Falling.
And hoping desperately that he would catch me.
Chapter Ten
Lorenzo
I watched her take in my penthouse like it was a museum she’d never been allowed to touch.
The way her eyes widened at the floor-to-ceiling windows, the way her fingers hovered over the leather couch without quite touching it, the way she held her breath when she stepped onto the balcony. It was like watching someone discover color for the first time.
And it made me realize something I’d never bothered to think about before.
I took all of this for granted.
Every day, I walked through these rooms without seeing them. The marble countertops, the Italian leather, the custom-built bookcases that I’d never once filled with books I actually read. The view, that fucking view, that I barely glanced at anymore because it was just there. Background noise.
But she saw it.
She saw the beauty. The sheer fucking absurdity of one man living in a space this large, this expensive, while she was, according to my PI’s report, hundreds of miles away from the quaint apartment she grew up in. For her, space like this wasn’t just rare; it was unthinkable.
I felt something twist in my chest. Not guilt, I didn’t do guilt, couldn’t afford it. This feeling was more of a recognition of how blind I’d been.
I’d grown up with money. My father’s money, my family’s legacy, the kind of wealth that came with expectations and obligations and a golden cage. I’d resented it for most of my life. I’d rebelled against it, tried to carve out my own identity, and built my own business from the ground up to prove that I could succeed without the family name.
But I’d never once stopped to appreciate what it meant to have options, to have safety.
That thought followed me as I led her to my study.
It was the room I spent the most time in when I was home—a corner space with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, a walnut desk that had belonged to my grandfather, and a wall of monitors that I used for work. The room was dark and moody, lit by a single brass lamp in the corner of the desk.
She stopped at the doorway, her eyes scanning the space.
“It smells like you in here,” she said softly.
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a good thing?”
“I don’t know yet.” She stepped inside, running her hand along the edge of the desk. “It’s… intense.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She turns to face me, and I see the shift in her posture. It’s the very moment she decided to stop being overwhelmed and start being in control.
“If we’re doing this, then I have conditions,” Zara declared confidently.
My lips twitch. “I expected you would.”
“First: no sex.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I fought to keep my expression neutral, but inside, something ruthless coiled and snarled, hungry and unsatisfied. Every muscle in my body wentrigid with the effort it took not to react—to stay where I was, to appear untouchable, unaffected, when what I really wanted was to grab her, to make her see how much I craved her.
I’d wanted her from the moment I saw her at my bar, wild-eyed and crying over a suitcase, her beauty like a dare. I had fantasized about tasting her, marking her, giving her all the things I kept locked behind my careful restraint. Now she was here, drawing that line with her voice, and desire turned tangled and raw beneath my skin, battling with another urge that threatened to swallow me whole.
I wanted to keep her happy as much as I wanted to keep her for myself. I told myself I would respect her terms. I wanted to be the man who could, wanted her to trust me more than I wanted to touch her, even when my own body screamed in protest.
I knew this wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t think it would be this hard.
“Clarify,” I said, leaning against the edge of the desk. “No sex at all? For the entire duration of the agreement?”
