Hired to seduce him

chapter 1

"I want you to seduce my husband."

Those eight words were the reason I was in this mess.

The paper cup was getting too hot to hold, but I didn’t let it show. My posture remained flawless. I stood in the towering, glass-and-steel lobby of Cole Industries, my stilettos clicking sharply against the polished marble floor as I waited.

My plan was simple. A classic play from the seduction handbook. But this time, I’d added a risky twist: the burn.

Men were predictable. Expensive suits didn’t change that. A man could ignore flirting. He could ignore beauty. But seeing a woman in pain? That was different. Instinct took over before logic ever had a chance. The pain on my face would obliterate any suspicion that this was a setup. He’d have to break his icy corporate shell. He’d have to touch me, hold me, and pull me to safety.

To make sure the hook took, I had styled myself to be the perfect visual bait. I kept my dark brown hair down, letting it fall over my shoulders in soft, calculated waves. I’d lined my dark eyes to give them a sultry, feline gaze, and painted my lips with a hint of gloss. My sun-kissed skin popped against my black tailored suit. I looked like a vision of pure temptation—even if I was about to suffer for my art.

At exactly nine o'clock, the private elevator doors slid open.

Nathaniel Cole had arrived.

Seeing him in person was a brutal assault on my senses. The man was imposing. He was easily six-foot-three, with broad shoulders and an athletic frame emphasized by a charcoal-grey three-piece suit. His dark hair was slicked back, and his sharp jawline looked like it had been carved from granite. But his eyes were the real trap—a grey so pale they looked like ice. He stared straight ahead, completely indifferent to the world.

I squeezed the coffee cup, calculated the angle, and waited. Nathaniel walked with a rigid, effortless stride, heading right for me. When he was only a step away, I feigned losing my footing, letting out a sharp gasp.

I tilted the cup, letting the hot liquid splash directly onto the back of my left hand and wrist before the cup clattered onto the floor.

The pain was instant. It was a mild burn—I wasn't stupid enough to leave myself with a permanent scar—but it was more than enough to look real. Tears rushed to my eyes. A whimper escaped my throat as I clutched my wrist, curling in on myself.

I waited for the panic to kick in. I waited for him to react. Instead, Nathaniel stopped for a fraction of a second beside me, his shoulder brushing mine just enough for me to feel the sudden, rigid shift in his posture before he moved past.

He didn't bend down. He didn't try to touch me. He just looked down, his pale eyes sweeping over me with absolute contempt. He stared at my cleavage, then at the way my clothes clung to my curves as I knelt on the floor. He saw right through the performance. His mouth twitched into a faint sneer of disdain, and without a word, he sidestepped the puddle and kept walking.

I froze, my hand throbbing and my pride plummeting.

*Well*, I thought, grinding my teeth to keep from crying out in rage. *This isn't going to be as easy as I thought.*

But to understand how I, the infallible Scarlett Quinn, ended up burning myself in a billionaire’s lobby, we had to rewind the clock. We had to go back forty-eight hours, shifting away from the smell of scalding espresso and into the sharp, clinical luxury of Claire Cole’s private office—the exact place where I foolishly agreed to play with fire.Claire, Nathaniel’s wife, had summoned me with a half-million-dollar offer. She was the definition of old-money elegance: ash-blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and a flawless posture that proved she had never had to work for anything in her life.

"I want you to seduce my husband," she’d told me, sliding a prenup across her desk.

Claire needed proof of infidelity to void a clause that would leave her penniless in a divorce. I, on the other hand, was utterly broke. My fiancé had cleaned out my bank accounts before running off with his yoga instructor, leaving me with exactly $4.15. I needed this money to survive.

"I've tried everything," Claire had confessed, a c***k finally appearing in her icy facade. "He's a cyborg. He only looks at financial spreadsheets. Women don't even register to him. He ignores them like background noise."

"A man with no vices is just a man who hasn't been tempted with the right strategy," I had replied, signing the contract. "Leave him to me."

And there I was now, in the present, my hand raw and throbbing, having failed on step one.

I stayed on my knees, half-rising as I blew gently on my blistered skin, fighting back tears of frustration. I was already preparing to turn back, curse Claire in my head, and find a clinic, when Nathaniel Cole suddenly stopped dead in his tracks about ten feet away.

The surrounding lobby seemed to freeze.

Then, he spun on his heel, his posture rigid. His grey eyes flicked down to scan the floor, tracking the dark puddle of coffee as it spread, before slowly traveling up my frame to lock onto my injured hand, where the skin was already turning a furious shade of red. His perfect, expressionless features suddenly tightened. A flicker of raw humanity crossed his gaze. Something in his brain seemed to switch on at the sight of actual, physical harm. The raw, reddened burn on my exposed skin had just shattered his impenetrable armor.

Maybe this wasn’t an impossible mission after all.