The billionaire's off-limits obsession

Chapter five

Elena spent the rest of the week telling herself Richard's warning had scared her into being careful, and spent every evening proving that was a lie.

They kept to the rules they'd made. No private rooms. No lingering hands in doorways where anyone might see. She sat through board briefings with her notebook open and her expression arranged into perfect neutrality, and reported on operational efficiencies and manufacturing timelines like the only thing she felt about Damien Cross was professional curiosity.

It was the least honest work she'd done in her career, and she was good at it anyway, because she had to be.

The evenings were harder to control. He'd taken to walking her out through the parking garage most nights, a plausible excuse, the kind of courtesy that raised no eyebrows, and every single time the elevator doors closed behind them, something in her chest loosened that she spent the rest of the day holding tight.

Tonight was no different, except that it was.

"You've been quiet all day," Damien said, as the elevator descended, his hand finding hers the moment the doors sealed shut, the one place they'd claimed as safe. "Richard again?"

"No." She let her head rest briefly against his shoulder, allowing herself the two floors of pretending this was simple. "The board wants a preliminary report by Friday. Not the final verdict, just an interim assessment of where things stand."

"And where do things stand?"

"You're running this company well, Damien. Better than well. The Detroit plant, the way you handled Richard's push for the European expansion, all of it shows someone who thinks in decades, not quarters. That part of the report writes itself." She hesitated. "It's the other part I don't know how to write."

"You don't have to write anything about us."

"I know. That's what worries me." She pulled back enough to look at him, the elevator slowing toward the garage level. "An interim report that says nothing except glowing operational praise is going to look exactly like what Richard's already accusing me of. A compromised evaluation. Even if every word of it is true."

Something tightened in his jaw, the same controlled frustration she'd learned to recognize from the boardroom. "Then what do you want to do?"

"I don't know yet." The doors opened onto the empty garage, and she stepped out first, putting careful distance between them out of habit now more than caution. "I want to be as thorough about the report as I am about everything else. I don't want either of us to have to wonder later whether I let this change what I actually believe is true."

"I trust you, Elena."

"Trust isn't the problem. Optics are." She stopped beside her car, keys already in hand, though she made no move to unlock it. "If Richard finds real proof of this, it won't just cost me the contract. It could cost you the board's confidence entirely, no matter how good the numbers are."

He closed the distance between them, unhurried, the way he did everything, and reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, a small gesture that felt more intimate than anything they'd done at Antoine's.

"Then we finish this quietly," he said. "You write an honest report. I keep proving I'm exactly who I say I am in that boardroom. And whatever this is between us stays ours until there's no report left to compromise."

"That's not a plan, Damien. That's a hope."

"It's the only one I've got." His hand slid to her jaw, tilting her face up toward his, and for a long moment neither of them moved, the garage silent except for the distant hum of the building's ventilation and the unsteady rhythm of her own pulse. "Tell me to stop, Elena. I keep giving you the chance because I mean it every time. If this is too much of a risk, if you want to walk away before it costs either of us more than we can afford, tell me now."

She didn't tell him to stop.

Instead she closed the last of the distance herself, and when his mouth finally met hers, it wasn't careful or measured the way everything else between them had been forced to be all week. It was three weeks of watching him fold under public pressure and never let it show, three weeks of catching him alone with his guard down and wanting, badly, to be the person he let it down for. It was every rule she'd broken already and the ones she was about to break next.

His hand slid into her hair, and hers found the front of his shirt, curling into the fabric like an anchor, and for one unguarded, reckless moment in an empty parking garage, neither of them thought about boards or reports or Richard's threats at all.

When they finally broke apart, breathless, her forehead resting against his, she felt the full weight of exactly how far past careful they'd gone.

"This isn't going to end well," she said quietly, though there was no regret in it, only a clear-eyed understanding of the risk they'd both just doubled down on.

"Maybe not." His thumb traced her cheekbone, gentle, reverent, entirely at odds with the ruthless reputation the papers had built for him. "But I'd rather have this and lose it than spend another three years pretending I don't want anything at all."

She thought of the interim report waiting to be written, of Richard watching for exactly this kind of proof, of every professional instinct screaming at her to put distance between herself and the man in front of her before it was too late.

She kissed him again instead, slower this time, deliberate, choosing it with both eyes open.

Whatever came next, she wasn't ready to let go of this yet. Not tonight.