A Heart-shaped Work of Art 🌶️🌶️
Chapter 1: A Heart-shaped Work of Art 🌶️🌶️
Damon’s POV — Saturday, October 14, 2028 — 12:00 p.m.
Venture Group Headquarters, Damon Tower, Boston
The moment the elevator doors slide open in the lobby of my own office building, Damon Tower, my brain just… stops.
Because she’s standing right inside, looking directly at me with the most astoundingly beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
A woman—gorgeous in a way that isn’t loud or obvious, the kind of beauty that devastates precisely because it i s deliberately understated.
As if she knows exactly what she is and how she impacts the world and has chosen restraint as her most dangerous weapon.
She’s actually trying quite hard to hide it, wrapped in softness and intention rather than the usual business suits and polish I see at work.
I’m guessing that maybe it’s her Saturday leisurewear because she’s draped in an oversized brown hoodie that hangs from her shoulders like armor disguised as comfort clothes, the fabric soft, worn, and utterly at odds with the precision of everything else in my world.
Her sleeves are shoved up over slim wrists, the hood resting against her back like an afterthought.
My gaze runs over her before I can stop it, tracking her without permission, cataloguing interesting details with the same ruthless efficiency I use in boardrooms, except this… this isn’t business. This is instinct.
Black cargo pants are hanging low on her hips, pockets everywhere. The fabric is loose enough to suggest modesty, trying to disguise her feminine hourglass shape while quietly betraying the truth of her lush body beneath.
The inward curve of her waist. The quiet fullness of her hips. The way the clothes try—and fail—to erase her. Yeah... her curves are definitely there—but suggested, not announced. Present in ways that don’t ask for my attention—but get it anyway.
It’s hinted at in a way that feels deliberate, teasing, triggering my imagination in ways that are infinitely worse. And my imagination doesn’t just respond—it accelerates, and I feel heat suddenly rushing south.
What captures my attention next are her long, dark waves of hair spilling around her face and shoulders in a thick, tousled veil of deep chocolate silk. I watch fascinated as mahogany red tints catch the light in quiet, molten flashes.
Then I look back at her face and take a hit straight to the chest.
Jesus Christ. It’s a heart-shaped work of art.
Her skin is warm, soft golden caramel, as though she’s been kissed by a gentler sun than the rest of us.
I see her soft, full mouth—plush and red even without lipstick, shaped with a precision that feels unfair, that perfect Cupid’s bow drawing my focus in an almost obsessive way that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
She’s clearly aware of the effect she has on me—and is enjoying every second of the show.
Self-consciously, she smiles a little smile and catches her lower lip between pearly white teeth and I feel it as if I took a sucker punch to my gut.
I’m sure she can either see my eyes dilate at that lip-tuck or something wolfishly showing up on my face because she quickly releases it again and stand straighter.
And her eyes—dark brown, wide-set, intelligent—they’re stunningly beautiful, and startlingly intense with an even darker espresso-colored limbal ring around her brown iris.
It feels as if they don’t just observe but interpret, pulling data from every microexpression I fail to suppress and assembling it into something far too accurate for my comfort.
She watches me with open curiosity and zero apology. It feels like she sees everything I am and everything I’m trying to hide for the world.
Yeah... she’s definitely aware of the effect she’s having on me—and she’s choosing not to look away, looking like she enjoys seeing me so rattled.
And when she looks at me, it doesn’t feel like a passing glance between strangers. It feels like recognition.
She’s smiling… not shy, not impressed either. If I’m reading her right—and I’m quite certain I do—she doesn’t know who I am. Or better yet—she does know it and simply doesn’t care.
There’s something in the way her gaze holds mine—something steady, unflinching—that makes my pulse shift instantly, a subtle acceleration that tightens low in my chest and spreads south, warm and controlled on the surface, anything but beneath it.
She isn’t looking at me like most people do, with respect, calculation or expectation or the faint edge of performance that always accompanies recognition.
She’s looking at me as if I’m simply there, an interesting man standing in front of her rather than the man the world insists on projecting onto me, and that alone should not be as disarming as it is. But it is. I really, really like that feeling.
Because there’s curiosity in her eyes—sharp, assessing, unapologetically interested—and layered beneath that, something far more dangerous.
A flicker of heat too, of awareness that suggests she already understands the full effect she’s having on me and has no intention of softening it for my benefit.
And when her gaze lingers, just a fraction longer than polite, I feel it register along my skin like heat rather than sight, a slow, deliberate sweep that mirrors my own earlier assessment of her body, as if she’s returning the favor with equal precision and considerably more control over her reactions.
