I burned the experimental sleep incense my best friend sent me, convinced that everything happening in the dark was nothing more than a hypervivid, lucid dream.

In that dreamscape, I turned my untouchable, icecold boss into my personal, obedient plaything.

By day, Adrian Hayes was a corporate deity—a centuriesold vampire, master perfumer, and CEO who looked down at my carefully balanced formulas with aristocratic disdain, watching my mortification with eyes like frosted glass.

By night, in the intoxicating haze of my bedroom illusions, he would loosen his silk tie with trembling hands, his amber eyes bleeding into a hungry, glowing crimson as he knelt.

“Mistress… how do you want to punish me tonight?”

I grew drunk on the illusion.

I reveled in having an immortal apex predator at my feet.

Until the afternoon I called my best friend to complain that the sedative incense was making me violently dizzy, only for Sadie to shriek into the receiver: “Laurel, what the hell are you talking about?

The lab recalled that experimental lucid blend weeks ago!

I sent you a tendollar box of grocerystore sandalwood!

What have you been doing every night?!”

Before my brain could process the catastrophic horror of what that meant, a doctor handed me a clinical lab report: Positive.

Ten weeks pregnant.

And before I could sneak out the fire exit to flee the country, a pair of long, leathergloved fingers—moving with terrifying, supernatural speed—snatched the paperwork out of my hands.

Adrian backed me against the parking garage wall, his impossibly cold body trapping me.

His knuckles were white, his jaw clenched tight enough to splinter bone.

“You played with me for three months,” he rasped, his breath carrying the chill of the grave against my mouth, “and now you think you can run?

You’re out of your mind, Laurel.”

“What has your mind been occupied with lately, Laurel?

Because this proposal is completely unmoored from reality.”

The silence of the UVtinted boardroom shattered as the leatherbound project dossier struck the mahogany table with a sharp crack.

My shoulders jumped.

I forced my chin up, only to collide with a gaze so frigid it felt like a draft off a winter lake.

Adrian Hayes sat at the head of the conference table, long, pale fingers steepled beneath his sculpted chin.

The bespoke navy suit he wore cut a razorsharp silhouette across his broad shoulders.

Behind his thin, goldrimmed glasses, his eyes held a lethal precision—the kind of look that had dismantled seasoned executives and rival vampire clans alike.

Faced with a face that belonged on the cover of an Italian art monograph rather than in an upstate New York corporate lab, every scrap of confidence I’d rehearsed evaporated.

All I managed was a thin, trembling professional smile.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hayes.

Point out the structural flaw, and I’ll have a revised formula balance on your desk tonight.”

“This is the third time your focus has drifted this month,” Adrian said, voice low, clipped, and devoid of human warmth.

“Hayes Atelier demands absolute, uncompromising devotion.

Your formulas hold brilliance, Laurel, but you waste it when you allow your mind to wander to trivial distractions.

Stay late tonight.

Recalibrate the accord in my private lab.

If the balance isn’t perfect, I will supervise it myself.”

The entire time, his gaze remained fiercely pinned to the printed metrics.

He didn’t grant me a single, lingering glance, yet the possessive weight of his attention felt suffocating.

I swallowed, scooped the binder against my ribs, and retreated to my bench.

“Our core brief for the third quarter was titled Subconscious Attraction—a luxury formulation built around the concept of primal, instinctual pull.

But how was anyone supposed to bottle the abstract terror of raw desire into a fiftymilliliter flacon?”

My eyes betrayed me, drifting toward the floortoceiling antiUV glass wall where Adrian stood with his phone pressed to his ear.

Broad back, tapered waist, long legs draped in tailored wool.

Viewed from behind, Adrian Hayes looked less like a corporate executive and more like a classical marble sculpture stolen from the Louvre.

Technically speaking, he was the world's most gifted nose, an olfactory prodigy who had used his immortal lifespan and supernatural senses to build an empire on impossible distillations.

But my obsession had never been purely intellectual.

I was twentyfour, and for my entire adult life, my heart had remained completely dormant—until the rainy morning of my first interview, when I had tripped over my portfolio in the lobby.

Adrian had moved like a shadow, kneeling before I even hit the floor, his long, aristocratic hands gathering my scattered parchment sheets.

The scent radiating from his wool coat had hit me like an electric shock: crushed pine needles after a blizzard, cedarwood, and something impossibly clean, cold, and eternal.

It had knocked the wind clean out of me.

I worked eightyhour weeks just to claw my way into his elite formulation unit.

