Bound By The CEO's Cruel Contract

Claire Page's eyes snapped open.

The first thing she registered was the pain. Every muscle in her body screamed in protest, her hips throbbing with a deep, bone-aching soreness that made her want to curl into herself and never move again. She lay still for three seconds, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling of the Bulgari Hotel's presidential suite, the morning light filtering through sheer curtains in thin, accusing strips.

She sucked in a breath. The air tasted of expensive cologne and sex and something else she didn't want to name.

Claire turned her head slowly, her neck stiff, her scalp tender. The movement made her wince. There, taking up more than half of the king-sized bed, was the broad, bare back of Ellsworth Mosley. His breathing was even, controlled, the rhythm of a man who slept like he conquered-deeply, completely, without dreams.

Her stomach lurched.

She pushed herself up on one elbow, the Egyptian cotton sheet sliding down her chest. The motion sent a sharp spike of pain between her legs, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to keep the sound inside. Her teeth broke skin. She tasted copper.

Claire swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her feet touched the cold marble floor, and her knees buckled immediately. She grabbed the nightstand with both hands, her knuckles white, her fingernails digging into the polished wood. The lamp rattled. She held her breath, waiting.

Ellsworth didn't stir.

She straightened slowly, her spine protesting each incremental movement. Her gaze dropped to the floor. There, crumpled in a heap of destroyed fabric, was her dress. The burgundy velvet evening gown she'd spent three months saving for. It was torn down the side, the zipper ripped clean away, the delicate neckline shredded beyond repair.

Her face burned. The back of her throat tightened.

The phone on the nightstand vibrated.

Claire flinched so hard she nearly knocked the lamp over. She snatched the device, her heart hammering against her ribs, her eyes darting to the bed. Ellsworth's breathing remained unchanged. She unlocked the screen with trembling fingers.

A text from an encrypted number she recognized as Leo Chen's. No greeting. Just a PDF attachment-a wire transfer confirmation for one million dollars to the account on her employment file. The memo line held three letters: NDA.

The cold hit her first. Then the shaking. It started in her hands and spread outward, a violent tremor that rattled her teeth. She gripped the phone until the case creaked, until her fingerprints smudged the glass. A million dollars. For her silence. For her body. For the thing she could never get back.

She pressed her free hand against her mouth. Her eyes burned, hot and desperate, but she wouldn't cry. Not here. Not where he might wake and see.

Claire pushed off from the nightstand. She walked toward the bathroom on legs that felt borrowed, each step sending fresh waves of discomfort through her pelvis. She closed the door behind her with a soft click and turned the lock.

The shower was already running when she realized she'd turned it on. She stood under the spray, fully clothed in the hotel robe she'd found hanging on the door, and let the cold water pound against her skull. It ran down her face, her neck, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. She let the heavy, sodden robe fall to the shower floor, a drowned thing, and stepped out onto the plush bathmat, wrapping herself in the thickest towel she could find before she dared to approach her makeup bag. She watched the water spiral down the drain and imagined herself going with it.

Twenty minutes later, she stood before the mirror in borrowed silence. The woman looking back was a stranger. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Claire opened her makeup bag with steady hands-the hands of a professional, a top-tier executive assistant who could manage three calendars and seventeen time zones without breaking a sweat.

She applied concealer in layers. The bruise on her jaw. The marks on her throat. The fingerprint-shaped shadows on her upper arms. She worked methodically, blending until her skin looked like porcelain, like nothing had happened, like she was the same woman who'd walked into this hotel twelve hours ago.

She twisted her hair into a severe bun at the nape of her neck. She cinched the belt of the fresh, dry hotel robe she took from the closet. She found her glasses in her bag, the heavy black frames that made her look severe, competent, untouchable.

When she opened the bathroom door, Ellsworth Mosley was sitting up in bed.

He leaned against the headboard, the sheet pooled at his waist, his torso bare and ridged with muscle that moved as he breathed. In his right hand, he turned a custom matte-black lighter over and over, the flame catching and dying, catching and dying. His eyes-dark, depthless, predatory-fixed on her with an intensity that made her want to step backward into the bathroom and lock the door again.

"Impressive," he said. His voice was gravel and smoke. "You switch roles faster than the NASDAQ opens."

Claire stopped three feet from the foot of the bed. She held her tablet against her chest like a shield. "I need to return to my apartment to change. I will be at the office by eight thirty."

Ellsworth's thumb stilled on the lighter. Something flickered across his face-irritation, maybe, or something hotter she couldn't read. He'd expected tears. Expected begging. Expected her to crawl back into bed and try to negotiate for more.

He gestured with his chin toward a garment bag hanging on the suite door. "Unnecessary. Leo delivered that an hour ago. Your size. Now, my schedule."

