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THE SLOW BANG | HARRY CASTILLO PART 6 of 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐎

A DECENT THIEF, A SMITTEN BILLIONAIRE, ONE VERY INCONVENIENT ATTRACTION. AMOUR, MONEY, SEX—EASY PEASY... RIGHT?

-> READ MASTERLIST HERE. A.N. -> it's time for monaco and mingling! hope you're all enjoying the holidays, so here's a little gift from my heart to yours! wishing everyone a joyful end of the year 🤍🦋 W.C -> 15k+ C.W -> 18+ MDNI, sexual themes, third person POV, fem reader, fingering, vanilla sex (p in v), sweet love confessions, harry spoils with a shopping spree, a thief reader, and she's a bad bitch, harry is fucking rich with a big dick that's what, age gap, luxury brand and pop culture references, witty repartee, cat-and-mouse dynamics, romcom everything.

If irony ever grew a sense of humour, it would look exactly like this—one of the world’s most fortified billionaires hopelessly hung up on a girl who kept breaking into his life… literally.

Harry Castillo, the mighty corporate titan, the man who trusted no one, had fallen unmistakably, absurdly, almost pitifully in love with a woman who lived by sleight-of-hand and instinct. It wasn’t obvious to him, but it was to everyone else. Especially her, and here is how she could tell (sadly, hilariously.)

As learned from trauma and repetition, there are three important things a woman dating any man ought to keep in mind—tools, really, to twist, examine, or fuck with as necessary.

First: men are bigger emotional spenders than women. She would know; she had to steal to survive. She understood the math of need, that money activated dopamine—quick, cheap, rewarding. For men who choke their feelings into silence, spending money becomes the only emotion they are socially allowed to express. Guilt, desire, loneliness, sex—they swipe it onto platinum cards and unconsciously feel relieved. Trigger the reward, numb the pain.

See Exhibit A, a completely gratuitous, reputation-ruining trip bound for the French Riviera. A private jet, Dom Perignon, six security personnel pretending to look the other way, and a detour that directly contradicted the COP summit Harry was supposed to attend later that year. If the press ever caught wind, she mused, they’d pin him to the wall in think-pieces for recycled pitchforks.

“Now… that wish list of yours—how many times am I on it?” Harry murmured into her ear, his arms a warm cocoon around her in the backseat of the English white Rolls-Royce gliding down one of the world’s most expensive roads.

She wasn’t listening. She had spent the entire ride working her jaw, aggressively popping her ears from the flight, and felt half-deaf. All she registered was the street sign that flashed past the window—

MONTE-CARLO.

She snapped upright like someone plugged her into a socket, with a medically concerning wide grin. “We’re going shopping? Already?”

Harry’s rumbling chuckle skimmed her spine before his lips did—a soft, claiming kiss at her neck. “I’ll open every store in this city just for you, sweetheart.”

“Well, you owe me. I’m taking compensation,” she affirmed.

He gave her a look—an assessing, who-the-fuck-are-you-kidding once over.

“One thing. Singular,” she falsely swore. “And don't try to upsell me.”

“Me?” Harry placed a hand over his heart, a glint in his eyes. “I would never.”

The car slowed at the Casino Square. Auric light welled forth everywhere—over the marble, over the tourists, over Harry’s profile. Monte Carlo glowed like a brilliant appetite.

He got out first whilst buttoning back his blazer, circled to her door, and offered his hand. “M’lady.”

“M’Harry,” she joked, placing her hand on his. “One little thing, okay?”

“Small things,” he reminded her, brushing a kiss to her knuckles.

“You make that very hard,” was all she said, grinning away.

A good-to-know about people like Harry? They slipped into love. Momentum, gravity, and foolishness, all of which she never trivialised. Once they began, they could never stop.

This brought her to the second truth about men. A shocking number—especially the wealthy, insulated, delusionally confident ones—are far more comfortable expressing affection with their wallets than with their actual mouths.

And it’s not entirely their fault. Our patriarchal society hands them a ‘provider’ manuscript at birth and applauds every time they hit a payment milestone. So, of course, they grow up conditioned to think love is a financial plan, affection is a transaction, and devotion is a receipt.

Enter, stage left... à la financial exploitation. Because these gentlemen, sweet dumbasses that they are, beg you to abuse your power when they confuse benevolence for emotional intimacy. And that’s where she flourishes—pull a string, twist a thread around her finger, anchor a smile just so, and voilà—

“It’s so hard to choose one when I look this good,” she sighed at her reflection, wrist adorned with a rose-gold Bulgari Serpenti Viper bracelet that looked like it was alive, slithering around her arm. The matching earrings sparkled when she swept her hair behind her ear, angling herself so the private shopping lounge's lighting hit the gems exactly right. She had never felt more beautiful in her life, in her own skin.

“Bling,” she sang out with a laugh.

Madonna would’ve applauded. A material girl in a material world, except this one had no idea what to do with a man who wasn’t trying to buy her.

The young French retail associate perked up instantly—scenting commission like prey. “The necklace is available as well, madame.”

Her brows lifted. “How much?”

“It comes to sixty-two thousand before—”

“Mhm. Harry, honey.” (Translation: Watch this.)

She turned to him instead, giving him the full effect: wrist, earrings, neck, attitude, feline smile. She stroked the earring with two fingertips—slow, delicate, tempting—designed to detonate somewhere irrational.

“How do I look?” she asked. Then pouted when he didn't answer, “Too much?”

Harry gave her a look that lasted precisely three seconds—but it was loaded. Unbearable fondness, stunned pride, possession, utter helplessness. Suddenly:

“We’ll take it,” he said, already producing his Amex, never taking his eyes off her.

She opened her mouth. “But, I also like the—”

“All of it,” he finalised.

She wrinkled her nose to hide her delight, glancing back at her reflection in the mirror. Psh, you call that a challenge? The man probably sneezed bigger numbers.

The retail associate exhaled a dreamy sound (he had that effect), and already she was sending the pieces off to be packaged into velvet boxes.

As Harry turned away to address one of his security detail—a tall, stoic man with an earpiece—everything in the store deviated into motion. Staff straightened, faraway shoppers snuck glances. Thus was the strange solemnity of fortune: it rearranged the atoms in the room.

The associate leaned in, her voice a whisper. “Mademoiselle, your boyfriend loves you very much.”

Her lips curled. Delightful, very delightful.

“Ah… je ne sais pas,” she hummed, tilting her head as if considering it. Thank you, elementary school French. “It seems I love his credit card more than I love him.” (I don't know.)

The woman snorted into a laugh, hand over her mouth. “Moi aussi.” (Me, too.)

They shared a conspiratorial grin—the universal sisterhood between women who knew the bizarre, fragile ego of wealthy men. As the associate wrapped each piece methodically—tissue, velvet box, gold ribbon—she watched the choreography of French indulgence unfold.

Angles, shadows, glass reflections—Harry’s security combed them all. A sommelier in a suit offering seltzer served in crystal glasses; soft, murmured French from the staff; and, of course, trailing their boss: his favourite thief.

It became a neat little pattern through the hours—store, sparkle, look, swipe. By the third boutique, she wasn’t even entering them; she simply paused outside the window display, hands behind her back, pretending to “just have a look,” and Harry would practically herd her inside before she could finish a sentence.

“You can have a closer look from inside,” he encouraged her.

First stop: Zimmermann, where she strutted in and out of clothes, finally landing on a frayed mini dress that looked like a bottle of Veuve reincarnated as fabric. Then, Hermès, where she decided a Birkin, even boxed, would loom too loudly and settled on a modest canvas Herbag instead. At Stuart Weitzman, he made good on those long-overdue strappy sandals—guilt clearly compounds. L’Occitane supplied the almond body oil she’d been eyeing since forever, and Guerlain, naturally, contributed with the limited-edition Rouge G in its little gold case and pop-up mirror, amongst others.

What truly baffled her was the sincerity. Genuine, earnest, Harry-shaped sincerity. She had his endless attention, his inexplicable compassion, his terrifyingly deep pockets. A trifecta of danger. An emotional booby trap wrapped in a billionaire with soft eyes.

“Do you like it?” he’d ask, always from just behind her shoulder, absolutely crowding her rather than the mirror.

Perfume, shoes, dresses, scarves, lingerie she couldn’t even convince herself to pretend she’d wear outside this place. Every time she tested something on, she could feel the gravitational pull of her own selfishness—a greedy tide licking closer.

She’d look up at him, torn between two internal voices: Too much, too generous, too difficult; or the ever-insatiable, Just take it, he can afford to replace the whole store.

Harry watched her make that moral calculation like it was the cutest maths problem he’d ever seen.

“Take it,” he murmured, eyes certain and annoyingly convinced. “Try more on. Pick whatever you like.”

She swallowed, ignoring the warm pricks climbing her chest. “You don’t think it’s…?”

He shook his head before she could even invent the word. “It’s you. You always look incredible.”

Christ, why did he have to say it like that? He was spending a shitload of money for… what? A woman who had robbed him multiple times and would, if the world demanded it, do so again? Nothing!

Where, exactly, in her beautifully disorganised life was she ever going to wear this Balmain number outside of today?

She twirled in it anyway, arms stretched out, letting the fabric kiss her skin. White, backless, short, gold buttons—so luxurious it made her slightly dizzy. It felt like slipping into another version of herself, one who didn’t lie for sport.

“Yes, I am taking the 407 for dinner,” she declared to her reflection, flicking her hair. “Tsk. Traffic is for mortals.”

Harry lowly laughed from behind her. He was lounging on the viewing sofa, legs set miles apart, like some handsome Roman emperor, espresso in hand, thoroughly entertained by the show.

She couldn’t help the squeal. “Omigod, I’m in love! Look at my butt pop!” She reached back, pawing for the tag. “Two? Three grand—”

“I’ve got it covered,” he dismissed, blowing into the cup.

“Six?” she yelped. “Six!”

He looked too unimpressed for his own good while he set the cup aside. “Rounding error. Cute.”

Harry rose, all polished power and brash indulgence, and approached her with that look—the one that made her feel posh even without the dress. He gently turned her back to the mirror, letting her see the two of them together, her wrapped in gold-trimmed sin, him looking at her as if she were an investment he was delighted to lose money on.

“Go as nuts as you want, sweetheart,” he murmured, fingers gliding slowly down the bare line of her spine. “I made this money so someone drop-dead sexy could enjoy it.”

“Ooh, keep buttering me up, rich boy,” she hummed, leaning into his touch as he reached the point where cloth met skin. “And you’d better keep making more because I am unnaturally expensive.”

He bent down, lips brushing her ear, her temple, his hand journeyed lower—past her ass, along the smooth length of her thigh, worshipping, proprietary.

“Trust me,” he said, thrumming voice sinking into her bones, “you’ll run out of wants before I run out of zeros.”

Her laugh was breathy, disbelieving. “Sure,” she murmured, “but I make a living proving people wrong.”

Dark eyes caught hers in the mirror, intent, hungry, while his hand slipped up the hem of her skirt.

“Mhm…” he hummed, thumb brushing her inner thigh. “I don’t mind owning the fallout.”

Good god. Sexy, smutty man. This unbelievably smutty, slow-burn menace of a man. He was like a Harlequin fantasy—and she was the idiot willingly signing the waiver.

Also, she was absolutely enjoying the electrical storm he was setting off across her skin.

His fingers dipped higher. Her spine bowed before she could think, a soft sound escaping her when he stroked along the soft, soaked heat between her legs. He moved around the edges of her panties, teasing, pushing into her, stroking—mapping her as if with every intention of planting a huge, smug flag.

Of course, he didn’t waste time. The man was efficiency in a $5,000 blazer—he drove two naughty fingers right through the wet fabric.

“Harry,” she warned, reaching back blindly to grab a handful of said blazer.

“Wet for me already?” he teased.

“There’re people—”

“I don't care. Everything you do makes me want you more,” he whispered against her ear, teeth grazing on her helix. “This is all mine.”

Normally, that sentence earned a hard eye roll from her—possessive men were a nuisance. But coming from him, with his breath at her skin and his hand stroking exactly where she wanted it, the words sounded less like a claim and more like a vow.

Then two of his fingers slid inside her, and any rebuttal she had disintegrated on the spot.

Holy fucking hell. She watched in the mirror—watched herself coming undone against the unshakable rhythm of his hand, watched her thighs clench, watched her lips part, watched him behind her, composed and focused. Erotic didn’t even begin to cover it.

In, out, in, out, in, in, in... slow, intentional, slick. It was obvious, he wanted her to see exactly what she looked like when he fucked her.

Just as his fingers coaxed every breath from her throat, and she bit her lip to keep from—

A voice broke through the curtain.

“Madame, the new—oh! Oh mon dieu. Pardon. Pardon!”

Harry withdrew instantly—coward, traitor—leaving her wanting, grasping for air and sanity. He stepped back, already sliding into a lazy leonine sprawl on the sofa as if he had not been knuckles-deep inside her thirty seconds ago.

Meanwhile, she was one heartbeat away from collapsing into the fitting-room carpet. She yanked the skirt down and tried to paste on something resembling human poise.

“He was just helping me… test the… elasticity,” she said brightly, clearing her throat. “Very stretchy. Good stretchy. Sorry—what were you saying?”

The poor attendant stammered through apologies, arms full of dresses, looking everywhere except directly at her. “Ah—oui, I have… the new collection…”

Which would’ve helped because Harry—absolute demon menace that he was—chose that moment to reward her composure by lifting that finger to his lips and giving it a slow, contemplative suck.

“So good,” he mouthed.

She choked on a laugh and converted it into a cough so violent it startled even herself.

The hot (sexual noun) afternoon spiralled from Dior to Celiné, and by the twelfth store, the Rolls’ trunk could have passed for a luxury ransom drop. Shop ‘til you drop was a real thing, and she was feeling it.

She scratched her temple, guilt finally pricking. “Might’ve gone a tiiiiny bit overboard.”

“Might need another car,” he mused, examining the overflowing boot. “Terrible trunk space on this one.”

