The icy shock of the water was a physical blow.

It stole her breath, a brutal contrast to the fire raging under her skin. For a split second, the cold was a relief, a baptism. Then, her dress, soaked and heavy, began to pull her down.

Her limbs felt disconnected from her brain. She flailed, her arms slapping uselessly at the surface. Water splashed into her mouth, and she coughed, a raw, choking sound that echoed in the silent, cavernous room.

She tried to grab the edge of the pool, her fingers scraping against smooth, slick tile, finding no purchase.

The door to the suite's main living area slid open.

Horace walked into the poolside lounge, his focus on a stack of documents in his hand. He'd come back for the quarterly reports he'd forgotten. A muffled splash, a sound that didn't belong, made him stop.

He looked up.

His brow, which had been set in a line of cool indifference, instantly furrowed. There was a woman in his pool. Thrashing. Drowning.

Through the distorted veil of water and her own blurred vision, Eleanora saw the tall, dark silhouette on the deck. Kason. He'd followed her. To mock her? To finish the job of destroying her?

Panic, raw and primal, clawed at her. She tried to back away, pushing herself deeper into the pool, away from the figure. The movement made her swallow more water.

Horace strode to the edge, his shadow falling over her. He looked down, his expression unreadable.

He saw her flushed face, the unnatural brightness of her eyes, the way her pupils were blown wide in the dim light. This wasn't just a clumsy fall. This wasn't a normal drowning.

A cold, sharp intuition, the kind that had kept him alive in boardrooms and back alleys, screamed at him. She was on something. A powerful hallucinogen, by the looks of it. A roofie.

He tossed the files onto a lounge chair and crouched, stripping off his suit jacket. He extended a hand. "Take my hand."

But Eleanora, lost in the drug-fueled nightmare, didn't see a rescuer. She saw her tormentor.

She slapped at the water, sending a weak spray in his direction.

"Go away!" she slurred, the words garbled. "Leave me alone, you... you cheating bastard! You disgusting old pervert!"

Horace's hand didn't freeze. A slow, cold smile spread across his lips. Old pervert. The insult, so juvenile, only seemed to amuse him, though the amusement was razor-sharp and dangerous.

"Watch your mouth," he said, his voice dropping to a low, cold growl.

She didn't hear the warning. She only felt the threat of his presence. Sobbing, she tried to swim away, toward the center of the pool, toward the illusion of safety.

Then, a brutal, searing cramp seized her right calf. Her leg locked up.

Her body went rigid, then sank.

Water rushed over her head, into her nose, her mouth. The world went silent, blue, and terrifying. A desperate, burning need for air consumed her. Her eyes were wide with a final, silent scream as her hands clawed at the water that was filling her lungs.

On the deck, Horace didn't hesitate.

He launched himself into the pool in a clean, powerful dive. The splash was a violent explosion in the quiet room. He was on her in two powerful strokes, a predator closing in on his prey.

A strong arm snaked around her waist, a band of steel locking her against him. He hauled her upward, breaking the surface with a gasp.

Her back was flush against his hard chest. Water streamed from his hair, dripping from his sharp jawline onto her face. She was coughing, sputtering, but she was breathing.

The drug was still in control. The terror of drowning was replaced by a confusing, shameful sense of security. His body was a warm, solid anchor in her spinning world. The strength of his hold wasn't just restraining; it was... grounding.

Her struggles ceased.

Like a drowning sailor clinging to a piece of driftwood, her wet, trembling arms came up, wrapping around his neck. She held on, her survival instincts overriding everything else.

Dazed, she tilted her head back, her cheek resting against his chest. Her lips, swollen and parted, were inches from his throat.

Horace felt the shift in her. The fight going out of her, replaced by a pliant, desperate clinging. He felt the heat of her body through their soaked clothes, the soft press of her breasts against his ribs.

His entire body went rigid, every muscle tensing as if bracing for a blow.

His face was a mask of stone, but his voice was a low, guttural snarl, laced with a fury she was too far gone to comprehend.

"What the hell did you take?"

Her mind was a bonfire of broken images and raw sensation. The drug had burned away reason, leaving only instinct.

She couldn't see his face clearly. He was just a shape, a presence, a source of warmth and strength in the cold, terrifying water. He was the anchor. He was safety.

She pressed closer, her feverish cheek finding the cool, wet skin of his neck. It felt good. Solid. Her arms tightened their grip, molding her body to his, trying to absorb his heat, his stability.

And then, from the depths of her shattered consciousness, a name surfaced. A name tied to a desperate, twisted need for comfort, for the fantasy of what should have been.

"Kason..."

The name left her lips as a soft, breathless sigh.

It was like throwing a switch.

The warmth in his body vanished, replaced by something arctic. The arm around her waist, which had been a firm brace, became a vise. The pressure was sudden, painful. It felt like his fingers were digging into her bones.

His eyes, which had been dark with a complex mix of concern and desire, were now just... black. Empty voids of fury.

"Who did you just say?" he bit out, the words low and serrated, as if dragged over broken glass.

Eleanora was lost in her hallucination. She was being held, rescued. This was how it was supposed to feel. She didn't register the danger, only the drug-induced mirage of tenderness.

She murmured the name again, "Kason," and, tilting her head up, she tried to find his mouth with hers.

That was the final transgression.

It was the one thing he could not, would not, tolerate.

