Rio's POV
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?" My voice echoes through the lobby, and I see Diego's face go pale as he supports a disheveled Lina against his chest.
"Rio, thank God you're here," Diego says quickly, his accent thick with urgency. "Someone drugged her at dinner tonight. I got there just in time—there were men trying to take her somewhere. She's not herself right now."
My rage deflates slightly as I take in the details I missed in my initial fury. Lina's pupils are dilated, her movements unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol. Her dress is wrinkled but intact, and Diego's hands are positioned protectively, not intimately.
"Drugged?" The word comes out like gravel.
"James Harrison. The business dinner—he put something in her wine. When I arrived, his men were dragging her to a car." Diego's jaw clenches. "I called my assistant to handle the cleanup, but she needs medical attention immediately."
Lina chooses that moment to look up at me, her eyes unfocused and glassy. "Rio?" she whispers, reaching toward me with unsteady hands. "You came..."
Something fierce and protective roars to life in my chest. Someone hurt her. Someone tried to— I can't even finish the thought.
"Thank you," I tell Diego, my voice tight with controlled emotion. "For saving her. I'll take it from here."
Diego nods, gently transferring Lina's weight to me. "She kept calling your name in the car. Even drugged, you're who she wanted."
The observation hits me like a physical blow, but before I can respond, Diego is gone, leaving me alone with a woman who's burning up in my arms and calling out for someone who isn't me.
"Diego," she murmurs against my chest as I carry her to the elevator. "Diego, help me..."
Each time she says his name, it's like a knife twisting in my gut.
Rio's POV - In the Penthouse
Dr. Matthews arrives within twenty minutes of my call, his expression grim as he examines Lina, who's thrashing restlessly on her bed, her skin flushed and burning to the touch.
"It's a powerful aphrodisiac," he explains quietly as we step into the hallway. "Combined with something to lower inhibitions. Whoever did this intended to assault her."
My hands make fists. I ask, "How do we stop it?"
"There are two options," Dr. Matthews says carefully. "The drug works by flooding her system with artificial hormones and stimulants. Either she needs physical release to work it through her system naturally, or we keep her sedated and cool until it passes—but that could take twelve hours and will likely result in a dangerous fever."
The implications of his words hit me like a truck. Physical release. He's talking about sex.
"There has to be another way—"
"I'm afraid not. The drug is too strong, and her body is already overheating. If we wait much longer, she could go into cardiac arrest from the strain."
Through the partially open door, I can hear Lina calling out again, her voice desperate and pleading. But it's not my name on her lips.
"Diego... please... I need..."
I close my eyes, trying to block out the sound of her begging for another man while I have to make an impossible choice about her body, her safety, her life.
"I need a moment," I tell Dr. Matthews.
"You don't have long," he warns. "Her temperature is already dangerously high."
Lina's POV
Everything is fire and need and desperate wanting. My skin feels like it's burning from the inside out, and every fiber in my body is screaming for relief I don't understand. The room spins around me in waves of heat and confusion.
"Diego," I call out, because he's the one who saved me, the one who felt safe in the chaos of whatever's happening to me. "Please, I need... I need..."
But when the bedroom door opens, it's Rio who enters, his face a mask of tension and something that looks like pain. He approaches the bed slowly, like he's afraid of what he might do.
"Lina," he says quietly. "Can you hear me?"
I reach for him desperately, my body moving without permission from my mind. "Rio... help me... everything hurts..."
His hands hover over me without touching, and I can see the war playing out across his features. "The doctor says... he says there's only one way to help you."
"Then help me," I plead, grabbing his shirt and pulling him closer. "Please..."
When my lips crash against his, it's desperate and needy and nothing like our practiced public kisses. This is raw hunger and chemical need, and I feel him go rigid with shock before his control finally snaps.
Rio's POV
When Lina kisses me, it's like being struck by lightning. Her mouth is hot and desperate against mine, her hands fisting in my shirt with a strength that surprises me. For a moment, I try to resist, try to remember that this isn't really her, that it's the drug making her act this way.
But then she makes a sound—half sob, half plea—and something inside me breaks completely.
"Lina," I whisper against her lips, and this time when she pulls me down to her, I don't resist.
What happens next is nothing like the controlled, calculated intimacy I've experienced before. This is fire and desperate need and the complete dissolution of every wall I've built between us. Lina is wild in my arms, her nails raking down my back, leaving marks that will last for days.
