His brows furrowed. “What did you say?”
Besides, I hadn’t changed because of Theo. I’d changed because of him. Not that I was telling him that. “My changes in behavior have not translated into a change in the standard of my work.”
“As your teacher, that’s for me to decide, and I’ve decided that it has.” His subtext said case closed. Especially when he leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on the desk, crossed at the ankles.
Weeks of bottled up emotion rattled through me. Every cell in my body vibrated with rage and want and horror and shame.
“Fuck you,” I said in as clear and as controlled a tone as I could manage. I’d leave. I’d talk to Velasquez. I’d report the fuck out of Donovan. I had a solid case. This wasn’t even anything to worry about. I’d get it worked out.
I grabbed my coat off the chair and spun once again to leave.
“Don’t you mean fuckwaffle?”
I’d had the door open, was this close to walking out, but I shut it again because I had to know. “Is that why you’re doing this? Because of Weston?” Was he jealous?
For half a second, I thought I’d hit onto something. His expression tightened and a strange prick of heat blossomed in my belly at the idea of Donovan jealous. Because of me.
But then he laughed, coldly. “No. I was just teasing you. Can’t take being on the other side of the joke?”
Is that what this was to him? A joke?
“This is serious!” I was so mad I dropped my coat and pushed his fucking feet off the desk. “This is my scholarship!”
In an instant he was up and around the desk in front of me. “I told you before how you could fix your grades if you’re that concerned about it.”
He was referring to his come-on in his room. When he’d suggested he could help me with my virginity. It was another way he could trivialize my situation, but it was also a chance to play with my emotions. I hated how it felt like a carrot dangling. How he played that card as if he knew that somewhere deep down I wanted him.
It pissed me off to a new level. I slapped him so hard my palm burned.
Donovan rubbed his cheek, and his eyes sparked. “Is this how you fought off Theo?” he asked, evenly.
“No,” I said tentatively.
Something shifted between us.
“Fight me like you fought him.”
I could have said no. It was such a strange, twisted request, but I was mad and ready to fight. And after weeks of the thoughts I’d had, weeks of pent-up desire and need, I didn’t want to say no.
And was it really a strange, twisted request if somewhere on a gut level I understood the impetus behind it?
Without further urging, I shoved both arms against Donovan’s chest as forcefully as I could. He pushed my hands away, but it felt good. Both to shove and be shoved. Like being able to pick up a heavy weight and the relief after you put it down.
Donovan nodded, encouraging me to come at him again.
I shoved him once more, but he grabbed my arm and wrapped it around my back. He tried for my other arm. I kneed him in his side then pushed against his face while he was bent over. He was too strong for me, and he captured my wrist easily.
He held me like this for a second as we caught our breath, all the while his eyes glued to mine. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked carefully.
Why wasn’t I frightened? I was trapped by a man I didn’t have any reason to trust, and I’d been in a similar situation and been violated. I should have been scared out of my mind.
But instead of feeling scared, I felt empowered.
And turned on.
Just like in all those fantasies I’d had.
“No,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
I wriggled against his hold to reinforce my request, using my entire body to fight him. Before I’d been keeping back. Now, I struggled with all I had.
Donovan fought harder too, but only with enough strength to just overcome me. He wrapped his arm around my waist, sliding my shirt up so he touched bare skin. I elbowed him in the ribs. His knee grazed against my inner thigh. Could he tell how wet I was through my leggings?
When he had me captured again, one arm behind me, one across my chest, he suddenly pushed me back until I was pinned against a bookshelf.
I gazed down to where his lower body met mine. Pressed hard at my belly was the firm bulge of his erection.
I’d long forgotten why I’d come here.
When I looked up again, his eyes were waiting. “I could smell you on his fingers.”
I barely had time to wish his mouth was on mine before it was.
There was nothing tentative or easy about the way that Donovan Kincaid kissed. The pressure of his lips was firm and intent. His tongue was thick as it dipped inside, tasting me in long licks. He dropped my arms and with one hand held my face at my chin, sort of cradling it, and it felt sweet, but also like it was meant to hold me in place. So he could kiss me how he wanted. So he could suck my top lip until it was fat. So he could nip along my neck while I wriggled against him.
My knees could barely hold me. I couldn’t breathe because I wanted him so much. I threw one arm around his neck, needing to hold on to something. Needing to hold on to him. His kiss got deeper as if he liked the way I clutched on to him. Then meaner—pulling roughly at my lip with his teeth while pinching my nipple with his fingers—as if he wished he didn’t like it like he did.
His lips never left mine, but I was very aware as his hand slid down my side and under the band of my leggings, under my panties, past the hood of skin to find my clit.
My breath hitched, and he slipped deeper, through the soft curls, burrowing inside me.
“Was this how he did it?” he said, pulling away. I don’t know if he wanted to watch the reaction to his question or to what he was doing.
“Yes.” It was mechanically the same. Two fingers stroking my sensitive inner walls.
But it was also nothing at all the same. I was so wet. And it felt so good. So fucking good. Like kindling catching on fire, spreading heat, growing hotter. Burning. Blazing. “Donovan,” I moaned.