In the beginning, I had tried subtle, feminine ploys: a slategrey silk slip dress under my lab coat, a bespoke honeypot fragrance I had spent weeks formulating to catch his attention.

I had practiced my posture in the mirror until my neck ached.

During my first project review, Adrian had looked at me twice.

My pulse had raced into my throat, convinced my quiet seduction had cracked the immortal's frost.

Then he had tapped the stainlesssteel bench with the end of his fountain pen.

“Lab safety codes require hems below the knee, Miss Kane.

It is a matter of basic protocol, not aesthetic preference.

Furthermore, your blood is already a distraction; your personal perfume has overloaded the room’s ambient air.

Wash it off immediately before you contaminate the batch.”

I had spent the rest of that afternoon scrubbing my wrists in the restroom while the senior technicians muffled their laughter down the hall.

After that, I accepted the cold truth: Adrian Hayes was an iceberg.

You didn't warm up to him; you just tried not to sink when you sailed too close.

By midnight, the research facility was an empty cavern.

Knowing his kind couldn't consume human food, but maintaining his public cover of having "chronic digestive issues," I had swallowed my pride earlier and picked up a bowl of rare, ironrich beef broth from the corner bistro, knocking softly on his corner office door.

“Mr. Hayes, you should drink this before you finish the balance sheets.”

He hadn't even lifted his pen from the parchment.

“Leave it by the credenza.

Aren't you supposed to be at the centrifuge?”

Now, at twelvefifteen, the Hudson Valley storm outside hit its peak.

Rain lashed the reinforced glass panes, thunder rumbling through the foundation like a freight train.

The old estate housing the research wing had been a private sanatorium in the 1920s; the staff loved whispering rumors that Adrian himself was the original owner, walking the same halls a century later.

I was leaning over a rack of pipettes, my hands slightly unsteady, when a heavy thump echoed down the exterior corridor.

A shiver crawled up my spine.

Just as I debated dropping my beaker and sprinting for the exit, the lab door swung open.

It was Adrian.

He looked uncharacteristically unspooled.

His charcoal tie hung loose around his unbuttoned collar; the first two buttons of his tailored shirt were undone, exposing the pale hollow of his throat.

A faint scent of singlemalt scotch and rainsoaked chill radiated from his coat, and the corners of his eyes carried an unnatural, feverish flush.

His irises bled from amber into a dangerous, glowing red.

“Still here?” he murmured, his voice rough around the edges.

Terror and a foolish, involuntary instinct drove me a step closer to him.

“Mr. Hayes… did you hear that outside?

The technicians said the east wing used to be an isolation ward.

Is it true?”

Adrian’s frame went rigid.

He glanced down at where my fingers had gathered the edge of his damp sleeve.

His Adam's apple bobbed in a hard, deliberate swallow.

“Nonsense.”

Before I could exhale, a jagged bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, followed instantly by a deafening crash of thunder that shook the glass beakers on their racks.

I shrieked, squeezed my eyes shut, and slammed straight into his chest.

It was like hitting solid marble.

Through his shirt, there was no human warmth, and his heartbeat was impossibly faint, almost entirely still.

The second my brain registered that I was clutching the industry's most terrifying vampire, I gasped and tried to shove myself backward.

His reaction was instantaneous.

One broad, inhumanly strong palm locked around the back of my skull; his other arm clamped around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off the polished tile and pinning me flush against him.

“Stay,” he grated.

The word was thick, almost unrecognizable.

Through the thin cotton of my shirt, I could feel the violent tension in his stonecold body.

His knuckles, braced against the edge of the granite lab island behind me, showed white through strained tendons.

“Mr. Hayes…” I whispered, trembling.

Adrian’s eyes darkened to molten bronze, bleeding into bright scarlet.

He dipped his head, his cold lips grazing my jawline.

“Is this what you wanted?

To be this close to me?”

Before my mind could decipher the madness in his tone, his mouth crashed down over mine.

It wasn’t the cool, clinical touch of a boss; it was an ambush.

Demanding, hungry, desperate.

A sharp, euphoric prick of fangs grazed my lower lip.

A single drop of my blood welled, and he swallowed it with a guttural moan that sent a shudder straight to my core.

My eyes widened in the dark.

My thoughts spun into a blinding static.

Of course.

It hit me like a splash of cold water.

Before the shift ended, I had lit a charcoal tablet with that sample disc Sadie had mailed me—the experimental luciddream incense designed to let your subconscious build scenarios you could actively control.

