Billion Dollar Mistress

Dorian tastes like bourbon and expensive decisions when he finally pulls his mouth from mine.

I’m on the low leather sofa in his office, the kind that’s meant for closing deals, not losing your mind. My trench coat is on the floor where it fell, my ivory slip dress slid high on my thighs, and the glass wall behind his desk is a sheet of Manhattan rain. I can see my own reflection faintly, broken by city lights, and it makes me look like a woman who should know better.

Dorian Vale does not look like a man who’s just done something reckless. He looks like a man who’s done it a thousand times and still believes he can control the landing. His shirt is open at the collar, his suit jacket draped over his forearm, his watch catching the light. The crystal is nicked, a small flaw on a perfect thing.

He rests his palm on my knee, heavy and warm, and I feel the weight of it all the way up my spine. Not possessive. Not gentle. Something worse. Familiar.

“Stay,” he says, like it’s a simple request and not a rearranging of my whole life.

I start to answer and his phone lights up on the desk.

EVELYN.

He doesn’t flinch. That’s what scares me. His eyes flick to the screen, then back to my face, as if he can will me into being a quiet choice instead of a loud consequence.

On the corner of his desk, a framed photo shows him between two kids in a museum, a paper dinosaur crown perched crooked on his head. I’ve stared at that crown before and told myself it isn’t my problem.

The phone keeps vibrating. His hand tightens once on my knee, a pulse of pressure that says don’t leave me, even as the name on the screen says you never belonged here.

Outside the door, the private elevator vestibule waits; I’ve seen the red light above the call panel blink, and I know there’s a camera that never sleeps. If Evelyn is on her way up, there’s a version of tonight where I’m still a secret, and a version where I’m the reason his family breaks.

Dorian’s thumb slides along the inside of my knee, slow, coaxing my body into saying yes even while my mind tries to survive. He lifts the phone at last, but he doesn’t answer it yet. He just looks at me, breath close, and quietly offers me the worst kind of choice: proximity or escape.