Possessed by Him

I clutched the warm paper bag of Italian takeout to my chest as I stepped into the elevator of Blackstone Tower. The familiar scent of garlic and basil wafted up, transporting me back to our college days when Gabriel and I would share meals in his tiny apartment, dreaming about our future together. Those memories felt increasingly distant now, fading like photographs left too long in the sun.

The elevator climbed smoothly toward the executive floor, and I tried to quiet the nervous flutter in my stomach. We hadn't shared a spontaneous lunch in months. Between Gabriel's increasingly demanding schedule and the growing distance between us, our relationship had become a carefully choreographed dance of polite interactions and hollow kisses.

But today would be different. I'd chosen his favorite – fettuccine alfredo from Marcello's, the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we'd had our first date. The place where he'd looked at me across a candlelit table with such tenderness that I'd felt my heart might burst.

"Ms. Summers," Gabriel's secretary greeted me with surprise as I stepped off the elevator. "Mr. Blackstone doesn't have you on his calendar today."

"It's a surprise," I said, lifting the bag with a smile that felt more confident than I felt. "Is he available?"

She hesitated, her eyes darting to his closed office door. "He asked not to be disturbed. He's in a meeting with Ms. Hayes."

Anna Hayes. His personal assistant. The woman whose name seemed to appear in every other sentence Gabriel spoke these days.

"It'll just take a minute," I assured her, already moving toward his door. "He needs to eat."

Before she could protest further, I was at his office door. I paused, my hand on the polished handle, suddenly uncertain. When had I started feeling like a visitor in my fiancé's life? I shook the thought away and knocked lightly before turning the handle.

The sound that greeted me was soft but unmistakable – a woman's gasp, followed by a low masculine groan that I knew all too well.

Time seemed to slow as I pushed the door open wider. The bag of food slipped from my suddenly numb fingers.

There, against his desk, was Gabriel – my Gabriel – with Anna Hayes wrapped around him. His hands gripped her thighs, her skirt pushed up around her waist. Her blouse was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. But it wasn't their state of undress that froze the blood in my veins.

It was his eyes.

Those dark, intense eyes that had once looked at me with such warmth now burned with a hunger I hadn't seen in years. A raw, unfiltered desire that made my stomach clench with the realization that he had never – not once in our recent memory – looked at me that way.

For one horrible moment, no one moved. The only sound was the soft splat of pasta sauce leaking onto the pristine carpet from the fallen bag.

Anna recovered first, pushing against Gabriel's chest with a