Page 1 of Point of Contention

Chapter One

Rylan

With my heart in my throat and my guts in knots, I sat in a black lobby chair on Reed Tower’s seventy-fifth floor, wondering what thehellhad just happened. How did I get here? After the press conference, Cabot had whisked me upstairs so swiftly my head spun.

Which was fitting, seeing as how the past forty-eight hours had been a whirlwind. Not to mention the past month.

In just four weeks’ time, I’d started a new internship at my dream publishing house, discovered that I not only enjoyed the kink life but the kink life enjoyed me, and I’d fallen in love with a man fifteen years older than me, who frowned as often as I smiled, and introduced me to a world I never wanted to leave. I’d been perfectly matched with a man who knew exactly what I needed, when I needed it, andhot damn, did he know how to get me there. I hadn’t even known men like him existed outside of romance novels, and here I was, completely enraptured by the real deal.

But he was also a force to be reckoned with.

Now, thanks to Stella, Cabot’s former executive assistant and apparently malicious—also former—submissive, everyone knew what we got up to when the lights were off. She’d taken very private—very NSFW—photos of Cabot and me in the underground club, the Rabbit Hole, then leaked them to the press.

Because she was jealous.

And vindictive.

And—

Nah.Let’s not give Stella any more airtime. She’s dead to me.

Moving on!

If having our private lives blasted all over the news wasn’t enough, the whole world now also thought we wereengaged—thanks to Cabot’s father, whom I still had yet to meet, thank you very much.

But you know what? That surprise engagement was bullshit. Cabot hadn’t asked and I absolutely had not said yes, which was why he was currently so frightening.

As I sat impossibly still in the waiting area, Cabot was the formidable presence I’d always known him to be—turned up to a thousand percent.

I was thankful that I wasn’t on the receiving end of his rage, but I wasn’t out of the woods.

His rage wasbecauseof me. Indefenseof me.

Even with the doors to the conference room closed, his voice echoed through the entire seventy-fifth floor. In my weeks at Reed Publishing and the time spent away from the offices with Cabot, he’d been intimidating and powerful, but I’d never seen him lose control. He’d raised his voice a time or two recently when grappling with his feelings for me, that slightly louder version of him intense, sure, but nothing to write home about. Honestly, call me kinky, but I kinda liked when he got all flustered and huffy.

But this was something else entirely.

He was absolutely livid.

My hands shook, so I sat on them. As one does. They were also coated with a healthy layer of nervous sweat, so the fabric of the chair beneath my butt helped with that little issue. But as the adrenaline began to seep from my system, I grew tired, uneasy, and a bit like someone who watched what was happening from above.

Like it wasn’t happeningtome.

Very out of body, yet here I was, living the dream.

My cell phone vibrated incessantly in my purse on the chair beside me, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer it. Greer would be even scarier than Cabot. She’d be fuming about this turn of events, and would lose her mind when she found out that, like her, we’d been completely blindsided by the engagement announcement ourselves. And there was no way she hadn’t seen the media circus that was Cabot’s attempt to smooth things over with the public.

No doubt, my best friend would have tuned in.

For that matter, her grandfather probably had as well.

I sank deeper into my chair at the thought of Professor Clements knowing what I’d done.

He was the only father figure in my life—that I cared to acknowledge anyway. My stomach twisted as I considered what he’d think about all of this. Not just the personal aspects of my sexual life, because him knowing anything about that was torture in and of itself, but the deeper stuff, the bigger issue. Allowing myself to risk my dream internship over a man—anyman—would be unforgivable in the professor’s eyes.

Truthfully? It was unforgivable in my eyes, too.

And the longer I sat here, the more I began to question myself, my decisions…