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There was nothing to say. He wasn’t listening. He never did, or when he did, he didn’t care. Words meant nothing to him. The only thing he cared about was his goddamned games.
I wrestled for another several seconds then surrendered, hating myself for giving in so easily. But I was no match for his strength, and the longer he held me the more I loved the feel of his firm arms, and the way he pressed his body tight along my back, pressing his head next to mine.
“You distract me,” he said quietly, honestly. “If I spend any time around you, I can’t focus for days. You sent that picture of your pretty little cunt, and I couldn’t even look at my phone all week without getting hard. I avoided you because it was the only way I knew how to deal with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re telling me right now.” “I’m telling you to come home with me.”
They moved further into other realms. He’d looked out for me at the office. He’d worried about me in a dark alley alone. He’d come for me tonight—I was sure of it even though he hadn’t said so outright. I cared that he’d come for me. I cared that he’d worried. If he suddenly didn’t, I’d hurt. Donovan Kincaid had the power to hurt me.
I stared at our fingers interlaced, suddenly aware of how thick the air felt in my lungs and how my heart sounded as loud as my heels on the marbled floor. After a nod at the doorman, we got in the elevator. The doors had closed, and we were on our way up before I realized we hadn’t actually checked in.
My heart started racing. My palms began sweating. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay. I needed escape, but I needed him too—with every part of me, I needed him. Needed him to fill me and fuck me and bend me and break me, and, oh god, it was going to hurt when he did.
“How much do you want me to hurt you?” he asked.
“It’s a long story. It’s the reason I couldn’t come back to Harvard. It’s a word that means ‘end’ for me.”
I was so wet, so turned on, so high on the enactment of a fantasy I’d had for years, that I came instantly, the intensity of it taking my breath away. He shoved in again as the strength of my orgasm tried to push him out. He continued to thrust with belligerent determination, fighting against my body’s tightening around him.
I couldn’t have explained if he’d asked, but I did know it had to do with Theo. Partly I was still confused. Confused about what was wrong with me that I wanted Donovan to reenact this terrible thing that happened to me. Why I liked it when he was rough and mean and animalistic. Why it turned me on so goddamn much.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. Not even a beat passed. “I don’t want you to go.” “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
I had to think about that for a minute because the thing was that protection hadn’t occurred to me while we were having sex either. Which was weird. I’d never had unprotected sex. But if I had thought about it, would I have interrupted the game to tell him to suit up? No. I wouldn’t. Part of the fantasy was about letting Donovan do whatever he wanted to me. Letting him take me however he wanted to take me. And if he wanted to take me bare, then he would take me bare. It wasn’t up to me.
“And,” he went on, “I haven’t fucked anyone else since you came into town.”
“You’ve let me choke you with my cock, fucked me for a better grade, and sat without underwear in a formal restaurant, and this is what you find humiliating?”
But I was inside his trap now. Stuck. And his hold wasn’t fragile at all. I was going nowhere until he cut me loose. Any moment now he would—he’d decide that he was no longer interested in feasting on his captured prey, and he’d cut me from his web. But I’d become too wrapped up in his spinning to escape undamaged. My wings would tear and break. I’d be destroyed.
“Because I want you to scare me, and you know it. Because the way you’re vile fits the way I’m vile.” I sucked hard on his thumb.
this was the first time I was truly aware of what I was doing. That no matter what Donovan wanted this to be, I was not just having sex with him. This was not a non-relationship. Not for me.
But somehow seeing him completely naked, his firm thighs a mouthwatering background to the centerpiece, made his erection seem even fuller and heavier and more substantial than it ever had before.
“Don’t do it, Sabrina. Don’t you dare come. Don’t you dare,”
It felt like a minute later, but it must have been longer because I was half asleep when Donovan pulled me under the covers and tugged me into his arms, spooning me. He was the only person I dreamt about that night, and my head wasn’t filled with images of rape or sex or assault or violence. Instead, in my dreams, Donovan held me tight and whispered words that made me feel things. Beautiful things. Things he could never feel in return. Words he could never mean if he were awake.
The air between us was charged, but it felt like razors when I inhaled, I was so unsure of what we were. What would happen next.
At least he’d been more polite about the way he’d asked for space this time. He’d made progress there. It just hurt that he still needed space.
