Page 20 of The Billionaire's Obsession

The first intrusion of his finger is strange, uncomfortable but not painful. He watches my face, gauging each reaction, adding a second finger when my body relaxes around the first. I'm panting now, chasing a feeling I can name but have never experienced with anyone but myself.

"That's it," he encourages. "Let go for me."

When it happens, it's like nothing I've felt before—a wave that crashes through me, leaving me trembling and crying out his name. Before I can recover, he's positioning himself between my thighs, the blunt pressure of him seeking entrance.

"This will hurt," he warns, voice strained with the effort of control. "But only for a moment."

I nod, beyond words now, wanting only to feel him, to know this connection that's been building since the moment we met.

He pushes forward, and there's a sharp pain that makes me gasp, my nails digging into his shoulders. He stills immediately, muscles trembling with the effort.

"Breathe," he instructs, pressing kisses to my face, my neck, my shoulders. "Breathe through it."

I do, and gradually the pain recedes, replaced by a fullness that's strange but not unwelcome. When I shift beneath him experimentally, his eyes close briefly, a look of exquisite concentration crossing his features.

"So tight," he groans. "So fucking perfect."

He begins to move, slowly at first, then with increasing urgency as my body adjusts to accommodate him. Each thrust builds that tower again, higher than before, until I'm clinging to him, incoherent sounds spilling from my lips.

"Look at you," he growls, his rhythm becoming more erratic. "Taking me so well. Your pussy was made for me, Lucy. Made to take me and only me."

The crude words shock me, but they also send another wave of heat through me. No one has ever spoken to me this way, with this raw, possessive hunger.

"Say it," he demands, his hand sliding between us to press against where we're joined. "Say you're mine."

"I'm yours," I gasp, the words torn from me as his fingers work a magic that sends me spiraling again.

"Mine," he agrees, his voice rough with exertion. "Your first. Your only. No one else will ever have you like this. No one else will know how perfect you are when you come."

His words push me over the edge again, and this time he follows, his body tensing above me as he empties himself with a groan that sounds like surrender.

Afterward, he holds me close, his heartbeat gradually slowing beneath my ear. His hand strokes my hair with agentleness that contrasts sharply with the intensity of moments before.

"I knew it would be like this," he murmurs, more to himself than to me.

"Like what?"

"Perfect." He tilts my face up to his, eyes serious now. "You're where you belong now, Lucy. With me. In my home. In my bed."

I should protest. Should assert my independence, remind him that a few weeks of dating and one night of sex—mind-blowing though it was—doesn't mean I belong to anyone. But lying here, wrapped in his warmth, surrounded by the luxury he's determined to shower on me, those arguments feel distant and hollow.

"Rest," he says, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Tomorrow, we begin for real."

I don't ask what he means. Tomorrow feels very far away, and for now, I'm content to drift in this strange new reality where Damon Blackwell—billionaire, businessman, force of nature—has decided I'm his.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Lucy

Two weeksinto living with Damon, and I've established a morning routine that feels like a small victory. I slip from the bed before he wakes, dress in my own clothes—not the designer pieces he keeps adding to my closet—and spend my mornings at the university library working on my thesis. It's not much, this sliver of independence, but I guard it fiercely, like a prisoner hoarding contraband. My advisor raised her eyebrows when I changed my address, but I meet her gaze without flinching. I'm still me, I want to insist. I haven't disappeared into Damon Blackwell's orbit completely. Not yet.

Today, Dr. Abernathy nods approvingly at my latest chapter draft. "Your analysis of gender dynamics in corporate structures is sharper than in previous versions," she says, tapping the document with one blunt-nailed finger. "Something giving you new insights, Lucy?"

I think of Damon's world—the way men defer to him with a mixture of fear and respect, the way women either flirt orfade into the background. I think of how I fit nowhere in that ecosystem.

"Just seeing things from a different angle," I say, and she gives me a look that says she knows there's more to it.

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