Bound By One Night With The CEO

Chapter two

Marlowe's POV

He didn't look at me for three days.

Not once, not even by accident. I told myself I wasn't counting, and I told myself that badly, because I knew exactly how many hours it had been since I walked out of his apartment with my head high and his money untouched on the nightstand. Twenty-seven. I'd counted every one of them.

People at the academy rarely caught up with Callahan Winslow because he belonged to a totally different level than the rest of us which had always been the case except now the estrangement seemed intentional in a manner it never had before.

In fact, he made not talking to me feel like the loudest thing ever while passing by the workstations two times a day like clockwork, talking to Natalie, Marcus, and anyone whose name wasn't mine in between humans, and somehow delivering the non-speaking to me louder than any words he could have said.

By throwing myself into the quarterly report I was mainly trying to distract myself from in reality I was desperately hoping even though I knew it was humiliating I would be drawn to the hope that he'd stop by my desk the way he used to, before there had been a night and a check and a door that I'd shut behind me on my way out.

"You haven't been talking, Are you good?” Natalie remarked the third afternoon as she sat opposite me, carrying her lunch.

"Perfectly." I whispered, not looking up from my screen.

She was not completely persuaded, but finally she dropped it, and I being thankful for that more than I showed up. I simply was not up to explaining the item located in the middle of my chest, a mix of desire and caution, which was igniting every single time his voice was passing through the room even when he was not talking to me.

It happened again that afternoon. I felt it before I saw him. some strange, physical certainty that his eyes had landed on me, sharp enough that I turned around out of pure instinct.

At the other side of the room, he was with a senior engineer in the middle of their discussion, then for just a second, his look went directly to me and quickly he averted his eyes, as if he'd been caught doing something.

It was like my entire body suddenly caught fire, and not the way a crush should be. It was similar to being looked at inside and out. Without thinking, I put my hand on my breastbone, as if it were possible to contain the feeling long enough to get a hold of it, and when I raised my eyes again, he was still engrossed in his partner, face closed, as though that brief tic had drained him of something, too.

Deep down, I hoped that it was just a figment of my imagination.

I was getting worse and worse at believing myself.

****Callahan's POV******

I had given myself very specific instructions. Do not look at her. Do not think about her. Do not, under any circumstances, remember the sound she made against my collarbone at midnight three days ago.

I broke every single one of those instructions roughly nine times a day, which I was keeping track of purely so I could be disgusted with myself about it later.

"You've been in a mood," my mother said over the phone that evening, the same conversation we'd had a dozen times this year, dressed up in slightly different words.

"Your assistant tells me you snapped at the whole finance team yesterday."

"Well, They deserved it." I grumbled.

"Callahan."

"Please! I'm fine, Mom." I lied.

No, I wasn't. I hadn't been okay since I gave ten million dollars to a woman and saw that she just left it behind like it meant nothing, like I was nothing to her, whereas any other woman that I had known would have taken it without hesitation and even thanked me for it.

So I reasoned with myself that her being the person I was always thinking of was the factor that kept me obsessed with her.

Pride. Simple, ordinary pride, wounded because she hadn't wanted what I offered. It was a good theory right up until I caught myself standing at the edge of the training floor that afternoon, mid-sentence with an engineer whose name I'd already forgotten, watching her from across the room like I had any right to.

She'd felt it.

I saw the very instant it hit her, the way her hand flew to her chest as if something inside her had suddenly moved, and something in my chest echoed it, a tug so intense that I had to turn my eyes away not to let it show on my face.

That had never happened to me before her. Not with anyone.

I was too quick to hang up after talking to mom and I stayed back in the office alone after the others had left, mulling the same thought until it got quite familiar.

I was Callahan Winslow. I did not chase women who walked out on ten million dollars. I did not lie awake replaying a single night like it had rearranged something permanent inside my chest.

And yet,

***Marlowe's POV****

Over the course of the week, I kept getting frustrated with the way I was being treated as if I was some sort of unfinished issue that neither of us wanted to tackle head on.

After everyone else had left, I finally caught him in his office. He was facing the window, with his back to the door, and his tie was a little loose.

He looked like a guy who hadn't gotten any sleep for days. Great, I thought, and I was a bit annoyed with Truth is I was feeling pleased at the sight of him.

“We need to talk.” I announced, unbothered to wait for an invitation, simply stepping forward and softly shutting the door. He looked up slowly.

Whatever he'd been expecting, it was definitely not this. "Marlowe, hold on..”

“You've spent three days trying to make me pretend I don't exist,” I interrupted, my voice fairly well-held together through denial.

“I wanna know if this is how it goes down. And if it so, then it is fine. Just don't make me figure it out.” I lashed out.

Behind his eyes, something flickered something that seemed at first glance to be a slight sign of relief before that too was replaced by the guarded, detached demeanor he'd adopted all week. "That's not it.”

"'It's that simple,” I said.

“It's either a yes or a no. There is no in between. I am not expecting this to be forever, Callahan. I am only asking for an answer.”

The silence stretched on for so long I nearly got up and walked away. Then he walks across the room to me, closing the same distance he did a week ago but there's nothing at all careless in the way he moves.

“I have no idea what you did to me,” he said softly,

“but I can't seem to get you out of my head. I have tried.”

That's not the answer I was expecting to hear.

That's not going to be the answer that makes any of this easier either, I realized with a small sinking feeling.

“Then why the silence?" I asked.

"Why three days of pretending I was a stranger?”

“Because I just don't know what to do with wanting someone this badly.” He said it as if in a confession he hadn't been prepared to make.

“I don't have to answer to a feeling. I am the one that issues the commands. I don't take them, not even from the chest that houses my heart.”

I would have itched to snigger, besides there was nothing remotely amusing about the pain resting like a feather under my ribs. "That's not an answer either, Callahan. That's just a more attractive way to say you're frightened."

His jaw clenched, and I was preparing myself for his gradual retreat to the cold, distant persona I had been observing all week. Yet, what escaped was an aggravated slow rugged breath, as if something deep inside him had finally ceased its resistance.

"Join me for dinner tonight,” he said.

“Not the academy. Not work. Only us, and I'll do my best to give you an honest answer instead of a lie." He added.

Now I realize I should have said no.

With every bit of pride I had, I felt like I should have said no, and gotten the hell out of there like I did when I hightailed it out of his apartment, steady and clean.

But there was the temptation again calling, deep and quiet, the same call I heard two days ago on the training floor, and for once, I allowed it to take control before my pride could.

"Fine," I said.

"One dinner. Don't waste it."