Chapter 17 Fuck you
RORY POV
Alexander.
He came.
Maybe my hearing aids were deceiving me. Maybe the two drinks I had thrown back had hit faster than expected and I was standing here hallucinating.
Slowly I turned toward the door.
A gasp escaped me before I could stop it.
Not in a lifetime did I expect him to show up.
He’d told me flat-out he wouldn’t help. So why now?
He looked like he'd stepped straight out of the darkest chapters of a romance novel. The kind you hide under your pillow.
A white shirt, black tie, and charcoal suit pants, topped with a heavy long coat that made him look twice as imposing. But it was the black leather gloves that chilled me. He looked like a man who had come to handle something filthy.
He walked in. The room parted for him without a word — people stepping aside, eyes wide, mouths open. Whispers exploded.
“That’s Alexander Miller.”
“The New York king?”
“How the hell is he here for Rory?”
He ignored every single one. His gaze stayed on me — cold, calculating, stripping me bare.
He stopped right in front of me. Close enough that his heat hit me like a wall. Close enough that I could smell the leather of his gloves and the faint burn of scotch on his breath.
His eyes moved over me. Slowly. Head to toe and back up again, lingering in places that made my skin feel like it was two sizes too small for my body. I felt every inch of this dress in a way I hadn’t standing in front of my mirror at home. The tightness of it. The amount of skin on display. The neckline that had already been pushing its luck before I’d even left the house.
“You couldn’t wait a few minutes for me, Aurora?”
His voice was thick, raspy, mocking.
I swallowed the lump in my dry throat. "I d-didn't know-"
He didn't let me finish. His right hand shot out, grabbing my waist and hauling me flush against him.
My nipples scraped the hard plane of his shirt through the thin silk. A sharp, shameful pulse shot straight to my clit. I gasped, loud, involuntary and felt wetness bloom between my thighs.
No man had ever affected me like this-with just a touch, he was rewriting my nervous system.
Around us I could feel the entire room watching.
Steve’s eyes burning holes into Alexander’s back from across the room. I didn’t look at him. I refused.
He didn’t let go.
Instead he bent to my ear, lips brushing the shell.
“I fucking hate this dress.”
The words went straight down my spine and settled somewhere between my stomach and my thighs in a way that made me press my knees together immediately. The warmth of his breath against my ear. The deliberate quiet of his voice. I was staring at his collar and actively willing my body to behave itself and losing comprehensively.
I wanted to shove him away. I wanted to grind against him. I hated both.
He pulled back slightly.
A slow smile spread across his face. Taunting. Knowing. The smile of a man who was completely aware of what he had just done to me and found it privately, darkly entertaining.
"Which one of you is picking on my wife?"
The question was asked in a deadly, flat voice.
The room went into a total panic.
My wife? I tugged at the lapel of his coat, forcing him to bend slightly toward me. "You're s-supposed to say girlfriend," I hissed into his ear.
He just shook his head, his eyes never leaving the crowd.
“Is that really Alexander Miller?”
“The one who owns half the city?”
"I heard he's dangerous," someone else whispered. "How the hell is he married to Rory?"
The murmuring moved through the room like fire catching. Everyone looking at him then at me then back at him with the expression of people trying to make something compute that absolutely refused to.
Alexander didn't acknowledge them. He reached out, took the drink right out of my hand, laced his gloved fingers through mine and walked us to a table like the rest of the room had ceased to exist.
We sat down.
I sat there in complete shock still trying to process the reality of my boss, my employer, the man who had looked me dead in the face and told me this was not his problem sitting beside me at Lia’s birthday party in black leather gloves holding my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Are you going to keep looking like a walking dead cast member, or are you going to play your part?" he sneered quietly beside me.
"What are you doing here, sir?" I whispered back.
"I came to collect, Aurora."
Before I could begin to process what that meant Katherine appeared.
She materialized at our table with the specific energy of someone who had been working herself up to this since the moment he walked through the door. Her eyes moved from Alexander to me and back to Alexander with something in them that was equal parts fury and jealousy and pure disbelief.
“How much did she pay you?” Her voice was sharp but shaking underneath it. “Why would a billionaire follow a cheap slow slut to a birthday party?”
Alexander looked at her.
Just looked. Still. Completely. For long enough that Katherine’s confidence visibly began to shrink.
“You might want to rethink that statement,” he said flatly, “if you don’t want your head smashed on this table.”
Katherine’s mouth quivered. “I’m a w-woman. You wouldn’t hit a woman.”
He scoffed. The sound was so completely dismissive it almost would have been funny under different circumstances.
“For my wife,” he said, “I’d chase God from heaven with a sword.”
I swallowed hard. The intensity in his voice was terrifying.
Katherine’s mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes flicked to me with something raw and ugly in them before Steve’s voice came from across the room.
“Kat.”
He was standing at a distance, watching. When his gaze was on Alexander his face carried something I had never seen on Steve before something that looked remarkably like fear. When his eyes shifted to me the fear became disbelief. Disappointment. Like I had personally done something to him by existing in this room on this man’s arm.
Katherine turned and walked back to her husband quickly.
“Is that the reason,” Alexander said, eyes still on Steve across the room, "you're dressed like a hooker?"
“I’m not dressed like a hooker,” I said.
“No?”
“No. And I d — didn’t dress like this for him.”
"Is that so?" He turned his chair toward me.
"Since you've been in my house, your outfits looked like they were shopped straight out of a mentally challenged person's thrift store. And all of a sudden, you're wearing your Christmas clothe for a sad little gathering where your ex gets to parade his upgrade while you stand in the corner like an afterthought? What does that make you Aurora?"
I kept my eyes on my hands.
“I borrowed it,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“I borrowed the dress,” I said, clearer this time.
He reached over and tilted my chin up with his gloved hand leaving me no choice but to look at him directly. His blue eyes from close range doing the thing they always did — making me feel like I was standing at the edge of something with no idea how far the drop was.
“Male attention does get you turned on,” he said.
I jerked my chin away from him. "Why are you here if you're just going to insult me? I'm sure people can see through this facade now.
Thank you for making it obvious."
"No one will see through it," he said, his voice dropping an octave as he leaned in. "Not when you look at me like that."
My cheeks went nuclear. "H-how do I look at you?"
He held my gaze for a long unhurried moment.
"Like you want me to fuck you."