After I was satisfied that the event was running smoothly and that everything we’d provided was working as intended, I set out to locate Tom.
“Here you are,” I said, when I found him inside the ballroom with a flute of champagne in hand. “I was looking for you.”
His brows rose. “Am I in trouble?”
“Of course not. I watched SummiTech’s presentation on my way in. The entire setup looked great. How do you think it’s going?”
His shoulders relaxed visibly. “I spoke to Munns about fifteen minutes ago, and he was pretty stoked, so I’d say it’s going great.”
“Excellent.” Robert Munns was our client, the CEO of SummiTech. “As long as he’s happy then Reach should be happy.”
“Exactly why I’m drinking.” Tom held his glass up for emphasis. “You should join me.”
A glass of champagne didn’t sound like a bad idea. It had been a long day. Correction—it had been a long week. While my workload had been pretty manageable, there had been mental and emotional stress that had worn me out, and I longed for an escape.
Alcohol wasn’t the kind of escape I had hoped for, but since I’d banished my non-relationship from my life the day before, I had to take what I could get.
“I will definitely join you if I can find a server.” I scanned the ballroom for the closest waiter.
“I’ll find one.” Tom, who was much taller than me, even as I wore heels, did his own survey. “I didn’t know Kincaid would be here.”
My heart stopped. “He is?”
“I just saw him talking to that Hudson Pierce guy.”
As soon as I turned, I saw him. He was impossible to miss. He’d obviously come straight from the office because he was still wearing what he’d been wearing when I’d glimpsed him from across the hallway earlier in the day. And damn did he look good. Donovan Kincaid wore a suit better than a room full of men in tuxedos.
Which was not a good thing considering my whole resolution to be done with him.
Suddenly I wished I’d chosen my outfit better. Black was so boring. I hadn’t even added jewelry. My underwear was fine but nothing fancy.
And none of that mattered because I wasn’t sleeping with him.
What the hell was he even doing here anyway? There was no reason someone of his level needed to attend this sort of thing on behalf of Reach. He wasn’t even dressed for the event. He’d obviously come here last minute. Had something gone wrong? Was he checking up on my team?
Was he coming here for me?
“Oh, god.” I turned my back toward him. I couldn’t settle the flutters in my stomach. I wanted him to be here for me, despite everything he’d put me through, and not only was that setting myself up for the worst kind of disappointment tonight, it was setting me up for the worst kind of disappointment in the long run.
I had to get out of there.
“Do me a favor, will you?” After our talk the day before, I was pretty sure Tom would help me out. “If he asks about me, tell him you haven’t seen me.”
I was already mentally mapping my escape. The ballroom was small, and I’d have to go past Donovan to get to the front doors, but I had to go that way because the coatroom was down that hall.
“Yeah. Sure. But…” Like he had the day before, Tom’s voice filled with concern. “Is there some sort of problem that you need help with?”
“No. I promise. And you’re a great guy for asking. Just, like I said, Donovan and I have a complicated…” I searched for a word that wasn’t relationship. “Acquaintanceship, and I’m just not in the mood to deal with him tonight, so I’m going to slip out before he notices me.”
“Ah. Got it. I had one of those myself.” He lifted the champagne flute again, but this time he tapped the finger where he wore his wedding ring indicating the courtship with his wife had been complicated.
“I think I’ve given you the wrong idea,” I said, dismayed by the conclusion he’d settled on. “Donovan and I are barely friends.”
“I get it, Sabrina.” But he was grinning like he had a secret. “Now go before he sees you.”
“Okay. Thanks, Tom.”
Still unsure about leaving my employee with the wrong impression, I hesitated a moment longer. Then I got my priorities straight and took off.
I hurried out, a woman with a mission, racing down the exposition hallway as fast as I could to get to the coatroom. Luckily, there was no one in line when I arrived, and I was able to present my ticket and get out of there quickly. But as soon as I turned around, I saw Donovan had also left the party.
He still hadn’t seen me, but there was no way that I could get out the main entrance of the hotel without crossing his path, so I slipped down a smaller corridor beyond the coatroom and discovered a side door. I pushed through the exit and found myself in an alleyway.
Perfect.
