Page 77 of The Cruel Heir
The lamp hissed in the quiet, dust motes drifting like slow snowfall between us. I made myself reach for the folio. The cover was cool, the hinge whispering as I opened it. Legal prose marched across cream paper: Irrevocable Trust - Zara A. Johnston Beneficiary, fifty percent interest, equal voting stock, independent trustee. My own name hammered through my temples. This wasn’t leverage; it was fact.
I flipped the page, and there, in bold: Quarterly disbursement schedule. Numbers so obscene they blurred, zeroes swimming. My breath snagged. Freedom had a dollar amount, and it was higher than the ransom Sterling once paid to keep another rival from touching me.
Fingers brushed mine, as he was sliding the metal card into the folio’s pocket. “No strings,” he promised.
“It’s Kingsley money,” I whispered. “There are always strings.”
He sank to a crouch beside the table, bringing us eye-level. The lamp’s golden wash illuminated the hollows under his cheekbones, the cut of his mouth. He looked unbearably tired, like the clever, cruel things in him had finally bitten their own master. “Then tie them to me instead. Spend every cent just to spite me, if that’s what it takes to prove I handed it over without expectation.”
Rain hammered the windows now, a hard applause. The storm wanted a witness. I wanted… God, I wasn’t even sure. I wanted my parents back. I wanted this ache in my chest gone. I wanted Sterling’s voice out of my nightmares, and yet here I was, clinging to the sound of it like a life buoy.
My thumb worried the folio’s edge. “If I leave, you won’t chase me?”
His laugh was almost silent. “Of course I’ll chase you. But I won’t use hunger or rent to slow you down.” He reached, not for me, but for the throw that had slipped off my shoulder, tucking it back with a featherlight touch. “Choose me or don’t, only let the choice be yours.”
Tears pricked. I blinked them away viciously, but they clung anyway, hot. “I hate you for knowing how much I needed someone to say that.”
“I’ve always known what you need.” Sadness dragged across his features. “I just kept mistaking possession for care.”
That confession cracked something. I closed the folio, hugging it to my chest like a shield. “I can’t forgive you yet.”
I can’t forgive you yet.
The words landed heavy between us, but I didn’t pull away.
His breath stilled, shallow, broken, but he didn’t argue. Didn’t demand. Didn’t twist my refusal into a bargain. He just looked at me, like I was the last prayer he’d ever whispered.
And I looked back. At the man I had every reason to hate, and every ache to hold.
Maybe it was the storm outside, or the war inside me, but something frayed. My fingers moved on their own, reaching for the lapel of his suit jacket. Tugging. Testing. And when he didn’t resist, when he let me touch him without strings, I folded into him, like a wave collapsing into the shore.
His arms locked around me.
Not with the force of old Sterling, but the ache of someone who knew this was goodbye.
His lips found mine, slow at first, reverent, like he didn’t believe he was allowed. My knees buckled under the weight of it, the reverence, the ruin. I clung to his shirt, like it could hold meupright, while he kissed the parts of me I’d tried to bury with my parents.
The folio slid from my hands to the floor. The clock ticked. Rain lashed the windows like it wanted in.
We didn’t make it to the guest wing.
Sterling lifted me, like I weighed less than memory, and laid me down on the Persian rug, right there beneath the lamplight, and the dust of old betrayals. He didn’t rush. He didn’t own. He asked, with hands, with eyes, with the whisper of his mouth against my pulse, if I wanted this. If I wanted him.
And I answered with a yes that burned.
He peeled away layers, like I was a secret worth unwrapping. My dress, rain-soaked and funeral-dark, crumpled under his hands. His mouth trailed over my skin, like he’d memorized every place I’d shivered, every spot I’d hidden from the world. When he reached my breasts, I gasped, not from shock, but from the way his reverence threatened to break me. No man had ever touched me like that, with penance instead of pride.
He shed his shirt next, buttons torn in his haste, breath ragged. The firelight caught the ridges of his body, the scars I’d once mocked, the strength I’d once feared. Now he just looked human. Just a man on his knees, before the girl who could end him with a word.
He kissed his way down my belly. Paused between my thighs. Looked up like a man begging absolution, not sex.
“You still want to stop-” he started.
“I don’t,” I whispered. “Just… make me forget this is goodbye.”
Something shattered behind his eyes, but he didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. His mouth descended with a hunger that broke me open.
I didn’t cry until his tongue made me come.
