Claimed By My CEO Stepdad

Aria Pov

"I hope you are coming home tonight, because tomorrow you are going to work with your stepdad in his company."

My mother's voice carried down the short hallway of our apartment, bright and full of that particular pride she only used when she spoke about him. I stood by the front door with my bag already on my shoulder, one hand still resting on the cool metal of the knob.

"Yes, Mom," I answered.

I didn't turn around. I already knew the expression Victoria would be wearing-the soft, satisfied curve of her mouth, the way her eyes lit up whenever she mentioned the man she had married three months ago. The man I had never met. The man whose face I couldn't even picture. Victoria never stopped talking about him. How successful he was. How respected. How generous. Every month, without fail, money arrived in her account. Enough to cover the rent, the bills, the little extras she had gone without for years. Enough for both of us. She said his name like it was a promise. She said the company he owned was a fortress. She said tomorrow I would finally step inside that fortress and start building a future that didn't depend on tips or late shifts or the thin kindness of strangers.

I pulled the door open and stepped into the evening.

The air outside was warm and heavy, the kind that clung to skin. I walked without any real destination at first, just moving away from the sound of Victoria's voice and the weight of her expectations. Tomorrow I would meet him. The stepfather. The stranger who paid for our lives while remaining a ghost. I had asked to see a picture once. Victoria had only laughed and said there would be time enough for introductions when I started at the company. She made it sound simple. Clean. As if a man could send money for months and then simply become family the moment I walked through the glass doors of his building.

I didn't want to go home and sit with those thoughts. I didn't want to listen to her talk about him for another hour. So I turned in the direction of Ethan's apartment.

I was going there to surprise him. In seven days we were supposed to get married, and I had been holding the news close, waiting for the right moment to tell him face to face. I wanted to see his expression when I said it. I wanted the ordinary night, the quiet apartment, the way he would pull me in and listen while I told him that everything was finally going to be official. That thought alone kept my feet moving.

Ethan. My boyfriend of eleven months. The one person who still felt like something that belonged only to me. He had a ground-floor place six blocks away, the kind with thin walls and a permanent smell of takeout and cologne. He had given me a key in the second month, after a night when I had shown up crying about nothing and everything. I still used it. It felt like proof that I had a place that wasn't bought and paid for by a man I had never seen.

The walk took longer than it should have. My mind kept circling back to the company, to the unknown man who would be my boss and my stepfather in the same breath. I tried to imagine what he looked like. Older, of course. Polished. The kind of man who wore suits that cost more than our rent. Victoria said he worked too much. She said he was rarely home. She said that was why the money came so easily-because he lived for the company and nothing else. I wondered if he even knew my name. I wondered if he cared that his new wife's daughter would be sitting at a desk in his building tomorrow morning.

Streetlights flickered on one by one as I passed the small row of shops that were already closing. A bus hissed to a stop across the street and pulled away again without me. I kept walking. The closer I got to Ethan's building, the more I told myself that seeing him would steady me. That his arms, his voice, the ordinary weight of his body next to mine would push the thought of the faceless stepfather out of my head for a few hours. And then I would tell him. In seven days we would be married. The words sat ready on my tongue.

By the time I reached his door, the sky had started to darken. I didn't knock. I never knocked. The key turned smoothly in the lock, and I stepped inside.

The apartment was quiet at first. Only the low hum of the refrigerator and the faint sound of traffic through the open window in the living room. Then I heard it-something that didn't belong. A raw, broken sound coming from the bedroom. High and desperate. The kind of sound that made the air feel thicker.

I moved down the short hallway without calling his name.

The bedroom door was open just enough. Light from the single lamp on the nightstand spilled across the bed and the two bodies on it.

