Wrong Room: The Ruthless CEO's Captive

Joanna Santana's fingers slipped against the heavy brass handle of the double doors. The metal was cold against her palm, but her skin felt like it was burning from the inside out. Three glasses of champagne. Maybe four. She couldn't remember anymore. The gallery opening had been a blur of fake smiles and cheaper wine than the price tags suggested.

She pushed.

The doors gave way with a soft pneumatic sigh, and Joanna stumbled into a corridor that swallowed sound. The carpet was so thick her heels sank into it, muffling every step. She blinked, trying to clear the swimming darkness at the edges of her vision. Wrong floor. She knew it the moment the silence hit her. The party had been on twelve. This was-she squinted at the brushed steel elevator panel down the hall-twenty-six.

"Perfect," she muttered. Her voice sounded wrong. Too loud. Too slurred.

She reached for the wall to steady herself. Her fingers found silk wallpaper, something expensive that felt like money under her nails. One step. Two. Her left ankle rolled on the third step, the four-inch heel catching in the carpet's plush pile.

"Shit-"

The pain was sharp and immediate, shooting up her calf. She grabbed for the wall but missed. Her shoulder hit a hard, flat surface. A door. It swung inward with a weight that spoke of solid oak and custom hinges, and Joanna tumbled through the opening into absolute blackness.

The door clicked shut behind her.

The sound was final. Sealed. She was alone in the dark with her own ragged breathing and the distant hum of Manhattan twenty-six floors below.

Joanna pushed herself up from the floor. Her palms found marble, cold and smooth. She got one knee under her, then the other. The room smelled like cedar and something else. Something warm. She reached out blindly and her hand connected with fabric. Cotton. Warm skin underneath.

A chest.

She froze.

The chest moved. Inhaled. The body attached to it shifted, and Joanna felt herself being shoved backward with a force that knocked the air from her lungs. Her back hit the wall. Hard.

"Who the hell-"

The voice was male. Low. Dangerous. Joanna's drunk brain processed the sound in fragments. Deep. Angry. Close. Too close.

She tried to speak. Her tongue felt thick. "I-water. I need-"

Her knees buckled. The room spun. She reached for something, anything, and her fingers closed around an arm. Muscle. Tension. Heat radiating through the thin cotton of a shirt.

The arm tried to shake her off. Joanna held on. Her face pressed against something warm and firm, the texture of fabric over muscle. A shoulder. She breathed in. Cedar. Soap. Male. The combination made her head swim worse than the champagne.

"Let go." The words were clipped. Controlled. "I'm calling security."

Joanna heard the threat. Her brain formed the appropriate response-apologize, explain, run-but her body wouldn't cooperate. She was so tired. So warm. The wall behind her was cold, but the body in