She groaned when he took her by the elbow. “I’m sorry,” she complained as he gently guided her back to the car. “I have a problem. There’s just too much stuff in this world for me, and it's just not fair.”

“Exactly,” he said without missing a beat. “And you still have the passenger seat to fill.”

She laughed. “And if that fills up?”

He opened her door, leaned down, and murmured, “Then I’ll get to sit you on my lap.” Certainty powered him to press an innocent kiss between her eyes.

Just in time for the third and final note: the richer the man, the more money becomes a proxy for emotion. The poorer the man, the more money reveals emotional pressure. Do with that what you will, and choose wisely.

As for her, Harry Castillo was especially, exceedingly rich.

Which meant her consequences were… expressive. Despicable, disgusting emotional consequences. They were messy, slow, and left indelible stains.

But then there was him—this infuriating, infallibly generous man with too much money and too little sense. And it tasted sour on her tongue, but she had to consider it: was he actually using money as an expression? A screwed-up language? A stand-in for something he couldn’t say because saying it would involve feelings and vulnerability and whatever other allergic reactions most men got?

So bleak for such an embarrassingly sweet, masculine idiot.

Was he really that emotionally illiterate? Did he truly think affection required permits? That protection needed to be itemised? That intimacy came with a warranty card?

How awful—...awfully exceptional.

And the cynical part of her, rather than the diseased romantic—the part that had kept her alive, clever, and one step ahead of all her targets—offered a second interpretation: that maybe Harry wasn’t ‘expressing’ anything.

Maybe this was building dependency. Maybe he was doing that rich-man thing where he and his empire became gravity, and she was expected to orbit him. Maybe he was idealising her, weaponising generosity with diamonds, controlling the dynamic.

Oh, this minted motherfucker.

He probably thought she was some cheap whore he could upgrade! Shower her with shiny shit and expect gratitude sex, and a lifetime of blowjobs. Or worse—a loyal, well-kept, half-domesticated mistress who came shaking her ass the moment he opened his wallet.

“One of these fingers could use a shiny rock for yourself,” he had murmured a while ago, lifting her hand with the newest Graff gold cuff and punctuating each finger with a kiss.

How fucking dare he. Traumatised, damaged, broody—whatever he was, it did not grant him coupons for condescension.

She had game. She had options. She had slipped through tighter traps with nothing but wit, clothes and the ability to vanish in plain sight. She could drop his ass in a heartbeat, disappear into another mask. Who needed him? She could buy all this stuff herself—or get it from someone who didn’t confuse attention with ownership.

It took her a full forty seconds to realise she’d been silently glaring a hole through the side of his head. He glanced up from his phone, caught her expression, and did a startled double-take.

“What’d I do?” He was already diligently setting aside his phone.

“Nothing,” she lied. “Just looking.”

“That is the look of someone deciding where to hide the body. Dial it back.”

She stared, nostrils flared.

He snapped his fingers as if struck with an idea. “I know that look, you get dangerous when you’re hungry. I’m not risking it. Dinner, hm... how about seafood?”

“Huh.”

But then her eyes slid to the rearview mirror—past her own face, past her own indignation, to the rose-gold Bulgari winking from her ears like tiny, expensive accomplices—and the righteous anger betrayed her. So much for integrity; they shattered like glass under a heel.

The Erykah Badu soundtrack wasn’t doing her any favours, either.

“I, I’ll bring the honey, you, you just bring the money…” wafted through the car while Ben in the front seat drummed the beat, mouthing along, “Fingers crossed behind my back… ’cause, Munny, I want you back, la-la-la-la...”

The ugly truth becomes established. When you spend most of your life clawing your way through scarcity—when need always trumps disappointment, when survival means relying on no one but yourself—there is something dangerously comforting about being… cared for.

Alright, okay. Cared for was too generous. Coddled sounded humiliating, and spoiled sounded naive.

But, in that moment, being his cheap whore felt startlingly like rest, or stepping out of the grindstone of her own competence.

Let’s also rephrase that before her feminism card was revoked.

Sometimes, in the give-and-take economy of adult, self-reliant life, it felt disarmingly good to be given to. To imagine a softness she’d never had access to since she was four. To pretend—even momentarily—that the world was generous, that the sky stayed up for her, that there was always a driver waiting with the engine running and she didn’t have to do everything with her own two hands.

But the minute they walked in through revolving doors for dinner, the spell broke, and all the old instincts came rushing back.

While they waited for their table at the bar, she found herself tip-tapping her fingers—an uncharacteristic tell. Everything she usually hid behind lacquered poise spilled through her body language: paranoia, irritation, confusion, an internal spreadsheet of mistakes. She hated being readable, even to herself.

One sweep around the restaurant, casing the crowd, told her everything she needed about her rich boy's not-so-hidden agenda. A humble little hotel spot, if you didn’t know how to look, pared down to its bones—Michelin-starred all the same—defined by clean geometry, ash-grey walls, walnut tables stripped of everything but a sprig of greenery and a trembling tealight.

Besides that, there were no families at the bar and no businessmen slumming it on expense accounts. The people were all waiting for their table, each with a varying definition of lovey-dovey couples: geriatric, millennial, short-term, long-term, bored, excited, desperate, and undisguised. This place wasn’t for fine dining—it was for romance and delusion.

She straightened, spine clicking into hauteur.

If this was the stage, ‘Eve’ had to step back into costume.

As much as she disliked wearing the persona of ‘Eve’ in front of Harry—all the calculated charm, the performative femininity, the illusion of power—it felt like the only expected response to the luxury shopping spree he’d paraded her through. Gentle worlds had rules:—receiving meant returning, and pleasure meant performance.

Wanting Harry Castillo was a frivolity reserved for women with softer childhoods and easier lives. She had neither, but.

She understood ecosystems. Sex, attention, competence, charm—these were the currencies she’d perfected. And if he was going to be generous with his abundance, she also understood the etiquette of the exchange.

Besides, the whole value-at-risk fiasco still hung between them—incredible really, how she could so easily reenact the same night she’d stolen that gorgeous emerald ring straight off his finger. The fact that he still wore it, glinting at her like a private joke, was either a threat or foreplay.

Harry made it infuriatingly easy. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since they walked in and settled down—as if she were some rare commodity he was privately appraising. He sat pressed close against her side, heat coiling through layers of fabric. One hand cradled a glass of Hennessy on the rocks; the other traced languid strokes across her back, territorial in a way that should have pissed her off more than it did.

He was claiming her, evidently, elegantly, effectively. For tonight—and maybe a bit longer—she was his.

She let her eyes drift up to him. His attention snapped to meet hers immediately; of course, it did. The man was a laser-guided weapon when it came to tracking her.

“You’re unfairly beautiful, you know that?” he murmured.

She managed a little smile. “If you say so.”

“...oh, wow.”

And she raised her brows.

“Is that tension I sense, or just wishful thinking?” he asked, a thumb teasing the waistband of her shorts.

Her outfit for the night—jean shorts, a white tank top, messy hair from many ensemble trials—gave off a high-net-worth Kardashian vibe, not ideal for this scene at all. But Eve had built her life on improvising with whatever materials were available; dignity, wardrobe, and morality included.

She angled her body toward him, sliding a hand around his glass. “Try confidence,” she murmured. “I already know what I’m going to do to you tonight.”

He watched her lift his drink, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Do what?”

“I want you so deep inside me that you can’t tell where you end and I begin.”

His only response was to relax, casually unbutton his blazer and lean across the bar to stroke her cheek with the backs of two unbearably warm fingers.

“Alright then, sweetheart.”

…That’s it?

Her eyebrows dipped by a fraction as she brought the drink up to her lips—an expression too small for anyone to catch. Seriously? No quip, no pushback, no challenge? That wasn’t the Harry she knew. That was… him being stupidly, inconveniently, romantic.

Ew, ugh. This is why people warned against ‘fucking feelings’—they diluted your game. A goddamn scam that made everyone go gentle when she needed them sharp.

Fine, okay. Focus. Find leverage.

She took a sip of the drink, mind leaping ahead, searching for heat, anything with a bit of teeth. Her gaze flicked around the bar, scanning for opportunity, especially since her charm wasn’t enough to keep control.

She clocked it all in a single sweep. The distracted bartender had pulled out a bottle of Black Label and set it aside instead of shelving it. Interesting. And then—perfect—the waiter approaching from the far end of the bar with a black leather access card clipped to his belt.

Bless the universe for handing her illicit props.

Her fingers drifted out in an innocent, idle stretch just as he passed, and—slip, dip—the card slipped out neatly and nestled into her palm.

She slid it into her pocket. Zip, zap, zoom, that was more like it.

Her gaze flicked to Harry, who was currently busy receiving a tray of oysters. Obscene things. Glistening, greyish bodies lounging in their curved half-shells and ice chips, randomly sexual somehow in the way only molluscs could be, surrounded by wedges of lemon and parsley stalks.

Harry murmured, “I am starving,” as he immediately set about the erotic ritual of eating them—squeezing lemon with long fingers, prying them loose, offering all of it with a casual, devastating masculinity that made every woman in a ten-foot radius stare.

He lifted one toward her. “Here, try some.”

“No sea filth for me tonight,” she said, dragging the plate aside, shells clattering. She had a keycard burning a hole in her pocket and precisely zero patience left.

Time to escalate.

Harry blinked, halfway to protest. “Babe, what are—”

Social propriety vaporised, and a flash of something hot, reckless, and entirely hers surged forward, and she closed the sliver of space between them—one purposeful lean, a hand in his shirt—and hauled him into a kiss. A shut-up-about-chow-and-feel-me-kiss.

He made a startled, muffled ‘oof,’ hands flinching before instinct took over, and he dissolved into a laugh against her mouth—low, delighted, disarmed—and dragged her in with a force that punched breath straight out of her.

In an instant, he was kissing her back the way he did everything: intensely, completely, with his whole stupid, billionaire heart. There he was, her prodigal fuck-me-now Harry Castillo returns.

The bar blurred into a heat-hazed backdrop—perfume, money, Mediterranean sweat, and too much liquor—but she only tasted him. Warm, male, a little vain, a little startled. A lot hers.

And she gave him the version of herself he kept falling for—the one with invincible lust. Legs slotting between his, hand fisting into the lapel of his blazer, his fingers threading through her hair, another softly stroking the back of her thigh.

God, they were really doing this. Full-on Frenching in the French Riviera like a pair of horny teenagers.

She deepened the kiss, tilting her head, tongue stroking against his, and the taste of him hit her—a hint of Hennessy and purely fantasy. It made her hum a dangerous little sound. If she had even one less moral scruple, she would have laid him flat on the bar and made a headline of them.

Eventually—reluctantly—she pulled back, resting her forehead against his, lips tingling, breath uneven. Harry looked dazed and happy while his nose nudged hers, soft, boyish, and completely at odds with his reputation.

Then panic flickered in his eyes as he darted a look around her shoulder with the full-body oh shit, did anyone see that? But this was a romantic location, and everyone was too busy tongue-wrestling their own mistakes to notice theirs.

“I’d ask why,” he rasped, attention back on her, “but I already know better.”

“Rightfully so,” she said, brushing her thumb over his bottom lip, wiping a smudge of her lipstick he’d stolen. Then softer: “Harry…”

He leaned in, instantly vigilant. His voice dropped several octaves. “What is it, sweetheart?”

She shook her head dumbly.

His brows furrowed, worried. “Hey, ‘sokay, talk to me. Is something bothering you?”

She shook her head again. She hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt and tugged, purring, “Instead... what do you say we get out of here?”

And that—unsurprisingly—was where everything began to tip downhill. Or was it uphill? Her impulses never agreed on the geography of disaster.

In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have moved quite so fast. Yes, exactly—in hindsight. She was operating firmly in now-sight, which tended to be louder, brighter, and catastrophically unbothered by everything.

She didn’t wait for his inevitable, incredulous “wait, what?” or the follow-up “hang on a second,” Harry always defaulted to verbal speed bumps when she made a decision with her whole chest. Too bad for him—she’d already stopped listening.

She hopped off her barstool with the stolen Johnnie Walker tucked under one arm and, with her free hand, caught the wrist he’d half-extended to rein her in.

“You’re so cute when you’re floored,” she said over her shoulder, breezing past him and pulling him into her wake, toward the vestibule. “Come on, come on!”

He followed—of course he did—blazer askew, shirt rumpled from her kissing, eyes glued to the line of her spine and the swing of her ass in shorts. Whatever gravitational field she emitted, it had him at a ninety-degree tilt in her direction.

She spun into the elevator lobby, walking backwards, waving the bottle in a lazy arc. Harry looked one part bewildered, one part aroused, and two parts man-in-over-his-head.

“Did you steal that?” he asked. “When did you—how—I—”

She slipped into her impression of him—smooth, rich-boy drawl. “Yeah, yeah, bought me an entire truck worth,” she mocked. “Please, don’t tell me this is your first brush with petty crime.”

“I have never—and we can’t just—”

“Wow,” she cut in, and her grin sharpened. “Then you’re going to love this.”

She flashed the black keycard between two fingers.

“No,” he refused, eyes wide. “Baby, what did you do?”

Before Harry could seize it, she folded her hand—poof. Tucked up her sleeve, vanishing within, sleight of hand smooth enough to make a stage magician weep.

She didn’t know what she’d use it for yet; improvisation was her native language. And whatever this card unlocked was undoubtedly better than the overpriced sea-slug appetiser.

“Let’s see, where to first…” She tapped her chin theatrically. “Rooftop access? Pool deck? Back kitchen?” Then she gasped. “Omigosh, presidential suite!”

Harry finally caught up to her, striding forward—jaw ticking, shirt untucked, sleeves pushed up like he’d been dragged through a kissstorm (which, to be fair, he had)—and stepped right in front of her, blocking her from the elevator buttons with his whole much-too-distracting body.

“This is not happening,” he started.

She cocked her head. “Oh, look at you. Big man says no. Adorable.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.” She smiled sweetly. “That’s what makes it funny.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. Infuriating. His expression didn’t change either—just flattened, dangerously patient.