Ethan was face-down, fists twisted in the sheets, back arched. Another man-Derek-was on top of him, hips driving forward in a hard, relentless rhythm. Ethan's mouth was open against the mattress. The sounds coming out of him were nothing I had ever heard before-loud, shameless, almost sobbing with pleasure. He had never made those sounds with me. Not once in eleven months. No matter how I touched him, no matter what I tried, he had never come apart like that. Derek had one hand locked around the back of Ethan's neck, holding him in place, and the wet slap of skin on skin filled the room.

Neither of them looked up.

I stood in the doorway long enough for every detail to burn itself into me. The sheen of sweat on Ethan's spine. The way his thighs trembled. The low, satisfied sound Derek made when Ethan pushed back to meet him. The complete absence of secrecy, as if the door being unlocked had never mattered.

Something inside my chest tore open.

I crossed the room before I could think. My hand swung hard and caught Derek across the shoulder and the side of his face. The crack of the slap was sharp in the small space. He jerked back with a curse, pulling free. Ethan's head snapped up. His eyes found mine-wide, glassy, still dark with the pleasure that hadn't finished yet. For one second there was only shock. Then the shock twisted.

He shoved Derek aside, scrambled up onto his knees, and backhanded me across the face so hard the world went white.

Pain exploded through my cheekbone and the corner of my mouth. I staggered sideways into the wall, the taste of blood already bright on my tongue. My ears rang. The side of my face throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

Ethan stood there naked, chest heaving, the evidence of what he had been doing still slick on his skin. Derek only reached for his pants, a small, cold smile on his mouth. Neither of them looked ashamed. Neither of them looked sorry. They stared at me like I was the one who had walked into the wrong room, like the violence and the betrayal were simply facts I was supposed to accept.

He slapped me after I tried to slap the guy, because they were not even feeling guilty.

Aria Pov

"You slapped me," I said, staring at Ethan.

"After how many years we have been together, you slap me."

My voice came out low and steady, but my cheek still burned where his hand had landed. The taste of blood lingered at the corner of my mouth. Ethan stood there naked, chest rising and falling too fast, Derek already pulling his pants back on like nothing had happened. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them looked guilty. The silence between us felt heavier than the slap itself.

I turned away before either of them could find words.

The ring slid off my finger easily. It had never fit quite right, always a little loose, as if it had known it wouldn't stay. I dropped it on the floor along with the thin chains and the necklace he had given me months ago. The soft clink of metal against wood was the only sound I left behind as I walked out of the apartment and shut the door. I didn't slam it. I didn't have the energy for that kind of noise. My hands were shaking, and the side of my face throbbed in time with my pulse.

Outside, the night air felt colder than it had earlier. I walked without direction at first, just putting distance between myself and the apartment that still held the image of Ethan on that bed. Every few steps I touched my cheek, half-expecting the skin to be split open. It wasn't, but the heat under my palm told me a bruise was already forming. People passed me on the sidewalk. None of them looked twice. I was just another girl walking alone with her head down.

I didn't go home.

My feet carried me to the nearest bar instead. The place was half-empty, dim lights, low music, the kind of spot where no one looked too closely. I sat at the counter and ordered without thinking. I had been about to head back to the apartment I shared with Victoria, but the thought stopped me cold every time it surfaced. I couldn't walk in looking like this-bruised, shaking, eyes red. What would my mother say? She would ask questions I wasn't ready to answer. She would worry. She would make everything about the new life she thought we were starting tomorrow, about the stepfather I still hadn't met, about the company and the future she kept painting in bright colors. I couldn't give her this version of me tonight.

My phone lit up on the counter.

Victoria's name flashed across the screen. I stared at it, thumb hovering. I tried not to answer. My hand moved anyway and pressed the green button before I could stop it.

"Aria, don't forget to come home tomorrow," she said, voice bright and full of excitement. "Your stepdad is coming home, and you're starting work at the company. I want everything to go smoothly. He's been looking forward to meeting you properly."