“We have lax fraternization rules, but even so, you can’t report to Weston once you’re dating him.” I almost dropped my coffee mug. “You’re kidding, right?” He turned to face me. “No, I’m not,” he said gruffly.
“My feelings haven’t changed, and you know goddamn well they haven’t. I never had the feelings in the first place. You were the one who pushed me to him, and that was only because you were trying so hard to push me away from you.”
He stayed at his door and watched from across the hall, so when I got in the elevator and turned around, my eyes locked on his. The last thing I saw before the elevator doors closed between us was his expression wrinkle with regret. I just couldn’t tell if he regretted letting me leave or that he’d ever let me in in the first place.
When I’d first let Donovan into my bed, I hadn’t thought it would be more than a one-night stand. I hadn’t realized that I’d fall so hard, so quickly. I hadn’t imagined that he might show feelings for me and that every time he turned cold afterward, I’d be shattered.
How could I lie beneath him, how could I be naked in front of him, how could I let him move inside me and not fall even deeper than I already had?
Without responding, I turned my phone on silent and tossed it on my coffee table. He’d blown me off for an entire week. I could ignore him for at least one night.
“Well, I’m here,” he said, hands curled into the sofa, “and I’m not leaving until you explain. Or until I’ve emptied my cock down your throat. The choice is yours.”
“Talk, Sabrina. Talk or I’ll find a way to make you talk, I swear to god.” Both his tone and expression were serious. The kind of serious that scared the shit out of me and made my pussy clench and drip.
“But see, after you say that there’s nothing between us, you contradict it with actions that suggest exactly the opposite. You showed up uninvited at my apartment tonight when I didn’t answer a few texts! That’s not the behavior of someone who thinks this is just sex. It’s confusing and not fair, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or believe anymore.”
“I can’t. I won’t. I don’t. I live my life so that it’s an impossibility. So that there is no chance that someone will get that close, and I’m not changing that for anyone. Not even for you.” He pointed an aggressive finger in my direction. “Especially not for you.”
“Amanda’s car accident happened because of me, Sabrina,” he said, struggling for his usual control and failing. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“No. It’s not like that.” He ran his hand along the back of his neck. “When I fall in love, I become so consumed, so preoccupied with the person I’m in love with that I do things I shouldn’t. I get involved. I intervene.”
What he described was…well, it wasn’t normal. It certainly wasn’t healthy. But who was I to be the therapist? I liked to play rape with the guy who’d saved me from being raped myself.
I ached for him now. I agonized for every day he’d let himself believe he deserved to be alone. I anguished thinking that he might walk out of my apartment without me changing his mind. I couldn’t let that happen. I refused to let him leave without a fight. But he’d already pushed me away, already withdrawn. There was only one way I knew to reach him.
“I know you’ve been carrying this weight around for so many years, and it’s hard to put it down because you don’t know how not to carry it anymore, but you have to put it down now. Put it down and let me make it better.” Let me love you.
“I’m not risking anyone, Sabrina. This is the life I’ve chosen, and I’m not changing it for you.”
Even if Donovan intended to continue our sex-only situation, there was no way I could. I’d already fallen so hard. It already hurt so much to let him go. I couldn’t risk getting any more entangled if he wouldn’t give me anything in return.
“To take care of the merger with Dyson Media. With the wedding approaching, he decided he should be there to make sure everything happened smoothly. I mean, he just decided last night that he has to be the one to go, and that it has to be now. He must have sensed a change in the economic winds or something.”
“Come on, Bri. Don’t give me that bullshit. That’s coming from Donovan, not you.”
“Point is, I don’t know if he’d have anything that far back, but you could check his files. Let me get you a code to his office.”
It was wrong to look through his files—I knew that before I put the key in the lock. This wasn’t like Weston giving me the code to the office. This was crossing the line. This was going through Donovan’s personal things, and I’d pretty much convinced myself that I wasn’t going to actually look at any of his files. I just wanted to see if the key fit and all.
Number one—this was what he meant when he said he got obsessed with women he loved. Number two—Donovan was in love with me.
The stewardess was attractive. Big tits and blonde hair. Barbie doll attractive. Not beautiful like Sabrina.
Then I pulled out my phone and loaded up the only picture I kept of Sabrina on my cell. I had hundreds of her, sure, but this one I’d taken myself, while she’d been sleeping in my bed. It was my favorite. She was naked, the sheet only pulled up to her waist, but what made it special was that she was curled up in my arms.
