POV Harper
I didn't just watch your life, Harper. I wrote it.
My brain scrambles for logic, for reason, for any explanation that doesn't involve the stepbrother I've spent seven years hating secretly orchestrating my existence from across an ocean. The photos scattered at our feet tell a story I never knew was being written—hundreds of moments I believed were private, captured by someone who had no right to witness them.
"That's impossible," I whisper, but even as I say it, the pieces start clicking into place with sickening precision. "You were in Italy. You couldn't have—"
"Italy has airports, Harper. And I have money." He doesn't move closer, but he doesn't back away either. "Distance was never the obstacle you thought it was."
"The Royal College," I say, my voice cracking. "Professor Morrison resigned so suddenly in my second year. Everyone thought it was a health issue." The memory surfaces unbidden—the way he used to linger after critiques, standing too close, his eyes crawling over me like I was something to consume rather than teach. "That was you, wasn't it?"
"The tip to administration was mercy." His jaw tightens, but his eyes never leave mine. "I considered breaking his hands first."
A normal woman would recoil from this casual discussion of violence committed in her name. But my thighs clench involuntarily because apparently I am far from normal.
"And Oliver?" The name tastes bitter on my tongue. "He left for Sydney three days after we slept together for the first time. I thought I'd done something wrong. I spent months wondering what I did to make him run."
"Oliver was a pretentious mediocrity who would have held you back." Jaxson's voice carries no remorse, only conviction. "His sudden career opportunity in Australia was the kindest thing I could have done for both of you."
The admission should horrify me. It does horrify me—this calculated interference in my most intimate moments, this systematic removal of anyone who got too close. And yet my traitorous body responds to his possessiveness with a heat that pools low in my belly, mixing with rage until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
This is wrong. This is so deeply wrong.
But the orgasm with Preston last night left me hollow, too sudden and too mechanical to satisfy the ache that's been building. Standing here now, learning the depths of Jaxson's obsession, that ache intensifies rather than retreats.
"Thomas," I continue, desperate to fuel my anger, to drown out the arousal threatening to short-circuit my moral compass. "The investment banker who stopped returning my calls. What did you do to him?"
"Nothing permanent." Jaxson's lips curve into a smile that should terrify me. "Just a friendly reminder that London can be dangerous for careless men."
"You had him beaten?" My voice rises, echoing off the study walls. "You hired people to assault a man because he took me to dinner?"
"I hired people to discourage a man who looked at you like you were a meal he planned to consume and discard." He steps closer, and I press harder against the desk—the same desk where I used to do homework while Father reviewed contracts across from me. "Every man who touched you was a disappointment. I simply accelerated the inevitable."
"You stole my choices." The words shake with emotions I refuse to name. "Every relationship, every opportunity, every moment I thought was mine—you were there, pulling strings like I was your personal puppet."
"I gave you the life you deserved." His voice drops to that dangerous register that makes my spine tingle. "The life Richard's money and influence would have bought you anyway, just without the strings attached to his approval."
"That wasn't your decision to make." I shove at his chest, but the contact sends electricity arcing through my nerve endings. "You don't get to decide what I deserve. You don't get to eliminate every man who shows interest in me just because—"
"Because what, Harper?" He catches my wrists, holding them between us. "Finish that sentence. Because I'm your stepbrother? Because I'm supposed to be a stranger? Because admitting why I did any of this would mean admitting that you feel it too?"
"I don't feel anything for you except contempt." The lie tastes like ash on my tongue.
"Liar." He releases my wrists but doesn't step back. "I watched you come last night while pretending I was the one inside you. Don't tell me you feel nothing."
Heat floods my cheeks, my chest, places I have no business feeling warmth when confronted with evidence of his stalking.
"That's not—I wasn't—"
"You were." He tilts his head, studying me with the patience of a predator who knows his prey has nowhere left to run. "Your eyes found mine the moment you came. Not his. Mine. You looked right at me while he was still inside you, and I saw everything you've been hiding."
"You saw what you wanted to see." I force the words through clenched teeth. "Your obsession is making you delusional."
"My obsession?" A dark laugh escapes him. "Tell me, Harper, does Preston know that your body tolerates him the way it tolerates a dentist's chair?"
"Stop."
"Does he know that the only time you've ever looked alive in his arms was when you were staring at me?" He moves closer, and I press harder against the desk. "I know what I saw, Harper."
"You're wrong." But my voice lacks conviction, undermined by the way my body leans toward him despite every screaming alarm in my head.
"Then prove it." He cups my face with unexpected gentleness, thumb brushing my cheekbone in devastating contrast to his words. "Walk away right now. Go back to Preston's bed and let him fuck you." His voice drops lower, almost tender. "Let him touch you the way you wish I would." His thumb traces along my jaw, tilting my face up. "Go on, Harper. I won't stop you."
My breath catches. "I hate you."
"Say it again." His thumb traces my lower lip, featherlight. "Make me believe it."
This is insane. He stalked me. He manipulated my entire adult life. He's everything I should despise.
But when I search for hatred, I find only hunger—vast and terrifying and older than my ability to articulate it.
My hand rises without permission, fingers trembling as they brush his jaw. The touch is tentative, questioning, a request for something I have no right to want.
He'll push me away. He has to push me away. This can't be real.
Jaxson goes completely still beneath my touch, his breathing shallow, his eyes searching mine for permission I'm not sure I should give.
"Harper." My name in his mouth sounds like a confession dragged out under torture—raw and reluctant and seven years overdue.
I rise on my toes and press my mouth to his—just a brush of lips testing whether this moment will survive contact with reality. The touch is barely there, a whisper of sensation that could still be dismissed as a mistake.
He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. Doesn't do anything except stand there while I hover at the edge of destruction, waiting to see if he'll shove me away or pull me closer.
Please. Please tell me I'm not alone in this madness.
His hand slides into my hair, cradling the back of my head, and then he finally kisses me back.