The Night I belonged to him

Chapter 1: Silk and Silence

I woke up in a stranger's bed with a slow, sick lurch in my stomach. A dull ache throbbed behind my eyes, and my head felt packed with wet sand, a cruel souvenir of last night's alcohol. For a few seconds I simply lay there, breathing shallowly, afraid that any movement would make the world tilt again.

Something was wrong. The ceiling was too high. The air was too quiet. I forced myself to look around, and my heart began to knock against my ribs. This was not my bedroom.

Beyond a wall of glass, a city skyline glittered in the pale morning haze, cold and beautiful and utterly unfamiliar. The silk sheets slid like water against my skin, far smoother than the cheap cotton I was used to. Through the open door of the walk-in wardrobe, rows of tailored designer suits hung in perfect order, and polished leather shoes lined the rack like soldiers standing at attention. Over everything lingered a cologne, rich and dark and intoxicating, with cedar and something warmer beneath it. It was strangely familiar. My mind whispered a name, and I shoved it away before it could finish. I didn't want to know. Not yet.

I tried to stand. My legs shook beneath me, weak as a newborn's, and I grabbed for the bedside table to keep from collapsing. My hand struck something, and a picture frame toppled to the floor and shattered with a crack that echoed through the silent room.

Pain bit into my foot. A shard of glass had buried itself in my skin, and a bright bead of blood slid down my heel. I hissed and sank back onto the bed, my hands trembling as I pulled the sliver free. Then, almost without thinking, I picked up the fallen photograph.

My eyes settled on the face in the picture, and the blood seemed to drain from my body. A cold sweat crawled down my spine.

Kellen Sterling.

I was in Kellen Sterling's bedroom. Sitting on Kellen Sterling's bed. I looked down at myself and my stomach dropped. I wore nothing but a black bra and knee-high socks. Then the realization hit me like ice water: I had no underwear on.

My breath caught. I flung the photograph aside as though it had burned me and scrambled off the bed, searching the floor for my clothes, praying with every frantic heartbeat that I wouldn't run into him. I found my underwear tangled near the foot of the bed and yanked it on with clumsy, shaking hands.

Before I could reach the rest of my clothes, the bathroom door clicked open.

I froze. Steam rolled into the room, and the cologne came with it, stronger now, wrapping around me. A tall man stepped through the mist, tanned and broad-shouldered, his dark hair damp and dripping, a towel slung low at his waist. Tattoos wound across his arms, shoulders and chest, leaving only his stomach bare. I had always known Kellen loved ink, as everyone at the office whispered, but I had never seen it up close. Helplessly, my gaze wandered from his wet hair to the line of his neck, over his shoulders, down the hard lines of his arms and chest. Then I tore my eyes away, my face burning.

Had we...?

The question stabbed through me. I had saved myself my whole life, guarding that one part of me, and the thought that I might have lost it to my own boss without even remembering made my chest tighten until I could barely breathe. Panic clawed up my throat. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted the floor to open and swallow me whole.

Reality snapped back when I realized he was watching me. The silence stretched, thick and awkward, and humiliation surged through me as I remembered I was standing there in only a bra, underwear and knee-high socks. My arms flew up to cover myself. I glanced around wildly for anything, a blanket, a shirt, anything at all.

Then I heard a low, amused chuckle.

"Getting shy all of a sudden, aren't you?" His voice was smooth and unhurried, laced with quiet amusement. "You're already my fiancée."

He strolled toward the wardrobe, and the towel at his waist slipped and fell to the floor. He didn't even glance at it. I spun away, cheeks scalding, my heart hammering as I tried to understand why my boss, the untouchable CEO of Sterling Corp, was dressing in front of me as casually as if I belonged there.

Then his words finally reached me. Fiancée.

I turned back without thinking, my voice cracking as I demanded to know what he meant. I was grateful to find he had already pulled on his trousers.

He didn't answer. He crossed to the drawer of his reading table, drew out a document, and placed it on the bed. "Sit," he said. "Read."

My body trembled with fear and a dread-soaked curiosity. I lowered myself onto the edge of the mattress and lifted the pages with unsteady fingers, my eyes crawling over the words. Then they stopped on two of them, bold across the top: Marriage Contract. And at the bottom, my signature, looped and unmistakable, sitting right beside his.

My lungs forgot how to work.

Before I could react, a firm yet gentle hand slid around my waist and drew me close. His warmth pressed against my back. He leaned down until his breath brushed my ear and whispered, "Do you see now, my dear wife?"

I jerked away on instinct, my pulse roaring. He only smiled, slow and knowing. Frantic, I asked what this meant, why and how I could have signed a marriage contract with him, and what exactly had happened last night.

I couldn't remember. There was only the company dinner, the glasses of wine, the laughter, and then nothing, a black, bottomless nothing. I looked up at him with desperate eyes, begging for answers.

He sat down in the chair, picked up a glass of water, and took a slow sip before he began. He told me everything: how I had gotten drunk, how he had driven me, how I had poured out every private trouble to him in the dark of his car, and how he had shared his own. How we had struck the bargain of a fake marriage. And nothing, he assured me, had happened between us in this bed. Yet, his tone seemed to add, though maybe I only imagined it. He told me how I had confessed my debts and my financial crisis, and how he had confessed the pressure of his company and his family, how he needed a wife to protect his position, and how I needed the money to keep my life from collapsing.

I staggered backward, stunned, as if he had struck me. Every word was the truth. These were things I had never told anyone, not my family, not even my closest friends. I had guarded them like a wound. I wanted it to be a lie. I didn't want to accept that I had handed my deepest secrets to him while I was too drunk to remember.

He rose and walked toward me, slow and deliberate. "Every woman would be ecstatic to spend just one night with me," he said, his voice low. "Yet here you are, given the chance to marry me, and still refusing. Interesting."

He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him. My mind spun. How was I supposed to handle this? What would my family do to me? How would my sister Crystal react? How could I explain this impossible mess to anyone?

Then my phone chimed.

A message from Crystal, sweet on the surface and threatening underneath: I heard where you spent the night. Are you all right?

My blood ran cold. That question only ever meant one thing. She had already spun a lie for my parents, a story that would make me the villain. I didn't reply. I looked at Kellen, brushed past him, and hurriedly pulled on my clothes with shaking hands. At the door I turned back and told him, my voice tight, not to tell anyone, and that we were not done talking.

I didn't know where to go. I knew what waited for me at home, the cold stares and the questions sharpened into accusations. I knew what waited at the office too, the whispers. I had no choice but to go to Victoria's apartment. She was my childhood friend, and my only one, and I always kept a spare set of clothes there. I was too exhausted to make sense of what was happening to me, but one truth sat in my chest like a stone: my life had changed forever.