I forced a smile into my voice. I laughed in the right places, the sound thin and false in my own ears. I told her of course I would be there. I told her I was fine. I told her I couldn't wait. She talked about the clothes she thought I should wear, about how impressive the building was, about how lucky we both were. I made the appropriate sounds of agreement. The words tasted like ash, but she believed them. When the call ended I set the phone face-down and ordered the most expensive bourbon they had.

The glass arrived heavy and cold. I drank it slowly while I talked to the bartender. I didn't give him names. I just told him the shape of it-how someone you trusted could look you in the eye after putting their hands on you and feel nothing. How the future you thought you were building could disappear in a single slap. How you could stand there holding the pieces of a life that no longer made sense and still have to smile on the phone for your mother. He listened without interrupting, wiping the same section of the counter over and over. When I finished the glass I pushed a fold of cash across the wood and told him to keep the change. He nodded once. I didn't wait for a reply.

I left the bar and walked until I found a hotel that still had vacancies. The lobby was quiet, all polished floors and soft lighting. A man stood a few steps away from the front desk, phone pressed to his ear, speaking in a low, controlled voice. I couldn't hear the words, only the steady cadence of someone used to giving orders. The secretary set two keys on the counter-one marked 9, one marked 6. The man ended his call, took the key for 6 without looking at me, and walked toward the elevators. I took the remaining key, the one for 9, and followed the signs upstairs.

The hallway smelled faintly of clean linen and something expensive. My key card clicked against the lock. The door opened onto a room that was nothing like what I had asked for. I had told the secretary I only needed a cheap place to sleep for the night. Instead I stepped into a wide, quiet VIP suite-soft lighting, heavy curtains drawn against the city, a bed large enough for three people, everything polished and expensive. Thick carpet swallowed the sound of my steps. A small bottle of something dark sat on the minibar, untouched. I didn't argue. I didn't go back downstairs. I was too tired to care what they had given me.

I dropped my bag by the door and sat on the edge of the mattress. The bedspread was cool under my palms. From the bathroom came the soft, steady drip of water, slow and rhythmic, like a clock counting down. I didn't get up to check. My body felt heavy, my face still ached, and the bourbon had started to pull everything under. I lay back against the pillows, eyes already closing, and let the exhaustion take me. The ceiling above me was white and distant. For a moment I thought about Victoria waiting at home, about the stepfather who would be there tomorrow, about the ring I had left on Ethan's floor. Then even those thoughts blurred.

I saw the man with a white towel tied around his waist.

"Who is this and what are you doing here?" I said.

Aria Pov

He just stared at me.

The white towel sat low on his hips, held by a single tight knot. Water still clung to his skin, tracing slow paths down the hard lines of his chest and stomach. His hair was damp, pushed back from a face that looked carved from something expensive and cold. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He only watched me the way a man watches something he has already decided belongs to him.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

"Who are you?" My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "What are you doing here?"

He still didn't answer. His eyes moved over my face, lingering on the darkening bruise along my cheekbone, then lower, taking in the wrinkled clothes I had fallen asleep in, the way I had pushed myself up on my elbows. The silence stretched until it felt like another presence in the room.

I swallowed. "How did you get in here?"

That finally pulled a response from him. His voice was low, rough around the edges, the kind of voice that didn't need to raise itself to be obeyed.

"The rooms connect," he said. "I was told this suite was empty."

I glanced toward the bathroom door and noticed for the first time the second door set into the wall beside it-narrow, almost hidden, the kind that joined two VIP rooms when someone paid enough. Heat crawled up my neck. I had been so tired, so desperate to lie down, that I hadn't even checked.

"I asked for a cheap room," I said, the words tasting useless even as I spoke them. "They gave me this one by mistake."

His gaze flicked to the key card I had dropped on the nightstand, then back to my face. Something unreadable moved behind his eyes.

"You're hurt."

It wasn't a question. I touched my cheek without thinking and felt the tender heat of the bruise.

"It's nothing."

