Chapter Five: The Hostage Situation

Elena woke up because someone was staring at her. She knew this before she opened her eyes. It was a physical sensation, a weight on her skin, like sunlight through curtains or a spider on an arm. She kept her eyes stubbornly shut, her face buried in a pillow that smelled like cedar and sex, and tried to pretend she was still asleep. “Your breathing changed,” Adrian said.m,His voice was right next to her ear. Low. Smug. Fully awake. Elena cracked one eye open. He was propped up on one elbow, his head resting in his hand, watching her with the intensity of a man monitoring a stock ticker. His hair was a disaster. His jaw was shadowed with stubble that had crossed the line from “sexy” into “homeless lumberjack.” And he was naked. Very, very naked. The sheet had pooled around his waist, revealing a landscape of muscle, bite marks she had done that, oh God and a tattoo on his ribs she had not noticed in the dark.

It was a small, precise rendering of a coffee cup. Elena blinked. “You have a caffeine tattoo.” “I have several,” he said, as if this were normal. “Maggie dared me. I was twenty-five and thought I was immortal.” “You got a coffee cup permanently etched on your body because your assistant dared you?” “She’s very persuasive.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “And I have a weakness for women who tell me what to do.” Elena pulled the pillow over her face. Adrian laughed. It was a real laugh, rough, surprised, delighted, and she felt it in her sternum. Then he peeled the pillow away with gentle but inexorable force. “No hiding,” he said. “We established this.” “It’s morning,” she mumbled. “Morning after rules are different. I’m allowed to be embarrassed in the morning.” “You’re not allowed to be embarrassed ever again. I’ve seen you naked. I’ve heard you scream. I’ve watched you ride a kitchen table like a-” “Adrian!” He grinned. It was a wicked, boyish expression that transformed his whole face from terrifying CEO to handsome disaster. Elena felt her stomach flip. “I like it when you say my name like that,” he said. “Shocked. Breathless. Like I just suggested tax fraud.”

“You suggested me riding a kitchen table” “And you did.” He leaned down and kissed her shoulder. Then her collarbone. Then the hollow of her throat. “You were magnificent. I took mental notes. I’m going to have the table bronzed.” Elena pushed at his chest. It was like pushing a marble wall. “I need to shower. I need coffee. I need to process my life choices.” “Denied.” “What?” He rolled on top of her with a fluid grace that pinned her to the mattress without crushing her. His forearms bracketed her head. His hips settled between her thighs. She could feel him morning him, thick and interested pressing and against her, and her body betrayed her with a rush of heat. “I’ve scheduled a hostage situation,” he announced. “You’ve what?” “I’ve cleared my calendar. Maggie has instructions to block all calls. The doorman has been told no visitors. And I’ve hidden your clothes.”

Elena stared up at him. “You’re joking.” “I never joke about hostages.” He nuzzled her jaw. “You’re staying in this bed until I’m convinced last night actually happened. I have a very low threshold for belief. It may take days.” “Adrian, I’m hungry.” “I’ll feed you.” “I’m sticky.” “I’ll bathe you.” “I need to check my email”  “You have no email.” He captured her wrists and pinned them above her head with one hand. “You have me. You have this bed. And you have a very busy schedule of being worshipped.” Elena squirmed. He held her easily, his eyes dancing with a predatory amusement that was somehow more dangerous than last night’s raw intensity. This Adrian was playful. This Adrian was happy. And he had her trapped. “You’re insane,” she said, but she was smiling. “I’m in love,” he corrected. “It’s worse.” He kissed her. It was soft this time, exploratory, a lazy morning kiss that tasted like sleep and sex and something frighteningly like forever. Elena melted into it despite herself, her fingers curling against his grip, her hips rocking upward. He broke away and looked down at her with mock severity. “That’s attempted escape.” “It’s involuntary!”

“Involuntary responses are my favorite.” He released her wrists and slid down her body, his mouth trailing fire over her breasts, her ribs, her stomach. “I’m going to map all of them. By noon, I’ll know exactly where to touch you to make you beg. By dinner, I’ll know how to make you laugh while you come.” Elena grabbed a fistful of his hair. “You’re not going to let me leave this bed at all, are you?” “Not until you admit you like me.” “I...what?” He looked up at her from her navel, his chin resting on her hipbone, his eyes dark and devastating. “You said I was yours last night. You said you were mine. But you never said you liked me. I want to hear it. I want to hear that the shy girl from the courthouse, who looked at me like I was a tax audit, actually likes the man I am when I’m not wearing a suit.” Elena’s throat tightened. She looked at him, messy, tattooed, ridiculous, clinging to her hip like a barnacle and felt something warm and terrifying bloom in her chest. “I like you,” she whispered. “I liked you even when you were a ghost. I used to Google you at 2 AM and feel pathetic about it.”

