Chapter 11

Aurora POV

For a brief, fleeting moment, everything stops.

The weight of the world, the suffocating pressure of expectation from my family, the reality of my situation… it all fades into the background like it never existed at all in the first place. I can’t remember what I’d been worried about only moments before, what that lingering pressure in my chest that now has turned to something else had been.

Dominic is still standing close, his fingers reaching up to brush against my cheek. The warmth of his touch stays far longer than it should, sending a spider web of tingles all the way down to my toes.

I don’t move. I hardly even breathe.

And then, before I can process what’s happening, he moves. His head dips, his breath ghosting over my skin—my lips—like he’s about to bring us back to our first night together, reminding me of all the ways he took and possessed me.

His eyes grow hazy with need as they glance down at my mouth.

None of this is calculated. There’s not an ounce of precision or control like I expect from him. It’s all instinctual, a reaction. Like he’s reaching for something familiar, something lost, without realizing he’s doing so in the first place.

My breath catches in my throat again, but I don’t pull away. Because for the first time in my life, someone is touching me without force… without some kind of expectation at the end of it for me to fulfill against my will.

I want him…

I hate how much I crave it.

My hand reaches up to move along his shirt collar, tracing the edge of the fabric against his skin. What would happen if I grabbed his tie and pulled him in closer? Forced our lips to actually meet? Would he take the risk of fucking me right out here in the hallway? Would he drag me into whatever one of these rooms he finds is open?

My body buzzes with lust.

But then, just as suddenly as he leaned in, Dominic pulls back and I’m able to breathe again.

“I’ll have a car pulled around for you.” His expression shifts, his gaze flickering with something unreadable as he speaks. For a brief second, it doesn’t feel like he’s looking at me, it feels like he’s looking through me.

Dominic takes a sharp step backwards, his face smoothing into that same unreadable mask he always wears. Like whatever that was never existed at all.

I swallow thickly, trying to push the bile from before back down again. The warmth between us vanishes in an instant.

Just like that, the moment is over.

I press my forehead against the cool glass of the car window, trying to ground myself while trying to forget the way his lips ghosted over mine—a barely there kiss that wasn’t at all what I wanted or needed—I desired more.

I had no right to crave him like this. No reason to, either.

He’s blackmailed me into a corner, forced me into abiding by whatever cruel and ridiculous scheme he’s playing against me and my family while giving me no choice but to comply in the process.

How could I want someone like that? How could this desperate feeling to get close to him again ever manifest into almost reaching out and pulling him close to me?

It’s sickening to think he’s able to keep me wrapped around his finger without so much as a threat to topple my entire life. Unlike earlier, he had no reason to protect me from Theo. It wasn’t like I had been in range of his father seeing what was going on and accusing me of leading Theo on like what could’ve happened at the dinner.

Dominic could’ve simply turned and walked in the other direction when he saw what had been happening down the hallway. But instead, he’d stepped in, intervened and chased Theo off without me so much as begging him to do so.

Why didn’t he?

And why did he do something as crazy as give his own father a sedative to knock him out before he could go through with fucking me? How had Dominic known that had been his father’s intentions? Was he afraid I’d get hurt?

If so… why did he care?

By the time the car pulls up to my family’s estate and lets me out, I realize not much time has passed since I’ve left. Dread pools in my stomach, making it hard to force my feet to climb the steps up to the entryway doors.

They’re pulled open for me the second I get to them, two butlers on either side quickly taking my coat and bag to bring up to my room.

“What in the world are you doing back so early?” Beatrice calls from the top step of the staircase leading up to the second floor.

The butler who took my coat and purse quickly hurries up the stairs, by-passing her to head down to my room.

Her long, flowing robe trails behind her as she descends the stairs. It’s tied loosely around her waist, a deep V cutting down her chest to reveal the round, perky breasts she paid top dollar for. The moment her slippered feet hit the floor, she stops.

“I… Mr. Guerrera wasn’t feeling well. So we left early.”

She looks unconvinced, both of her arms crossing over her chest. “Really.”

The sharp contrast between the warmth of Dominic’s touch and this cold indifference sinks into my bones.

For the first time since coming back home, I realize something that terrifies me more than anything: I’d felt safe back in that hallway—being protected by Dominic. I’d craved his touch, his attention, in a way I’ve never felt before in my life.

The thought makes me sick.

I brush past Beatrice and head upstairs to my room. There’s no energy left in me to try and lie my way out of her suspicions. If she wants to look into why I left early, I’m not going to stop her. Either way, my father will probably beat me tomorrow once he finds out I arrived home early.

The second I get my door closed, I sag against it.

I’m so tired but I know the second I lay my head down on my pillow, I’m going to end up staring at the ceiling all night. My body is too wired from earlier, my mind replaying Dominic stepping in and saving me over and over again.

What am I supposed to do?

Before I can sink further into the delusion that Dominic might actually be something more than just another man pulling my strings, my phone chimes. I head over to my bed and pull it from my purse.

My stomach clenches when I see his name—or rather, the initials I saved him under.

My father is choosing wedding venues for you to get married at. When he talks to you about it, suggest the one at the botanical gardens.

My brows knit together.

What scheme is he planning now?

Dominic POV

He wasn’t supposed to care.

He had spent years perfecting the art of detachment—of using people, discarding them, keeping his emotions locked behind an iron wall that no one could breach.

And yet again Aurora had managed to slip through the cracks.

Watching her crumble, her voice raw with years of exhaustion and silent suffering, had stirred something in him that he didn’t want to acknowledge.

She reminded him of his mother.

"Some of us don’t get choices, Dominic."

His mother had said something similar once, years before his father put a bullet in her. She had suffered in silence, trapped in a world she couldn’t escape. And now, decades later, he was standing face-to-face with another woman shackled by the same fate.

Aurora wasn’t his mother, but the echoes of her pain resonated too deeply within him.

A sharp exhale pulled him from his thoughts—Romero.

“You need to keep your distance,” his right-hand man warned, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall of his bedroom in the penthouse. “She’s the daughter of your enemy. You can’t let yourself get too distracted.”

Dominic didn’t respond right away.

He knew the risks. He knew better than anyone what this game required of him. The problem wasn’t that he was unaware of the boundaries and walls he needed to keep up against Aurora... It was that, for the first time in a long time, he found himself tempted to cross them.

Dominic rolled his shoulders, his mind returning to business. “The wedding venue that’s been surveyed, we’re going to go with that one. It’s the most suitable for our plans.”

“The botanical gardens?”

Dominic nodded, pushing aside all thoughts of Aurora as he reached for his phone. “Yes. Make sure everyone is up to date on the plans.”

“Understood.” Romero answered him.

No matter what he felt toward Aurora, the endgame remained the same. And when the time came, she would be nothing more than another pawn in the war he was about to unleash.

That’s how it had to be.

Even if his heart was starting to tug him into a different direction.