She lifted a comical brow at his immovable wall of No. “What, too pussy to play?”

“I don't want to play.” He even used air quotes—air quotes—and somehow managed to look unimpressed while doing it. It knocked her mood—not down a peg so much as sideways. “I want to have a nice dinner with you.”

She sidestepped him, hit the elevator button with a cheerful ding. “No, you don’t,” she dismissed. “You think you do, but you absolutely don’t.”

He wanted a nice, merry dinner. In there. Like civilians with stable attachment styles. What was the point of all that when they both knew what they actually did best? They were built for breaking furniture with fucking chaos, chemistry—not cheese soufflé and dry talk.

Harry reached past her and pressed the button again, turning it off. The little LED died, and so did the buzz under her skin.

He eventually faced her—obsidian eyes, controlled exhale—and she knew instantly she’d miscalculated.

“I actually do. Look, what’s the big deal?” he asked quietly, softly. “Why are we doing this again?”

Oh, she had a list. A whole museum of trauma, neatly catalogued.

But she shrugged it off. As in, Olympic-level bullshit. Because what she really wanted to say was: I am very replaceable. I have to earn your attention like everyone else. If I don’t perform, I am nothing.

But she wouldn’t say any of those things. She’d rather swallow glass than admit them to her own reflection, much less Harry Castillo and his inconvenient sincerity.

Instead, she said, “You’re overthinking.”

“You’re underfeeling,” he countered.

Jesus, this emotional Kevlar was rubbish.

“Can’t you just be with—” He paused to exhale his thoughts instead. “Is it that hard to drop the mask and not turn everything into a game or a punchline? Because it really is not funny on my end anymore.”

Her smile—her armour—slipped. He leaned in until she couldn’t dodge the meaning in his stare.

His voice lowered to say, “I'm done pretending this doesn't mean anything. I have intentions, just as you do, but I don't joke about mine, alright?”

She forced an eye roll, muttering, “You like me, I get it.”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes—frustration, restraint, maybe a plea. “‘Like you’ isn’t the half of it. I wish it were that simple.”

“Maybe it should be simple, you always make it so intense,” she mumbled to herself, folding her arms.

“I make it—” The words stalled as he looked at her, incredulous. He let out a humourless laugh, then pushed his hand briefly into his hair. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

She looked down at her feet, feeling a thousand pinpricks at the intensity of those dark eyes. She couldn’t bear his earnest or handle the risk of being wanted for something other than her shit circus acts.

How the hell was she supposed to recover from this? Why him? Why this? Why was he choosing her when she knew exactly what she wasn’t?

Was his last girlfriend a trauma bond? Was he sick in the head? Untreated childhood wounds, perhaps, or a brain injury? It was easier to insult his emotional stability than admit she was terrified. And she refused to feel bad for him, for herself, or the way his people stared at her like she was a security breach.

Harry reached gently, slid the stolen Johnnie Walker bottle out of her grip, and she let go without resistance.

“Let’s put all this back where it belongs,” he murmured. “Then I’ll have the car brought around.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She fucked up real bad.

“Car?” she asked, forcing a hopeful laugh. “Are you kicking me out before I even get fed?”

No answer, and the silence lodged in her throat.

He pushed open the cornermost lobby door and waited for her, not turning around, giving her the dignity of choice. No dinner, no suites, quick fucks or distractions either.

Wherever they were going, it wasn’t back to the restaurant. She had fucked it up pretty nicely, so that door had closed before she’d even realised she wasn’t the one holding the knob. Were they going “home”? Did he have a home here? Did she? Or was he about to do the super executive thing and ship her back to New York like return-to-sender merchandise?

She climbed into the car beside her expensive monolith—and tried to pinpoint the exact moment she’d gone off-script. She never missed with him; moreover, men like him. She read intentions the way other people read books: quickly, decisively, with a high success rate.

So where the hell had she misplayed it? Had she rushed? Pushed? Skipped steps? Probably. Definitely. Absurdly. However, men often enjoyed being rushed by a pretty girl. Usually, they mistook it for flattery or a quickie, and she often wielded that like a scalpel.

Harry wasn’t acting like a man who’d been rushed. He was acting like a man who’d seen something she didn’t mean to reveal. Irritating son of a bitch.

She snuck a look at him, and he became even more unreadable—this gorgeous slab of silence, all angles and self-control, jaw tense, impassive gaze forward, expression a complete blackout. The hardest part was that he wasn’t angry, because anger she could work with. Anger had handles.

A new category: deeply, inconveniently unfathomable.

Also, not talking. That was so not ideal.

She turned her head a fraction, studying him. He’s not mad. He’s thinking? Processing? Plotting my assassination?

She folded her arms, disinclined to meet that fate. “So are we doing the silent film version of tonight?” she asked lightly. “I could start miming. I’m pretty good at interpreting myself.”

He said nothing, dark eyes ahead, loosening his tight cuffs on his wrists. Now, that annoyed her more than any argument could have.

She leaned her head back and let her thoughts sharpen. Her gaze dropped to his hands—capable, calm, resting on his knee like nothing in the world could force them to clench, not even her.

If he wanted something, he’d say it. If he wanted me, he’d take it. If he wanted me gone, he’d already have tossed me out. So what the hell does he want?

Everyone always wanted something from her. A taste, a thrill, a bit of reflected glamour, a night they’d brag about later. That was the rule: maintain the equilibrium. Attention for attention, heat for heat, touch for touch. It made sense, it was transactional and safe.

So why wasn’t he fucking taking anything? What was he doing instead—offering no demands, giving without collecting, making space rather than closing it. Which, ironically, felt like the biggest power move of all.

She blew out a breath through the O of her lips, forced her mind back into familiar territory—detachment, analysis, strategy. If he didn’t want anything, she’d figure out why.

Because a man who doesn’t take might be the one who can, they only move when they’re absolutely sure. Dangerous, flattering, cute. And, when the time comes, she’ll be ready.

Life had a way of reimbursing her in the most mystifying currencies.

Tonight’s payment: a four-poster bed draped in lovely gauzy bednet, thousand-thread-count sheets cradling her freshly shaved legs, softest floral print pyjamas, amazing lingerie, hair smelling like Le Labo had baptised her, and a body pleasantly aching from an entire day of shopping, wandering, and being doted on by a gentleman who really shouldn’t know how to dote. She felt like Holly Golightly times infinity.

“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered, palming her face.

Because peace shouldn’t feel this nerve-wracking and because this—this idyllic nocturnal luxury—was a trap she was trying very hard to enjoy.

By one in the morning, sleep felt like an unpaid internship. She wrestled with the Alaskan-king duvet—more beast than bedding—shoved pillows around like she was rearranging battle formations; even tugged a silk sleep mask over her eyes. None of it helped.

That silence that belonged to him more than the deafening night. That damned, sprawling, expensive silence had followed her here, from the hotel, onto the pier and the beach.

Here, meaning a place she very much should not have ended up: a little island off Monaco coasts named Isla Bravamar, which sounded fictional, like something pirates would shout before leaping to their deaths.

Things to note: yes, it was real, and no, you cannot find it on a map.

Because the man she was currently failing to sleep beside—well, not beside, but in the vicinity of—owned the island.

Owned an island.

Could we go back and read that again? It deserves one more.

The realisation had clunked into her skull only after the pier had disappeared behind them and the speedboat had fired forward across the lazy sea. She had assumed—naturally—that they were headed for a superyacht or possibly a submarine (though even she admitted that was pushing it).

But no, the rich fucker had a whole landmass to his name.

She’d been excessively generous with her attempt at emotional neutrality when Harry had guided her onto that sleek boat. She’d maintained a façade of “oh, yeah, this is totally normal,” even as her stomach twisted with something sourer than seasickness.

The not-knowing was humbling. The waiting for his mood to shift, for him to speak, for someone to break the impregnable barrier of quiet he’d built between them since the restaurant.

She’d dared a glance at him a few times on the bumpy speedboat, and he’d been ocean-still: one arm spread along the back of the bench, auburn curls whipped by wind, wrinkle-eyed gaze fixed on the dark horizon—calculating, planning his next ten moves with the ease of someone who didn’t know what it meant to lose. The media vultures had gotten at least one thing right about him: Harry Castillo was always thinking ahead.

Then, through the dying streaks of Mediterranean gold, his island emerged—jagged, dramatic, mountainous—like a geological middle finger to God. And perched arrogantly on its crest, lit by the last bruised light of the sunset, rose Château Castillo.

You’d think a family in finance would cling to something obnoxiously modern—buildings with more sharp edges and that practically growled old money, new money, all the money. Something like Harry’s penthouse: elegant lines, concrete, windowpanes stretching like skyscraper limbs.

But a Belle Époque villa tucked into tall carob and olive trees was… whimsy? Sentimentality, softness, human?

Set snug into a grassy embankment, the place looked less like a billionaire’s hideaway and more like the home of a lonely storybook princess, singing to birds and blowing dandelion seeds into the wind. Blushing clematis and bougainvillaea cascaded over the arched entryway like pastel snowfall, and the garden ran in neat, romantic geometry beneath the gangling windows, ending at a crooked, weather-worn trellis drinking the last of summer's sun.

A little path of mossy flagstones wound up from the jetty. She followed it, heels clacking, forgetting about the crew still unloading the boat.

“This whole place is his,” she murmured, out of breath, out of her goddamn mind. The word that landed in her chest was: invasive.

“Ours,” she thought she heard Harry say behind her—quietly, like he wasn’t sure she’d allow the shared pronoun.

Ow, unacceptable. She didn’t touch that thought.

Anyway—insane, truly insane—how a man could just buy an island like purchasing a side of fries. Apparently, nothing was impossible if you had the net worth of an empire and the emotional depth of a locked vault.

Inside, the villa only doubled down on its charm offensive.

If one of Harry’s grandparents had been a count or countess, she wouldn’t have been surprised. The place was a collision of old-world beauty and filthy fortune—Versailles oak parquet floors, ranging French windows so tall they could double as gateways to Narnia, Saarinen and Wegner furniture arranged to face a tremendous fireplace, Murano chandeliers dripping down like crystal rain. A sweeping staircase split into two upper floors of majestic bedrooms.

One of which was hers, ahem, the biggest, with a vast terrace overlooking glistening Monaco Bay and half the Mediterranean.

Moneyed comfort at a scale that felt… too personal. How surreal that in a home so beautiful, she felt like the ugliest thing in it—her, Harry, the unresolved mess between them. A splatter on a flawless postcard, smudging the whole tableau. Her with her emotional potholes and a man who cared too loudly.

But she was good at ignoring regret. A master, even. So she inhaled, smoothed her hair, and chose the only emotionally responsible option: pretend everything was fine and enjoy the shit out of this.

“Harry, can we please...” she tried to call out to him, but—

“Later. Bit busy right now,” was his quiet response.

So, he vanished. Naturally. People like him didn’t wait around—they absorbed into shadows, into phone calls and weightless laptops, into whatever high-level universe needed them.

Whilst she wandered between Spanish flair in every tilework, endless empty closets, a Sub-Zero fridge, another Viking Range, and then finally… family photos.

“Aww, tiny Harry,” she cooed, picking them up one by one.

Lovable chubby little Harry and his brother, knobbly-kneed in matching swim trunks, French tan, posing with goggles too big for their faces. A candid at a holiday dinner, well into the now—between candlelights, arms thrown over shoulders. A wedding photo of Mr and Mrs Castillo, hands linked, eyes lit with the kind of uncomplicated happiness she had only ever seen on billboards and dreams. Altogether, a close, happy, lavish family.

It all felt too intimate, like she’d stumbled into a heart with muddy boots.

She carefully set the frames down and blinked at them once more from afar.

Whatever bridge she’d imagined earlier between her and Harry—precarious but crossable—it now stretched into an impossible canyon. A curated world built on legacy, love, privilege, expectations and foundations she had never had and didn’t know how to stand on.

The void yawned, and she stepped back. Couldn’t even survive that jump if she tried. Another bitter truth: she did not belong in this island, house, or in the same orbit as its owner.

Upset and disoriented from the invisible chasm, it was around two in the morning when she felt the supersized bed in all its off-white, netted, feathery goodness dip under a new weight.

She kept still, eyelids lowered, breath even. A flawless performance of sleep, all while listening to the gruelling movements and efforts of one Harry Castillo.

The gentle scuffling of the duvet. The deep, frayed yawn—god, men had no idea how pornographic they sounded when tired. The drag of cloth against the skin; shirt going off. The muted clicks of a phone hastily checked and dropped aside, and eventually, the collapsing noise of his head hitting the pillow. His sigh—long, spent, defeated—rolled over her like a tide.

Her pulse did the opposite of staying calm, palpitating right to her throat. She should not have known his rhythms this well. Irresponsible.

She felt him hesitate behind her—for a fraction, a breath—before sliding closer. The mattress dipped again, and warmth crawled up her spine. Then, his fingertips... his palms... and all her nerves, the absolute sluts, stood to attention.

He painstakingly swept her hair off her shoulder, nimble fingers feeling the tingling love spots just behind her ear and along her neck. So delicately, his forefinger reached up and pressed the roundness of her bottom lip. Fireworks. Neural implosion. Absolutely humiliating.

Then his drawling, laughing sigh. “I'm so screwed.”

Like-fucking-wise, Castillo, she thought, drowning in heat.

She issued the most noncommittal, sleep-drunk groan she could fake and burrowed her smile in the pillow. A dismayed, scandalised little “no” escaped him.

Too late. She felt his hand settle at her waist and then, slowly, inexorably, he pulled her in.

Oh, fantastic. Full-body contact. Just what her overtaxed self-control needed.

His palm slid forward, spanning her stomach. His arm came around her, his chest aligned with her spine. A leg, long and warm and unfairly proprietary, wedged between hers. His warm lips brushed the slope of her shoulder; the hot exhale alone nearly melted bone.

Every tension suppressed in her body surfaced despite her best efforts. Her breath hitched, and—humiliatingly—she arched the smallest bit toward him.

