Chapter 2

Afterward, both of us were soaked in sweat.

This time was different. Adrian was gentle. He was also, in a way that wore me down, slow.

I rested against his chest and let the skirt stay wrinkled where it was.

The nausea had gone. Hunger came up in the empty space it left.

Adrian picked me up.

One thin heel was still on the carpet. He didn't turn back for it.

There was a rest room off the CEO's office. He carried me in, and he came in after me.

He washed me the way he got dressed. Careful. Nothing skipped.

When his fingers reached the scar across my chest, they stopped.

I looked up and pushed the wet hair off my forehead. "If you're going to wash me, wash me. Don't treat me like a porcelain doll."

Adrian didn't answer. The water was loud.

He put the thought away and kept going.

When I came out, I had changed into a new slip dress, a pale dusty pink.

No makeup. I looked like I had just climbed out of someone's bed.

I had.

"Eat," Adrian said.

The tie was knotted again. The suit was perfect. Only the tip of one ear still held a little red.

The elevator opened onto the office floor, and eyes stuck at once.

Someone dropped their voice, sure they were far enough off.

"Eden Cross is disgusting. A used-up slut, and she still keeps our CEO dangling every single day."

"You don't know? She was supposed to marry the Pierce heir. On the wedding day Mr. Knox stormed the church and took the bride in front of everyone. She didn't want the blood heir. She took the adopted son. No shame at all."

"I heard the two of them came to blows over her. Old Mr. Pierce got so angry he checked into a hospital. Mr. Knox is probably about to be thrown out of Pierce."

Then the sighs.

"Mr. Knox has lost his mind, letting her get to him like that. Did you see them come down just now? Her legs were still shaking."

"How badly does she want to be—"

Laughter swallowed the rest. Someone else was blunter.

"She's wild. Every noon they make so much noise none of us can rest. You can hear it through the wall."

I listened. Nothing in me moved.

Those lines had been going since the first day I walked into Pierce.

Adrian was the one who stopped.

He took out his phone and aimed it their way. The shutter made a small sound in the corridor.

The people still whispering finally noticed. The two subjects of the talk were standing a few steps off.

One face went white. One tried to shrink back to a desk. One laughed, dry, and got nothing out of it.

Adrian sent the photo to the HR director. The line under it said, Get rid of them.

He put the phone away, took my hand, and walked on.

His steps stayed steady. Every one of them landed like a foot on someone's neck.

I flicked at my hair. It still wasn't dry. "Mouths belong to other people. If they want to talk, let them. I'm not going to lose a piece of flesh over it—"

And in a sense, they weren't wrong.

The soundproofing in that office probably wasn't as good as Adrian thought, and every time he went at it like nothing else existed.

At the start I bit my lip and held the sound back. Later I stopped bothering.

I had also learned what he could stand least.

He never liked to talk while he did this.

From the beginning to the end he kept his teeth together and his breath low, as if he refused to let himself look too far gone.

The moment I made a sound, he came apart.

The tips of his ears went red enough to bleed. Each breath landed heavier than the last.

"No." He cut me off. His voice wasn't loud. "This is my ground. I won't let them say things that hurt you."

I looked at him.

His face had sunk dark enough to scare someone. Like he meant to fight.

I let out a breath.

I had been numb to those words for a long time.

Set beside the knife he had driven into me with his own hand five years ago, this was an itch.