Chapter Ten
Vane
I'm not looking at the Tokyo projections.
I have three windows open on my screen—the Nikkei index, the Zurich merger drafts, and the live feed of the hallway security cameras—but my focus is entirely on the woman at my feet.
Sloane is a study in repressed agony. I can see the way her shoulders are shaking, just a fraction, as she fights the urge to lean against the cold bed frame. I watch the way her head occasionally nods before she snaps it back up with a violent, stubborn jerk. Even her legs are in constant, subtle motion, juggling her weight to fend off the inevitable cramps.
She is a creature of pure, unadulterated will.
Anyone else would have begged by now. Anyone else would have used the "Audit" on the cliffs as leverage—would have tried to weaponize that intimacy to bargain for a few hours of sleep. But not Sloane. She treats the encounter like a transaction that has already been cleared. She keeps the wall between us high, even when she's bleeding behind it.
"Come here," I command.
She freezes. She looks up, her eyes bloodshot and shadowed with dark circles that make her look hauntingly beautiful—raw and stripped of her corporate armor. "The index hasn't moved, Mr. Sterling."
"I didn't ask for a report. I said come here."
She moves on her hands and knees, a slow, cautious crawl that ignites a dark heat in my gut. She stops at the edge of the mattress, looking like a discarded saint. I reach out, my hand tangling in her hair—it's still damp from the ocean spray—and I pull her head back until she's forced to meet my gaze.
"You're fighting so hard to be a machine," I whisper, my thumb tracing the faint shadow of a bruise beginning to form on her jaw. "But machines don't have hearts that beat this fast. Machines don't have eyes that scream 'I hate you' while their bodies whisper 'don't let go.'"
"The contract doesn't require me to like you, Vane," she whispers back. The Vane slips out again, unbidden, sounding like a confession.
"The contract requires you to be whatever I need you to be." I lean down, my face inches from hers, my breath fanning over her lips. "And right now, I need you to admit that you'd rather be on this floor, suffering under my gaze, than anywhere else in the world. Admit that the clinic is just the excuse you tell yourself so you don't have to face the fact that you're just as broken as I am."
"I'm... not like you," she gasps, though she doesn't pull away. She leans into the touch she claims to despise.
"We'll see." I release her hair and gesture to the space on the floor directly beside my hand, which rests on the edge of the bed. "Put your head here. On the mattress. You will not sleep, but you will stay within my reach. I want to feel you trembling."