He noticed, of course.

“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he compelled at her neck, his voice sleep-hoarse and too intimate. “I know you’re awake.”

She stayed quiet at first, letting the pull of him, the absurd magnetism of him, settle into her ribs. He wanted conversation. She owed him that much after the emotional debris field she’d dragged him through today.

So she scuttled sideways to face him—careful, slow—clutching the sheets to her chest even though modesty had abandoned them both hours ago.

He was right there, too close for safety and sanity; exactly where he always seemed to end up.

This was the kind of view people pretended to enjoy in five-star hotels. Who cared about the Empire State Building when Harry Castillo was stretched out beside you in the lamplit dark, a living, breathing monument worth craning your neck for?

He lay on his side, handsome face half in shadow, half bathed in a warm amber glow, like someone had painted him using soft brushes and good intentions. Thicker stubble dusted his cheeks—twenty-four hours older and unfairly lickable. His impossible brown eyes—burning, maddening—were nothing but quietly attentive. Like she was an answer to a question he’d been chewing on all night.

And she realised she wasn’t breathing until he did. A soft rush of warm breath that ghosted across her lips and cheeks and made her stupidly aware of how close they were. How close he’d chosen to be, and she kept allowing him to be.

She broke first, leaning in without consciously deciding to.

“I still don’t know what you want from me,” she admitted—too honest, too naked, a truth slipping out before she could stuff it back in.

He didn’t look away as his thoughtful fingertips traced the soft bridge of her nose, the arch of her brow, as though searching for the right page in a book.

“Why must I always want something from you?”

She almost screamed, almost rolled her eyes, almost got the fuck away—because denial was easier than sincerity.

“Because I don’t know how to give you anything else, Harry,” she blurted.

God. There it was, the ‘cheap whore’ judgments. Ten out of ten, perfect. Embarrassment flared up her spine, and she wanted to drag the words back down her throat and punch them in the balls they should not have.

Harry’s brows drew together, genuinely confused. “I’m not following.”

“It’s not you,” she rushed, heat pricking up her neck. “It’s just... I’ve only ever been good at one thing: giving people what they want.” Her gaze flicked away, to his collar, the duvet, her own hands. Anywhere but his unblinking eyes. “And people usually want the wrong things from me. That’s all I’m used to.”

A hollow laugh left her. “I guess I filled in the blanks.”

Silence stretched—solemn, intentional, intimate in a way that made her want to vaporise on the spot.

“You think I treat you like some joke?” he asked softly. “Is that the impression I gave you?”

“I didn’t say that,” she muttered, retaining her stiff expression as her stomach knotted. “I just didn’t think any of it was meant to be simple or real. Not after—” She gestured vaguely toward the absurd opulence around them. “All of this.”

“I wasn’t trying to buy anything off you,” he emphasised. “I just wanted to give you something you’d love, and I wasn’t sure I measured up by myself.”

“I do love all of it,” she agreed. “And you... you’re enough for me.”

That came out so much worse than she imagined it would. She winced where he could not see it.

Another long, gentle pause. Harry shifted a fraction, enough to soften the line of his shoulders, then:

“I brought you here,” he said, “because I wanted more time with you. Because I enjoy the person I am with you. And I want to keep you past the end when the lights go out.” His thumb brushed her cheek, a touch so tender it almost wasn’t real. “I wish you’d want something with me that wasn’t just… fleeting.”

Her throat constricted with barbed wire. She blinked at him, startled.

“It’s not?” she whispered because she genuinely couldn’t compute it.

A smile ghosted across his face—tiny, fond, unbearably gentle. He tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured. “My beautiful girl.”

Beautiful girl, beautiful girl, beautiful girl. It was like a trap snapping shut.

Instantly, the magnet he had forged into her wrenched. She lifted her head off the pillow before she could stop herself, bracing on her forearm so she could hover down at him, gain some power. He lay back, one arm folded behind his head, the other hand lazily roaming her waist, her neck, the soft architecture of her cheek like he was reacquainting himself with every angle.

“We’re complicating this,” she announced, because panic made her eloquent.

“Then let’s uncomplicate it,” he countered calmly. “Tomorrow, we could... fly to Spain. How does Granada sound?”

“Spain?” she echoed, horrified and intrigued.

“Or the moon,” he shrugged. “Your choice.”

She indulged him anyway. “I don’t have a spacesuit.”

His eyes gleamed with mischief. “Who needs a spacesuit when you’re already breathtaking?”

“Jesus—honey. Harry.” She palmed his cheek seriously. “No offence, but you’re supposed to be the sensible one here.” She motioned between them. “Look at us. Truly. Look.”

He did, and he looked far too pleased about whatever he saw.

“That’s the problem,” she barreled on. “We don’t fit. We don’t even belong on the same planet, much less—” she flapped a hand vaguely toward the bed “—as something.”

“Together,” he amended.

She sighed.

“But that’s how it works,” he said, infuriatingly patient. “People don’t start aligned. They choose to grow into each other.”

A sharp snort evaded her. “Grow? Are you for—hold on—” She started counting off on her fingers. “I’ve robbed you—multiple times. I twist things, I push, I pull, I manipulate you, I use you. I have no life plan, shit—I don’t even have a five-hour plan. Ninety per cent of my brain is morally grey-to-black sludge, I cling to money, I’m vain, I’m selfish, half my life is one long, stupid strategy and—”

She was winding herself up like a cartoon bomb, her breath growing shorter with each indictment. With a surplus of revelations and realisations looming large, a subtle confession dropped into her mind out of nowhere.

I think some part of me is falling in love with you.

Oh, god.

No, god, no. No, no, no.

Anything but that.

Harry just watched her, amused, fond, like her frantic declarations were the best thing he’d heard all night.

“W-o-w,” he said finally, each syllable separate, laughter warm as he cupped her chin. “What a mess.”

Finally! “Precisely.”

He tapped her nose once. “Still not disqualified. You're actually winning with that pitch.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Be serious.”

“We wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.” His smile faded; gentled. “Why are you so determined to make me see the worst in you? Do you really think you can convince me to hate you?”

“You should. I make it pretty easy,” she muttered.

“Not even close.” His eyes flashed with a sudden rush of—sympathy? “Sweetheart, you’re still a good—”

“No, no, don’t—” She shook her head like it might rattle the words away. “Don’t call me something I’m not. Please.”

Because he was wrong, and he had to know it. She knew it, lived with the truth daily. She was, by all respectable metrics, a terrible human being.

And hey, she’d made peace with that a long time ago—around the same period she pawned a silver locket she’d lifted off a toddler in a stroller.

One sickly March night sleeping on a stoop had been enough to teach her the fundamental rule of her life: morals don’t keep you warm, and they sure as hell don’t keep you fed. A manageable life required flirty smiles, nimble fingers, a flexible conscience, and the ability to lie through one’s teeth.

And none of those, she reminded herself, were exactly “girlfriend material.” Larceny wasn’t quirky, manipulation wasn’t charming, and conceit didn’t play well in relationships.

But they kept her alive. And survival, she’d always known, was a far more realistic goal than redemption.

“Maybe all the fun is getting to your head,” she whispered, aiming for wry but landing closer to tired.

“Blame the company.” His voice dipped. “I love our fun.”

She gave him a helpless little smile. “I love our fun too.”

His mouth twitched, the smallest upward curve. Through the incoherent daze of sleep, through his dubious demeanour, a softness she had longed to see.

Tell me you can love me. Tell me we can love each other somehow. Tell me I’m not imagining this. But her throat held the confession hostage.

“I hate when this happens,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” Her traitorous voice shook despite her best efforts. “I hate that you’re not closer.”

The second it slipped out, she wanted to swallow it whole. Vulnerability felt like stepping on a landmine barefoot, but he wordlessly opened his arms, a warm little space carved out just for her.

She tried to laugh the chagrin away, ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her face crumple, and nestled in against him—and, Jesus Christ.

No one cuddled like Harry. He didn’t half-commit; he did it the way he kissed her—with his whole stupid enormous body, big arms protectively bracketing her on the centre of the bed, her cheek on his bicep, one strong thigh clamping her close. A full-body shelter as he wrapped her until the world narrowed to warmth, breath and faint laundry detergent, until the darkness felt less like danger.

She burrowed in until her nose brushed his throat. “You’re so warm,” she muttered, the closest she’d allow herself to admitting she liked this.

“You’re freezing,” he murmured back, rubbing a hand down her back.

When she shifted a little, something decidedly awake pressed against her inner thigh. My, oh, my, this was turning from a cuddle to a fuckle (yes, that is a word).

She wriggled enough to tilt her head back and glance up at him. “You’ve got a little…” she murmured, pointing down, “affection erection going on downstairs.”

“Ignore it,” he mumbled, barely awake.

“I think he’s feeling left out.”

He groaned into her hair. “Can you not refer to my penis in the third person?”

“I can’t help it—he’s practically knocking on my front door.” She slipped her hand down between them with a mischievous little hum, fingers stroking down her favourite massive shape of him through his trousers. Hot, tough, thick, twitching, hungry, definitely not asleep.

“There, there. I got you, too.”

“Or address it directly, it's not a puppy.” Although his hips went off on a slow tangent against her palm.

“But he came out all shy to say hello,” she cooed.

“That’s it.” He angled his head down, one amused brown eye peering at her through a curtain of curls. “You keep talking like that, I’m going to have to hide him in your mouth.”

She gasped in delighted outrage, giggling. “Harry!”

The bed trembled with his laugh, and then he solved the entire issue before she could ponder over how a person could get used to hearing that sound. He dragged his palm up her thigh, guiding it around his hips, until she was straddling the length of him. Her panties brushed over his hard cock, heat meeting heat, and she felt every thick ridge, every line, every damn vein that could very well ruin her in moments.

“Is this okay?” he murmured, concerned.

One of his banded hands stroked the back of her head, fingers combing slowly, tenderly, like he was coaxing her to sleep. Or smoothing down every raised feather of her fear.

She nodded, eyelids drooping on a sigh. “Mhm. Soooo okay.”

He kissed her forehead and reached behind him to turn off the lamp. “G’night, sweetheart.”

The tenderness startled her every time—as if she’d trip and fall straight through it if she wasn’t careful. But she let herself sink into him anyway, resting her cheek on his chest. She squeezed her face in, clutching him tight. She wanted to keep this so much, always, all of his late nights, his midnights, his mornings...

“Night, Harry,” she whispered, finally letting the world go quiet.

Monday, 10 a.m.

People loved to say breakfast was the key to a great morning. Which was very cute, very wholesome.

Also, deeply incorrect.

The true champion of mornings—the real engine of human joy, the nutritional powerhouse—was sex.

It didn't have to be great sex. Plain vanilla sex, which had everything: cardio, serotonin, dopamine, a light dose of emotional delusion, and enough sweat to count as exercise. It was health, wellness, and spiritual alignment all in one sinful package. Gwyneth Paltrow could never.

And if sex was the reigning champion, then waking up next to Harry Castillo was the victory parade.

She surfaced from sleep to find herself still tangled in him—his legs locking hers, his arms wrapped around her so tightly it was a miracle she didn’t wake up laminated. Sunlight traversed his face in a theatrical diagonal, like God had ordered down a spotlight just for him. And then the choir started up (in her head, unfortunately.) White robes, big wings, gold harps, smug-looking angels.

The choir crescendoed. Then suddenly... snoring?

Yep, loud Harry snores. The angels dissolved into the horrendous rumbles of a big snorer, bed shaking along with the sounds of an induction motor powering up. A real honk-shoo symphony. It should have been a form of domestic terrorism, but.

On Harry—it was unfairly adorable. Disgustingly adorable.

She was definitely fucked when she watched him for ten indulgent seconds, her heart all soft and gooey, then... reached over and pinched his nose.

One beat. Two. Three. Four—

Finally, Harry inhaled with the force of a vacuum cleaner, eyes snapping open, wild and disoriented. Then he noticed her, instantly appeased, and tucked himself right back around her, as if her body were his home base.

“Morning,” she chirped, planting a kiss on the arc of his cheek. “You were about two snores away from sucking in the walls.”

One bleary eye opened. “Imagine what I could do fully awake.”

“Be a human foghorn?”

“Next time, I’m biting you back.” He burrowed his head closer into her hair.

She threaded her lithe fingers through his hair, delighting in the feeling, sweeping curls back from his forehead, and both his eyes fluttered shut with a pleased sigh. Then came the kisses: her cheek, her temple, then the soft place under her ear that short-circuited her entire frontal lobe.

“I could wake up like this forever,” he murmured against her skin. “How have we never done this before?”

She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Morning breath. Don’t be romantic right now.”

He grinned against her palm, nudged it away, and nuzzled her nose with his. “Then I’ll just kiss you everywhere else.”

Well, goodbye, spine. Goodbye, dignity. Welcome, big O.

She melted, then liquified, then bolded, italicised, and climbed on top of him. In under ninety seconds, the morning evolved from tender to biblical. Like, pillars-of-fire, Old Testament biblical.

How was she to explain this to anyone who was not her? See, morning sex with Harry was like... sourdough. Stupid comparison, but painfully accurate.

A little warmth, a little patience, and suddenly the whole thing rises and comes alive. Bouncy, best devoured fresh, and preferably with cream. (Alright, she really needed breakfast.)

She peeled herself out of his sleepy vice grip, pushed him flat onto his back, and swung a leg over his hips. His morning hardness ground up into her, arrogant, unapologetic, so ready for her.

His fly was already open—because apparently she’d been grinding in her sleep—so he propped up on his elbows, laughter rumbling against her chest as he buried his face between her breasts.

“Yeah,” he mumbled into her skin, bliss-drunk. “Forever.”

Oh, god, she was so fucked.

She could absolutely, unequivocally get tired of Harry as a human being—his overbearingness, that hot mouth that always had an opinion, his heroic tendencies that made her want to scream into a pillow. But sex with him?

No one gets tired of miracles, and he was inconveniently starting to feel like one.

