Claimed by the CEO

The dream always began in darkness... Not the empty, hollow black of a room without light but something denser. Something alive. A darkness that breathed, that watched, that wanted. Isabel Knight stood in the center of it, wearing nothing but a silk slip that clung to her curves like a lover's hands. She should have been cold. She should have been terrified. But her skin burned, and her heart hammered a rhythm that felt ancient, primal, wrong. "You've been waiting for me, bella." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Rough as gravel dragged across velvet. Deep enough to vibrate in her bones. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.. a claiming wrapped in syllables. She tried to speak, but her throat wouldn't cooperate. Her lips parted, and a breath escaped, shallow, needy, embarrassing. And then he emerged... The shadows didn't part for him. They bowed. They clung to his frame like worshippers to a dark god, outlining six feet and five inches of lethal masculinity. Broad shoulders that blocked out what little light existed. A silhouette carved from violence and power and something so potently male it made her knees weak. She couldn't see his face. Try as she might, her gaze kept sliding away from his features, as if her mind refused to hold the image. But she felt his eyes. Felt them like hands roaming her body, stripping away the silk, laying her bare. "Don't," she whispered. Or tried to... The word came out as a whimper. "Don't what?" He moved closer, each step deliberate, predatory. The air between them grew thick, charged with electricity that raised the hair on her arms. "Don't look at you? Don't want you ?" A low, dark chuckle that sounded like sin itself. "It's too late for that, bella. Far too late." He stopped inches from her. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough to smell him.. expensive cologne mixed with something darker... Gunpowder. Power... Danger... His hand lifted, and she flinched. But he didn't strike... He touched... One finger.. just one.. traced the line of her jaw. Rough skin against soft. Calloused from violence, yet impossibly gentle. The contrast made her shiver. Made her ache. "Soft," he murmured, and this time she heard it—the edge in his voice. The control straining at its leash. "So f*****g soft. Do you have any idea what you do to me? Do you know how many men I've killed for looking at you the way I'm looking at you now?" She should have run. Any sane woman would run. But her feet wouldn't move. Her body betrayed her, arching into his touch like a cat seeking warmth from a fire that would surely burn her alive. "Please," she breathed, not knowing what she was asking for. "Please what ?" His finger slid down her throat, pausing at the hollow where her pulse hammered wildly. "Please stop ?" The finger continued lower, tracing her collarbone, dipping into the valley between her breasts. "Or please more ?" His other hand caught her waist, pulling her flush against him. The evidence of his arousal pressed hard and heavy against her stomach, and Isabel gasped a sharp, shocked sound that echoed in the darkness. "Feel that?" he growled against her ear, his breath hot, his voice dropping to something barely human. "That's what you do to me. That's what you've done since the moment I saw you. I walk through blood and fire every day, bella, but one look at you and I forget my own name. One thought of you and I'm hard as f*****g stone." His hand slid down her side, gripping her thigh, lifting it to wrap around his hip. The silk rode up, exposing her, and she felt his groan vibrate through his chest into hers. "f**k," he moaned, the sound raw, broken, desperate. "You smell like heaven and sin. Like everything I shouldn't want and can't stop craving." His mouth found her neck.. hot, wet, devastating. He didn't kiss. He consumed. Sucking, biting, marking. His teeth grazed her pulse point, and she cried out, her hands flying to his shoulders, gripping the expensive fabric of his suit. "Nathaniel," she gasped, not knowing where the name came from. It simply was, burning on her tongue like a prayer or a curse. He stilled. Then growled.. a sound of pure possession. "Say it again," he commanded, his hand sliding between her legs, making her see stars. "Say my name while I make you come apart. Let me hear who owns you, bella. Who owns this pretty little body. Who owns every f*****g breath you take." "Nathaniel," she sobbed, arching into his touch, shameless, wild. "Nathaniel, please—" "That's it," he groaned, the sound torn from his throat like it hurt. Like it worshipped. "That's my good girl. My perfect, beautiful bella. Let go. I've got you. I'll always have you." His fingers worked magic, cruel and perfect, while his mouth claimed hers in a kiss that wasn't gentle. It was war. It was conquest. It was a man starved for a woman he intended to possess down to her soul. She was falling, spinning, burning... And then she felt it—the pendant. Cold metal pressed against her breast as he leaned into her, and she looked down. For one perfect, terrible moment, she saw it clearly—a wolf with ruby eyes, its jaws open, consuming a crescent moon. Silver and obscene and familiar in a way that made her heart stop. "Remember," he whispered against her lips, his fingers driving her higher, higher, until she was breaking, shattering, screaming his name into the darkness. "Remember me, Isabel. Remember who you belong to. Remember... " ----------------------------- Isabel woke up screaming. Or rather, she woke up gasping, her scream dying in her throat, her body convulsing with the aftershocks of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Her sheets were twisted around her legs like shackles. Her nightgown.. cotton, modest, sensible was bunched around her waist. Her skin was slick with sweat, and between her legs, she throbbed with an ache that was mortifyingly real. "Oh God," she whispered, pressing her hands to her face. Her cheeks were on fire. "Oh my God." The dream was fading, as dreams always did, slipping through her fingers like smoke. But pieces remained.. sharp, vivid, branding. The voice. That voice like whiskey and smoke. The hands. Rough and commanding and knowing. The name.. Nathaniel. She'd never known a Nathaniel. Where had that come from? And the pendant. Isabel sat up, her heart still hammering against her ribs. The wolf consuming the moon. Silver. Red eyes. She could almost see it if she closed her eyes, could almost feel the cold press of it against her skin. "What the hell was that?" she asked the empty room. Her bedroom offered no answers. Just the familiar.. faded wallpaper, the secondhand dresser, the window that let in too much street noise from the apartment below. Reality. Her reality. Where she was twenty-two, broke, and so far from the kind of woman who inspired that kind of desire that it was almost funny. Almost. Because her body didn't think it was funny. Her body was still humming, still wet, still wanting with an intensity that terrified her. She'd never had a dream like that. Never. She'd dated exactly two boys in her life—Timothy Miller in high school who'd kissed like a wet fish, and Marcus from the bakery who'd taken her to one movie before ghosting her She was inexperienced, her grandmother's sweet girl, the nice neighbor who said please and thank you and always carried groceries for old ladies. She wasn't the kind of woman who had wet dreams about faceless men with predatory voices and magic hands. "Get it together, Isabel," she muttered, forcing herself out of bed. Her legs were shaky. "It was just a dream. Just hormones. Just... stress." But as she stumbled to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, she couldn't shake the feeling that lingered like a brand on her skin. Mine, the voice had said. You belong to me. The face was gone from her memory. The room was gone. But the voice, the touch, the feeling of being claimed so completely.. it remained. It hummed in her blood like a promise. Or a warning...