Adrian went very still. Then he buried his face in her stomach and made a sound like a dying whale. “What was that?” she asked, alarmed. “Joy,” he said, his voice muffled. “That was the sound of a man experiencing joy. I’m going to buy you a island. No, a country. Liechtenstein. I’m buying you Liechtenstein.” “You can’t buy a country”

“I’m a billionaire. I can buy several.” He surged up and kissed her again, hard and grinning. “Say it again.” “I like you.” “Again.” “I like you, Adrian.” “Again, but with my middle name.” “You have a middle name?” “Archibald.” Elena snorted. She actually snorted, which would have mortified her in any other context, but Adrian lit up like she had handed him the moon. “There she is,” he murmured. “There’s my wife. Laughing. In our bed. At my terrible name.” “It’s not terrible, it’s just” “Archibald,” he confirmed. “My mother had a sense of humor. Or a grudge.”

Someone knocked on the bedroom door. They both froze. Adrian’s head snapped toward the door with the speed of a cobra. “Go away,” he barked. “Mr. Blackwood,” came Maggie’s voice, muffled but distinct. “It’s eleven AM. The board is asking if you’ve died. I told them you were in a very important merger negotiation. They asked with whom. I said it was confidential.” A pause. “Should I tell them the merger is horizontal and currently pinned beneath you?” Elena shrieked and yanked the duvet over her head. Adrian sighed. He looked at the lump under the covers that was his wife, then at the door, then back at the lump. He reached over and patted what he approximated was her hip. “Maggie,” he said calmly. “Leave the coffee on the floor and walk away. Do not make eye contact with the door. Forget you saw anything.” “I saw nothing,” Maggie agreed. “Though I should note that Mrs. Blackwood’s robe is on the dining room chandelier. I’m not asking questions. I’m just reporting it as a safety hazard.”

Elena made a sound of pure agony. Adrian grinned. “Thank you, Maggie. Your bonus this year will be a house.” “Thank you, sir. The robe is silk. Dry clean only.” Footsteps retreated. Adrian tugged the duvet down. Elena’s face was the color of a tomato. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “She knows,” Elena whispered. “She knows.” “Maggie has worked for me for seven years. She knows everything. She knew I was in love with you before I did.” He kissed her flaming cheek. “She’s very happy for us. She texted me a champagne emoji at 6 AM.” “You’re all insane,” Elena said. “I married into a cult.” “A cult of one. You’re the only member I care about.” He rolled off her and stretched, gloriously unbothered by his nudity. “Now. Shower. Then breakfast. Then I’m taking you to my office.”

Elena sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest. “Your office? Why?” “Because I have to pretend to work for three hours, and I can’t concentrate if you’re not in my line of sight.” He walked toward the bathroom, giving her a spectacular view of his back muscles, dimples, more bite marks. “Also, I want to have sex on my desk. It’s a very good desk. Mahogany. Presidential.” “You want to have sex on your desk because it’s mahogany?” “I want to have sex on my desk because you’ll be on it.” He paused in the bathroom doorway and looked back at her, his expression suddenly soft. “And because I spent two weeks in Dubai staring at that desk and imagining you bent over it. I have a lot of fantasies to work through, Elena. We’re on a tight schedule.” He disappeared into the steam of the shower. Elena sat in the wreckage of the bed, the sheets torn, pillows on the floor, her red netting destroyed on the lampshade, and listened to him sing something off-key in the shower. Now she was married to a very loud, very naked, very ridiculous man who wanted to buy her Liechtenstein and had a coffee cup tattoo. She smiled. Then she got up, found his discarded shirt on the floor, and put it on. It smelled like him. It hung to her knees. She rolled the sleeves up and padded toward the bathroom, where the singing had devolved into humming.

She pushed the door open. Adrian was in the shower, water sluicing over his shoulders, his face tilted into the spray. He looked like a cologne commercial. He looked like a headache. He opened one eye. “You’re wearing my shirt.” “It was either this or the duvet.” “It looks better on you.” He held out his hand. “Come here. I’ll wash your back. And your front. And everywhere else. Very thoroughly. It’s a moral imperative.” Elena stepped into the shower. The water was too hot. His hands were everywhere. He pinned her against the tile and kissed her until she forgot her name, then produced a bar of soap and proceeded to “wash” her with a dedication that was obscene. By the time they made it to the kitchen, the coffee was cold and Maggie had left a note on the counter:

“Dry cleaning picked up the chandelier robe. Breakfast is in the warmer. Please use protection. The board cannot handle another ‘merger delay.’ ~M” Elena buried her face in Adrian’s shoulder and laughed until she cried. He held her there, smiling against her hair, and realized that two weeks of hell had been worth exactly this: his shy, quiet wife, wearing his shirt, laughing in their kitchen, finally home.

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