She propped herself up, then slid her hands along his shoulders, pulling him in for a slow constellation of kisses down his neck. Harry shifted her closer, cosying her over his thighs. They were both still molten from sleep, all soft limbs and softer hearts, desire humming like a lazy current instead of the usual wildfire.

“You wanna stand up,” he murmured, lifting the strap of her camisole with two fingers, “and show me what’s hiding under this? Make my whole morning worth getting out of bed?”

She winked, whispering, “Yessir,” because teasing him was half the foreplay.

A pleasant, dizzy heat rushed her—half arousal, half ego—so she rose onto her knees, pushing off his chest, eyes never leaving his, hooking her thumbs to her waistband, slowly peeled down her pyjama bottoms and skimming off her camisole. His eyes followed like they were attached to her hips by a string, all while yanking his trousers down and kicking them off the bed.

The black La Perla set was almost unfair in daylight. Soft sheer triangles lifting her breasts, another cut of satin framing her hips—floral, delicate, wanting.

And oh, he was losing it.

Dark eyes crawled over her with reverence, then greed, then something softer. It was almost too simple now when he looked at her like that. So simple to want him, have him, and want him a little more. He had completely devoured with an overwhelmed smile until she humoured him a little.

When she swivelled her hips and struck a smug little pose, he actually laughed under his breath. She bit her lip for extra effect.

She snapped the string at her hip. “Oh,” she murmured, fingers drifting to the thin strap of her bra. “That sound means I’m winning. Like what you see?”

“I’m breaking laws for it, babe,” he admitted in an exhale. “Do you know how illegal this is?”

“Being too hot, officer?” she purred. She slid the strap down one shoulder, not enough to free anything.

“Being fucking irresistible.” He crooked a come-hither finger, voice darkening. “Get that ass over here before I press charges.”

“Needy, needy.”

Of course, she went, but she didn't walk this time. She sank to her hands and knees over the duvet, moved toward him in a slow, feline prowl, ass swaying with sinful intention, her hair falling forward in a fluffed-up curtain as she crawled between his knees.

“Sweetheart,” he groaned with a grin.

“Ssh-ssh-ssh... feel this.”

Her hands slid up his strong thighs first, and when she reached his torso—she leaned in, embossing a kiss just below his sternum. A soft one, then another, higher. Then one to the hollow of his throat. The lune of his neck. She kissed her way up him, inch by torturous inch, tasting the tension in his skin, the restraint in his muscles, the storm he was trying not to let break.

His large, impatient hand rose to her chin, the cold emerald ring brushing her throat as he traced a decadent line down her front—between her breasts, over her stomach, stopping just above her panties. Her muscles fluttered under his fingertip.

“Now?” she asked, arching a brow.

Harry wrinkled his nose—a mischievous, boyish expression he had no right to make while his thumb hovered two inches from her slit. “You starve me.”

She mirrored the expression mockingly, caught his wrist, and dragged his hand around to her ass. “Later. Just fuck me.”

There it was—the sacred trifecta of words every adult eventually blurts out, whether from desperation, epiphany, or sheer hormonal mutiny. She hadn’t meant to sound like she was invoking a spell, but apparently it worked, because he caught her hips like she’d dropped her entire world into his hands and trusted him not to let it roll off the Atlantic bed.

Morning breath, pillow hair, consequences—who cared? She could fuck him through a gas leak at this point.

He dove in, slanting his lips against hers, unhurried, greedy, his tongue swirling with hers. His brown curls were a riot, his skin warm with sleep, his biceps firm as they crushed her closer to him, and she felt the familiar spark of him waking up everywhere they touched. Hair standing on ends, goosflesh over his skin, abdomen tautening. Some alchemy, she thought hazily, involving both germ exchange and emotional exposure. So romantic.

Broad palms over her hips, thumbs brushing her lower belly, fingertips tracing the small indents at her waist—he mapped her like he missed an update overnight.

“How do you want me, Harry?” she murmured against his ear, teasing the lobe with a nip. “Soft and sweet? Hard and deep?”

He rumbled a laugh into her neck. “Both ways, Dr Seuss.”

Composing erotic Seussian sonnets. This was how he scrambled her—the man turned her into a poet of porn.

But he wasn’t listening. Or rather, he was—just not to the words. He slowed them down, tugging her back to appraise her. Just to look.

“Where do I even start...?” he said to himself. “Dreamgirl.”

His palms knew her better than mirrors did. He charted her body like a cartographer reading a landscape: the swell and valley of her breasts, the ridges and hollows of her ribs, the curve of her stomach, the softness at her waist she usually hid under perfectly chosen dresses. The endless stretch marks like river lines, the little dimples of cellulite like tiny lakes, the scars and freckles scattered like a galaxy—they were all perfectly hers, and he touched and loved every one, all the topography of years of lived-in imperfections that she carefully disguised only by tubes of Sally Hansen leg makeup.

Now it was all here. Disorganized. Bare, unavoidable, and she was waiting, absurdly, for him to blink, or laugh, or ruin it by looking away.

Harry didn’t; he reached her face last, cupping it gently, and she cuddled into his palm without thinking.

“This,” he said quietly, thumb brushing her cheek, “this is the closest I’ve ever felt to you.”

He could’ve confessed anything—love, longing, fear—but nothing would’ve landed with the same serene force. They’d had feral, spectacular sex before, borderline architectural feats. An unguarded morning mess with no armour, no banter to hide behind, was the one that felt the most intimate.

And because speaking would’ve split her chest wide open—because one wrong syllable might’ve let everything she tried not to feel spill out—she chose the one language she didn’t mistrust.

Touch.

She took his hand to her lips, kissed each fingertip—slowly, knowingly—tracing out coordinates on a map only the two of them had access to.

By the time she rose up and aligned him beneath her, her brain wasn’t doing language anymore. Sensation, nerve-endings, Harry, and the intense need to love the shit out of him. Make it count, make it last.

She sank down onto him in one controlled, devastating descent, slow enough to feel every gorgeous inch. Every inch until she could choke on the fullness, her every sense was sensitised to a million.

Their groans met halfway between them, a perfect collision—her, at the sweet, shocking stretch; him, for the heat that wrapped around him like a welcome home present—and she folded herself over him, clenching around him like her body could overwrite every previous version of closeness she’d ever allowed.

Full. Deep. And unmistakably hers as much as she was his.

Christ, those eyes of his... so dark, so goddamn possessive when he was buried this deep in her. He knew no one had ever had her like this, the only luxury he’d ever wanted and finally gotten his hands on.

She surged in and out of every memorised ridge of his length, mouth latching onto his neck, teeth piercing him to scrape a hickey, licking up his throat. Loud, wild, feral—she didn’t bother pretending she was capable of moderation. That crap had packed its bags the second she woke up to his snores.

Quietest, softest sex she had ever had. Her moan cracked out when he attempted to thrust up into her—needy, powerful, a shock straight through her spine. Oh, the bliss. Oh, the Harry-ful ecstasy.

And yet—for all the billions technically riding beneath her, inside her—nothing made her feel as helpless as the way he watched her. She was his: his choice, his private liberty, all of his futures with a picket fence and a mailbox with both their goddamn names on it.

The tempo built, tension tautening between her hips, their bodies syncing easily, and still, with all his gentle strength, he held her like she was breakable—one arm wrapped securely around her waist, grounding her while his mouth closed over her breast.

He freed it from the lingerie, patient, impatient, greedy, all of which she secretly adored, then set to her—lifting it to his tongue drawing slow circles, suctioning on a nipple until he bit down, flicking up and down, teasing around, savouring. She felt each motion like a current through her ribs. When she threaded her fingers through his hair and swept it back from his forehead, he glanced up.

He bared a wicked smile on her nipple and a muffled “hi,” before hollowing his cheeks with a suck, and she twitched violently, a moan tearing out of her.

“Fu-uh,” was all that eventually made it out.

Then, suddenly—before she could register anything beyond ‘oh, fuck’—her world flipped.

In a thoughtless, instantaneous motion, she was on her back, he was settled between her thighs, taking her hands, entwining them with his, drawing them up above her head, and sliding into her in a single hard stroke that blanked her vision. Body-slammed was more accurate.

“Come on!” she whined between kisses.

“You come on,” he triumphed with that twisted little smirk she hated loving, “you don’t get to stay in charge every time you climb on top of me.”

He drove into her—slow first, then deeper, building a rhythm that made her breath scatter and back arch. Sheets bunched under them as he worked her up the bed in fast thrusts.

“Look at that,” he murmured. “You wanna come that bad?”

She nodded helplessly, grabbing his shoulders, nails dragging, her walls tightening around him reflexively.

Her body tightened, pleasure winding sharp and electric where she couldn’t hold it, more, more, faster, inside, inside, and she broke—came hard, went to pieces all over him, shaking, her moans dissolving into vowels that barely resembled language or his name.

He held her through the ride, one hand braced beside her head, the other keeping her hips locked right where he wanted them.

“That’s it, sweetheart. There you go,” he rumbled his coax until she felt it vibrate at her clit. “Come for me. Make a mess on me.”

As if she needed permission.

Instead of chasing his own finish, he seemed determined to wring every tremor from her, dark eyes drinking her in this mindless state of pleasure, stalling just enough to prolong her orgasm long, his gradual strokes undoing wet, slick sounds from somewhere between her legs. Saviour was generous; she felt more like a willing hostage.

A broken, wanting sound tore out of her. Longest orgasm ever, period. She was limp now, overwhelmed by the sensation that pricked at her skull, hovering in that impossible space where the question of ‘how am I still coming?’ stopped being rhetorical and started feeling existential.

“One more,” he breathed. “Gimme one more, honey.”

When he finally kissed her—deep, claiming, head angled just where he liked it—his hips began to snap harder than the last, deeper, each intense thrust pulling a moan from her, building right into the oversensitive edge she was still riding.

When her eyes eventually met his, for a heartbeat, it felt quietly seismic. Stars flickered in that moment, bleeding in softly between them, an intimate little universe spun just for two.

His arms tightened around her, muscles locked, breath hot against her mouth, and she felt that last fraction of control slipping from him.

“Shit—oh, baby—” he groaned, wrecked and breathless.

And then he spilled into her while she was still trembling, still pulsing around him, still stupidly, blissfully open.

They stayed tangled like that—boneless, overheated, slick with sweat and others, pleasantly dazed—for a full two minutes that felt both indulgent and necessary. He’d gone slack on top of her, cheek pillowed on her breasts, hands roaming with lazy entitlement. Cock still buried deep, the occasional twitch a reminder that neither of them was quite done processing what had just happened.

You know, there are moments in life—rare, suspiciously perfect ones—when everything settles and clicks into place. When the universe stops improvising, the noise just shuts up, the chakras line up like obedient little soldiers, and peace doesn’t feel aspirational. You are content.

She was well within the walls of that cosmic moment now, contained and held by it.

“Harry...” she began, stroking the back of his head.

“Whatever it is, the answer’s yes,” he mumbled.

She laughed, satisfied, and felt herself reflexively clench around him without meaning to. “Cracked the code for next time. We were that good, huh?”

He lifted his head, eyes bright with a grin that was far too smug for a man still catching his breath. “Missionary on a bed is pretty unbeatable.”

She arched a brow. Expected more from him, to be honest.

“Correction,” he said, hovering closer. “Missionary on a bed with you is unbeatable.”

That, she could accept. She looped her wrists behind his neck and pulled him down into a kiss—hungry, unhurried, acquainted. His hips rolled in instinctively, knees nudging her thighs apart, urging himself back into the newly empty fragment of space inside her. She heaved in a breath and shuddered out a moan.

She broke away first, because she was the practical one—even now. “We’re going to be stuck here all morning.”

“I see no flaw in that plan.”

She smiled, knowingly wicked. “So, you don’t want to see me all wet in a bikini?”

He groaned into her neck. “That’s a dirty trick.”

She patted his chest. “Come on then, rich boy. Up and at ’em. Up, up—Harry, no—don’t you—!”

He ignored her entirely, launching a relentless assault of kisses that had her giggling and squirming. He locked her in place, smothering, spreading his kisses as if claiming every inch of exposed skin.

“Every time,” he murmured, punctuating the entire sentence with kisses dressing her neck and shoulders, “I think, I’ve had enough. And every time, I realise”—kiss, kiss, kiss—“absolutely not. I want more, more, more. You make me so selfish.”

She endured the love onslaught with a happy sigh and a grin she didn’t bother hiding. She was satisfied right where she was.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured against her mouth, the word still warm from a kiss. He lifted his head again, eyes searching hers now, collected, unmistakably nervous.

“I want to do this right.”

Her stomach dipped. Oh?

“Alright,” she said carefully after a beat, bracing for impact.

“You. Us.” He hesitated, then committed with a hard swallow. “I don’t want to screw it up.”

She felt the warning flare immediately—heart, ribs, instincts all lighting up at once—fight, flight, flirt. She chose the third.

“I—ah.” A pause. Then, because she was her: “Probably not the conversation to have while you’re still inside me.”

His brows slanted over his eyes. What?

She gave him a look. You know what.

He glanced down, realisation dawning, swore quietly and—because he was unbearably a man—he rocked into her once more, a reflexive, greedy goodbye. Then he pulled back with visible effort, like leaving somewhere he already missed. She inhaled sharply, resenting how quickly the absence registered. Hated it even more that her body mourned him before her brain could catch up.

She tugged her panties back on and sat up, spine straightening to hear his bad news. He flopped onto his back, forearm thrown over his eyes, like a man about to be interrogated by Cupid or a jury of ex-girlfriends.

She rested a soft hand on his chest. I'm right here, she wanted to say. Beneath, his heart leapt a big beat and answered immediately—fast, uneven, utterly unpolished. She grinned, liking that she did that to him.

“Honey.”

He let out a long breath. “I know, I know. Just give me a second to recalibrate.”

“Recalibrate what? What’s going on?” she coaxed.

He hesitated, jaw flexing where she could see it. “How do I say this without sounding like I’m auditioning for Gilmore Girls?”

