd ever seen him, and infinitely more dangerous.
He looked up as she entered.
Wayne's POV
The sight was a physical assault.
The grey silk was his. Seeing it on her, swallowing her slender frame yet gaping to offer a devastating glimpse of shadow and soft brown skin, her legs endless and bare beneath the hem… It was an intimacy more profound than nudity. She was wearing him. Claiming him. The morning sun ignited the gold in her curls, her eyes sleepy and knowing.
His body reacted instantly, violently. A jolt of pure, possessive heat shot straight to his core. He had to shift in his chair, casually dropping his tablet into his lap to hide the immediate, betraying evidence of his desire. His coffee turned to acid in his stomach.
She's trying to kill me. Slowly.
"Morning," she said, her voice husky from sleep. She glided to the espresso machine, her movements a languid, conscious ballet. As she reached for a cup, the shirt stretched, outlining the perfect, full curve of her backside.
He couldn't speak. He gave a curt nod, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. He stared blindly at his tablet, seeing nothing but the memory of silk sliding over hip.
The Musee d'Orsay
Ariyah's POV
In the cathedral-like hall of the museum, he was the perfect, attentive husband. His hand was a constant, warm brand on the small of her back as he guided her through the crowds. But his touch was different today lighter, more proprietary, his thumb making slow, unconscious sweeps against her spine through her thin dress.
At Van Gogh's Starry Night , he stood close behind her. Not touching, but the heat of him was a wall at her back. He leaned down, his lips near her ear, his breath stirring her hair.
"He painted this in an asylum," Wayne murmured, his voice a low vibration that traveled straight down her neck. "Seeing heaven from a prison."
It wasn't about the painting. It was a confession. A warning. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
As they left, she let her steps slow. Then she reached for his hand, sliding her fingers between his. A simple, wifely gesture.
He went utterly still for a heartbeat. Then his hand closed around hers, his grip firm, almost crushing, as if he was drowning and she was the only rope.
The Evening
Wayne's POV
Dinner was exquisite torture. She wore a black column dress that should have been modest, but the fabric was a sinful, liquid velvet that clung to every one of her curves like a lover's caress. The back was a plunging surprise, a vast expanse of smooth, warm skin he ached to map with his lips.
Candlelight danced in her eyes, over her glossy mouth. She drank her wine, her throat working with each swallow. A man at a nearby table glanced at her, his gaze lingering on the swell of her breast. A red-hot wire of fury seared through Wayne's veins. The primal urge to get up, to break the man's chair over his head, to carry her out of this place and into the dark where no one could see her but him, was so strong he had to grip the edge of the table.
His mind, traitorously, flashed to the safe in his study at home. To the sleek, titanium restraint cuffs inside. An object of perfect engineering, for the exploration of perfect surrender. A hunger he'd never dared voice. Looking at her now, proud and radiant, he wondered if he would ever be worthy of asking for such trust. The thought of her offering itof her wanting to offer it was almost enough to shatter him.
Under the table, her foot brushed his calf. Once. An accident? It happened again, a deliberate, slow slide.
He looked up, met her gaze. Her eyes were dark, challenging. A slow, secret smile played on her lips. She knew. She knew exactly what she was doing to him.
He didn't move his leg.
The Apartment - Midnight
The elevator ride up was silent. The walk down the plush hallway to their rooms was a minefield. The air between them crackled, thick with the day's accumulated tension—the shared shirt, the clasped hands, the foot under the table.
He stopped at his door, his hand on the knob.
"Wayne."
Her voice, soft but unwavering, stopped him. He turned.
She was closer than he'd realized. He could smell her perfumebjasmine, vanilla, and the unique, warm scent that was just her. She stepped into his space, erasing the last safe distance. Her eyes, in the dim hallway light, were fearless.
She lifted a hand and placed her palm flat against his chest, right over his pounding heart. The touch was electric, searing through the linen of his shirt.
"The connecting door," she said, her voice a husky whisper. "It's closed."
Wayne's POV
Her hand was fire. Her words were a detonation. Every shred of control, every hour of restraint, every noble intention to go slow, to be gentle, evaporated in the inferno of that touch. He could feel the frantic beat of his own heart under her palm. He wanted to rip the shirt from her body, press her against that door, and show her exactly what her seduction had unleashed.
He saw it then the faint, thrilling tremor in her fingers. Not fear. Anticipation. She wanted this. She was asking for it.
The realization was the only thing that saved his crumbling sanity. She wanted him, not just the fulfillment of a clause. It was the difference between heaven and hell.
With a Herculean effort that made his muscles scream, he moved. He covered her hand with his own, pinning it to his chest, feeling her pulse race against his. His other hand came up, not to pull her closer, but to hover near her cheek, trembling with the effort not to touch.
When he spoke, his voice was unrecognizable guttural, ragged, torn from a place of pure, animal need. "If I go through that door, Ariyah," he growled, each word a promise and a threat, "there's no going back. I won't be gentle. I won't be civilized. And it won't be just once." He was giving her one last out, hanging by a thread over an abyss of his own desperate want.
She didn't flinch. She rose on her toes, bringing her face inches from his. Her glossy lips parted. Her breath mingled with his.
"Who's asking you to be?"
The thread snapped.
A raw, tormented sound escaped him a groan of pure, agonizing need mingled with a growl of surrender. He didn't kiss her. The force of what he felt was too vast, too terrifying for a kiss.
Instead, he brought the hand he was holding to his lips. He turned her palm up and pressed a kiss to its very center, a kiss of shocking, desperate tenderness. He poured every ounce of his warring desire and fierce, protective reverence into that single touch.
Then, he let her go.
He turned, wrenched open his door, and walked into the darkness of his room. He closed the door behind him with a soft, definitive click.
But he did not turn the lock.
Ariyah's POV
She stood frozen in the hallway, her whole world reduced to the burning brand in the center of her palm. The heat of his kiss seemed to seep into her bones, travel up her arm, and pool as a deep, throbbing ache between her thighs.
He had walked away. Again.
But this was different. That kiss… that wasn't a rejection. It was a vow. A savage, tender promise.
She looked at the heavy, ornate connecting door. It was just wood. The last barrier. It wasn't locked. She'd heard the distinct absence of the deadbolt turning.
On the other side was her husband. A man pushed to the very edge of his legendary control. A man who had just confessed he would ruin her for any other man, in every way imaginable.
A slow, triumphant smile curved her lips. The hunt was over.
The capture was hers to claim.
Wayne's POV
On the other side of the door, he braced his hands against the cold marble of the fireplace mantle, head bowed, his entire body shaking. The image of her in his shirt, the feel of her palm, the scent of her, the defiant fire in her eyes it all played on a loop behind his clenched eyelids.
He listened, every nerve ending hyper-aware, for the sound he both longed for and feared: the soft turn of the handle on the connecting door.
The beast was unchained. And it was waiting, coiled in the dark, for its queen to command it.