He took one step closer. The towel shifted with the movement, and I hated how my eyes followed the line of muscle disappearing beneath the white fabric. I forced my attention back to his face.

"It doesn't look like nothing," he said.

Another step. The air between us changed. I could smell the clean scent of hotel soap on his skin, something dark and expensive underneath it. My pulse was too loud in my ears.

"You should put clothes on," I said, but the words lacked any real strength.

He stopped at the edge of the bed. Close enough that I would have to tip my head back to keep meeting his eyes if I stayed where I was. I didn't move.

"Tell me who did that to your face."

The demand was quiet, almost gentle, and somehow more dangerous because of it. I shook my head.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

The sentence landed heavier than it should have. I didn't know this man. I had no reason to tell him anything. Yet the way he looked at me-steady, unblinking, as if he had already claimed the right to the answer-made the truth press against the back of my teeth.

"Someone I used to trust," I said finally. "That's all."

He was silent for a long moment. Then he reached out. I should have pulled away. Instead I sat frozen as his fingers brushed the edge of the bruise, the touch so light it barely existed. Heat followed the path of his skin against mine.

"He won't touch you again," he said, as if it were already decided.

I laughed once, short and sharp. "You don't even know me."

"I know enough."

His hand didn't leave my face. His thumb traced the line of my cheekbone, careful of the tender spot, and something low in my stomach tightened. I should have told him to stop. I should have stood up and walked out of the room. Instead I stayed exactly where I was, breathing too fast, watching the water still sliding down the side of his neck.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"Like you're deciding something."

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Maybe I am."

The space between us disappeared. One moment he was standing over me, the next his knee was on the mattress and his hand had slid from my cheek into my hair. He didn't yank. He simply held me there, tilting my face up until there was nowhere else to look except his eyes.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

I opened my mouth. No sound came out.

He kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. It was claiming-slow at first, then deeper, as if he had been waiting longer than the few minutes we had been in the same room. I made a small sound against his mouth and felt him answer it with a low noise of his own. His free hand settled at my waist, fingers spreading over the fabric of my shirt, pulling me closer until my knees brushed the damp towel and the hard heat of his body beneath it.

When he finally lifted his head, my lips felt swollen. His breathing had changed.

"You shouldn't let strangers kiss you," he said, voice rougher now.

"You're the one who started it."

"And you're the one who didn't stop me."

He kissed me again, harder this time. I felt the shift of the towel as he braced himself over me, the brush of bare skin against my clothes. My hands, traitorous, rose to his shoulders. The muscles under my palms were solid, still warm from the shower. He made a sound of approval and pressed closer, deepening the kiss until I was lying back against the pillows with his weight balanced above me.

Questions still crowded my mind-how he had ended up in the connecting room, why he looked at me like he already knew the taste of me, why my body was answering him so quickly-but every time I tried to form one, his mouth distracted me again. He kissed the corner of my lips, the line of my jaw, the sensitive spot just below my ear. Each touch sent another slow pull of heat through me.

"You're shaking," he murmured against my skin.

"I know."

"Is it fear?"

I shook my head once. His hand slid from my hair down the side of my throat, resting lightly over the place where my pulse raced.

"No," I whispered. "It's not fear."

He drew back just enough to look at me. The towel had loosened. I could see the sharp cut of his hipbone, the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath the white fabric. His eyes were darker than before.

"Tell me to leave," he said again, softer this time.

I didn't.

Instead I reached up and pulled his mouth back to mine. The kiss turned hungry. His hand found the hem of my shirt and slipped underneath, palm spanning my waist, thumb brushing the underside of my breast. I arched into the touch without meaning to. A low sound left his throat, and he pressed his hips forward. Even through the towel and my clothes I felt how hard he was.

The last coherent thought I managed was that I had come to this hotel to escape one man and had somehow ended up under another. Then his fingers traced higher, and thinking became impossible.

I am already getting wet.