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it—heady, surprised. Of course, he watched Gilmore Girls. That tiny, stupid detail—him on a couch in his mighty Tribeca apartment, emotionally invested in fast-talking women—was treacherous to her resolve.

The sound drew him back; he dropped his arm and met her gaze with a crooked, nervous smile, replacing the bravado.

She slid her fingers along his jaw. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He searched her face for some sign. “You honestly want to hear it?”

She nodded eagerly.

“You sure about that?”

She frowned. “I don't like this game.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is not how I planned for this to happen. I had a whole thing...”

“For what? I swear, I—”

“Sweetheart,” he cut off.

She sucked in a breath. “Yes, Harry?”

“I love you,” he said.

Whoooooosh. Heart. Motherfucking. ATTACK.

So, as the moment stretched, there were no good responses preloaded for this scenario.

And her body froze with the spike of her pulse; the words had hit her bloodstream before her brain caught up. The thoughts arriving were spectacularly unhelpful—fuck, fuckety fucking fuck—echoing around her skull like a fire alarm.

She stared at him, lips parted, the screeching shock giving way to the obvious. “Oh.”

Because the truth—annoyingly, irrevocably—was, of course, this was a sentence catching up to reality. She knew.

She had known, in her slow, undeniable accumulation of proof. Since the night she’d shown up at his apartment unannounced. Since he’d turned what should’ve been the world’s most expensive booty call into whatever this was. Since the way he stayed with and without, looked at, and chose her.

She had clocked it, catalogued it under ‘inconvenient truths’, and, because survival required it, pretended she saw something else.

But there it was now, spoken and impossible to evade.

When the kick-up love dust finally settled, she didn’t discover his feelings in that moment. She finally stopped pretending she didn’t already know that this man was abso-fucking-lutely in love with her.

“I do, I love you so much,” Harry repeated, breathing a sigh. This time, he was planting his feet into it. She had never expected to hear those words aimed at her, right then, or in this lifetime—spoken so plainly, without an angle, and meant it.

“I’ve been sitting with it for a long time now. I checked—timing, proximity, sex brain, all the usual bullshit. It’s not that.” He met her eyes, mouth tilting. “I really, really love you. I hold you, and things slow down. When you’re gone, and it gets louder. You’re next to me, and I’m not managing the room, performing or negotiating feelings. I look at you, and it’s—easy.”

The word easy seemed to rattle him as much as her. He went still, as if he’d tripped over a truth he had never planned to say out loud, or perhaps he never thought the words would make it out.

Which gave her time to do what she did best when intimacy demanded responses: plan an exit. Jokes. Distance. Motion. She could be halfway dressed and charming in under thirty seconds if she needed to be.

She could feel the instinct coiling, ready... but where the fuck was she running off to anyway? Every inch of the planet was fair game. That’s the thing about two hearts, equally unhinged—they always find each other and sparks fly.

She dropped her gaze to the hand on his chest, the thrill on her tongue curdled briefly into regret.

“I’m not asking you to meet me there. I just… needed to be clear about where I am,” he reminded her quietly.

His heart was still racing too fast for his exposed words, and that made sense. It certainly hadn’t gotten the memo that he was a rich, powerful, brilliant man making a calm confession to some dumb thief.

The impulse to leave tasted reliable. Except—it didn’t win.

Because, damn it all, she loved him, too. So freaking undeniably hard.

Had, for longer than she wanted to inventory. It crept in sideways, in pauses, with it's destiny-bullshit, not before the sex (she wasn't rewriting history)—though she wasn’t about to pretend his godly, gorgeous, big, presidential dick hadn’t made a compelling argument and made her listen to him—but somewhere in the space where he stayed when she tested him and didn’t try to correct her sharpness or soften her edges for comfort.

Harry offered her things she’d trained herself not to want anymore: closeness without leverage, desire without obligation, a side of sweet love, all tied together with the radical freedom of fucking up and not being discarded for it.

It didn’t sound as stupid and terrifying as it used to. Still dangerous but—not impossible anymore. The thought skidded through her head, scattering a thousand emotions behind it.

As if sensing the precise moment she might bolt, Harry closed his hand over hers. His heart kicked harder under her palm. And that—ridiculous, earnest, wild truth—that he was afraid too, but still here.

He wasn't fearless, but he was choosing her anyway.

“Baby,” he called.

“Yeah, still here,” she mumbled, impressively calm for someone whose internal organs had just been rearranged—emotionally and otherwise. “Just… recalibrating.”

Yes. Recalibrating sounded sane. Mechanical, temporary.

“You do that. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned in and brushed a soft, criminally affectionate kiss to her cheek.

She startled anyway, her heart skipping like a faulty gear, and then he ruined the moment by moving away.

Harry rose out of bed with the audacity of a man who had just poured his heart out and expected the universe to accommodate it. Naked completely, golden sunshine catching every unfair, exercised line of him—bare ass, big dick, rippling back muscles. He stretched—arms up, spine arching, neck rolling—completely unbothered by her stare, as if nude confidence were his natural state.

She blinked. Had she hallucinated the last thirty seconds? Was this post-orgasm psychosis?

“Thought you're not going anywhere,” she mumbled.

“Not too far, I promise. But three lovesick confessions in twelve hours?” he replied, unimpressed with himself. He clucked his tongue and placed his hands on his hips. “My credibility is in shambles. I need to do something aggressively masculine to recover.”

She burst out laughing despite herself, mood lightening instantly. “What, you’re gonna wrestle a bear? Or punch a—wait.” She held up her fingers, counting to make sure. One last night, one just now... “When was the third?”

She looked up for an answer. He was gone.

“…Harry?”

Movement caught her eye, and she glanced down.

“You gotta be shitting me.”

Harry was on the floor... doing push-ups.

Slow, controlled, ridiculously competent push-ups. Back flexing, biceps straining, perky ass clenching, little grunts escaping like punctuation, confidence visibly reassembling itself rep by rep. His cock was swinging slightly with the motion, too, because Cupid clearly had favourites.

“Omigod,” she muttered, snickering. “You’re processing feelings with your delts.”

“Working through it,” he puffed.

“Do it one-armed, baby,” she challenged.

And he did. Didn’t even falter—one arm tucked behind his back, pace steady, barely winded. So, so, so hot, ridiculous, tempting to not get on top of.

He popped back up to his feet, did two cross punches in the air, and winked. “Yep. Still got it.” He lowered his voice a gruff octave while leaning to cup her chin. “Did I scare you off?”

“With the naked push-ups?”

His mouth flattened. “Not exactly.”

She rose onto her knees, fingers in his hair, brushing her nose with his. “Then, no. Not even a little.”

Relief softened his expression. “Good. I don’t say things I don’t mean—I’m only yours.”

She hated how much that worked, and she grinned immediately when he pushed a soft kiss into her lips. All aloof, he grabbed a towel and headed for the en-suite, whistling like he hadn’t just detonated her emotional equilibrium.

“And hey, when was the third!” she called after him.

The bathroom door swung shut.

She collapsed back into the mattress with a huff, staring at the ceiling, heart still doing laps, thighs still slick, brain short-circuiting. She rubbed a hand over her chest.

Hot rich motherfucker in love doing push-ups about it.

This wasn’t what she’d imagined wanting—it felt inevitable now. And she would not change a goddamn thing about it.

Never once did she think she could love a man this fucking hard.

Monday, 12 p.m.

my everything list

Shopping $$$

Get drunk :P

Make a decision - Job?? GED?? both? neither?

yacht ride, babyyy

Cook

Harry, we need to hash some things out before

I love you I love you I love you lovelovelovelove

She had never been good at focusing on one thing. Luckily, life rarely demanded purity of attention—simply momentum. Perfection was a luxurious myth sold to people with time and parents, and life didn’t actually reward any singular devotion; it rewarded traction. Juggling. Overlap. The ability to keep several fires burning and pray that at least one stayed warm.

Multitasking, then, was her love language.

And today’s lineup so far: cooking, GED, job lead, dote over Harry. Ambitious, but manageable. She’d done worse on less sleep.

So far: alive.

The GED application glowed on her laptop at the edge of the counter, one accidental elbow away from a battery death. It was going shockingly well, all things considered. No guardian consent needed—thank fuck—no parental signatures to bullshit or explain. New York treated it like a free-for-all, which felt right, and six dollars for practice tests. She could swing six dollars. There was ten grand just whiling away in her bank account right about now.

The kitchen smelled like butter and heat and crazily close to optimism.

Cooking-wise, she’d gone intentionally low-risk, high-reward: pancakes. Simple, forgiving, impossible to fuck up beyond recognition.

Not the shitty protein-packed ones either—these were indulgent. Golden, thick, fluffy. She dumped sugar where restraint suggested “a pinch” and melted a whole bar of Echiré butter. Oatmeal had been a staple food for the poor; now, these pancakes were proof that she was doing all right for herself.

Her phone was jammed between her shoulder and ear while she whisked with one hand and nudged the laptop trackpad with the other.

“Yes—nannying for about three years now,” she answered, cracking an egg with misplaced confidence. “Part-time... sometimes full-time. Depends on the week, really... or the meltdown—”

Shell fell in. She stared at it.

“…so I also have experience with twins,” she resumed quickly, fishing shell fragments out with a fingertip. “Triplets, if you count kittens—oh, shit.”

The microwave beeped angrily. Butter smoked into the sterile kitchen.

“Dammit.”

“Are you busy?” the voice on the other end asked gently. “Is this a bad time?”

She hissed as she yanked the butter out and tossed it with a clang against the marble countertops. “Not a bad time at all!” She laughed nervously. “Nah, no way. I’m just being... efficient.”

The girl on the phone—Sarah—sounded younger than her stress warranted. She wasn’t actually looking for a nanny, it turned out. She was looking for a caregiver for her father. Joel something. Sixty-something. Stubborn as hell, according to Sarah, and deeply uninterested in the concept of help. The family was moving to Connecticut—she, her husband, their kid—and she didn’t want to leave her poor dad alone in New York pretending he was indestructible.

She nudged the phone tighter against her shoulder, flicked the stove down a notch, and scanned the counter for the vanilla she knew she’d put right there.

“Schedule-wise—I’m flexible,” she continued. “I don’t scare easily, I don’t hover or nag, and I’m very good with tantrums. I’ve survived a two-year-old screaming at me in Cantonese for forty-five minutes straight. Didn’t cave once.”

She paused, reconsidered. “I mean—he did win eventually. But I held out longer than his parents.”

Nannying had always been like that, it's own sort of fun. Less about the job, more about where it took her. Those Upper West Side apartments with too much light and upholstered furniture that no one ever sat on. Nouveau riche couples who talked about gallery openings, charity galas, their Hamptons timeshares and preschool waitlists like they were battle plans. Sometimes, late at night, she’d lie on a guest bed wrapped in hotel-grade sheets and imagine herself there permanently.

Inside the Charlotte York life. Chanel suits, Vivienne Westwood chokers, a well-behaved little puppy, a kid she chose, and a rich, handsome husband who was gentle without being condescending.

Now with Harry in her picture, the fantasy felt… closer. Just a tiny inch.

Sarah laughed on the other end—relief blooming through the line. “You might be overqualified.”

She set the bowl aside and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “That’s what I'm hoping.”

There was a hesitation. A soft crackle of static. “I should warn you—my dad isn’t easy. He can get… bossy. And rude.”

As if summoned by the accusation, a booming voice cut in from the background—gruff, irritated, unmistakably alive. “I can hear you, kid.”

She winced reflexively.

There was a sniff. A chair scraping. Then, louder: “Now who the hell is this supposed to be?”

Sarah hadn’t muted the line. Rookie mistake. “Potential caregiver,” she mentioned.

“Yeah, that’s not happening. Hang up.”

“Listen to me, just—”

“I don’t need a goddamn nanny, y’hear me?” His voice drifted farther away, fueled by momentum and indignation. “I ain’t crippled, I ain’t senile, and I sure as hell ain’t dying yet!”

“Oh, c’mon, Daddy, nobody said any of that! It’s just for backup, your knees are—” Another scrape, something knocked over. Sarah returned to the phone, mortified. “I’m so sorry about this. Can I call you back?”

“Yeah, totally,” she said easily, very much kissing ass. “You can check my references, too, and you’ll hear—”

The line went dead. She stared at the contact screen for a second, then let out a breath through her nose.

“—good things,” she finished to no one. Fifty dollars’ worth of an international phone call went down the drain.

She bit her lip and set the phone face down on the counter. Inhaled—once, twice, three times—until her lungs burned just enough to feel productive. This will pass. This will pass. This will fucking pass.

The job prospect had collapsed back to zero, which was impressive considering it had barely gotten off the ground. Still, the griddle was hot, and the GED application still sat patiently open on the laptop, blinking at her.

Note to self: not everything had to be solved at once. Survival had taught her that much. Progress was relative; it was a series of small wins.

I love you. I really, really love you. I’m only yours.

She leaned back, closed her eyes for a beat, and let the words sink in. Her smile widened, and her mood lifted with it. Magic words from a magical mouth.

She scooped batter onto the buttered pan, the sizzle answering immediately, reassuring. As it spread, she glanced back at the application and felt the old doubts stir.

Sure, she’d been smart once. A sharp, bright, first-bench kid. But who was to say years of scrubbing bleach into tile grout with fumes clawing into her sinuses and wiping baby asses hadn’t sanded a few neurons right out of her brain? Academic intelligence wasn’t exactly a muscle she’d exercised lately. Mostly, she’d trained in endurance, patience and the art of getting through a day without wanting to scream.

The pancake settled into an obedient circle, browning perfectly, bubbles blooming neatly along the edge.

Okay, well. At least one thing in her life behaved.

She flipped it. Golden. Immaculate. “Boom.”

Two things, then.

She prided herself on multitasking—on keeping several plates spinning without letting any one of them crash too loudly, no room to think too hard about any one thing.

But none of it had prepared her for Harry walking into the kitchen.

And just like that, her flawless system developed a variable. The I-love-you variable.

I love you. I really, really love you. I’m only yours.