Claire's eyes flickered to the black bag, then back to him. The sheer, invasive preparedness of it stole the air from her lungs. "Your nine o'clock with Morgan Holdings has been moved to conference room B. The due diligence files are prepared. Coffee will arrive in four minutes."

"Get out," he said.

Claire dipped her head in a slight nod. She turned on her heel and walked to the door, her steps measured, each one a silent battle against the fire in her hips, a mask of professional grace hiding the agony beneath. Her three-inch heels, which she'd retrieved from the living area, clicked against the marble in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat.

She pulled the heavy door closed behind her. The latch clicked with finality.

Inside the suite, Ellsworth threw off the sheet and stood. He moved toward the bathroom, intending to shower, to erase the night from his skin. His foot caught on something. He looked down.

The white Egyptian cotton sheet lay twisted across the mattress. And there, dead center, was a smear of rust-colored red. Small. Almost invisible. But unmistakable.

Ellsworth Mosley went very still.

His mind replayed the night in fragments. The way she'd moved beneath him. The tension in her thighs. The small, swallowed sounds she'd made that he'd mistaken for pleasure. The resistance that had given way too fast, too completely.

He walked to the bedside phone and punched in an internal number. Leo answered on the first ring.

"Sir?"

"Claire Page," Ellsworth said. His voice was low, controlled, and infinitely dangerous. "I want her medical records. Financials. Every address she's lived at for the past five years. Have it on my desk by noon."

He hung up without waiting for a response.

Claire's heels clicked across the marble lobby of Mosley Tower at 7:45 AM. The morning shift security guard nodded at her. She arranged her face into the smile she used for strangers-warm at the edges, empty at the center.

"Morning, Ms. Page."

"Morning, Marcus."

She swiped her badge at the executive elevator and stepped inside. The doors slid shut with a soft pneumatic hiss. The moment she was alone, her shoulders dropped. Her spine curved. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal wall and sucked in air like she'd been drowning.

The elevator rose. Sixty floors. Sixty-one. The pressure change pressed against her eardrums, her sinuses, the tender space behind her eyes. Her stomach rolled.

Ding. Sixty-eighth floor.

Claire straightened. She smoothed her skirt. She walked down the corridor with her chin up and her gaze fixed on the horizon line of windows at the far end. The women's restroom was on the left. She pushed through the door, checked the stalls-empty-and turned the deadbolt.

She made it to the last stall before her knees hit the tile.

The retching started immediately, violent and dry. There was nothing in her stomach. She hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, before the gala, before the hotel, before everything. Acid burned her throat. Her abdominal muscles seized, and each contraction sent fresh agony through her pelvis, through the torn places the hot shower hadn't healed.

Tears streamed down her face. She didn't bother wiping them.

When the spasms finally stopped, Claire slumped against the partition. Her forehead rested against the cool metal. She closed her eyes, and the darkness behind her lids opened like a door.

She was seventeen again. The Stark Academy spring formal. She'd saved for three months to buy the thrift-store dress, to get her hair done at the mall salon. Jerrad Tyler had asked her to meet him by the fountain. She'd thought-

The memory cut in with perfect clarity. Jerrad with his arm around Ashton Stark's waist. Ashton's lip gloss shining under the string lights. The way they'd looked at her, at the dress that was already unraveling at the seam she'd tried to hide.

"Did you actually think he'd take you?" Ashton had asked. Her voice was honey and arsenic. "A charity case? A parasite living off the Tyler family's generosity?"

The wine had been red. Cabernet, probably. Expensive. It had hit Claire's chest and splashed up onto her chin, her throat, soaking through the thin fabric to her skin underneath. It had been cold. So cold.

"Stay away from our world," Ashton had whispered. "You don't belong here."

Claire's eyes snapped open. The bathroom stall smelled of industrial cleaner and her own sweat. She fumbled for her phone, her fingers clumsy. The screen lit up. One million dollars. Seven zeroes. Enough to buy Ashton Stark's entire wardrobe and burn it.

She laughed. The sound cracked in her throat.

She'd done it. She'd actually done it. She'd walked into that hotel room last night with her chin up and her heart hammering so hard she thought she'd pass out. She'd reached for his tie with hands that shook, trying to mimic the way she'd seen women do it in movies-slow, confident, dangerous.

Ellsworth Mosley had looked at her like she was transparent. Like he could see the terror underneath the mascara, the inexperience beneath the red lipstick. His eyes-God, his eyes-like birds of prey, like something that hunted from above and struck before you knew you were dying.

She'd thought she was hunting him. She'd thought she was the spider.

Claire pressed her hand against her mouth and tasted salt. She was going to be sick again.

Footsteps in the corridor. High heels. Someone tried the bathroom door, found it locked, moved on.

Claire wiped her face with toilet paper. She flushed. She stood at the sink and ran the water until it was ice cold, then splashed it against her cheeks, her neck, the hollow of her throat. The woman in the mirror looked like a corpse with good bone structure.

