Chapter 7

Chloe’s POV

Three days of enforced silence felt like a geological era. My life had shattered, been temporarily reformed in a burst of forbidden heat, and was now placed on a high shelf, waiting for Drake Humphrey’s permission to move again.

I was drowning in his rules. Every minute felt governed by his absence. I kept the black dress I’d worn to his office crumpled in a ball beneath my pillow, inhaling the faint, masculine scent of his expensive cologne mixed with my own climax, a brutal souvenir of his control. I was a puppet whose strings had been abruptly severed, and the inertia was maddening.

I checked my personal phone every fifteen minutes, despite knowing he had blocked the anonymous number I used. The phone screen was a constant source of anxiety and disappointment. I was caught in a cycle of desperation, and it made me despise him and myself for needing him so completely.

I couldn't escape the memory of his mouth, not just the initial, h