It was almost offensive how good he looked in a post-shower, beach-is-life-adjacent way—linen button-down hanging open past his chest, khaki shorts, barefoot on marble. His hair was damp, curls darkened, towel slung over his shoulder as he scrubbed at it lazily. Whatever wreckage they’d made of each other in the bedroom an hour ago, the sharp haze of lust had been softened to a sweet eye-crinkling smile.

She blanked for a second. Fingers drumming uselessly on the counter while her stomach became overcome by flutters. Too late to deny she had fallen so hard on her ass for this man. She became acutely aware of being watched, like she was doing something extraordinary instead of flipping pancakes and silently spiralling about her future.

He came up behind her, pressed close, and scattered some fond little kisses along her shoulder.

“I didn’t know my shirt came with a hot model,” he murmured, tracing a hand down the seam of his button-down to cup between her legs.

Heart melt. Panty melt. Whole-soul melt. She swallowed the smile and nudged him back with her hip. “Guess we’re both winning. And move over, I haven’t showered yet.”

“Still, hard not to feel like I’m winning right now,” he said, giving her ass a little love tap.

Then his attention drifted—to the island cluttered with batter splatter, upturned measuring cups, crushed eggshells, and a saucepan of tragically scorched butter. And finally, inevitably, to the laptop.

Oh no.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t look, please, please.

He did, of course. Yes, you beautiful, wealthy man who just declared his love—here is the part where you discover the girl you’re falling for is finishing high school embarrassingly late and pretending she’s not fucking terrified.

“Hey, honey,” she rushed in, too fast, “do you want to finish these for me? I’m gonna run upstairs and clean up.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said absently, already scrolling. Fuck.

She scowled and escaped the kitchen, her footsteps heavier on the marble than she meant them to be. What was so fascinating about it anyway? A few exams. Some scores, some numbers. A life checkpoint she’d shoved into the corner of her mind because it was easier not to look directly at it. Now it loomed, avoidance coming for its due.

Byredo in the blue-mosaic walled rainfall shower, L’Occitane worked into warm skin, Eres white-and-gold bikini strings knotted, and finally she tugged on a short knitted cover-up to catch her reflection—sun-warmed, loose-limbed, almost suspiciously happy.

Not even slow progress could dent this because—come on. She was about to have breakfast on a private island in France with the hottest man she’d ever laid eyes on after a morning of soft lovemaking. A man who had very calmly, very earnestly told her he was in love with her, and fine, she hadn’t said it out loud yet, but her body had cast its vote, she was swimming in it too, deep and effortless, like she’d forgotten what it felt like to stop treading water.

So honestly? Everything else could fuck right off.

Harry’s appreciative glance—quick, warm, unmistakably proud—came with a kiss pressed to her temple and a quiet “my sexy girl.” Then they were outside on the sheltered sandstone verandah, slumped near the zero-edge pool where the water disappeared into the clear blue horizon. Afternoon light glazed everything gold, saline air scented with the sweetness of new beginnings and sugar.

Breakfast—lunch, technically—was unapologetic: a tower of pancakes drowning in maple syrup, butter melting into glossy puddles, summer berries bleeding red into whipped cream, with a side of pistachio biscotti and coffee. Beyond it all, the Monaco coastline lounged in the distance, absurdly enchanting, a postcard view.

At the rate their hormones had been syncing, she half expected them to be off fucking their brains out again by now, publicly, irresponsibly, but instead they sat there and ate together, close, sluggish, drifting in and out of each other’s orbit and thoughts. A delicate little something had settled between them, and neither seemed interested in jostling it.

She caught herself studying his legs—bare now, stretched out comfortably—and the scars.

Thick, purled, pale lines mirrored on both sides, too symmetrical to be accidental. Surgery, maybe. Or something more violent? The questions rose, then waited. She was learning when not to pry.

“What did you picture for yourself, back then?” Harry asked suddenly, like he’d been waiting for the right silence.

She sputtered a laugh into her coffee. “Excuse me? Where did that come from?”

“Curious about little-you,” he clarified. “What did you think you’d be?”

“You first,” she countered. Old habit. Deflect, delay.

“Chef.” No hesitation. He leaned back, sunlight catching in his hair, turning it silver. “You’ll need to ask my brother about it sometime. He’s got photographic evidence. Fat kid, bowl cut, deeply serious about béchamel.”

She opened her mouth to tease, but he lifted a finger. “Uh-uh, no diversions. Your turn.”

She scooted closer instead, invading his space like that might change the rules.

He squinted at her, mock-studying. “Princess. Fashion icon. Pop star. Professional surfer.”

“I’m going to pretend that wasn’t wildly sexist,” she said sweetly, “and say world domination.”

“Ah. Supervillain.” His smile curved. “That tracks. You’ve already conquered my entire being.”

She laughed along with him. “Is this absurdly soppy version of you here to stay?”

“Be honest with me, sweetheart.” He turned toward her now, serious, one knee folded up on the cushion. The scars were unmistakable in the light. “Really, who did you think you’d become?”

Her gaze dropped away. She shovelled berries into her mouth, buying seconds with cream and sugar. Chewed, thought, prepared to hear his laughter.

“Doctor,” she said, muffled.

He nodded, as if confirming his thoughts. “Called it.”

She blinked. “You did not.”

“I absolutely did,” he said calmly. “You’ve got that spark. The one people get when they want to fix big things. I can see it. You’d be curing cancer by now, or—” his eyes lit mischievously, “turning people into dinosaurs.”

A smile tugged at her mouth, crooked and rueful. “Yeah, well... too late now.”

He didn’t soften it with platitudes; he only reached over, thumb brushing her wrist, right where her pulse gave her away, and said, “I don’t buy that for a second. Sounds more like unfinished business.”

She flipped her hand over and squeezed his, firm, gentle, a thank-you disguised as a boundary.

No, it was too late. It was finished. Even if she dragged herself through the next twenty years with her teeth clenched and her head down, doctorhood wasn’t waiting at the end of the road for her. That road had closed, and life had made sure of it. You don’t get to reroute a whole fucking life without casualties.

But—

There was a small, stupid, embarrassing thought that had taken up residence in the back of her head. One she hadn’t invited, but hadn’t evicted either.

Ever since the Pretty Rich Pussy cartoon had run—thanks to him, of course—she’d gone digging through old boxes, old drawers, old versions of herself. Sketchbooks, scribbles on receipts, loose scraps that were too clever or too cute to destroy. Proof that she’d always been like this, drawing, doodling, making sense of the world edgewise.

Wouldn’t it be something—to make a living off it?

Not a fantasy life or an overnight success. Simply as someone who got paid for askew perspectives and telling the truth sideways. Surrealist art, if you wanted to make it sound expensive. Maybe a column, some exhibitions. Maybe her name printed clean and unborrowed beneath her own work. A legacy that didn’t belong to anyone else.

It wouldn’t rival Harry Castillo—nothing could—but at least it would exist in the same gravitational field. He was undiluted energy, motion, emotion and impossible speed. She didn’t need to match him; all she had to do was stand upright without disappearing.

“I won’t guess anymore,” he said softly. “Tell me what's on your mind.”

Her eyes dropped to their hands. The instinct of a girl in love kicked in—silence, minimise, don’t ask for shit you can’t afford.

“I…” The words made it halfway out and died there. “Nothing.”

It physically hurt to say, like swallowing a lie sharp enough to draw blood. There were a thousand things she wanted—but real love had always come with strings and expectations and humility. She was all up in it now.

“Don’t bullshit me either,” he bit out. “I know when you’re lying.”

That was the problem. It was fucking exhausting—this way, he kept offering himself without keeping score. Letting her take and take without once asking for collateral.

“It's not like that,” she sighed.

“Let me put it this way at least: if there were no consequences—no debt, no expectations—what would you let yourself try?”

So, if he was offering, she allowed herself some more honesty. She quietly told him, “I’d stop pretending this is just a phase.”

Yes, because a ‘phase’ meant that you did not have to defend it, or protect it, or grieve it when it was taken from you. But hearing herself address it now, she realised how much it cost her to keep up with that. How many versions of herself she folded up and shoved into drawers because believing felt greedy, unnecessary, stupid? Stripping all of it down of those flimsy lies, she was left with a stubborn pull that had survived every mistake and slammed door. And admitting that—to him, to herself—felt like stepping out without armour and daring the world to swing.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Look at me.”

When she did, he shifted closer, observant eyes faltering her heart, lifting their joined hands to his chest. The intimacy of it—skin, heartbeat, heat—hit her so suddenly.

“Do you know what I’d do for you?” His voice plunged into a bare huskiness, rougher now. “I’d bring the sun down to one hand, and put the moon in the other. I’d burn bridges, cross every line I’ve ever drawn all for—for this... this single lock of hair.”

He tugged lightly at a loose strand. When she smiled eventually, he closed his hands over hers again, pressing them flat against his heart.

“So,” he said, “whatever it is, you bright, beautiful girl—let me make it real for you.”

He continued to look at her, hopeful, patient—like he wasn’t going anywhere until she said the thing she was circling. She exhaled, defeated by that alone.

“Harry...” She gulped painfully.

“Right here, baby.”

“Please don't give up on me,” she finished.

His attentive gaze sharpened. He lifted her chin gently, as if he needed to read her face up close, not miss a single flicker. When her vision blurred and she blinked it back, he absorbed it all.

“I’m a fucked-up insensitive jerk who takes feelings for granted, I've made horrible mistakes, and hurt people, but,” she heard herself and realised how much pain it caused her to admit this, “I wasn't always like this. Nobody starts life dreaming of taking what isn’t theirs, but I ended up here. One bad decision stacked on another.”

She drew a shaky breath. “I want to return now. For me. And—” she slowly committed, “—for you.”

Her voice wobbled, and she hated that it did. “I can’t promise perfect. I can barely promise I won’t screw up again. I probably will. But I can promise better. That I’m trying, and I can be different.”

She swallowed, sounding too scared when she admitted, “So just—stay, Harry. Stay with me while I figure it out.”

That was all she had to offer him. Not a sweet miracle or a grand reprieve. Honest effort, and the promise that she would keep showing up, that when she fucked up again—and she definitely would—she wouldn’t run, and she wouldn’t ask him to either.

Love, she’d learned, was the easy part. Belief was the hard one; it was what rooted it, what kept it upright when everything else tried to tear it down. And he was a man who lived in motion, thrived in noise and pressure and appetite—rich in everything except stillness. Maybe she could be that, the little chaotic thing that held in it.

As if he’d plucked the thought straight out of her skull, he said, “I don’t need you fixed.”

“Lucky you. Fixing is not my strong suit,” she lamely joked.

“I mean it.”

She sniffled into her wrist. “Stop making me so damn tense!”

“Baby, I don’t want some other future version of you I have to wait for. I want this one. You, right now. The divine, clever, trying one.” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, as if warming something cold back to life. “Better is enough for me.”

She swallowed. “You say that now.”

“I’m saying it because I know exactly how perfect you are—and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone else.”

All the love shards in her chest softened in a way that scared the shit out of her. Annoying, beautiful.

She leaned forward, resting her brow against his, their hands tangled between them. His soft breaths framed her jaw, and for the first time in a long time, she felt… contained. Like there was an invisible roof over her head, something solid keeping the weather out, keeping her warm.

“I can’t promise I won’t disappoint you,” she whispered.

He let out a soft laugh. “Yeah. Join the club.”

Too much, too much. She had to move. She pulled back with a soft laugh, sniffed, and shook her head.

“Feels like we just got here and we’re already having a third-act conversation.”

He smiled, clocking the deflection and letting it pass anyway. “Then don’t go. Stay as long as you want. Do whatever you want, wherever you want.”

“Don’t be all unrealistic and tempt me,” she groaned, dragging a hand through her hair. “We’ve got lives to get back to, hon. Real ones with bills, messes, bad days.” A beat. “And I’ve got a lot more shit to untangle.”

“We?” he asked, amused.

“We,” she echoed, surprising herself with how natural it felt.

“I like ‘we,’” he murmured. “I could ‘we’ with you for a long time.”

She poked his cheek. “‘No pressure, Castillo—” Then she leaned back, bolder now, stretching out and swinging her legs up onto his lap, knees bent near his chest. Casual. Not casual at all.

“...But how would you feel about doing the whole ‘we’ thing back home as well?”

The goddamn smile on his face, unfiltered, boyish delight, was almost nasty. Like she’d just offered him the last cookie on earth and promised to fuck him senseless afterwards for good measure.

Jesus. Men.

And tragically—infamously—her man was a leg man. His hands slid to her feet, thumbs massaging slow circles before trailing up her calves. He lifted one leg, mouth warm on the inside of her ankle, and answered her in pieces—each word broken open by a kiss.

“I,” kiss, “absolutely,” kiss—kiss—kiss—“love that.”

She snickered, flexing her leg. “Me, too.”

“You,” kiss, “make me,” kiss, “so,” kiss, “so happy.”

She dragged the back of her spoon through the last of the berries and cream, smacked her smiling lips, and thought—yeah, she could get used to ‘we.’ It tasted better than fate's bullshit ever had.

“Just so we’re aligned,” Harry drawled, settling back, hand still firm on her leg, “this is where I stop sharing you with coincidence? And I get to keep you more often now?”

She snorted softly into a bite of berries. “I’m trying this new thing called commitment. Turns out coin-cidense is très… fatigue, ooh la la.”

He rumbled out a laugh. “Babe—”

“Yes, Harry,” she cut in, rolling her eyes, though the smile ruined the effect. “You can keep me. A little more than often.”

He stroked his considering hand back down her calf, all possessive. Her words had just stoked a whole bonfire. “Meaning... boyfriend privileges.”

She made a theatric gasp. “Sacrebleu!”

“You can sacre my bleu later, naughty girl. Answer.”

She giggled, pointing her spoon at him before setting it aside. “Very confident for someone who hasn’t seen the fine print on those privileges.”

“I wouldn’t bring it up if I hadn’t earned a few,” he said easily. “I’m a generous stakeholder.”

