I Walked Into the Wrong Room and Married the Right Man

The hallway stretched before me like a judgment aisle, and I was walking down it.

Room 1214. The brass numbers gleamed under fluorescent lighting that did absolutely no favors for my complexion. Not that it mattered anymore. My complexion hadn't mattered since the tabloids decided I was yesterday's news, thrown out with the recycling like last week's grocery ads.

I adjusted my coat. My very expensive, very revealing trench coat that I'd bought during better days. Back when photographers waited outside restaurants for me. Back when my name meant something other than

"that actress who lost everything."

Now I was standing outside a hotel room at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday,ready to trade my body for my daughter's future.

God, I was pathetic.

The lawyer—the one with the reputation for winning unwinnable custody cases—was supposedly staying here. My informant, a desperate text from a desperate friend of a desperate friend, had been clear: He likes women. He likes them willing. He likes them quiet.

I could do willing. I could do quiet.

What I couldn't do was lose my daughter. Not to my ex-husband, who'd made sure the press saw me at my lowest, photographed me leaving rehab with mascara running down my face like some tragic before picture in a makeup commercial. Not to the media, who'd turned my postpartum depression into a spectator sport.

Not to a system that favored money and connections over actual maternal love.

I knocked. Once. Twice.

The door cracked open, and darkness stared back. No light from inside. No silhouette. Just a slice of black that swallowed the hallway's fluorescent glow like a hungry mouth.

"Mr. Wright?" I whispered, using the lawyer's name. "It's Skylar Love. We need to—"

A hand shot through the gap. Large. Strong. Fingers wrapping around my wrist like a vice. I barely had time to gasp before I was yanked forward, stumbling across the threshold into absolute darkness. The door clicked shut behind me, sealing us in.

I can't see anything.

My pulse spiked. Fear and something else—something electric—coursed through my veins as strong hands gripped my shoulders, spinning me, pressing my back against cool hotel wallpaper.

"Wait—" I started, but a mouth found mine.

Not gentle. Not asking permission. Taking. Demanding. The taste of expensive whiskey flooded my senses, mixed with something woodsy and masculine. Cedar. Sandalwood. The scent of a man who didn't need to try because everything came easy to him.

My carefully prepared speech—the one about my daughter, about custody, about how I'd do anything to secure his representation—dissolved like sugar in hot water.

His tongue swept past my lips. Demanding entry. I gave it. My hands found his chest—broad and solid beneath a dress shirt that probably cost more than my car payment used to be—and fisted the fabric.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to be the one in control. The seducer. The one with the plan.

But his body pressed against mine, hard and unyielding, and