Divorcing The Billionaire: Watch Me Shine

Cleone Knight adjusted the wick of the last scented candle, its flame casting a soft, flickering glow across the master bedroom. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the lights of Manhattan glittered like a carpet of fallen stars. It was a perfect scene, meticulously crafted for a reunion.

She checked her reflection in the full-length mirror. The silk negligee, a deep sapphire blue, clung to her frame. She'd bought it specifically for tonight, for his return from a month-long business trip. Three years of marriage had taught her that Graves Mills didn't respond to emotional pleas, but he understood gestures. This was a gesture of hope.

The private elevator chimed, a soft, discreet sound that echoed directly into the penthouse foyer. Her heart gave a painful leap, a frantic bird caught between hope and a familiar, deep-seated anxiety. She smoothed the silk over her hips one last time.

Graves Mills entered the room, his presence immediately sucking the warmth out of the air. At six-foot-three, in a perfectly tailored suit, he was a man built of power and ice. He loosened his tie, his gray eyes sweeping the room with the indifferent appraisal of an owner checking his property. He hadn't looked at her yet.

"What's with the smell?" he asked, his voice a low rumble. He gestured toward the candles. "It's unnecessary."

The carefully constructed atmosphere deflated like a pricked balloon. Cleone felt a familiar chill creep up her spine, but she forced a small smile. "I thought it would be nice. To welcome you home."

She moved to help him with his jacket, a wifely duty she'd performed a thousand times. He shrugged off her hands with a subtle, surgical precision, his shoulder sliding away from her touch. He walked past her toward the table, studying the dishes like an auditor inspecting a dubious ledger.

“Kidneys. Oysters. Lamb fries.” He picked up the tonic bowl, sniffed it, and set it down with a soft, damning clink.

Graves sat, but he didn’t pick up his fork. He leaned back, his eyes pinning her in place. “I’m gone one month and you’re already this desperate for a man?”

The viciousness of the words stung, but Cleone’s smile only sharpened. She had learned to parry him blow for blow. “Desperate? I’m simply being a diligent wife. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to come back from your next trip to find me greeting you with a ready-made family.”

A muscle jumped in his temple. In one fluid motion, he stood, pulled her against his chest. “I don’t need any of this,” he said, his breath hot against her ear, “to satisfy you.”

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, one arm banded under her hips, and carried her out of the dining room. The bedroom door clicked shut behind them with an ominous finality.

The silk of her negligee tore under his impatient hands, and the cool air hit her skin a heartbeat before his burning touch replaced it.

He laid her on the bed, and for a suspended moment, the gray of his eyes was a storm of something that looked terrifyingly like need.

He moved over her, inside her, with a reverence wrapped in domination—every stroke a possession that mimicked devotion so perfectly she sometimes let herself believe it.

He coaxed responses from her body that her mind fought against, pulled sounds from her throat that were half sob, half plea.

He made her say his name, made her admit she wanted him, until her voice frayed into a whisper and she had to beg him to stop.

Only then did he shudder and relent, collapsing beside her like a god momentarily sated.

When he was finished, he rolled away from her without a word, his back a formidable wall of muscle and indifference.

She lay there, feeling used and more profoundly alone than when she had been by herself. The silence in the room was a physical weight, pressing down on her chest, making it hard to breathe. It was broken only by the distant, muted siren of a city that never slept.

Then, another sound cut through the quiet. A sharp buzz from the bedside table.

Cleone reached for it on instinct, her mind still fogged with exhausted sleep. She swiped the screen before she registered her mistake.

“Graves?” A fragile, achingly familiar voice spilled from the speaker. “It’s so cold in the hospital. I’m scared. Can you come? Please, I need you.”

The name on the caller ID glowed like a brand: Aurelia.

The name detonated in Cleone’s chest. The woman who had disrupted her wedding, the white moonlight Graves held in the deepest chamber of his heart! Hadn't she been left in a coma after that car accident? Could it be...

Was she awake?

The phone was ripped from her hand. Graves was suddenly awake, his face a mask of glacial fury. He didn’t spare her a word—just turned, the device pressed to his ear, and strode into the ensuite bathroom. The lock clicked.

Through the door, she heard his voice transform. It softened into a tone she had never been granted: gentle, protective, laced with a tenderness that made her insides curl up and die. “Don’t cry. I’ll be right there.”

When he emerged, he was already pulling on a fresh shirt, his movements brisk, efficient, utterly detached from the bed they had just shared. He didn’t look at her.

Cleone’s hand shot out, her fingers clutching the hem of his shirt like a lifeline. Her voice came out raw, scraped hollow by three years of silence and the ghost of what they’d just done. “Graves, don’t go.”