Page 124 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless

Inside, the penthouse waits in darkness. I don't reach for lights. Don't need to. The city pours illumination through floor-to-ceiling windows, painting everything in silver and shadow. In light just sufficient to navigate without erasing the intimacy of darkness.

We stand in the living room, suddenly uncertain despite decision already made. Despite promises already exchanged. Despite the gravity pulling us toward inevitable collision.

"Jaden?" I ask, though I know the answer.

"At my mother's." Her voice carries a slight tremor. "Until Sunday."

Two days. Two nights. Time existing as luxury rather than constraint. As possibility rather than limitation.

I watch her move through the space—this territory once familiar, now rediscovered. Her fingers trailing along the back of the couch we chose together. Her eyes taking in the art thatstill hangs where she placed it years ago. The penthouse that has remained largely unchanged, as though waiting for her return.

I reach for her, fingers tracing the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the fullness of her lower lip. Memorizing through touch what I've preserved through memory. Learning the subtle ways she's changed in my absence. The ways she's remained the same.

"I've missed you," I confess, the words emerging without calculation. Without strategy. Just raw truth in darkness.

Her eyes close briefly, lashes casting shadows against her cheeks. When they open again, I find something I've searched for across five years of separation. Something I feared I'd never see again.

Home.

"Show me," she whispers.

And I do.

With hands that tremble despite years of practiced control. With mouth that seeks rather than claims. With body that remembers hers like topography never forgotten.

We move toward her bedroom without speaking. Without needing to. Following the inevitable trajectory of bodies that know each other. That have missed each other. That have found each other again across time and distance and pain transformed into wisdom.

At her bedside, I pause. Let her set the pace. The terms. The boundaries. Give her what I once took—the power to choose. To lead. To decide how this reunion unfolds.

She reaches for me in darkness. Pulls me toward her with gentle insistence. With the certainty of decision fully made and never regretted.

"Stay," I whisper against her mouth.

Not just for tonight. Not just until morning. But for all the mornings that follow. All the nights that wait on the other side of yes.

She answers with her hands. With her mouth. With her body aligned with mine in the perfect synchronicity that once defined us. That now defines us again, but with the wisdom of fracture and repair.

With surrender that feels like the greatest victory I've ever claimed.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE QUIET AFTER

CHANEL

"Stay," he whispers against my mouth.

The word hangs between us—not a command but a question. A revelation of vulnerability from a man who's built empires without flinching. Who's dismantled enemies without remorse. Who's calculated risk across seven markets before most people finish their morning coffee.

Yet here, in the darkness of his bedroom—our bedroom once—the word emerges raw. Undefended. A single syllable that contains four years of absence, of careful distance, of choices we've both had to live with.

I answer without words.

My hands find his face, fingertips tracing the jawline sharper now than in memory. The slight silver at his temples that wasn't there before. The lines around his eyes that speak of sleepless nights I wasn't there to witness.

My body remembers his before my mind can intervene—the precise pressure of his hands at my waist, the heat of his skin beneath my palms, the way his breath catches when myfingers trace the hollow at the base of his throat. Muscle memory preserved despite years of careful forgetting.

His mouth finds mine again, and any remaining distance collapses.