She bit her lip, hard, to keep the smile from giving her away. “Oh yeah?”

His gaze dipped to her mouth, lingered, then met her eyes again. “Oh, yeah. And I play for keeps.”

Fucking loverboy. God, she could eat him up with a fork.

She caught his shirt collar, tugged him in, close enough that his breath brushed her lips. “Dibs on the rest of you, then.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe his luck, dark eyes all soft and half-lidded, mouth already open for her. “First dibs forever, baby.”

And she kissed the fuck out of her boyfriend.

Yes—boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Harry, devastatingly hot, stupidly in love with her, and all hers. You know how it goes—when you know, you know. And they knew. There was nothing left to hedge, no hovering lines, no loopholes.

There was a finality in the kiss, too, fully enforced want and love. They were both smiling into it, ridiculous, incandescent, like two jack-o’-lanterns tearing into each other.

Because weight was just advice, Harry lifted her easily onto his lap and yanked her cover-up over her head in one smooth, greedy motion. She fisted his shirt in retaliation, plucking some buttons, dragging it off him, helping where she could, impatient as hell. His hair fell apart immediately—mussed, perfect, wispy curls—and her chest went tight at the sight of him like that. All bare skin and devotion. One gullible target and one cynical marksman made the perfect chaos.

“Harry,” she breathed, wrecked.

“I love these,” he murmured, palms warm as he squeezed her breasts together, playful and reverent. “I love all of you. Every inch, baby.”

She. Could not. Stop. Fucking. Smiling.

He kissed her again, and she clung, legs locking around his hips as he carried her—hands firm on her ass, his hard-on pressing in to the seam of her legs like punctuation—down into the recessed living room. He navigated the little tilt of steps and the velvet couch without missing a beat, mouth breaking from hers only to speak.

“You realise I was a perfectly functional man before you,” he said mildly, as he set her down.

She fell back against the couch, spread out for him, arms over her head, all seductive. No strategy or shame. She just wanted to look sexy for him. “And now?”

“Now I’m your machine. For sex and so on.”

“We need to explore the ‘so on’ portion,” she said, lazy, smug. “Boyfriend privileges are a lot of work, you know.”

Jesus, his response in kind was not even fair. She’d take half-naked, sun-warmed Harry over tailored, boardroom-polished Harry any day. The tan, the chest, that kiss-swollen mouth, those impossible eyes. Everything inside her clenched hard enough to count as exercise. Best Kegels of her life.

“If they’re this good,” he exhaled, eyes dark as he took her in, “they require a steady hand.”

She arched a brow and parted her thighs, inviting, unrepentant. “Good thing I can handle a steady hand... or two.”

His smile went feral—wolfish, wrecked—and then he was there, spreading her thighs wider, hauling them up with an ease that made her laugh even as it made her breath stutter. He dipped his head, a low growl thrumming out, muscles flexing on his back, all beautiful intent.

She sighed when he ploughed a series of soft, teasing, ticklish kisses over the fabric of her panties, too deliberate to handle.

“Two steady hands, huh?” he murmured, tongue flattening right into the spot where he knew she would feel it most. “That what you really want?”

Her hips rocked into his tongue instinctively, needy, shameless. “I—”

“Harry!”

Freezing wasn’t the word. They both blew a fuse at the exact same time.

He lifted his head. She lifted hers. They stared at each other—three full seconds of identical, wide-eyed disbelief—like they were silently negotiating whether a human voice had just entered the room or if they had finally fucked themselves stupid.

“Harry, are you in here?” the voice came again—young, female, too close, unfamiliar.

Uh-oh. Oh, fuck.

Her brain went straight to DEFCON 1, skipping logic entirely. Who the hell is that? Why is she here? Confused staff? Threesome applicant? Ex-girlfriend? Or—sure, yeah—a murderer. Murderers announce themselves politely all the time.

Harry moved first—thank god for him—smooth as sin even while clearly dying from cockblock. Or was it pussyblock? He eased her legs off him carefully, pressing a finger to his lips in a warning that was half command, half apology.

“Let me handle this,” he whispered.

“I hate you,” she whispered back.

“Liar.”

Footsteps. Close now. Too close.

“Yeah, Charlotte!” Harry called out, voice immediately normal, maddeningly composed. “Just a sec!”

A sec? A fucking sec? And who the hell was Charlotte? Now, she had very little experience being a committed girlfriend, but she was learning quickly that she might never survive it—because this man was about to make her lose her goddamn mind.

Harry scrambled for his shirt and whatever dignity was left on the floor. She, meanwhile, clocked the fact that she was still in a slinky, criminally indecent bikini and—surprisingly—felt zero regret. If this was going to be humiliating, she wasn’t going to shrink from it.

She stalked after him, hissing, “Who the hell is—”

“I told you I had the place for the week, asshole!” another voice cut in—male this time, approaching fast, and way too familiar. Sounded… disturbingly like Harry.

“The baby, honey,” Charlotte scolded.

“Shit, sorry.”

A baby. There was a baby.

Wait, pause. Some old mental files snapped open with the unending ‘Charlotte, Charlotte, where have I heard that name?’ and pulled from an obsessive deep-dive—post-first-one-night-stand paranoia. Wedding afterparty photos. Background shots. Harry, half-visible, lurking at the edge of frames. His brother and new sister-in-law. Drunk smiles. Too much champagne. Family.

Oh, that Charlotte. Then the other voice must be the brother... what was his name again...?

Harry was suddenly in front of her again, already pulling his shirt around her shoulders like a shield. “Here—come here, baby. Quick.” He adjusted the fabric, buttoned a few strategically, then lifted his fingers under her mouth, framing it gently. “Small smile. For me?”

She slid her arms into the sleeves and glared up at him.

“I tried,” he muttered, resigned, smoothing the shirt over her chest.

His hair was still wrecked—standing up in places from where she’d been clawing at it earlier. She reached up without thinking, fixing it, taming sex knot into casual human.

Charlotte’s voice stalled mid-step. “Where the hell—” Then, sharper: “Harry, there you are!” Charlotte’s eyes landed on her. “...Oh my.”

Peter stopped short behind her. “Whoa.”

The ocean did that whooshing, theatrical breathing thing it does when no one’s talking. Four adults holding their collective breath. Then the black baby carrier in Peter’s grip made a small, offended snuffle, like the infant disapproved of the tension.

She stood there in Harry’s shirt, barefoot on cool stone, pulse still jackhammering through her veins. Her body hadn’t caught up yet—still wired from the abrupt stop, the almost. Chin instinctively tipped just enough because pride, once engaged, does not disengage.

From what she remembered, Peter and Charlotte were the couple. Their wedding had been featured in The New York Times and splashed across wedding blogs as a trendsetter. Wedding journalists had feasted on it for a month straight. Golden-hour photos, impeccable tailoring, effortless symmetry. A love story that arrived pre-approved.

And Charlotte’s Instagram confirmed it—public, polished, and aggressively curated—had been a rabbit hole of glossy ‘Adore’ tags and destiny-coded captions. A matchmaking agency special. Set up, locked in, meant to be.

Which meant—married bliss or not—she was still a dead fucking duck.

This was not how you met your boyfriend’s family. Especially not a boyfriend you’d technically had for—what—ten minutes? Fifteen, if you counted eye contact?

“Harry,” Peter said, dragging the name out, smirk already loaded.

“Pete,” Harry bit out, jaw tight.

“Harry,” Charlotte echoed, this time impressed as hell, giving her a curious, assessing sweep from bare feet to borrowed shirt. Flattering from such a gorgeous woman.

“Char,” Harry sighed.

“Harry,” she murmured, tugging his wrist—a reminder that she was still here. And that he was still half-naked.

Harry scrubbed a hand down his face and into his hair. “Baby.”

“Baby?” Peter and Charlotte chimed in unison.

“Okay—enough,” Harry said, and she watched him flip the switch. Public Harry snapped back into place. Composed, charming, gracious, like it didn’t cost him a goddamn thing. Impressive, annoying... hot as hell.

His unambiguous hand settled on the small of her back. “Yes. She’s officially my girlfriend. Peter, Charlotte—this is... the Eve I told you about. Babe, meet the more infuriating half of my family. My dick of a brother, and the poor girl who drew the short straw.”

The couple spoke over each other in murmurs, each expressing their own complaints. Very cute.

But that fucking name again, like a ghost with branding rights. Would it ever stop following her around? She clicked her tongue up at him softly. “Eve? Really?”

“You have to admit, it’s a cute nickname,” Harry soothed, thumb brushing slow circles against her spine. “My original sin. My favourite sin.”

She widened her eyes, delighted, chucking his hand off her. “Shit timing.”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Charlotte burst out with it, already striding across the room. Sure—sooner, when they’d been dating all of twenty minutes.

She leapt up and pulled Harry into a tight, congratulatory hug. “I’m so happy for you, H.”

“And you—oh my god, it’s so nice to finally meet you,” Charlotte squealed, pivoting immediately and wrapping her in a vice-grip hug that popped at least one lung. She pulled back, eyes bright.

“I feel like I've known you for so long, and... just look at you,” Charlotte said, hands still on her arms like she was cataloguing her. “You’re even more beautiful than the photos I—”

“Charlotte,” Harry warned, already making a cut-it-out gesture.

“—should not elaborate on,” she finished cheerfully, obediently. “Nothing too weird. You know how boys with crushes are. Ridiculously obsessed.”

“Amen to that,” Peter snorted from behind the baby carrier. “I’ve never seen a man zoom in on shots so respectfully in my life.”

Charlotte chuckled along anyway. “I swear, my baby heard your name before mine.”

Oh wow.

So Harry Castillo hadn’t just been interested in her. That folder that he had said he had on her... he’d literally catalogued her, and had her cross-referenced. It all lined up—the uncanny timing, the run-ins that had felt accidental but never quite were, the way he always seemed to know just enough to stay one step ahead without tipping his hand.

Her mind immediately took the scenic route to worst-case scenarios. Private investigators, background checks, a terrifyingly expensive man in loafers tracking her movements, like she was a stock about to spike. Equal parts flattering and mildly alarming, that he kept tabs on her all the time.

She tipped her head, studying Harry now with new eyes. “This whole time?” she asked.

He shrugged, as if he’d already decided how much of the truth she could handle. “You were a question mark. I don’t like unanswered ones.”

“So,” she drawled, even as her pulse ticked up, “you spied on me.”

His mouth tilted at one corner. “That’s an aggressive word.”

“I don’t know whether to feel very special,” she continued, “or start checking my phone for trackers.”

“Both can be true,” Peter offered helpfully.

Harry sighed before turning to deadpan at his family. “Outstanding, family. I feel deeply cherished. Anyone else care to pile onto the psychopath accusations?”

His avid brother didn’t miss a beat. “Obviously, this psychopath is nuts about you. Nuts isn’t even it. He’s goofy about you. Fully brainsick—”

Harry cut him off with a look alone. “Don’t.”

“No, no—emotionally fucked,” Peter clarified, unbothered, rocking the carrier with one foot like he’d done it a thousand times. “Which is honestly better for him. He’d been walking around like a stray before you showed up.”

She felt Harry’s embarrassment before she saw it—a subtle pressure shift beside her. She bit the inside of her cheek, amused.

Peter noticed immediately and pointed at her, nodding along. “See? That look. That’s how it starts. That’s how he gets you. Next thing you know—”

Harry stepped forward, voice calm, eyes lethal. “You really wanna finish that sentence, Pete?”

“You gonna hit me while I’m holding your niece?” Peter grinned.

“I think I might give it a—”

Charlotte clapped her hands once, interrupting. “Okay, that’s enough testosterone for one afternoon.” Then she turned to her, tone shifting—warm, curious, sincere.

“Eve, why don’t you and Harry join us for dinner tomorrow night? We’re planning on meeting with a few friends, and I would really love to get to know you better.”

The question was obvious; this was it—the moment you either shrank or showed up. Stepped forward and let yourself be seen.

She glanced up at Harry. Rather than wary or defensive, he looked… hopeful, openly elated at the idea of her saying yes.

She breathed out her little ball of anxiety through a smile. He never helped. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? Public humiliation? Emotional exposure? Mild death? Whatever, she had survived worse.

“Yeah,” she said, rolling her shoulders back. “I’d love that, too.”

“Yay!” Charlotte celebrated, then smacked a hand over her forehead. “Dang it—you haven't met our little Sophie, yet...”

Harry’s hand found her back again, saying I’m here without making anyone else listen in, and her stomach flipped—like the vertigo of stepping onto solid ground after a long fall.

She let herself lean into Harry just a fraction, just enough for him to feel it. He held her in place, lips coming to rest down by her temple.

“Thank you,” he murmured against her skin.

“You owe me,” she whispered, nudging her elbow into his ribs.

Well, fuck, she thought. Looks like I’m really doing this.

Looks like ‘Eve’ was meeting the family.

Did you really think I'd let this chapter go without a Pedro boy?!?! Also, predictions as to what you think is going on... and which Pedro boy would you like to see next?

taglist 🫶 { @oolongreads (you are my one and only), @woodxtock (my baby girllll, my whole life), @divine-timings , @jodiswiftle (BAY-BEH!), @bensonispunk @brittmb115 , @for-a-longlongtime , @pedritotito (THE EVE!), @desuidesu , @bluelightwrites , @isa942572 , @mallingcalling-blog , @i-howl-like-a-wolf-at-the-moon , @itstokyo-cos , @indiegirlunited , @holholliday , @i-workwithpens , @any-corrie , @yourallaround-simp , @directfromreynaldo , @tezooks , @yungsuesi-blog , @czessianna , @aleariixx , @noisynightmarepoetry , @th3mrskory , @monamedeiros12 , @oliveksmoked , @gothcsz , @itstheanxietyforme , @lowrisemiller , @rosey1981 , @ovaryacted , @hermionelove , @wowitsafemale , @murphyjett , @nightwitchlurker , @verdensverstemennesker , @k-d--h , @mistresssolana } - for the few interested sweethearts and babes, thank you for your support! 🌻🦋 “”

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dams ☁️