A sound that was half laugh, half snarl, ripped from his throat. It was the sound of something primal and possessive being violated.

He shoved her away.

There was no warning. One moment she was clinging to him, the next she was airborne, her body a weightless, helpless arc in the dim light.

She hit the water hard.

The cold was a brutal slap, a punishment. It rushed into her mouth, her nose, shocking her system. The violent coughing that followed was agonizing, but it was a pinprick of reality in the fog.

The chill was a predator, sinking its teeth into her skin, a stark contrast to the fire still burning in her veins.

Horace stood a few feet away, the water swirling around his waist. His chest rose and fell in harsh, ragged breaths. He didn't move to help her. He just watched, his face a mask of cold fury, like a god judging a sinner.

She clawed at the water, her nails finding nothing. The combination of extreme heat and cold was a unique form of torture. A low, wounded whimper escaped her lips, the sound of an animal in a trap. Tears, hot and useless, streamed down her face, mixing with the pool water.

She managed to get her head above the surface, gasping for air, wiping the water from her eyes.

The dim, blue underwater lights of the pool cast an eerie glow. Her vision, for the first time in an hour, started to clear. The fuzzy silhouette sharpened into hard lines and cruel angles.

Her blood ran cold.

That wasn't Kason.

That wasn't the face of the man who had betrayed her. It was the face of the man who had warned her. The face from the newspaper clippings. The face that had stared down at her in the elevator with such unnerving intensity.

It was Horace.

The recognition was an electric shock. It jolted through her spine, overriding the drug. Fear, pure and undiluted, took over.

She turned, scrambling, swimming desperately for the edge of the pool. For escape.

He moved.

With long, powerful strides, he cut through the water, the ripples of his advance reaching her first. He was a shark, and she was bleeding. He blocked her path to the steps, a solid wall of muscle and menace.

Her fingers were inches from the tiled edge when his hand closed around her ankle.

It was a manacle of flesh and bone.

He yanked.

She was dragged backward, away from safety, back into the deep, back to him.

He dragged her through the water until she was directly in front of him, her body forced to tilt back, her face turned up to his.

His eyes were black holes, swallowing the dim light of the room. They burned with an intensity that felt like it was physically searing her skin.

"Horace," she choked out, the name a plea, a prayer, a surrender.

Hearing his own name seemed to do something to him. The raw violence in his gaze didn't disappear, but it shifted, condensing into something darker, more focused. More possessive.

His hand moved from her ankle to her chin, his fingers clamping down like a steel trap. It wasn't a caress. It was a claim.

"So you do know who I am," he rasped, his voice a low threat. "Then you know I'm not my pathetic nephew."

Tears streamed from her eyes, mixing with the water on her face. The last dregs of the drug left her body weak, her limbs heavy and unresponsive. She had no fight left.

She tried to push against his chest, a feeble, desperate gesture. "Please," she sobbed. "I want to go home."

He laughed, a cold, humorless sound. "You broke into my suite. You threw yourself in my pool. You kissed me," he paused, leaning closer, his breath a hot ghost against her lips, "and you called me another man's name. You don't get to go home."

In one fluid, brutal motion, he hooked an arm under her knees and lifted her from the water.

She was nothing against his strength. A doll. She hung in his arms, soaked and shivering, the ruined dress clinging to her like a second skin.

Water dripped from them, pooling on the priceless Persian rug as he strode from the pool area into the cavernous bedroom. The city lights of Manhattan glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, indifferent witnesses.

He tossed her onto the massive bed.

The silk sheets were cool against her overheated skin. She landed with a soft thud and immediately tried to scramble away, to crawl to the other side.

His foot came down on the hem of her wet dress, pinning her in place.

She froze, her heart hammering against her ribs so hard she thought it might break.

Slowly, deliberately, he reached up and undid his tie, pulling the silk strip from his collar with a soft hiss. His eyes never left hers. They were dark, stormy, full of a terrifying promise.

"Since he didn't want you," he said, his voice dangerously soft, "I'll be happy to take his place."

"No," she whispered, shaking her head, the movement frantic. "No, please, don't."

Her pleas were meaningless. Her resistance was a joke. He was a force of nature, and she was just a girl who had been foolish enough to get caught in the storm.

He came down over her, his body a heavy, suffocating weight. He blocked out the light, the city, the world. There was only him. His scent of cedar and smoke and pool water. His terrifying strength.

A strange, horrifying mix of pain and sensation shot through her. She couldn't tell if she was hot or cold, if the shivers wracking her body were from fear or the drug or him.

She bit down on her own lip, hard. The sharp, coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. It was the only thing that felt real.

Outside, the city glowed, a million tiny lights forming a beautiful, cruel backdrop to the ugliest moment of her life. Every touch was a brand, a mark of ownership. A punishment.

Her vision blurred, the glittering lights of the skyline smearing into streaks. Her consciousness, battered by the drug, the betrayal, and now this, began to fray at the edges.

She closed her eyes, a final act of surrender. She let the darkness, the humiliation, the sheer, crushing weight of it all, pull her under.

As her consciousness frayed, the punishing rhythm of his movements ceased. He stared down at her pale, tear-streaked face, and the cold fury in his eyes was slowly replaced by a dark, aching possessiveness. Only then did his arms wrap around her, pulling her tightly against his chest, holding her as if she were a treasure he had just stolen and would never, ever let go.