Grace pushed through the heavy glass doors of the Meridian Hotel’s bar, the kind of place where old money went to die quietly in crystal tumblers. The air was thick with cigar smoke and the low hum of deals being made in shadowed booths. She didn’t belong here—not in her crumpled silk dress that still smelled faintly of Ethan’s betrayal—but belonging had never felt farther away.

She slid onto a stool at the polished mahogany bar, the leather creaking under her like a warning. “The strongest thing you have,” she told the bartender, voice raw from crying and whiskey burned in the car. “Make it two.”

The first sip of the smoky, hundred-dollar scotch hit her like a slap—precisely what she wanted. This wasn’t about getting drunk. This was a controlled demolition. She wanted to feel something so sharp it cut Ethan out of her like a tumor. She wanted to be wrecked so completely that there was nothing left of the girl who had begged for scraps of affection on Egyptian cotton sheets.

Her eyes swept the room, desperate for a target. Older men with wedding rings and wedding-bellied egos leered from corners, their gazes crawling over her like damp hands. None of them made her pulse kick. None of them looked like they could break her properly.

Then she saw him.

He sat alone in the darkest corner booth, half-hidden by shadows, a king on a throne of black leather. Mid-forties, maybe—silver threading the temples of his dark hair, jaw cut from marble, shoulders filling out a charcoal suit like it had been sewn onto him. He wasn’t scanning the room for company. He didn’t need to. Power rolled off him in waves cold enough to bruise. Hazel eyes—predatory, ancient—lifted from his phone and locked on her for one heartbeat. Long enough for her nipples to tighten painfully against the lace of her bra. Long enough for the heat to pool low and treacherous between her thighs.

She looked away first, cheeks burning.

The second scotch loosened her tongue. Words spilled out to the bartender like blood from a fresh wound.

“He never even made me come,” she whispered, then laughed—ugly, wet, broken. “Two years of faking it, moaning like a bad porno because I thought if I was good enough, quiet enough, perfect enough—he’d want me. Turns out he was thinking about cock the whole time he was inside me.” Her voice cracked. “I’ve never had an orgasm with another person. Not once. What does that make me? Broken? Ugly? Forgettable?”

The bartender’s face softened with pity she couldn’t stand. “Miss, maybe you’ve had enough—”

“No.” She slammed the glass down, amber liquid sloshing over her knuckles. The words tore out of her before she could stop them, loud enough for half the bar to hear. “I want to be fucked. Properly. Ruined. I want hands around my throat and teeth on my skin and a cock so deep I forget my own name. I want to be choked until I see stars, marked until I bruise, used until I’m sobbing and begging and coming so hard I black out—”

Silence crashed over the bar like a guillotine.

Mortification flooded her, hot and suffocating. Chairs scraped. Heads turned. The bartender reached for her arm. “Ma’am—”

She bolted.

Heels skittering on marble, she fled into the lobby, chest heaving, tears streaming. The room spun. She needed to hide—needed walls around her before she shattered completely. At the front desk, she snatched a keycard from the distracted clerk—gold lettering, heavy stock—without even hearing the number. Elevator. Buttons blurring. Fortieth floor. She stumbled out, vision swimming, and shoved the card into the lock of Suite 4001.

The door clicked open into pure darkness.

The scent hit her first—cedar and storm and something darker, male and expensive. It wrapped around her like arms, calming the frantic hammer of her heart even as her knees buckled. She kicked the door shut behind her, kicked off her heels, and collapsed face-first onto the biggest bed she’d ever felt. The sheets were cool silk against her flushed cheek. She buried her face in the pillow and inhaled like a junkie—his scent, this stranger’s scent—and her traitorous body responded instantly. Thighs clenching. Panties soaked through. A helpless whimper escaped her as she rubbed her legs together, chasing friction that wasn’t there.

Please, she thought, half-prayer, half-madness. Come home. Find me here. Take me apart.

The whiskey dragged her under, consciousness fraying at the edges. She was drifting, floating in warm black, when the soft electronic beep of the door sliced through the haze.

Grace forced her heavy lids open.

A silhouette filled the doorway—tall, broad, backlit by the hallway’s gold glow. The door swung shut behind him with a final, decisive click.

Hazel eyes found her in the dark, sharp as broken glass.

Apollo Reed stepped into his own bedroom and looked at the trembling, beautiful wreck sprawled across his sheets like an offering.

“Well,” he said, voice low and velvet-rough, “this night just got interesting.”