The pact had been made in the cold light of dawn. Forty-eight hours. No touching. No "accidental" brushes. No filth. Damien had looked Sera in the eye and seen his own desperation mirrored back. They weren't animals. They were civilized human beings who could control their impulses.
By hour six, the silence in the penthouse was screaming.
Damien spent the afternoon in the home gym, trying to burn off the restless energy that felt like a swarm of hornets under his skin. He pushed himself through a brutal set of weighted pull-ups, his muscles glistening with sweat, his jaw locked. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the phantom sensation of her legs wrapped around his waist.
He didn't hear her enter. He just smelled her; that maddening scent of vanilla and sun-warmed skin.
Sera was "searching" for a yoga mat, wearing a pair of white cotton shorts so short the pockets hung out the bottom. She lingered, stretching her hamstrings with a slow, deliberate grace that put her backside on full display. Damien watched the muscle in her thigh twitch as she moved. He didn't say a word. He just turned back to the pull-up bar, his grip tightening until his knuckles turned white.
The clock hit hour nineteen at 1:00 AM.
Damien lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling of his master suite. The air was cool, but his blood was boiling. Every rustle of the sheets reminded him of her. Every shadow in the corner looked like the curve of her hip.
Then, the door clicked open.
Sera didn't say a word as she crossed the room. She was a silhouette of pure temptation, her skin glowing in the moonlight. She hadn't bothered with clothes this time. She was completely naked, her steps silent on the heavy rug.
She climbed onto the bed, straddling his lap before he could even sit up. Her warmth seeped through his silk pajama pants, a direct strike to his sanity.
"I can't do it," she whispered, her voice a jagged rasp in the dark. She leaned down, her hair falling over his face like a silk curtain.
"I can't stop thinking about you, Damien. I can't stop feeling you inside me. It's like a fever."
Damien didn't fight it. He didn't lecture her about the "rule." He reached up, his hands tangling in her hair, and pulled her down into a kiss that tasted of desperation and surrender.
"You're ruining me, Sera," he growled against her lips. "You've turned me into a fucking addict."
He flipped her onto her back with a slow, heavy gravity. This wasn't the frantic, angry sex of the office or the hallway. This was deep. This was deliberate. He stripped off his pants and entered her in one long, agonizingly slow stroke that seemed to last forever.
Sera let out a broken sob, her back arching off the mattress as he bottomed out. Damien didn't look away. He kept his eyes locked onto hers, his hand wrapping firmly but carefully around her throat, grounding her in the sensation.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice a low vibration. "I want you to see exactly who is destroying you. This pussy owns me, doesn't it? It's all I can think about when I'm in meetings. It's all I want when I breathe."
"Yes," she gasped, her fingers digging into the muscles of his arms. "It's yours. Everything is yours."
He fucked her with a rhythmic, soul-crushing intensity, driving her through two staggering orgasms before he even considered his own release.
He transitioned her into doggy style, his large hands fisting her hair to pull her head back, while the other delivered a sharp, stinging slap to her reddened ass cheek. The sound of the impact was a thunderclap in the silent room.
"You like being marked, don't you?" he hissed, banging her from behind until she was squirting across the charcoal sheets, her body shaking with a violent, beautiful tremor.
Damien followed her over the edge a moment later, a guttural roar leaving his chest as he filled her womb with another thick, hot load, marking her from the inside out.
They lay together in the ruins of the bed, the air smelling of sweat and the heavy, sweet scent of their union.
Sera curled against his chest, her head resting over his racing heart. For the first time, the "CEO" mask was completely gone.
He was just a man, exhausted and obsessed.
"I think I'm addicted to you," Sera whispered into the dark.
Damien stared at the ceiling, his hand absentmindedly tracing the curve of her shoulder, feeling the way she fit perfectly against him. The danger hadn't gone away, it had just become part of their DNA.
"Yeah," he replied, his voice heavy with a truth he could no longer deny. "Me too."