This wasn’t real.

This was the chemical trickery of an induced dream.

My subconscious was just adding dramatic vampireromance tropes to my crush.

The moment the realization set in, the terror dissolved into a wave of giddy, shameless defiance.

In the waking world, I wouldn’t dare meet this immortal’s gaze for three consecutive seconds.

But here?

In my own manufactured slumber?

I threw my arms around his neck, my fingers tangling in the thick, silken hair at his collar, ignoring the sting on my lip.

“Playing hard to get, Mr. Hayes?”

A low, inhuman growl tore from his chest.

Adrian lifted me onto the marble counter, his cold mouth trailing fire down the line of my throat.

“Laurel…” he breathed against my skin, and the raw vulnerability in his tone nearly broke my heart.

“Don’t look at anyone else.

Look at me.

Only me.

You owe me this.”

I woke up at seven in the morning on the leather sectional in the employee quiet room.

Rubbing the deep ache in my shoulders, my face burned crimson as the fragmented memories of the night came rushing back.

The dream had felt impossibly visceral—the scratch of his wool coat, the distinct scent of cedar and rain, the burning pressure of his unnatural strength against my hips, even the phantom prick of his fangs.

Then I opened the door into the corridor and saw the real Adrian Hayes.

He stood twenty feet away, wearing a charcoal threepiece suit, his hair swept back with surgical precision, coldly dressing down the procurement director.

Every inch of him exuded untouchable, aristocratic restraint.

I tucked my chin and hurried past.

Just a dream.

Obviously.

Later that week, the executive board introduced a guest sensory evaluator: Julian Palmer.

Twentytwo, halfFrench, with a mop of sunbleached curls, bright hazel eyes, and the eager warmth of a golden retriever.

More importantly, his nose was one of the sharpest human noses in the European market.

“For the remainder of the prototype phase,” Adrian announced during our morning standup, “Laurel will be assigned directly to Julian to coordinate the synthetic pheromone trials.”

Adrian’s gaze flicked to me, the edge of his glasses catching the fluorescent glare.

“These are proprietary formulas.

Keep your focus where it belongs, Miss Kane.

Do not make mistakes.”

I nodded like an automaton.

The moment I returned to my apartment that night, I rushed to the nightstand, lit another cone of Sadie’s incense, and pulled the down comforter over my shoulders.

I needed to know if I could trigger that level of illicit control again.

As the grey smoke spiraled into the air, the familiar heaviness dragged me down.

When I opened my eyes, I was inside an expansive, minimalist penthouse.

UVcoated floortoceiling glass overlooked the glittering Manhattan skyline.

Adrian sat sprawled on a low leather sofa, dressed in black silk loungewear, his pale chest bare beneath the open V of the lapel.

A continuing narrative, I thought, thrilled.

I stepped across the polished hardwood.

He looked up, a dark, wicked smirk curling his lips, his eyes flashing ruby in the dim light.

“You took your time tonight.”

Before I could reply, he caught my wrist with supernatural speed, pulling me down across his lap.

His cold hands slid beneath my oversized sweater, his teeth catching the sensitive curve of my earlobe.

“That kid, Julian,” he murmured, his voice dripping with venomous jealousy.

“He spent all morning staring at your neck.

Listening to your heartbeat.

You don’t smile at him.

You belong to me.

Understand?”

I dissolved against him, laughing breathlessly into his collar.

In this dream world, the terrifying immortal titan of the fragrance industry was nothing more than an obsessive, desperately possessive stray.

For the next two months, I became an addict.

Every evening, I lit the incense.

Every evening, I entered the penthouse to find the monster who belittled my work by day kneeling at my feet, murmuring apologies, letting me command his touch.

It was the ultimate psychological revenge, feeding every secret vanity I had spent years suppressing.

Eventually, though, familiarity bred a strange restlessness.

One night in the dream, I reached into my bag and pulled out a narrow red silk tie, dangling it before his eyes with a teasing smirk.

“Mr. Hayes… shall we introduce some discipline tonight?”

Adrian’s expression instantly turned to stone.

He shoved my hands away, rising from the sofa as the heat in his eyes froze over.

“What do you think I am?

Some hired boy you can degrade for sport?

If you have this little respect for me, don’t lay another hand on me.”

I blinked, stunned.

The subconscious AI in this dream has a bruised vampire ego?

I spent the next half hour soothing him, petting his hair, murmuring sweet reassurances until the stiffness left his broad shoulders.

