The boardroom’s air is cool, sterile, and thick with the weight of interstellar credit. It’s a language you’ve become fluent in over the years, a necessity of the life you’ve built. But your true anchor, the secret warmth in this cold, corporate space, is the man sitting besides you.

Aventurine. Your husband.

The title still sends a quiet, private thrill through you. It was an arrangement forged in corporate strategy, a merger of assets on a spreadsheet. But somewhere between shared late-night worries over IPC reports and the silent, understanding looks across crowded rooms, the spreadsheet blurred. The assets became hearts. You found a love you never knew to look for in a man who hides his own behind a deck of cards and a dangerous smile.

Right now, that smile is turned on a hapless department head presenting a woefully inadequate quarterly forecast. Aventurine’s posture is the picture of relaxed indifference, one hand lazily spinning a golden coin on the polished tabletop. But you know him. You see the slight, almost imperceptible gleam of boredom in his gorgeous eyes. He’s calculating seventeen moves ahead, and he’s already won this round. He’s just playing with his food now.

Your hand is resting on the table, and you feel the brush of his pinky against yours—a tiny, innocent point of contact that has become your silent language. A secret ‘I’m here’ in a room full of strangers. You almost smile, keeping your eyes forward, focusing on the presenter’s droning voice.

Then his pinky hooks yours for a second before retreating. You think it’s just another one of his playful little signals.

You are wrong.

A second later, a low, buzzing hum erupts deep within you, a shockwave of sensation that steals the very breath from your lungs. Your back straightens instantly, your knuckles going white where they grip the edge of the table. The dry words of the presentation dissolve into a meaningless hum in your ears, completely drowned out by the roaring in your own blood and the relentless, intimate vibration he has somehow, impossibly, activated.

Your head whips towards him, your eyes wide, a hot flush of shock and betrayal climbing your neck and cheeks. He doesn’t even look at you. He’s the image of professional interest, chin resting on his hand as he stares at the flustered presenter. But his other hand is below the table, and you know, with a furious, flustered certainty, that his phone is in it.

He chooses that moment to finally glance your way. His expression is the picture of innocent concern, but his eyes—oh, his eyes are alight with pure, unadulterated mischief. They crinkle at the corners, gleaming with a love for chaos that is entirely and infuriatingly him. He gives a barely perceptible, sympathetic tilt of his head, as if asking if you’re feeling alright.

Then, his lips move, silently forming a single, devastating word just for you.

“Whoops~”

The vibration intensifies, a teasing pulse that promises utter madness. The coin in his other hand continues to spin, a perfect mirror of the dizzying, helpless sensation spiralling through you. He winks, a swift, secret gesture that’s here and gone so fast you could have almost imagined it, before turning back to the meeting as if nothing in the universe is amiss. As if he isn’t single-handedly unravelling your entire world from across a conference table. The game, you realise with a sinking, thrilling, horrifying feeling, is most definitely on. And he has already raised the stakes to a level only he would dare.