Claimed By My Ex-Fiancé's Ruthless Brother

"Keep Walking, Miss Gilmore."

The security guard's voice sounded flat, mechanical, and entirely devoid of pity.

Darlene pressed her palm against her scorching forehead. Her knuckles were bloodless, her vision blurring into nauseating streaks across the polished white marble floor.

The cold air pouring from the vent couldn't penetrate the fire tearing through her veins. She clawed at the collar of her champagne silk gown, her trembling fingers pulling at the taut fabric, desperate to get air into her lungs.

Ten minutes ago, her fiancé, Demario Montgomery, had stood beneath the ballroom's crystal chandeliers, smiling as he pressed a glass of chilled sparkling wine into her hands.

"Drink it, Darlene," he'd murmured, his fingers brushing her cheek with an oily tenderness. "Be a good girl tonight, and your brother's ICU bills are covered next month. Every penny, no exceptions."

The image looped in her mind, circling and circling. The drink had to be wrong. But she'd had no choice but to drink it.

A sharp electronic beep pierced the haze as a keycard slid through the lock. The two dark walnut doors swung silently inward.

Darlene stumbled across the threshold. Her heel snagged the edge of the plush wool runner, her knees folding. The guard half-shoved, half-carried her through the doorway, and behind her, the heavy doors thudded shut with the dead finality of a lock.

Darkness swallowed her whole.

The smell hit her first. It wasn't the cheap citrus cologne Demario favored. It smelled of fresh cedar, cold rain, and the bitter, expensive tobacco of Cohiba cigars.

She gripped the cold marble console table in the foyer, her throat burning like raw sandpaper.

"Demario?" Her voice came out hoarse, broken. "Is that you... give me water... please..."

A spark flickered near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall at the far end of the suite.

The blue flame of a silver lighter guttered and steadied. In that brief flash, a sharply cut jawline emerged from the shadows.

Clayton Montgomery exhaled a thin plume of smoke. His slate-blue eyes caught the faint glow of the Manhattan skyline outside, fixing on her with the cold, precise focus of a predator locking onto prey.

The drug slammed into Darlene's blood again. Her knees gave out completely, her body pitching forward.

But the impact never came. She was caught.

The heavy silhouette crossed the distance in two strides. Strong, calloused fingers closed around her slender wrist like iron cuffs, halting her fall midair.

The shock of his chilled, tailored wool against her burning bare skin sent a violent shudder down her spine. She didn't pull away - her trembling hands blindly hooked onto his broad shoulders, clinging to him like an anchor in a raging sea.

Clayton looked down at the flushed face buried against his chest, and his lips pulled into a cold, mocking smile.

"So my useless little brother actually did it," his low baritone rumbled against her ear, carrying a biting scorn and something unnameable and restless. "He wrapped up his own fiancée and delivered her to my doorstep."

His hand didn't let go. Instead, his palm tightened, sliding with deliberate pressure down her spine, searing through the thin silk of her gown with a suffocating, oppressive heat.

Darlene's sanity had already turned to liquid fire. Her teeth sank into her lower lip, biting until the sharp, coppery taste of blood bloomed across her tongue.

"Help me..." she whimpered, arching her slender neck toward the cold air.

Her blue eyes misted over with tears and fever, and she instinctively pressed her burning cheek against the hard curve of his throat.

Her breathing came ragged and shallow, brushing across his carotid artery.

Clayton's hand clenched hard around her waist. His knuckles went rigid.

The unshakeable self-control that had ruled Wall Street cracked open at the seam. His Adam's apple bobbed - a slow, strained swallow.

"Look at me," Clayton commanded, his voice a low, hoarse growl. "See who's standing in front of you."

He didn't push her away. Not an inch.

Darlene heard nothing. The humiliation of the Gilmore family's sudden bankruptcy, the sneers of society, and the gaunt, machine-bound face of her comatose brother Dwight all swirled through her mind like a nightmare. She was drowning, and this man was the only solid thing left in the world.

She lifted her head and pressed her trembling, burning lips directly against his mouth.

It was desperate. It was clumsy. And it was utterly reckless.

Clayton froze for half a heartbeat. Reason still warned him this was a trap, but the dark hunger surging in his chest had already broken free of its leash.

With a low grunt, his arm hooked around her waist, lifted her off her feet, and slammed her back against the cold paneled wall of the foyer.

The delicate silk of her designer gown strained beneath his weight. The fragile seams split with a sharp, violent tear, tiny freshwater pearls scattering across the dark carpet.

He carried her in one fluid motion, kicking the bedroom door open.

The California king mattress swallowed them as he threw her onto the cold sheets.

Outside, the late-autumn rain began to beat against the glass, casting the dim, distant neon of Manhattan across the tangled figures on the bed.

The five-centimeter surgical scar along the inside of Clayton's left forearm went pale and stark in the dim moonlight as his muscles coiled, pinning her wrists above her head.

Darlene's short nails dug deep into the breadth of his back, raking faint crescents of blood across his tight, sweat-slicked skin.

At two in the morning, lightning split the sky, flooding the room with a searing white. In that instant, the raw, unbridled possessiveness in his eyes was laid completely bare.

As the drug's tide finally ebbed from her veins, pure physical exhaustion overwhelmed Darlene's consciousness. With a faint, broken whimper, her head rolled to the side and she slipped into absolute darkness.

Outside, the storm settled into a steady, rhythmic drumming.

Clayton pushed himself up, leaning against the tufted leather headboard. His long, calloused fingers slowly wound a strand of chestnut hair from the pillow, his gaze unreadable and deep.

On the nightstand, an encrypted satellite phone vibrated against the marble surface.

A text from his assistant lit up the screen:

Demario stationed eight tabloid photographers by the service elevator. Ready on your word.