Page 48 of Accidental Mile High Daddy

You make me feel real. Human.

What a fucking joke.

I looked out the window again, my vision blurring, my hands clenching so tight that pain bloomed from where my nails dug into my palm.

Of course it meant nothing. He was a Strathmore, and they didn’tlove. Theywon.

Fuck him.

Fuck Ryan.

Fuck all of them, everyone that had been there this weekend, save for Zach.

But most of all, fuck me for letting him in, for believing anything that came out of his mouth.

Chapter 14

Matt

The view from the top floor of StrathOne’s headquarters stretched across downtown Atlanta, all glass, metal, and money. On paper, from up here, I should’ve felt like a king.

In reality, though, I couldn’t stop checking my goddamn phone.

I sat at the head of the boardroom table while half a dozen department heads updated me on projections, ad performance, and cargo margins. I heard every word, but none of it stuck, it just passed through me and disappeared out the other side.

Instead, my head was too focused on her.

Sienna.

The way she’d laughed in the candlelight at that restaurant. The way she’d spun Zach on the dance floor, not a care in the world for who was watching her, breathless and grinning. The way she’d looked up at me from the bed after the third time I’d undone her, her eyes heavy and her mouth parted, far too much hidden behind her irises. Worse—the way she’d sobbed my name into my neck in the dark, trusting me with every inch of her body like I’d earned it, like I deserved her.

I closed my eyes for a second, just long enough to hear her voice in my head again.

It’s not an invitation to sleep with me, Matt.

I’d meant to prove her wrong. But not likethat.

“Matt?” someone said. Marketing—Emily, maybe.

I blinked, forcing myself back to the present. “Yeah. Continue.”

She didn’t look convinced. I wasn’t sure I cared.

I left the meeting early, pushed the door open before the PowerPoint had even gotten to anything useful and ignored the shuffle of chairs and hushed voices behind me. I could feel a migraine building behind my eyes, a pulsing throb that had been there since the moment I’d gotten on my plane back in Tulum.

No. Since the moment I’d left her bed.

I’d told myself it was better this way, cleaner, leaving before it got messy, before it blurred into something I couldn’t fix. But I’d fallen asleep with her in my arms.

I never did that. Not with anyone but Zach, not in years.

And instead of waking her gently or saying goodbye or letting her see me in even one honest moment outside of my cock being in her, I did what I’d trained myself to do so well — I’d left. Disappeared. Cold sheets, no note, nothing.

Normally, I could do that. I could leave and feel nothing. But this was too much, too long, and she was lingering. I’d known she would the moment I’d slipped out of the bed, second-guessed myself as I’d pulled away from her as gently as possible and heard her whimper of protest in her sleep, hated myself as I’d stood there and watched her until I was sure she wasn’t going to wake up fully.

And now there was nothing. No response to the first text I’d sent a few days after, just a hesitant text asking if the money went through.

None to the second text I’d sent, following up.