It’s not a challenge. Not exactly. But it’s close enough that my instincts respond anyway, tightening, sharpening, recalibrating around her presence.
And it’s definitely an invitation.
Because this—this moment, this look, this quiet, electric recognition passing between us without a single word exchanged—doesn’t feel like coincidence.
It feels like an important moment and the impact and the pull of her eyes is magnetic. Almost unreal.
She’s watching my every reaction—tracking it—and there’s something in the slight curve of her mouth that tells me she’s clocking everything that is happening to me. And enjoys that I have this reaction to her.
Soon she giggles first, then lets out a small laugh at my still shocked and overwhelmed facial expression, because I can’t seem to stop staring at her.
She looks like she’s designed for the red carpet, for haute couture, dresses and heels, breaking hearts on endless repeat… and yet she’s wrapped in comfort clothes like she’s trying to hide her exceptional body in plain sight.
Well… not really succeeding with that, no... because it has the exact opposite effect, drawing my gaze to her like a beacon.
I realize there’s only passed a few heartbeats even though it feels like several minutes.
I finally step into the elevator on instinct, before my legs even tell my brain they’ve decided to move, momentum carrying me forward a fraction too fast.
I almost stumble and nearly overshoot the back wall, then catch myself and lean up against it for emotional support while studying her from behind.
Jake, my best friend and two-year-older brother, follows me in, looking strangely from me to her... as he hits the button for my penthouse apartment, one hundred and twenty-two floors above the city.
Half of the floor is the apartment that only me and my three brothers have access to, but the other half is the employee’s public rooftop garden.
I want to get out of my suit first. Then Jake and I’ll grab a bite for lunch, before we use my private gym to train like we normally do on weekends. After that we’ll prepare to go out clubbing tonight.
The elevator doors close. The space shrinks. At the second level one of the guards working in the building crams into the elevator.
He’s a towering young man with muscles everywhere, pressing her inward, so she steps back from the doors—closer to me.
Every proximity alert in my body starts clamoring and lights up at once.
Her scent hits me first—jasmine, vanilla, and something warm and intoxicating that is purely her.
Tantalizing in a way that has no business existing in a small metal box moving between floors. The reaction is immediate and deeply inconvenient.
It slides straight into my lungs and ignites something in my chest, then lower—far less appropriate—where something in my groin responds with equal intensity, something primal and embarrassing as hell if she notices.
Fuck—this woman should come with a warning label, a flashing one, preferably in neon.
But it’s not just her body that intrigues me. It’s her stillness, her posture—a quiet alertness and intelligence.
Coiled awareness and a kind of power that doesn’t need volume to command space. It’s contained and deliberate.
She’s not outright avoiding attention. She’s controlling it.
She stands by the rail, eyes on the control panel, pretending not to notice anyone around her—and doing an impressively poor job of pretending not to notice me either.
Because when the big hunk in front of us shifts restlessly from foot to foot during the long elevator ride, there’s no avoiding it.
She has no choice but to move one step closer, with me pressed flat against the wall right behind her.
Heat radiates between us, thin layers of fabric doing absolutely nothing to dull the awareness snapping into place.
She glances back and up at me, and suddenly I’m a goner.
Something fractures and shifts—violently. A sharp current hits dead center in my chest, fast and electric—and I see the echo of it in her too.
Her pupils dilate for a fraction of a second—a tiny, involuntary spike of awareness and attraction—before she shutters it behind practiced indifference, masking it behind composure that is entirely intentional.
She felt that—I saw it. She knows what it was, and she shut it down, which tells me two things: she’s experienced, and she’s careful.
That combination is dangerous—because this is clearly not her first rodeo; she knows the signs of a man reacting to her, and she’s not going to let herself get caught easily.
That makes her both intriguing and exactly my favorite kind of game... one that sends my hunting instincts roaring through me so fast I nearly move forward without thinking.
My instincts wants me to step closer—fast, predatory, immediate—to see if she retreats or leans in.
But I put a hard brake on myself and force it down—I would never—not here, not at my own very public and highly profiled company—not with her or anybody else.
And definitely not in a glass tower filled with people who would love to take a photo of me breathing too close to any woman and sell it to the highest bidder.
Being the youngest self-made CEO billionaire in the States makes it both easy and lucrative for photos like that to end up in the glossy gossip magazines that will twist any look or movement into a dramatic headline.
So no... I can’t afford to show interest in her in public—no matter how brutally fast she gets under my skin.
