Bound By One Night With The CEO

Chapter three

Marlowe's POV

He led me to the spot that I couldn't have dreamt of, not the fashionable rooftop restaurant where everyone is taking photos but it turned out the restaurant which was behind an unmarked entrance, a little candle-lit dim place that only rich men have known existence of.

"It seemed to me you are not a private table person, " I said as I sat opposite to him.

"I did not want a crowd during this evening." He did not look away during these words and the straightforwardness of the situation somehow sent my heart into the same frantic rhythm as if it was weeks ago that I had my first one.

Dinner went slower than I expected.

Him asking and then, for the first time, waiting for the replies made a deep impression on me - the part of my life I kept hidden from the academy that I didn't talk about and the bits of myself that I folded and hid from the light.

I answered the way I used to survive doing, a bit truth and a bit lying, and maybe if he found a hole or got a bit suspicious he didn't really care.

While the candles were getting smaller, he had already reached out to my hand and I allowed myself to keep in that way of holding a bit longer than I actually should have.

"I think I still have not figured out what you have done to me,” he stated, the tip of his finger was slowly drawing circles over the top of my hand.

"In fact, this is the first time that someone's made me go without sleeping that much."

“Perhaps, you just have not been longing for something you have not been able to purchase.” I whispered, my voice, unintentionally gentle.

"Maybe." His eyes slowly drifted down to my lips.

So slow and deliberate , and we both felt that the space between us was almost tangible.

"Or maybe I've never been that close to someone who made saying 'no' sound impossible,”

It's true that at least he didn't physically touch me publicly.

Also, the restaurant staff must have seen him as he moved to and fro from his table very freely. Still, the promise of a kiss hung in the air constantly between us until finally we arrived at his apartment.

We both were still so tense and controlled, holding each other's hands on the walk way and keeping our body close as possible. Then when we were finally inside, it was as though everything we had repressed during dinner melted away and disappeared in the air.

He forced me into the entrance hall where the wall pressed against my back, and with one hand, he cupped my face. The caress was sweet, and it didn't really fit with the fierce hunger I saw in his eyes, and when at last he kissed me, the one I had been waiting all week for, it felt like the release at a single moment of unbearable tension and anticipation turned into agony.

"Say the word, " he whispered against my lips, "and I'm gone."

My lips stayed silent. I said nothing.

I pulled him closer, a shared secret we understood instantly.

After that, I stayed awake the whole night and watched the whole development just like last time, but now we were taking it more calmly. It was no longer two people randomly meeting and testing each other; rather, we became a pair that just knew precisely what they desired.

Second night of me sleeping in his bedroom.

Ten days only.

And this time, definitely because it was my heart and not my mind that was speaking, I knew without any doubt that the whole thing, no matter what was said, wasn't a dream at all.

I woke to find the other side of my bed empty. His voice was barely audible, a murmuring sound, like it came a few steps away at the far end hall of his home.

I got to the study, he was still wearing the T-shirt from the previous night, had been holding a smartphone close to his ear for quite a while and his lower face was quite fixed.

That tightness of his was familiar to me now and I knew very well the reason why; a few moments ago before he had made that hurting comment.

"no, it's handled," he was saying.

"It was never serious. I'm ending it today."

Everything in me went very still.

He turned around and caught sight of me at the door and, whatever mask he had been wearing, it immediately broke down.

"Ending what," I said, though some small, cowardly part of me already knew.

"Marlowe,"

"Say it."

He set the phone down slowly, like the extra seconds might soften whatever was coming. They didn't. "This can't go anywhere. You should hear that from me now, before it gets any further than it already has."

"You said last night,"

“You should understand." His tone was emotionless and restrained, more fit for the voice of an actor reading lines into a tape recorder than that of a human breathing life into them. Nothing's altered.

“You have the right to someone who can actually offer you that which you desire. I'm not that man, and in the future never shall be." He announced to my face.

I broke down on the inside, “That's not an answer that's a script” I whispered, voice trembling no matter how hard I fought for it not to be.

"You don't get to kiss me all over my body like that last night and then give me your breakup speech today like I'm a stock you're liquidating." I managed to curse despite my entire body trembling against my will.

"I'm not good enough for you, " he says it so well, like those six words could guarantee a sleepless night, like the night had felt more honest than either of us had in months.

"You'll thank me for this eventually"

I laughed and I sounded easier than I had intended.

“But you wouldn’t know that right now. You won’t understand it now.” He said

"Don't do that, Don't act like this is some noble sacrifice for my benefit. If you don't want it, have the decency to just say so." I blurted out

“Fine.” His responded coldly

Whatever was in his eyes completely disappeared, slamming shut like a door behind them.

“I don't want this! don't want you either. Last night, all that happened was a mistake I let get out of hand.” He It took enough time to let out these words.

I refrained from showing a single tear; he never saw the big one and my insides were crying out for it too. In a silent flurry, I packed up my stuff without giving the least pleasure of getting to see me collapse to him.

I just doubled over and clung to the doorframe trying not to faint.

It was over as fast as it had gone. I told myself it was the stress, and the insomnia, and the yin-yang ups and downs of being desired and then discarded in a span of a day.

I didn't let myself think about the other reason. Not yet. Not with him still standing there watching me with an expression I refused to name.

I turned around and kept walking without looking at him. After only a few minutes, I was sitting alone in the taxi.

My hands were shaking while I was trying to recall the number of days it had been since my last period. I couldn't bear the thought that I had forgotten about the period about three weeks ago. My heart literally shook with such an enormous shiver

The man in the front seat turned around to check on me asking was everything alright. In answer to his question I said "Yes, I am." And then I said a silent prayer to God for giving me yet another opportunity to do that for a lie that big one.

I couldn't get my key into the lock of my apartment on the first attempt.

it was my hands that were vibrating, not the ground. I gave up trying, sank onto the first step with a noise like a bag falling, and sat there, my phone lit up on my knee, typing over and over three times the same four words of the internet: early pregnancy symptoms.

A list of symptoms came back that felt like a verbal attack. Nausea. Missed period. Sudden dislikes for certain smells I used to enjoy a lot. The exhaustion that I had been passing off as just a broken heart since quite the beginning.

Suddenly, I got down onto a sitting position and put one palm across my tummy, as if trying to feel for the life that might have sprouted there from the seed of love. Tears that I had kept from crying out his front door finally poured out in a hot, silent stream, down my face, all the way in a stairwell nobody had been around to see.

Be it good or ill fortune, whatever was waiting for me would be faced just like everything else in life had been.

Alone, and on my own terms.

But as I sat there in the dark, replaying his words in my head. The harsh tone he used..

“I don't want this! don't want you either. Last night, all that happened was a mistake..” Tears ran freely down my cheek.

One truth settled over me colder than anything he'd said inside that apartment.

If I was carrying his child, Callahan Winslow was never going to be allowed to walk away from this as easily as he thought he had.