Chapter 291

[ 1,290 words ]

Katia’s POV

The bedroom in the upstate Windsor estate was quiet—too quiet, the kind of heavy, isolated silence that only a sprawling property shrouded in misty rain could produce. Down the hall, Aiden was already asleep, his room dark and settled. I was sitting on the edge of the mattress, the artificial glow of my tablet illuminating the dark as I tried to review the shipping manifests for the Brooklyn shipyard, when my phone vibrated in my palm.

The screen lit up with his name.

I swiped the screen and pressed the receiver to my ear, expecting his usual gravelly, possessive whisper. But when he spoke, his voice sounded like iron sliding over stone—stiff, strained, and strangely formal.

“Ms. Kensington,” he rasped, the words forced through a tightening throat. “I’m afraid you will have to rush to my home. We need to discuss the London extension. It’s urgent p>

The line went dead before I could even draw a breath to answer.

I stared at the darkened screen, my stomach hitting concrete as the realization washed over me.

The London extension.

It was the code. It wasn’t just the jargon he’d used when he backed me against my office desk; he had first used those exact words right at the family dining table, with everyone sitting around us. We had played the part of distant business partners pretending to review urgent logistics, only for him to drag me upstairs to his room and fuck me while the family sat completely oblivious downstairs.

He had masked his raw, unyielding hunger behind a wall of fake business logistics so my assistant wouldn’t suspect a thing, but the game had started long before the office. It wasn’t an administrative request. It was a distress signal. A highly classified, private warning that he was in deep water and needed me there immediately.

My fingers gripped the edges of the phone, my mind racing, when the screen buzzed again.

A text message from the same contact.

You better be fast or another woman might just fuck me.

I stared at the glowing words. My chest tightened, a hot, violent spike of pure, territorial fury instantly turning my blood to liquid fire.

The sheer, unadulterated audacity of Julian Windsor.

My body was still carrying the physical marks of his touch, the deep, dark bruises on my hips still tender from the night before, and he was sending me a text threatening to let another woman into his bed?

But then the pieces began to click together. The strained rasp in his voice on the call. The stiff formality. The vulgar, desperate urgency of the text. He was compromised. He was playing out the pretense of our code because someone was standing right next to him, and he had used the text to cut through my potential hesitation with a knife of pure jealousy.

Another woman.

Did I really want another woman sleeping with him?

The mere thought of Delia—or any other female in this city—putting her hands on his broad, scarred shoulders, or feeling the massive, throbbing weight of his body on hers, made my vision go black at the edges. He was mine. He had marked me, claimed me, and written his name on my skin in a language that could never be erased. The possessive, feral beast I had spent seven years trying to lock away roared in my chest.

I didn’t waste another second. I tossed my tablet onto the bed, grabbed my car keys and my heavy wool coat, and walked out of the Windsor family house upstate.

The digital clock on my dashboard read eight-twenty PM as I threw my car into gear. I hit the highway back to the city, my hands white against the steering wheel, my racing reflexes taking over as I pushed the engine to its absolute limit through the dark, misty rain.

When I reached the city mansion, the massive front doors were unlocked. I pushed them open, my heels clicking sharply against the stone floor of the gallery.

The heavy, suffocating scent of floral perfume hit my nose instantly, mixed with the weak, flickering glow of a dozen tapered candles coming from the formal dining room.

And standing near the threshold, watching my approach with a pale, tight face, was Delia.

I stopped. My eyes dragged slowly down her body, cataloging the sheer, revealing midnight fabric of her dress. She had worn it intentionally. The black lace of her bra was fully visible, and beneath the sheer fabric over her hips, the thin string of a black thong was completely exposed. She had set a trap. A desperate, pathetic attempt at a seduction.

Delia’s eyes narrowed into slits as she looked at me, her fingers tightening around her wine glass.

“What are you doing in my house at this time of the night? Shouldn’t you be in bed with your husband?” Delia asked, her voice dripping with an artificial sweetness that did nothing to hide the venom underneath.

I slowly unbuttoned my coat, my posture completely straight, my face arranged into a flawless, untouchable mask of professional indifference. I scanned her—from her styled hair down to the exposed curve of her bare ass catching the candlelight—before I spoke.

“Well, I just finished warming his bed and now I have to work,” I said, my voice smooth, quiet, and entirely steady.

Delia gasped, her face turning a sudden, violent red.

I took a slow step forward, my eyes drifting past her toward the formal dining table. I looked at the red rose petals scattered across the mahogany, and then my gaze settled on the untouched, covered plates between the candles.

“And where is your husband?” I asked, a cold, highly amused smirk touching the corner of my lips. “By the look of the untouched plate from the table, I can tell he probably didn’t have dinner with you. Or maybe… he walked out on you p>

The humiliation was complete. Delia’s chest heaved, her knuckles turning a bloodless white as she took a frantic step closer to me.

“You think you are winning?” she hissed, her voice shaking with rage.

I looked at her. I didn’t flinch. I kept my chin up, looking down at her with the quiet, detached curiosity of a scientist studying a nuisance.

“I didn’t know it was a competition, sis,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, mocking whisper. “Are you competing with me? And what is this competition about p>

Delia opened her mouth to scream, her fingers clawing at the air.

“Ms. Kensington p>

The deep, resonant voice cut through the suffocating heat of the room. It comes from above the grand stone staircase.

I snapped my head up.

Julian was standing at the railing of the landing. He was holding onto the wooden banister with a white-knucled grip, his frame towering and dark in the shadows. His face was a frozen, unbending wall of ice, but his voice carried a strange, heavy rasp—as if he were forcing the words through a tightening throat with everything he had.

“I called you here to discuss the London Extension, not to talk with your sister,” Julian commanded, his pitch-black eyes locking onto mine with an intense, warning focus. “Please come up. It’s very urgent. The board is waiting on a conference call p>

I stared up at him, my lips parting slightly.

He was standing there, clearly completely out of his mind on whatever that was going on with him, his thighs probably numb and his head spinning, and yet he was still gripping that wooden railing, forcing his muscles to obey him just to play out the professional pretense of our code.

I almost laughed.

Because what the fuck is wrong with Julian Windsor?

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