Tempted by My Ex’s Brother

EIGHT

Dante's POV

I had never expected that night to go the way it did. Not with her. Not with the woman whose face I couldn’t get out of my mind since the moment she first collided with me outside the club days ago.

And definitely not with my body reacting, actually reacting, for the first time in years. But it happened.

And the lingering shock of it still pulsed faintly under my skin as I sat on the edge of the bed in the private room, trying to slow my breathing. The session had ended. But the effect hadn’t. The room was dim, the soft, warm lighting designed to make guests feel relaxed, safe, enveloped. I knew every inch of this space; I had personally overseen its design, monitored feedback, and tweaked details. I’d built this club from the ground up with the most clinical, detached purpose: to fix what was broken in me. Yet tonight, everything I thought I understood about myself had shifted because of her. Lily.

She stood a few steps away, her back slightly turned to me as she adjusted the strap of her dress. That red dress had clung to her in ways I shouldn’t be thinking about, not when she was clearly shaken, not when she clearly had no idea what she had just done to me.

She thought I was just another service provider. If anything, that made the entire situation even more absurd. I swallowed, cleared my throat quietly, trying to recenter myself.

“Lily,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

She stiffened a little but looked back at me. Her cheeks were still tinted with the afterglow of… everything. A sight I kept catching myself staring at longer than I should.

“Yes?” she asked, her tone polite, but I could hear the underlying conflict, like she was battling something inside her.

“About next time…” My voice faltered for a moment, and that rarely happened to me. “When would you like to schedule another session?”

Her eyes widened, as if the question startled her more than the entire experience had. “Oh—” She shook her head quickly. “I… I don’t know. I’m not sure if there will be a next time.”

Something inside me tightened unexpectedly. A strange, unwelcome feeling, disappointment. Rejection? No, it wasn’t that simple. It was something sharper, something possessive that I’d never felt.

“You didn’t enjoy yourself?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.

She blinked at me. “It’s not that. I just…” Her gaze wavered. “This was supposed to be a one-time thing. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have—” She stopped, pressed her lips together, then shook her head again. “I need to go.”

Before I could respond, she reached for her purse.

“Lily—”

But she was already heading for the door, heels tapping in a quick, almost desperate rhythm. She didn’t look back once. And in the next second, she was gone. The door clicked softly behind her. The room felt suddenly, irrationally empty.

I stared at the door for a long moment, my heartbeat still too fast, my body still thrumming with an after-effect I wasn’t used to. My hands curled slightly at my sides. I drew in a slow breath and exhaled, trying to settle the torrent of thoughts in my head.

That reaction, my reaction, wasn’t imagined. Wasn’t psychological. It wasn’t something I talked myself into. It was real. For years, I had felt nothing. For years, every doctor, every therapist, every specialist had told me the same thing: trauma-induced s****l dysfunction needed time, needed exploration, needed the right stimulus.

None of them ever told me the “right stimulus” would be a woman who accidentally crashed into me outside my club and stared up at me with wide, shocked eyes. I let out a slow, humorless laugh under my breath.

Who the hell was she? And why her?

I stood, straightened my shirt, and left the suite. When I reached my office, I closed the door and leaned back against it for a moment, letting the silence settle. The sudden craving to understand her, to make sense of the pull she had on me, made my skin feel tight. I crossed to my desk, woke the computer, and typed her name.

Lily.

I didn’t know her last name, but the club records would. Every client signed NDAs, confidentiality agreements, and all standard practices. Privacy was our top priority. But the owner accessing his own files was another matter.

I found her file almost instantly. Lily.. Pretty name.

I opened the profile, expecting nothing more than her age, preferences, medical limitations, and the basics.

But what I found made me pause, eyebrows lifting. She wasn’t just a random guest. She was a programmer. A backend engineer, and not just at any company — but at MorphTech Innovations. One of my investment companies. That was… unexpected.

I scrolled through her employment details, noting the dates, the progress reports, and her name appearing in several successful project logs. She wasn’t just some employee. She was competent. Well-regarded. Quiet but consistent. She was not only beautiful but also extremely intelligent and resourceful.

I leaned back in my chair. Fate had a strange sense of humor. Not only had she awakened something in me physically — something I had thought was permanently dead — but she was within my sphere already, just unknowingly close. I tapped my fingers lightly on the desk, my mind already racing ahead.

MorphTech employed hundreds. No one would question my sudden interest in reviewing progress reports, departmental productivity, or team performance. No one would ask if I requested a cross-company meeting. No one would suspect a thing. Besides, I had every right to visit one of my own companies. My lips curved slowly.

This— this was an opening. And I wasn’t going to waste it.

I glanced again at her file, studying the small ID photo attached. She looked different from how she looked tonight. More timid. More reserved. Tired, even. Like she was holding herself together by sheer will. What had happened to her recently? Why had she looked so broken beneath the red dress and bravado?

I didn’t know. But I knew one thing with startling clarity, I wanted to find out. Not just because she was the first woman my body had responded to — though that alone was significant enough to overturn my entire life — but because something in her expression tonight had stirred something else in me. Something that wasn’t physical at all. Something I couldn’t name yet. I leaned forward again, elbows resting on my desk. I needed to see her again.