“Say it again,” he growled.
“Donovan.” I’d said it so many times in the dark, in my head. It felt new to say it out loud in this way but comfortable, like finding a pair of jeans that seemed to have been perfectly tailored.
His lip turned up, the closest thing to a smile that I’d ever seen him give. Damn, his face was really striking. I’d never seen it this close up. Not pretty but captivating. He was only twenty-two and yet he already had lines starting at his eyes. His thick brows and the deep line in his chin gave him a rugged appeal, and the way he studied me while he rubbed and kneaded me below was intense and committed and…god, what he was doing to me…I closed my eyes as the pleasure built toward a climax.
“Did you touch him?” he asked, suddenly withdrawing his hand.
I opened my eyes. “No.”
“Touch me.” It was the same way he’d told me to sit when I’d first arrived. Then it had pissed me off to be ordered around. Now I was so eager, my hands were shaking.
Donovan caressed my face and kissed along my forehead while I worked to get his black trousers open. When I got his pants and boxer briefs worked down to the top of his muscular thighs, his cock fell out, long and thick and hard. His tip was purple and stretched tight, and all of a sudden I knew that this was going to be it. This was going to happen. This was going to be inside me because there was a cyclone of want blustering at the core of me, begging me to have him. But also, it had to happen because I had a very real fear that whatever this strange, complicated thing was that was going on with Donovan might never happen again if it didn’t happen now.
I skimmed my palm across his crown, reverently, then drew my fingers closed around him and pulled down.
He hissed, and my stomach flipped.
Donovan brought his hand to join mine—the one slick with my wetness—and together we stroked up, down. Up. Do
wn.
Up.
He pulled his hand away, but I kept working him, even though I could feel his eyes on me, watching me. Asking me.
I didn’t look up. Because I didn’t want to be asked, and I didn’t want this to stop. And that made me an awful person and an awful woman and probably someone who needed to schedule an appointment with a campus psychiatrist as soon as possible, but so be it. This was my consent. I was touching him.
He seemed to understand because then he was pulling out his wallet, tearing open a condom, pushing my hand away and rolling it over his erection. Or maybe he was never asking my permission, after all.
I shimmied my leggings and panties down to my knees. Donovan lifted me and they fell to my ankles. I widened my knees, giving him room. He lined his head at my entrance and, without any hesitation, drove inside.
It hurt at first. A lot.
I was too tight and too dry, even as wet as I was. Donovan was persistent, though, pushing and nudging until I opened up for him and he could slide all the way in. Tears fell down my cheeks and my nails dug into his back. Fluid trickled past where we were joined and down my leg. I felt tense and wound up and unbridled.
But then there was Donovan’s mouth, kissing me, centering me. He was just as demanding as before. Greedy and impatient like his cock. But as I gave in to his lips, my body relaxed, and soon there was no more pain, just pleasure coiling inside me, tightening and expanding.
He noticed when I gave in. I could feel his attack change. He hitched me up higher so the angle of his pelvis was better against mine and ground into me repeatedly with deep, merciless jabs. I tried to speak, to say his name, but all that came out was grunts and groans and incoherent syllables.
I was lost to him.
The shelf behind me cut into my lower back and my phone buzzed in my coat pocket on the floor by the desk and I had an F on my paper and the door to the office was unlocked and I had a date with Weston, but all I cared about in the world at the moment was the dirty, filthy scenario I was living out. It was everything I’d imagined those nights in my room—a little bit cruel and a little bit hard—plus as erotic as hell. And the man knew how to touch me. Knew how to move inside me.
It was also more. Because I’d never once imagined that, while he did those terrible sexy things, Donovan would look at me the way he looked at me. Studying my face. Watching my eyes. Like he cared about what he’d find there.
I’d never once imagined that I’d want that from him.
I came without warning. I’d always been finicky when it came to orgasms—my high school boyfriend had found it hard to make me come with his tongue and fingers. I’d had better luck on my own, depending on my mindset. Maybe I was a girl who needed penetration. Maybe I was a girl who needed Donovan.
He regarded me even closer as I spiraled. I fought to keep my eyes open so I could watch him watching me. He seemed to find this funny because he chuckled, kissed me again, and then plowed into me with renewed fervor.
He came on a long low grunt, and for just a moment at the end, he closed his eyes, and I’d never seen his face so relaxed. We were still catching our breath, he was still inside me, and I brought my hand up to touch his cheek—how young he looked now. How innocent.
He caught my hand against his jaw. His eyes flew open. “I didn’t want to notice you,” he said so quietly it was almost a whisper. “And now I don’t know how not to.”
Another cryptic Donovan statement, but this one made my chest feel warm and stretched. “Then notice me,” I said.
He considered me a moment longer. Then stepped away, pulling out of me. “I can’t.”
He motioned for me to stay where I was. Then he removed his condom, tied it off, wrapped it in tissue from the desk and pocketed it before fastening his pants. I had to give him credit—it was probably not a good idea to leave a used condom in Mr. Velasquez’s office. Next Donovan brought some tissue and knelt down in front of me so he could clean up the blood and cum that had dripped down my thigh.
