Elena didn’t sleep.
It wasn’t the champagne, or the dazzling lights of Manhattan bleeding through the towering windows, or even the intoxicating echo of Damien’s kiss still burning on her lips.
It was something deeper. Something that refused to be named.
She had crossed a line—and she wasn’t sure there was any way back.
Wrapped in silk sheets that whispered against her skin, Elena stared at the vast ceiling above Damien’s bed. She could still feel his hands on her waist, his mouth devouring hers like a secret he’d kept for far too long. The kiss had shattered something—logic, reason, the thin veneer of control they both clung to. Now, she was adrift in a sea of contradictions, torn between what was contractual and what was undeniably real.
She slipped out of bed as the first rays of m