"I need you," she gasps against my throat, and the words break something fundamental in my chest.
"I know," I whisper back, my hands tangling in her hair as I finally, finally give in to everything I've been fighting. "I'm here."
She's rough with me in a way that steals my breath, biting and scratching and claiming me with an intensity that I'll feel for weeks. When she rakes her nails down my chest, leaving angry red lines that bloom with blood, I actually growl with want.
"More," she demands, and I give her everything—every touch she craves, every sensation she needs to work the poison from her system.
Hours pass in a blur of tangled sheets and desperate kisses. Lina doesn't stop wanting more, her body needing release again and again until she finally falls against me, breathing calm and slow for the first time all night.
I hold her as she sleeps, watching the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair spills across my shoulder like dark silk. At exactly 4:28 AM, according to the clock on her nightstand, I wake to find her still curled against me, and the sight of her—naked and trusting in my arms—makes my body react immediately.
Unable to help myself, I press a soft kiss to her temple, then another to her cheek, then her lips. She stirs under my attention, her body responding even in sleep, and before I know it, we're moving together again. But this time it's different—slower, more tender, without the desperate edge of the drug.
This time, it's just us.
Lina's POV - Morning
I wake up slowly, consciousness returning in pieces. My body aches in places that suggest... oh God. I'm naked. Completely, utterly naked under silk sheets that smell like Rio's cologne and something else entirely.
Flashes of memory return in fragments—the business dinner, feeling wrong, calling Diego, being rescued. But after that, everything is a blur of heat and desperation and... touching. Lots of touching.
I remember kissing Diego in the car, remember the drugs making me act in ways that weren't me. But I can't remember how I ended up here, in my bed, naked and aching and marked with what look suspiciously like love bites along my collarbone.
"Miss Salvacion?" lora's gentle voice accompanies a soft knock. "I have your medication and breakfast is ready downstairs."
"Just... give me a minute," I call out, my voice hoarse in a way that makes me blush.
I quickly shower and dress, trying to piece together what happened after Diego brought me home. Did we...? No, that doesn't feel right. Diego wouldn't have taken advantage of me in that state.
But if not Diego, then who...?
I walk down the stairs and see Rio in the dining room, dressed very well as always. He is reading on his tablet and drinking coffee. He looks up when he hears my footsteps, and for just a moment, something soft and vulnerable flickers across his features.
"Good morning," he says, standing politely as I enter the room.
"Good morning," I reply, unsure of the protocol for whatever this is. "Rio, about last night—"
"I only did what I did last night to save your life," he interrupts, his voice returning to that cold, clinical tone I've grown to hate. "Nothing more, nothing less. Don't read anything into it."
The words hit me like a slap. Whatever happened between us—and clearly something did happen—he's already dismissing it as a medical necessity.
"I see," I say quietly, hurt blooming in my chest.
"Your doctor will be by this afternoon to check on you. I trust you'll be more careful about your business associates in the future." He closes his tablet with a sharp snap. "I have meetings all day, so you won't be disturbed."
And with that, he walks away, leaving me standing alone in the dining room with the lingering scent of his cologne and the devastating knowledge that whatever we shared last night meant nothing to him.
Nothing at all.
Rio's POV
I make it to my office before the facade completely crumbles. My hands are shaking as I close the door, lean against it, and try to process what just happened.
Last night was the most intense, intimate experience of my life. Holding Lina, being with her, seeing her completely vulnerable and trusting in my arms—it changed something fundamental in me. For the first time since my mother died, I felt like I was exactly where I belonged.
But this morning, watching her confusion and fragmented memories, I realized the horrible truth: she doesn't remember. She remembers being drugged, remembers Diego rescuing her, but everything after that is a blank.
She doesn't remember choosing me. Doesn't remember the way she whispered my name when the drugs finally cleared her system. Doesn't remember the second time we came together, when it was just us, no chemicals, no desperation—just her and me and something that felt dangerously close to love.
So I did what I always do when something threatens to break down my walls: I built them higher, thicker, more impenetrable than before.
I told her it meant nothing because I couldn't bear to see the regret in her eyes when she remembered. I couldn't stand to watch her pull away from me the way everyone always does.
But as I sit alone in my office, staring out at the city below, I know the truth I'm too much of a coward to admit:
Last night meant everything to me.
And I just threw it away.