Hired a Gigolo, Got a Billionaire

Chapter 99 The bedroom door clicked softly shut behind us. Christian walked straight into the bathroom, unbuttoning his bloodstained shirt with sharp, impatient movements. I followed him in, still trying to process what had happened in the garden. "Take off your shirt," I said as I stepped into the spacious bathroom, where he had already opened the first aid cabinet. "I need to see how much damage he did." Christian shot me a look that was equal parts exhaustion and stubborn, almost childlike defiance. "I'm fine. Most of this is his blood." "Shirt.

Off." My voice was firm. "Now." Something in my tone must have told him I wasn't going to argue about it. With a resigned sigh, he finally stripped the ruined shirt away, revealing a torso that-despite the circumstances-was still hard not to notice. But my attention went immediately to the dark purple bruise spreading across his right ribs. "Just a bruise," he muttered, catching my stare. "And your face." I pointed at the cut above his eyebrow and the bruise beginning to bloom on his cheekbone." Sit down." To my surprise, he didn't argue.

He sat on the edge of the bathtub while I grabbed a clean cloth, dampened it with warm water, and carefully started wiping the blood from his face. We stayed quiet for several minutes, the intimacy of the moment heightened by the closeness of the small room and the vulnerability he rarely let anyone see. "Anthony said something," I finally began as I dabbed a mild antiseptic onto the cut. "He said I looked like Francesca. When she was younger.' The muscles under my fingers tensed instantly.

"You don't look like her." "But he said-" "He said it to get under your skin." Christian cut me off, his tone gentler than his words. I kept working, trying not to get distracted by the heat of his skin so close to mine. "Still... it made me wonder. Maybe there is something. Some similarity that drew you to me." Christian caught my wrist, stopping my movements. His eyes, as intense as ever, locked on mine. "There is something," he admitted, surprising me. "A certain... fire in your eyes. An intensity." My heart skipped, unsure if I wanted to hear the rest.

1/4 Chapter 99 +25 Bonus "Yours builds. It transforms." A rare smile touched his lips, softening his features. "A ruined dress becomes a work of art. An impossible situation turns into an opportunity.

sending a shiver down my spine. "Probably more than I should." The air between us shifted, growing heavier, charged with a tension that had nothing to do with the fight earlier. I finished cleaning the cut above his eyebrow, acutely

skip a beat. "Christian..." His hand came up to my face, the touch impossibly gentle compared to the violence he had shown in the garden. I don't know who moved first. Maybe both of us, drawn at the same time by a gravitational pull too strong to resist. His lips found mine with an urgency that

the fear and adrenaline of the past hours through this contact alone. He stood without breaking the kiss, shifting us until my back was pressed

name both a prayer and a question. "Yes..." I answered the unspoken plea, my hands in his hair now, tugging him into another kiss that erased any trace of coherent thought. Christian's hands found the hem of my blouse, his fingers slipping beneath to brush the bare skin of my waist. The touch

final barrier between us. Christian pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. What I saw there-a mix of desire, fear, and something deeper neither of us dared to name-made my heart nearly stop. "Zoey, I-" Three hard knocks on the bedroom door

in the living room? They might be, you know... busy." "After what just happened in the garden? Doubt it-" Their voices drew closer to the bathroom, and Christian and I pulled apart quickly, scrambling to regain some semblance of composure. I smoothed my