Adrian’s gaze softened with smug satisfaction, though he maintained his haughty scowl, calling my mind a chaotic mess of frivolous human nonsense.

Bizarrely, the tension bled straight into daylight.

At the Atelier, Adrian’s critiques turned vicious.

He tore my lab journals apart, rejected my topnote balances with razorsharp memos, and watched me from across the floor with an intensity that bordered on predatory.

Between the relentless pressure at work and an inexplicable wave of chronic fatigue, my body finally gave out.

I spent a full Monday collapsed in bed with dry heaves and a spinning room, dragging myself into the formulation lab late Tuesday afternoon.

Adrian wasn't there.

Instead, a circle of technicians stood around Julian Palmer’s workstation.

Julian wore an ivory knit sweater, looking youthful and disarmingly sweet.

The second he caught sight of me, his eyes lit up.

He abandoned his pipettes and hurried over, pressing a cardboard cup into my hands.

“Laurel!

You look like you’re about to faint.

I ran down to the café and got you steamed milk with vanilla.”

He reached out, his fingers gently wrapping around my wrist to steady the cup, his gaze brimming with open concern.

He was handsome, certainly.

But compared to the dark, consuming intensity of the immortal in my nighttime fantasies, Julian felt like a summer breeze next to an oncoming hurricane.

“Thank you, Julian, but I’m fine—”

The heavy double doors of the lab swung open with an ominous thud.

The room dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat.

Literally.

Adrian stood in the threshold, his wool overcoat dark with slush.

His gaze swept the room like a thermal scope, his eyes completely swallowed by a glowing, predatory crimson as he locked instantly onto Julian’s fingers wrapped around my wrist.

“What is happening here?”

His voice was dangerously quiet, resonating with a supernatural cadence that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

I pulled my hand back as if burned.

“Mr. Hayes, Julian was just checking in because I was sick yesterday—”

“Is this a research laboratory or a social club?”

Adrian cut in, crossing the floor with slow, deliberate, lethal steps.

He stopped inches from me, looking down from his sixfoottwo height, his lips curled in a sneer that masked a furious jealousy.

“One flash of a pretty human face and you abandon your proprietary formulas?

Are you truly so easily distracted, Miss Kane?

Is your loyalty to your craft this fragile?”

The injustice of it hit me like a slap.

“Excuse me?”

“If Hayes Atelier does not command your absolute, undivided attention, you have no place leading this formula.”

Surrounded by eight of my peers, the humiliation transformed into pure, reckless rage.

My eyes stung, but I lifted my chin and glared straight through his designer frames.

“I admired you once, Adrian Hayes.

But I have never let my personal feelings compromise a single drop of my work.

And even if Julian and I were seeing each other, that is my private life.

It has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?”

Adrian’s pale fingers crushed the leather portfolio in his hand, the material groaning under his monstrous strength.

“Splendid,” he whispered, a terrifying smile touching the corners of his mouth, exposing the faintest hint of elongated canines.

“Miss Kane is suspended from the active collaborative roster.

Your independent clearance is revoked.

Pack your notes.

From now on, you report solely to my office.”

He pivoted on his heel toward his office, tossing one last command over his shoulder: “Palmer.

Inside.

Now.”

The heavy door slammed behind them.

Immediately, the lab broke into frantic whispers.

“Laurel, are you insane?

You don’t talk to him like that!”

“Everyone knows he’s one of the oldest vampires in the Northeast—he’s literal royalty in this industry.

Did you really think throwing yourself at him was going to work?”

I stood frozen beside my bench, tears hot against my cheeks, feeling the cold reality wash over me.

The dream had ruined me.

It had given me the dangerous illusion that Adrian Hayes belonged to me, that I had broken his armor.

In truth, without that stupid sandalwood smoke, I was just another expendable human worker he couldn't wait to scrape off his shoe.

That evening, I burned the final sliver of incense.

Inside the familiar penthouse, Adrian stood by the UVglass, his jaw tight, his broad back tense.

I took a deep breath, fighting the hollow ache in my chest.

“We’re done.

I’m not coming back here.”

Adrian spun around, the haughty distance vanishing in an instant.

He lunged across the rug with a blur of speed, grabbing my wrists, his breathing ragged.

“Is it because of Palmer?

Laurel, I lost my temper because he touched you—because you defended him!”

I shook my head.

“It’s not about Julian.”

It was about reality.

But what was the point of explaining that to a phantom conjured by my own lonely mind?

A shudder ran through him.

