CHAPTER 4

BLAKE

My penthouse is exactly how I kept it after she left.

That's not entirely true. I've redecorated. Updated. Made it look like a man who's moved on rather than a man who's been stuck in amber for three years. But the architecture is the same. The view is the same. And standing in this space with Elle actually standing here with her in the same room, breathing the same air—feels like rewinding time until I'm back to a moment where I still had her.

She doesn't want to be here. That's clear from the way she's holding herself rigid, defensive, like she's bracing for impact. I had Vault tell her I needed to talk to her privately. Off the record. She came because she's professional, because she's a journalist and journalists follow leads, because some part of her is curious.

Or because some part of her wanted to see me alone.

I pull out my phone without preamble. No buildup. No context. Just the photos.

Five years old. High resolution. Vivid in a way that time hasn't faded.

Elle in my bed, sheets tangled around her, her back arched, eyes closed. Elle on the kitchen counter, my hands on her thighs, her mouth open. Elle's face twisted in pleasure, mine buried between her legs, her hand in my hair.

I watch her face as she sees them.

For exactly one second less than that, really her entire body goes rigid. Her pupils dilate. There's a flush that spreads up from her collarbone. And in that moment, before she catches herself, I see it: relief. Recognition. The specific satisfaction of a person who's been wondering if they still mattered and just got their answer.

Then her professional armor slams back into place.

"You kept those?" Her voice is cold. Steady. Impressive in its control, except I know her. I know the specific timber of her voice when she's pretending not to care about something that's destroying her.

"I kept a lot of things," I say, and I'm watching her face like a scientist observing data. "Memories."

"That's—" She stops herself. Takes a breath. Forces her expression into something closer to annoyance than anything else. "That's pathetic, Blake. Stop bothering me with this. I'm over you. I moved on. You need to do the same instead of sitting around playing with old photos like some sad—"

The words are bullets, but they're blanks. We both know it.

"You're over me," I repeat, and I let a smile play at the corner of my mouth because I can afford to be patient now. I have time. I have her here, in my space, and she's lying to my face while her body is telling me the truth.

"Yes."

"Then this should be easy."

I set the phone down on the table between us. The photos are still visible, still bright against the dark surface of my phone. Elle's eyes flick to them and then away, too quickly. But not before I see it again—that flash of something that isn't indifference.

"What do you want?" she asks, and her voice is tight. She's holding herself together with visible effort now.

"Six months," I say. "You stay embedded with the team. Full access. You do your job, you write your story, you maintain your professional distance."

"And?"

"And you prove to me that these photos mean nothing to you anymore. That you're actually over me. That this—" I gesture to the phone, to the evidence of what we were, "—doesn't matter."

She stares at me. "That's insane."

"Is it?"

"Yes. Blake, that's—you can't ask me to—"

"I'm not asking." I lean back, watching her. "I'm telling you what happens if you want to keep this assignment. If you want to keep your access to The Forge. If you want to write the story that's supposed to launch your career."

It's a power play. It's cruel. It's everything I promised myself I wouldn't do, and I'm doing it anyway because I'm drowning and she's the only oxygen I can see.

"You're blackmailing me," she says flatly.

"I'm setting terms."

"With my own body as collateral."

"With my memories as collateral," I correct. "There's a difference."

Elle's hands are shaking. I can see it now that she's stopped trying to hide it. Her fingers are clenched so tightly that her knuckles are white.

"This is disgusting," she whispers.

"Probably."

"You're a bastard."

"I know."

And in that moment, in the space between her accusation and my acknowledgment, something shifts. Because she's not leaving. Despite everything, despite the fact that I just essentially told her I'm going to control her for the next six months in exchange for not weaponizing her own pleasure against her, she's not walking out.

Which means she's thinking about it. Which means some part of her wants to stay.

ONE YEAR INTO THEIR RELATIONSHIP

I am twenty-six years old and completely sure I have found the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with.

We're in my penthouse, in bed, tangled together after sex. Elle is still trembling from orgasm, her skin flushed, her hair spread across the pillow like she's a work of art someone commissioned specifically for this moment.

I roll over, pulling her on top of me, holding her hips in my hands. She's still breathing hard, and I'm still hard, and I want to be inside her again, but first I want this: the moment where she's completely surrendered, where there's no wall between us, where she's just *mine*.

"You're mine, Elle," I say, and my voice is possessive in a way I don't usually allow myself to be. "Say it."

She looks down at me, and her eyes are glassy, unfocused. "What?"

"Say it. Tell me you're mine."

"I'm yours," she breathes, and the way she says it—completely surrendered, completely sure—is like a drug hitting my bloodstream. "Blake, I'm yours."

I flip her over, pinning her wrists to the mattress. "I'll never let you go," I say, and I mean every word. "Never. You understand me? I will never let you go."

She nods, and there are tears in her eyes, but they're happy tears. They're the tears of someone who's found exactly what they needed.

"Never let me go," she whispers.

I kiss her with tenderness and intensity mixed together, and I promise myself that I'm going to keep this. I'm going to keep her. I'm going to be the person she thinks I am.

I fail at that almost immediately.

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"So?" I ask, and my voice is casual, like I'm asking her if she wants coffee. "Do we have a deal?"

Elle looks away from me. She's thinking. I can see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her fingers are still clenched. She's calculating: What does she lose? What does she gain? Can she actually do this stay here, work here, be near me, and pretend that seeing these photos didn't just crack something open in her chest?

The answer is that she can't. But she's going to try anyway.

"Fine," she says quietly. "Fine. We have a deal."

I feel something in me settle. Not satisfaction it's too complicated for that. But something like relief. She's staying. For six months, she's staying in my world, and I have leverage, and maybe—

Maybe I can figure out how to fix this.

Maybe I can figure out how to make her want to stay after the deal ends.

"Good," I say, and I pick the phone back up, sliding it into my pocket. "Then we don't have anything else to discuss."

She's still looking away from me. Her hands are unclenched now, resting in her lap. There's something small and broken in her posture, and it takes everything I have not to pull her against me, not to undo the last ten minutes, not to tell her that I never actually would have done anything with those photos.

But I don't. Because if I do that, I lose whatever leverage I have. And leverage is all I have now.

"Elle," I say, and she finally looks at me. "For what it's worth—"

I stop myself. There's nothing worth saying. There's nothing that makes this okay.

"Just go," I say instead. "We'll see each other at practice tomorrow."

She stands up. Her legs are shaking slightly as she walks toward the door. I watch her go, and I'm already regretting everything, and I'm already planning how to make this right, and I'm already knowing that I probably won't.

She pauses at the door. For a moment, I think she's going to turn around. I think she's going to say something.

She doesn't. She just leaves.

I stand alone in my penthouse, in the space where we used to be, and I pull the phone back out. The photos are still there evidence of a time when she was completely mine, when she trusted me with her body and her vulnerability and her surrender.

I could delete them. That would be the right thing to do.

I don't. I lock them away in a private folder instead, encrypted, hidden, mine.

Because I'm not ready to let go of the proof that she was ever mine at all.