Chapter 5 5

A bargain had been struck in the silent, gilded cage of the penthouse. The devil had named his price with chilling precision, and now, payment was due. A cold, dreadful resolve, the kind born of absolute necessity, settled in Fiona's stomach. If she was going to sell her soul, she would not do it cowering and weeping. She had to retain some microscopic shred of agency, even if it was a performance. She had to show him she wasn't completely broken, that there was a flicker of defiance left in the woman he sought to possess.

Taking a shaky, fortifying breath, Fiona pushed herself off the desk and stepped forward, closing the final inch of space between them. The air crackled with his potent, masculine energy. Her hands, trembling almost uncontrollably, reached up, her fingers hesitantly gripping the fine, expensive material of his shirt's lapels. It was a clumsy, desperate, almost pathetic attempt to initiate the physical consummation of their twisted contract, to seize a sliver of control in a situation where she had none. She tilted her head up, forcing herself to meet his dark, intense gaze, and leaned in to kiss him.

Brendon didn't move. He remained perfectly still, a predator watching its prey walk willingly into the snare. His eyes never left hers as her cold, trembling lips brushed against his. It was only then that he reacted. His hands clamped onto her waist, his grip firm and possessive, brooking no resistance. With a single, fluid, almost contemptuous motion, he lifted her as if she weighed nothing and set her upon the vast, polished surface of the mahogany desk, scattering a stack of neatly arranged financial reports. The heavy terrycloth of the bathrobe fell open, exposing her completely to his cool, assessing gaze.

He moved between her legs, his body a wall of heat and power, trapping her. His mouth descended on hers, not with passion or even lust, but with a chilling, claiming force. It was a kiss of ownership, a brand. As his hands began to explore her body, sliding over her skin with an owner's methodical, entitled entitlement, Fiona's gaze, dazed and unfocused, drifted past his broad shoulder. Her eyes caught a flash of brilliant, polished metal under the soft, ambient light of a nearby lamp.

Her blood, which had been pounding in her ears, turned to ice.

A simple, solid gold band. Polished, understated, and sitting unequivocally on the ring finger of his left hand.

Her mind screeched to a halt. The world tilted on its axis, the dizzying heights of the penthouse suddenly feeling like a precipice from which she was about to be shoved. He was married. The thought slammed into her with the force of a physical blow, a stunning, brutal betrayal that felt almost as sharp as Grant's.

In that instant, fragmented whispers and catty rumors from her university days-gossip she had dismissed as the envious chatter of her classmates-coalesced into a horrifying, crystal-clear certainty. Professor Powell has a type... a brilliant, beautiful student... His first love, they called her his 'white moonlight'... Adelina Hunter... a prodigy, a genius... she was his student, too. They say he never got over her.

The full, sickening, degrading scope of her situation crashed down on her. She wasn't just a desperate woman making a deal with a powerful man. She was a pawn in a sick, repetitive psychodrama. A cheap, sordid, living replacement for a ghost he couldn't have. And worse, so much worse, she was a homewrecker. The dual, crushing taboos of a student-teacher transgression and the unforgivable sin of being the other woman ignited a firestorm of moral disgust in her soul. She, who had just been so brutally cheated on, was about to become the instrument of another woman's pain, a wife who was likely at home, waiting for this monster to return.

"No," Fiona gasped, the word torn from the depths of her being. She shoved against his unmovable chest with all her might, her body suddenly rigid with a desperate, frantic revulsion. This was a line she could not cross, not even for her grandmother. "Stop. Get off me! You're married!"