Page 8 of The Rival's Obsession
Her fingers are between her thighs—slick and glistening.
“Naughty girl,” I call out, not stopping my thrusts. “Coming without permission.”
She just moans in response, too wrecked by the scene to form words.
I slow my pace, easing Sam back down from the high. Letting him breathe again.
Every motion still deep. Still deliberate.
His hands clutch my arms like he needs the anchor.
I lower myself over him, our chests brushing.
His mouth finds mine again—hungry and grateful.
We kiss through the aftershocks—soft and deep this time.
And when I finally pull back—his lips swollen, eyes blown wide, chest heaving—I drag my knuckles down the side of his face and smirk.
“You were so fucking good for me,” I murmur against his mouth. “And you’re gonna take so much more tonight.”
It’s eight ten a.m., and Dante still hasn’t shown.
I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I’d be more shocked if he had walked in on time, freshly pressed and pretending not to be the human disaster currently burning a hole through the company’s reputation.
I’ve been pacing the hallway outside for the past twenty minutes, waiting for the inevitable—trying to keep my breathing steady while my phone does its best to destroy me.
The trending hashtag—#DeadWeightVegas—is a car crash I can’t stop watching.
Every time I scroll, there’s a new video. A different angle. A different slow-motion replay of the exact moment everything imploded.
Dante’s fist. My jaw.
The mic still hot as the crowd gasped, every eye in that cavernous convention center turning on us.
We were supposed to be the keynote—the headliners for the biggest architecture convention in the country. Months of planning, of PR, of perfectly controlled messaging—wiped out in twelve seconds of live humiliation.
I don’t even remember saying it.
The words were meant for one person, offstage, off record. But somehow, the sound team caught it, crystal clear:
“Dante’s nothing but dead weight. Has been for years.”
The punch came less than thirty seconds later.
Now it’s everywhere.
I tap a video—a TikTok this time. Someone slowed it down, added dramatic music, bold font that reads Corporate Breakup of the Year?
Christ.
I lower the phone and press my fingers to the bridge of my nose, trying to stave off the headache clawing at the back of my skull.
The board’s waiting. No one’s said it out loud, but we all know this is a reckoning.
And I already know how it ends.
What I don’t know is how the hell I’m supposed to tell my father.