Then he left me with my pants still down and went to sit behind his desk.
I dressed myself and watched him, curious as he opened up his laptop and clicked a few keys. “You have an A on that paper now, Sabrina,” he said, his voice not entirely steady. “I believe that should be acceptable to you.” He couldn’t look at me.
Dread started gathering in my stomach. “That’s not. That’s not why I did that.” He didn’t believe that. He couldn’t. He felt bad now—as he should—and was fixing his mistake. Surely that was what this was.
“I’m sure it’s not why you did that.” He was more in control of himself now. He shut the laptop and finally met my eyes. “But now you’ll have a chance with Weston King, won’t you?”
It was a punch to the stomach. The cruelest thing he could have said.
With tears in my eyes, I grabbed my coat off the floor and started for the door. My hand was on the knob when he added, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot to mention, Weston does like virgins. My bad.”
There were a lot of words I wanted to unleash on him, but even if I tried at the moment, I knew it would come out in nothing but snot and drivel. He’d worn me down. I’d played his game and he’d won.
I opened the door and ran until I was out of the building. Ran until I couldn’t run any more because I was sobbing too hard to go on. I stopped at the river to cry and catch my breath and silence my dang phone, which had been going off nonstop in my pocket.
I pulled out my cell and looked at my notifications through bleary eyes—four missed calls and several texts, all from my sister.
Aubrey: Where are you?
Aubrey: Call me ASAP. It’s Dad. He’s in the hospital.
Aubrey: Sabrina! It’s a heart attack.
Aubrey: He’s going to die. Call me. I need you.
Epilogue
Ten years later
Ashley tapped her toe, anxious for the server to come by again. “I swear to god, if we don’t get out of here in time because of that damn waitress…”
“Calm down, would you? It’s really not that big of a deal if I don’t see him.” I finished the last swallow of my martini and pushed my glass aside.
“Are you kidding me? It’s been—what? Ten years since you left Harvard?”
“About that.” Ten years. It was strange how it hadn’t felt like that much time had passed. It still felt like yesterday, and it also felt like it happened in another lifetime, to somebody else.
“You have to see him. You never got to explain to him what happened. What if he’s been pining for you all this time? And he never knew that your father died. He just figured you ran off and didn’t care. Though I still don’t understand why you didn’t just take Audrey back to Cambridge with you.”
“I’ve been over this already,” I sighed.
She threw her hands up in the air, her exasperation with our server translating into exasperation with me. “You had a full ride! How could you let that slip through your fingers? I’ve heard you talk about the jobs you pined for—running big corporations on Wall Street and making the big bucks. You could have had that if you’d stayed!”
“I know! And believe me, I tried. But my scholarship was taken away when I didn’t finish out the semester. I couldn’t afford Harvard without that.” It had crushed me. Almost as much as the death of my father. All my life I’d worked for that scholarship, then to have it yanked away... It was salt on a very deep open wound.
Ashley, ever true to justice, became indignant. “I know, I know. They took it away. You should have appealed it.”
I’d explained this part to her before too. Many times. Something she’d probably remember if she hadn’t just finished three vodka tonics in less than an hour. “I did appeal it. But the scholarship was privately funded through the MADAR Foundation and since it wasn’t sponsored through the university, the donor didn’t have to adhere to school policies. Blah blah blah.” The memory was bitter in my mouth, months of writing letters only to be re
jected time and time again. “If I’d had the right name, the right connections. If I’d had money, I’m sure things would have been different.”
“Isn’t that everyone’s story? Hey, waitress!” she practically yelled across the bar.
“Ashley! Shh!” I didn’t know why I was shushing her now. The whole restaurant was already looking at us.
She didn’t mind the attention. “We made eye contact. It’s cool. She saw me. She’s bringing the ticket.” She stole the olive from my empty martini glass. “Anyway, you got your masters at Colorado University and then got swept up by a headhunter for one of the best ad firms in California, moved to L.A., met me and your life really began. You’re welcome.”
I pretended to roll my eyes, but honestly, Ashley had become a great friend and confidante. Other than my sister, she was the only person I’d ever told about Donovan Kincaid and Weston King. I’d left out details both times I’d shared the story, however. No one needed to know how sick and dirty I’d been back then. With Donovan.
I still thought about him, sometimes. At night. When I couldn’t sleep. When I was restless and couldn’t figure out what I needed. Sometimes it was just my hand and fantasies of him.
I wasn’t admitting that, though. What kind of girl still dreamed about the asshole who’d taken her virginity and thrown her aside like that?
What would have happened if I’d been able to stay?
“Here you go,” the waitress said, dropping off our ticket.
She was already off to another table when Ashley caught her by the arm and pulled her back. “And here’s my card. Could you hurry please? We have to be somewhere.”
“We really don’t,” I said, but the server was already out of earshot.
“Yes, we do!” Ashley turned the “Advertising in a New Age” program around so it was facing me and pointed at the keynote speaker excitedly. “He probably thinks you stood him up all those years ago. You have to make it right!”
Dirty Filthy Rich Men Page 5