She found her compact. Her lipstick. The red she'd chosen specifically because it made her look like she ate men for breakfast. She applied it with surgical precision.

The mask was back in place when she unlocked the door.

Leo Chen stood in the hallway, a stack of folders under his arm, his phone pressed to his ear. When he saw her, his face went through three expressions in rapid succession-relief, anxiety, something else she couldn't read.

"Claire. Thank God." He ended his call without saying goodbye. "He's already here. He's been here since seven. He's tearing through the morning staff like a-" Leo stopped. His eyes narrowed. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." She took the folders from him. Her fingers didn't tremble. "Which meeting first?"

"Morgan Holdings at nine, but-Claire, he's asking for you specifically. He threw his coffee at the wall when I said you weren't in yet."

Her heart contracted. One hard squeeze, then nothing. "I'll handle it."

She walked toward the oak doors at the end of the corridor. The doors to Ellsworth Mosley's office. They looked like the gates of something biblical. Something you didn't come back from.

Her hand was steady when she knocked.

"Enter."

Claire pushed the door open. The office smelled of leather and cedar and the particular ozone scent of expensive electronics. Ellsworth sat behind his desk, a wall of glass and steel between them, his attention fixed on a tablet that showed columns of numbers she recognized as the Morgan Holdings pre-merger analysis.

She crossed to his desk with the coffee she'd collected from the break room-black, two sugars, exactly how he took it. She set the cup down six inches from his right hand, turned, and began to retreat.

His hand closed around her wrist.

The grip was iron. His fingers overlapped, pressing against the bone, and she felt her own pulse hammering against his palm. He didn't look up from his tablet. He simply applied pressure, pulling her backward until she was bent at the waist across the desk, her face level with his, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his dark irises.

"Sleep well?" he asked. His breath was warm. Mint and something darker.

"Thank you for your concern, Mr. Mosley." Her voice was flat. Professional. The voice she used for conference calls with Singapore at three in the morning. "I slept adequately. Your nine o'clock-"

"Your neck," he interrupted.

His free hand rose. His thumb found the place where her concealer was thickest, where the bruise from his mouth sat purple and tender beneath the makeup. He pressed. Hard.

Claire's vision sparked white at the edges. She didn't make a sound. Her teeth sank into the inside of her cheek, and she tasted blood, and she held his gaze with eyes that gave away nothing.

Ellsworth's thumb circled. The pressure shifted from pain to something else, something that made her stomach clench with memory. He was watching her face with an intensity that felt like dissection. Like he was trying to peel back the layers and find the machinery underneath.

"Interesting," he murmured.

He released her wrist so suddenly she almost stumbled. He picked up the Morgan file and threw it at her chest. She caught it against her body, her arms folding around the heavy binder.

"Thirty minutes," he said. "I want the consolidated financials, the liability assessment, and the projected EBITDA for the next eight quarters. If it's not perfect, you'll be cleaning out your desk by lunch."

Claire turned and walked out. Her knees didn't buckle until she was behind her desk, out of his sight.

She sat down. The chair was standard ergonomic, nothing special, but the pressure against her hips, against the places that were still healing, made her vision gray out. She gripped the edge of her desk and waited for the world to return to focus. Her forehead was damp. Her blouse stuck to her spine.

She opened her laptop. Her fingers found the keys. She began to type.

Through the slats of the blinds behind her, Ellsworth Mosley watched her shoulders shake. He watched her pause, her hand moving to her abdomen, pressing hard before returning to the keyboard. He watched her spine straighten by force of will alone.

He picked up his phone and dialed her extension.

"Yes, Mr. Mosley?" Her voice was steady. He couldn't see her face.

"My itinerary for next week. Bring it in."

"Of course, sir."

She appeared in his doorway ninety seconds later. Her color was worse-grayish, translucent-but her hands held the papers without tremor. She crossed to his desk and extended the folder.

Ellsworth leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms over his chest. He didn't take the file.

Claire held it out. Her arm began to shake. First the fingers, then the wrist, then the whole limb, a fine tremor that traveled up to her shoulder. She didn't lower it. She didn't speak. She simply stood there, offering him something he didn't want, while the seconds ticked past and her body betrayed her piece by piece.

He let her hang for thirty seconds. Forty-five.

Then he reached out and plucked the folder from her fingers. His touch was brief. Impersonal.

"You're learning," he said. "In Mosley Holdings, we take what we're paid for. We give value for money." His eyes held hers. "Never forget your position, Claire."

"I never do, sir."

The words hit him wrong. He couldn't say why. He felt them like a hook beneath his ribs, pulling at something he didn't want to examine.

"Get out," he said.

She left. The door closed softly behind her.

Ellsworth stared at the space where she'd stood. His hand found the lighter in his pocket and turned it over and over, the metal warming against his palm.