The CEO's Forbidden Contract: 30 Days To Seduce Me

Chapter 4: The Rules Break

The doorman at 740 Park Avenue didn't even look at my suitcase. He just looked at me, like he knew I didn't belong.

"Ms. Hartley for Mr. Blackwood," I said, my voice cracking.

He nodded. "He's expecting you. Private elevator."

My suitcase had a broken wheel. It squeaked across the marble lobby, and my cheap coat stuck to my back with sweat. Twenty-four hours ago, I was making lattes at The Daily Grind and crying over my student loans. Now I was moving into a penthouse because a ghost CEO offered me ten thousand dollars a month to seduce him.

Ten thousand dollars. For thirty days. To pretend to be his girlfriend.

The elevator opened directly into his penthouse, and I forgot how to breathe.

It wasn't an apartment. It was the sky.

Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked all of Manhattan; Central Park spread below like a dark blanket, the Plaza glowing in the distance. Snow fell outside in soft flakes, and everything smelled like him: expensive wood, black coffee, and winter.

Adrian was standing by the window with his back to me. Black shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows, black trousers. No tuxedo tonight. Just raw, beautiful male.

"You came," he said without turning.

"You said eight o'clock sharp or the contract is void."

He turned. His eyes swept from my messy bun to my scuffed sneakers, lingering in my mouth.

"You brought one suitcase for thirty days?" he asked.

"Two jobs and a studio in Queens doesn't leave room for wardrobe, Mr. Blackwood."

His jaw tightened. "Adrian."

"What?"

"Rule one. When we're alone, you call me Adrian."

My stomach flipped. "How many rules are there?"

"Four." He walked toward me, silent on the polished floors, stopping inches away. Close enough that I could see gold flecks in his dark eyes. "And you've already broken two."

"I haven't even moved in yet."

"You wore that coat." His fingers barely brushed my frayed collar, and I shivered. "And you're still calling me Mr. Blackwood in your head. I can see it."

He was right.

He took my suitcase like it weighed nothing and gestured down a hallway that seemed endless.

"Come. I'll show you where you'll live."

The penthouse was insane. A kitchen that had never been cooked in, a two-story library with a ladder, a living room with a fireplace that was lit, casting golden light across the velvet sofas. Real art on the walls, a piano no one had touched in years, and a Christmas tree in the corner that was already decorated, even though it was barely December. He didn't stop anywhere. He walked straight to the end of the hall, to double black doors.

He pushed them open.

And my heart stopped.

The bedroom was bigger than my entire apartment. A bed bigger than king-size, draped in charcoal silk, a wall of windows showing snow falling over the city, a bathroom visible through an open door with a freestanding tub that could fit two people easily and a rain shower that glittered like diamonds. A walk-in closet half-filled with garment bags, designer labels I only knew from magazines, and a small velvet box on the dresser that I knew, somehow, was for me.

But there was only one bed.

One.

I stared at it. Then at him. Then back to bed.

"No," I said.

"Yes."

"Adrian, you said I would have my own room. The contract said private quarters."

"The contract said you would reside in the penthouse for thirty days. It did not specify separate bedrooms. My lawyers are very good at what they do, just Emma."

There it was again. Just Emma. Low and rough, like a secret only he knew, like he was tasting it and liking it too much.

"There is one bed," I whispered.

"Observation correct."

"Where am I supposed to sleep?"

He walked past me into the room, loosening a button at his throat. The movement made his shirt pull across his chest, and I hated that I noticed. I hated that my body reacted before my brain could stop it.

"Rule four," he said, turning in the middle of that massive room, his shadow falling across the silk sheets. "You sleep here."

My mouth went dry. "With you?"

"With me."

He said it simply, like he was telling me the weather, like he wasn't completely rewiring my nervous system with two words.

"I can't; you said this was business! You said thirty days to seduce you, not thirty days to."

"To what?" He stepped closer, and I stepped back until my back hit the door frame. My coat was still on, and I was sweating and freezing at the same time. "To share a bed? Emma, if you want to seduce me, you're going to have to do better than sleeping in the guest wing."

" Is there a guest wing?"

"There was. I had it locked."

"You had it locked!"

"I have a reputation to protect. A ghost CEO suddenly living with a woman? The press will tear you apart. My board would tear you apart. If you sleep in the guest room, people will know this is fake. If you sleep in my bed, they'll believe it. They'll believe you're mine."

The word mine hung heavy and dangerous and thrilling between us.

I should have run. I should have grabbed my squeaky suitcase and run back to Queens and my student loans and my safe, small life where CEOs didn't whisper my name like a prayer and offer me the world with strings attached.

But ten thousand dollars. My mom's medical bills are sitting on my kitchen counter. My loans. My dream of actually finishing my degree without working three jobs and falling asleep on the subway.

And the way he was looking at me, like he wanted to devour me and protect me at the same time, like I was already his problem to solve, his to keep.

"What are the other rules?" I asked, barely audible over the hum of the city.

He smiled, slow and devastating, the kind of smile that made billion-dollar deals collapse.

"Rule one: you call me Adrian when we're alone. Rule two: you never lie to me. I can always tell. Your eyes give you away." His gaze dropped into my mouth. "Rule three, you wear what I buy you. That coat goes in the trash tonight. I bought you something that deserves you. Something cream. Something satin." His eyes dropped lower, then snapped back up, darker. "Rule four... You sleep here. In this bed. With me."

"And what do you do? In this bed?"

His smile faded, replaced by something darker, hungrier, more honest than any contract he'd ever signed.

"I try not to touch you."

The air left my lungs in a rush.

"That's your plan? You bring me here, put me in your bed, and try not to touch me? That's supposed to help me seduce you?"

"It's my rule," he said quietly, his voice barely a whisper now, his eyes locked on mine and burning. "Not my plan. My plan is failing already, just Emma. It failed the moment you walked into my lobby with that broken suitcase."

He was suddenly too close again, his hand coming up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers grazed my cheek, warm and calloused, and I felt that touch all the way down to my toes. The diamond necklace from my dream wasn't there yet, but I could almost feel it, cold and heavy and perfect against my skin, marking me as his.

I should have flinched. I didn't. I leaned into it for half a second before I caught myself.

"Emma," he whispered.

"Just Emma?" I whispered back, shaking.

His eyes flared, gold and black, and he leaned in, his mouth so close to my ear I could feel his breath hot against my skin, his chest almost touching mine, his heart pounding as hard as mine.

"Just Emma," he breathed, and his lips barely, barely brushed my skin, not quite a kiss, not quite not, a promise of everything he wasn't supposed to want.

The doorbell rang, sharp and loud.

We both froze, breath tangled.

Adrian cursed under his breath, low and violent and frustrated, and stepped back like he'd been burned, as I had burned him.

"That will be your dress," he said, his voice rough as gravel. "For tomorrow night. We have a gala at The Plaza. You're meeting the board. You're meeting my mother. You're meeting everyone who wants to see me fall."

"Your mother!"

He was already walking to the door, leaving me standing in that impossible bedroom with one impossible bed and the scent of him still on my skin.

"Get dressed, just Emma," he called over his shoulder without looking back, his hands clenched at his sides like he was holding himself back. "And remember rule four. You sleep here. Tonight. With me."

I stood there long after he left, staring at that bed, at the snow falling outside of Manhattan, at my broken suitcase in the middle of a billionaire's bedroom that was now mine too.

One bed. Thirty days. Four rules and I had already broken two.

One rule left to break, and he hadn't even kissed me yet. Not really.

But he would. I could feel it in the way he said my name, in the way he looked at me, like I was already his.

Just Emma.