He didn't ask permission.
He simply decided.
I stood in my tiny apartment, still barefoot, still wearing the same oversized sweater I had thrown on after the test, when Theo Valadier started giving orders.
"Pack what you want to keep. The rest we replace."
His voice carried the same quiet authority it had the night he told me to spread my legs wider so he could watch himself slide into me.
I opened my mouth to argue. He lifted one hand.
"Nora. You are eight weeks pregnant with my child. You threw up twice this morning. Your refrigerator contains yogurt that expired in April and half a bottle of cheap wine. You are not staying here."
I folded my arms over my chest. "I've survived twenty-nine years without a billionaire babysitter."
He stepped closer, close enough that I smelled the cold city air on his coat and the faint trace of the cologne I had licked off his throat three weeks ago.
"You are not surviving anymore," he said, low. "You are living. With me. End of discussion."
I should have told him to go to hell.
Instead my traitorous body remembered how it felt when he pressed me into that hotel mattress and flooded me so deep I tasted him for days. My nipples tightened under the sweater.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
His gaze dropped to my breasts, then lower, to the place between my legs that still carried faint bruises shaped like his fingerprints.
"Pack," he repeated, softer this time, rougher. "Or I carry you out exactly as you are."
Forty minutes later I stood in the freight elevator of a building so exclusive it didn't even have a name on the outside, clutching one duffel bag and the worn paperback I refused to leave behind.
Theo stood beside me in silence, one arm protectively around my waist like he expected the elevator cable to snap. When the doors opened directly into the penthouse, my breath stopped.
Floor-to-ceiling windows framed Manhattan like a crown. Everything was dark wood, white marble, and low amber light. A fireplace big enough to stand in crackled quietly. It smelled like cedar and money and him.
A woman in a crisp black uniform appeared, took my bag without a word, and vanished.
Theo shrugged out of his coat, tossed it over a chair worth more than my yearly rent, and turned to me.
"Welcome home."
I laughed, sharp and disbelieving. "This is insane."
He closed the distance until my back met the window and the entire city glittered behind me.
"I told you," he murmured, fingers sliding under the hem of my sweater to rest on the still-flat plane of my stomach. "If you ever needed anything."
His palm was warm through my T-shirt. Possessive.
I swallowed. "This isn't need. This is kidnapping with better thread count."
He leaned in, lips brushing my ear. "Call it what you want. You're here. You're safe. And tonight you're going to let me take care of you the way I wanted to three weeks ago."
Heat pooled low in my belly. Pregnancy hormones, I told myself. Not the memory of him groaning my name while he pumped me full.
He felt the shiver that ran through me.
"Bedroom," he said against my throat. "Doctor's appointment tomorrow at nine. Tonight you rest."
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, sir."
The word sir slipped out before I could stop it. His grip tightened.
We didn't make it to rest.
He lifted me, carried me through hallways lit only by the city glow, and laid me on a bed so large I could have swum across it. My clothes disappeared under his hands like they offended him.
When I was naked he stood at the foot of the bed and looked his fill.
"Spread your legs," he ordered, voice thick.
I did.
He groaned at the sight of me, slick already, thighs trembling.
"Still full of me," he said, almost to himself. He stripped fast, climbed over me, and slid home in one slow thrust.
I cried out at how perfectly he filled me, how my body welcomed him like it had been waiting weeks for this.
He moved slow, deliberate, every stroke dragging against places that made my toes curl.
"Look at me," he demanded.
I opened my eyes.
His gaze locked on mine, fierce and tender and terrified all at once.
"You're mine now," he whispered. "You. This baby. All of it."
I wrapped my legs around him, pulled him deeper.
"Then prove it," I breathed. "Fill me again."
He did.
Three times.
Until I was sobbing his name and he was shaking, spilling so deep inside me I felt it in my spine.
Afterward he held me against his chest, one hand splayed over my stomach like a vow.
Outside, snow started to fall over the city.
Inside, I let myself believe, for the first time in my life, that someone might actually stay.