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My seventeenthbirthday. My mother sitting on the edge of my bed, beautiful and distant as always.

"Emotion is a luxury, Lucas," she'd said, smoothing my hair with distracted affection. "One you'd be wise to avoid indulging."

Six months later, she was gone—off to Paris with a younger lover, leaving my father to retreat into work and me to learn the hard lesson that feelings were dangerous, unpredictable, best kept tightly controlled.

"Lucas?" Savannah's voice pulled me back to the present, concern etching her features. "Where did you just go?"

I stepped back, creating necessary distance, fighting the unexpected surge of emotion the memory had triggered. "Nowhere important."

"I don't believe you." She followed, erasing the space I'd created. "Tell me."

"My mother," I admitted, the words emerging against my better judgment.

"She wasn't... emotionally available. Believed feelings were a liability rather than an asset."

Understanding dawned in Savannah's eyes. "And you learned from her example."

"It was an effective lesson," I said, moving to the window, seeking refuge in the panoramic view that usually centered me. "One that served me well in business."

"But not in relationships."

"I haven't prioritized relationships," I corrected. "They've been... peripheral. Convenient. Uncomplicated."

"Until now."

I turned to find her directly behind me, closer than I'd anticipated. "Until you," I acknowledged.

Something shifted in her expression—a softening, a vulnerability that made my chest tighten with an unfamiliar ache. Without conscious decision, I reached for her, one hand rising to cup her cheek with a gentleness that surprised even me.

Take control. Establish dominance. Return to familiar territory.

The commands echoed in my mind, the instinctual response to emotional exposure.

But my body betrayed me. Instead of pulling her against me with the demanding passion that had characterized our previous encounters, I stroked my thumb across her cheekbonewith exquisite care, as if she were something fragile, precious, irreplaceable.

"I've missed you," I said quietly, the admission costing me more than any business concession ever had.

"More than I expected. More than I was prepared for."

Her eyes widened slightly, clearly surprised by this departure from our established dynamic. "What does that mean, Lucas?"

The rational answer hovered on my tongue—a measured response about mutual pleasure, compatible goals, the logical benefits of continuing our arrangement. But what emerged instead was something far more dangerous.

"It means I'm falling for you," I said, the words torn from some place I'd thought safely locked away.

"It means you've become necessary in ways I never anticipated. It means I spent this week feeling as if some essential part of me was missing."

She made a small sound—part gasp, part sigh—her entire body swaying toward mine as if pulled by an irresistible current. I caught her, arms sliding around her waist, not with possession but with something that felt dangerously like reverence.

"I don't know how to do this," I admitted, pressing my forehead against hers.

"How to be what you need. How to offer the emotional honesty you're asking for when I've spent decades avoiding precisely that."

"I'm not asking for perfection," she whispered, her hands coming up to frame my face. "Just effort. Just willingness to try. To let me see the man behind the mask, not just glimpses but the full reality."

The request was simple, reasonable even. Yet it terrified me more than any financial risk I'd ever taken, any corporate takeover I'd ever engineered. To be seen—fully, completely,without the careful filters I'd constructed—was to be vulnerable in ways I'd sworn never to be again.

Retreat. Recover. Regain control.