Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 477

Chapter 477: Remembering How to Breathe

Two hours.

Catherine Reynolds lay on the cold marble floor of her office, and the only thought her brain could form was: Two. Fucking. Hours.

Her body was a map of conquered territory.

Every muscle trembled with exhaustion she’d earned. Her thighs ached in ways that would make walking tomorrow an interesting challenge. Her throat was raw from screaming—actual screaming, the kind that probably that would’ve had security wondering if someone was being murdered on the executive floor.

Which, in a way, she had been. The old Catherine was dead. What remained was something new, something she didn’t have words for yet.

She couldn’t move. Didn’t want to move.

The marble floor was hard and unforgiving beneath her, but somehow felt more honest than the expensive carpet would have. This was where she’d ended up—sprawled on the ground like a discarded beauty, and discarded she wasn’t, thoroughly, completely satisfied, fundamentally changed.

Her office looked like a hurricane had hit it.

The mahogany desk—her mahogany desk, the one that cost forty thousand dollars and had intimidated countless competitors—was covered in evidence. Papers scattered everywhere. Her laptop on the floor, screen cracked.

Crystal pencil holder shattered. The antique letter opener from her grandfather halfway across the room.

And she didn’t care.

She couldn’t make herself care.

Eros stood near the window, and she tracked him through half-lidded eyes, watching him with the kind of attention that felt like worship and warning combined. His suit—what remained of it—told its own story.

Shirt completely destroyed, buttons scattered across marble like evidence at crime scene. Fabric torn where she’d clawed at him with desperate hands.

His pants were a wrinkled mess, belt hanging undone, the expensive material marked with her lipstick, her arousal, her surrender.

He looked like he’d been through war.

He looked magnificent and victorious.

The thought should’ve carried shame. Should’ve made her feel like terrible person for what she’d just done—fucking a sixteen-year-old recruit on her first day hiring him. Professional boundaries obliterated. Power dynamics completely violated. Everything she’d spent twenty years building potentially compromised.

It didn’t.

She felt alive for first time in twenty-three years. And if that made her selfish, so be it.

"Catherine." His voice cut through her spiraling thoughts—gentle but carrying authority that made her body respond despite its exhaustion. "Look at me."

She did, and found him crouched beside her, close enough to touch but not touching yet. His face showed concern layered beneath satisfaction, and that combination did something to her chest that had nothing to do with physical pleasure.

"You good?" Simple question carrying genuine weight.

She laughed—shaky, disbelieving sound that hurt her abused throat. "Good? I can’t feel my legs. Can’t think straight. Can’t remember my own name for solid thirty seconds just now. Pretty sure I screamed loud enough that everyone in this building knows exactly what happened up here."

{And I don’t care. I should care. I’m the CEO. I’m supposed to maintain dignity, professionalism, control. But I don’t fucking care.}

"That’s not what I asked." He reached out, hand cupping her cheek with surprising tenderness. "Are. You. Good."

The distinction made something crack open in her chest—not breaking, but opening. Letting warmth flood spaces that had been frozen so long she’d forgotten they existed.

"I’m..." She searched for adequate words. "I’m alive. For first time in decades, I actually feel alive instead of just functional." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

{How does seventeen-year-old understand what I needed better than I understood it myself?}

"Age doesn’t matter when it comes to understanding desire," he said, and she realized he’d somehow known exactly what she was thinking. "Some people live sixty years and never figure it out. Others are born knowing."

She tried sitting up, and her abs immediately protested, muscles she didn’t know existed screaming their presence. She made it maybe six inches before collapsing back against marble with soft "oof" of defeat.

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