To my utter shock, the proud immortal sank to his knees on the hardwood, his cold arms wrapping around my waist, burying his face into the fabric of my shirt.

“Tell me what I did wrong,” he rasped, the deep timbre of his voice fracturing with a raw, agonizing vulnerability.

I felt the terrifying, imperceptible tremor of his immortal frame.

“Don’t leave me.

Please.

I know I have a wretched temper, but I’ll change.

I’ll let you tie me up.

I won't complain.

Just don't walk away.”

He pulled a length of crimson silk from his pocket, pressing it into my hand with trembling fingers.

A single, freezing tear pressed into the cotton of my shirt.

“Punish me, Laurel.

Call me whatever you want.

Just don't go to him.”

My chest seized.

It was too real.

Too agonizing.

I touched my aching temple, swaying slightly.

“You don't understand… I think this incense is poisoning me.

I’ve been nauseous for days.

I can’t do this anymore.”

At the word poisoning, Adrian went rigid, his cold hands immediately checking my pulse, his eyes wild with terror.

“Enough, Adrian.

Wake up.”

I shoved him back and turned away.

The next morning, the department was stunned by unprecedented news: Adrian Hayes had called out sick.

In his six years leading Hayes Atelier—and supposedly the last century of his existence—he had never missed a single day.

I couldn’t afford to care.

The nausea had become debilitating.

By two that afternoon, I was sitting in an exam room at an urgent care clinic three blocks from the facility, staring anxiously at the physician.

“Doctor, is it possible to suffer neurological toxicity from inhaling lowgrade essential oils?”

I asked, my voice shaking.

The physician gave me a deeply enigmatic look, studying the printout in her hands.

“Miss Kane, your blood work is highly unusual.

The cellular adaptation we are seeing is anomalous, but the core HCG result is clear.

There are no toxins.

You are approximately ten weeks pregnant.

However, given the strange blood markers, I've printed an urgent ultrasound requisition.

I need you to go to imaging immediately to ensure the fetal heartbeat is stable.”

She handed me the pink slip of paper.

The room spun.

No experimental formula.

No shared dream.

No hallucination.

I stumbled out of the exam room and into the clinic hallway, staring blindly at the ultrasound requisition.

I dialed Sadie, my hands shaking so violently I nearly dropped the phone.

“Sadie,” I whispered.

“That experimental sleep incense... it’s real.

My hallucinations were real.”

“Laurel, what on earth are you babbling about?!”

Sadie’s voice cracked over the line.

“That batch failed safety trials two months before I mailed you the care package!

It was incinerated!

I sent you a sixdollar box of grocerystore sandalwood incense to help you sleep!

Sandalwood doesn't cause hallucinations!

What have you been doing?!”

My breath caught in my throat.

“What…?”

Before I could form a thought, a large, immaculate, icecold hand reached over my shoulder and cleanly slipped the ultrasound requisition from my fingers.

“Pregnant,” a low, raspy baritone murmured behind me.

“That explains the fainting spells.”

The familiar scent of cedar, snow, and immortal predator hit my senses.

I turned my head, moving like an automaton.

Adrian stood there in a long black cashmere coat, his face hollow, his eyes ringed with dark circles, his skin pale as alabaster.

He looked precisely like the broken creature who had knelt on the penthouse floor eight hours ago.

Every night.

Every word.

The fangs against my neck.

The crimson tie.

The orders.

It was all real.

Adrian glanced from the paperwork to my paralyzed face, his brow furrowing in a dangerous line.

“What illicit scenario is running through your head in broad daylight, Laurel?”

I scrambled backward, reaching blindly for the paperwork.

“Give that back!”

He raised his arm effortlessly out of my reach, his other hand sliding around my waist to yank me flush against his solid chest.

Dipping his head, his cold lips brushed the shell of my ear, his voice a low, lethal vibration.

“Why did you try to break things off last night?”

The pure desperation beneath his icy veneer made my knees buckle.

He was furious.

He had to be.

A centuriesold vampire lord, an untouchable executive, subjected to bizarre midnight roleplay by a human assistant—and now an impossible pregnancy?

He was going to drain me.

He was going to use his legal team to erase me from the industry, or just bury me in the woods.

Panic took the wheel.

I dropped my head and bowed at a ninetydegree angle.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Hayes!

It was an unforgivable mistake!

I crossed every professional and supernatural boundary!

You have my word, I will terminate the pregnancy immediately!

I won’t take a dime from you, I’ll pay for the procedure myself, and I’ll have my resignation letter submitted by five!”