Except, once the door closed behind me, I realized how dark and narrow the alley was and immediately regretted the decision to come this way. I turned back and pulled on the handle of the door. It was locked. Of course.
I sighed, kicking myself for not having my Mace and looked in both directions, searching for the best way to get to a main street. Several garbage dumpsters lined the wall to one side of me, but the streetlight seemed to be out on the other side.
I started on the path past the dumpsters.
Something rattled along the pavement to my right—like the wind blowing a pop can or something inane, but it was eerie nonetheless. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and walked faster. More sounds behind me begged for my attention. The sound of a door? Footsteps? My imagination running wild?
I was too scared to look.
No, there was definitely someone behind me.
The steps got louder and nearer. I hurried my pace, but my heel caught on a crack in the gravel, and just as I started to go down, someone grabbed me at the waist.
I inhaled sharply, preparing to scream.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Donovan asked crudely before I could get sound out.
“Oh my god, it’s you.” I crumpled into his arms, relieved to find my stalker was someone familiar.
“But it might not have been,” he said, roughly. His grip on me was both warm and possessive. His fingers dug into my waist as though he’d had to lurch to reach me. Or as though he didn’t want to let go.
It felt good.
So good.
Then I remembered everything from the week. How he’d been a complete ass. How I’d vowed I was done with him.
“But it was you. So let me go.” I wriggled out of his grasp, missing him instantly.
“Seriously, Sabrina. What were you thinking coming out here alone? If you wanted to get raped, you could have just called me.” Even with the dark, teasing words, his delivery was a lecture.
“Actually, I couldn’t. Since you aren’t taking my calls or answering any of my texts. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll—” I started to turn away, but he grabbed my arm, digging his fingers into my skin painfully, even through the thick material of my coat.
“You aren’t going anywhere out here alone.” His eyes were black in the dimly lit alley, his tone final.
I yanked my arm away. After a week of avoidance, now he was going to give me his two cents? No fucking way. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
He put his hands in his coat pockets and scoffed. “I don’t know about that. I have a pair of panties in my nightstand that says otherwise.”
I stared at him incredulously for half a beat. None of this was serious to him. This was just like college when he fucked with my grades for his own amusement. “You goddamn asshole, Donovan,” I seethed. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me. Don’t stick up for me at work.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re so angry. It’s making me need to fuck you.”
Fury bubbled up inside. Before I could think about what I was doing, my hand flew up to slap him.
He was too quick. He grabbed my forearm before I reac
hed his cheek. A smile spread devilishly across his face. “Save it for the bedroom. I like it when you struggle.”
“This isn’t foreplay!” I pulled my hand free. “You can have your non-relationship rules, and I’ll follow them, but you don’t get to avoid me like I’m nothing and still expect me to walk into your arms the minute that you’re in the mood.”
“I don’t expect that at all. I’d much rather you crawl.”
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.
With my eyes burning, I spun away from him once more.
“Sabrina, you’re not walking out here alone.” He followed right behind, but when he tried to reach for me, I snatched my hand away.
I heard him sigh. “I wasn’t avoiding you.”
“Like hell you weren’t,” I grumbled, pissed that he’d gotten me to engage. I kept walking though, only yards now from the street.
“I wasn’t exactly avoiding you. I had a major deadline this week. It required my full attention.”
I couldn’t help myself. As angry as I was, as done with him as I was, I couldn’t stop myself from reacting. That’s what he did to me—that’s what he always did to me—he made me feel.
I pivoted toward him. “Then you act like a decent person—remember how you said that’s what we both were? And you take ten seconds to explain that to me in a motherfucking text.”
Before he could say anything in response, I spun right back around to continue my advance to the road.
But this time Donovan caught me, wrapping both arms around me from behind. I struggled with determination, elbowing him sharply.
“Jesus Christ, Sabrina,” he exclaimed, tightening his grasp. “Stop!”
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.
“What?” I asked, broken. “What do you have to say?”
He exhaled, his breath warming my neck, his mouth right at my ear. “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 closed my eyes and let his words sink in, let them settle in between the facts I already had and the things I’d decided must be true and the things I wished were true and the things he’d said were true before, but I couldn’t get them to make a pattern that made sense.
I couldn’t get these words to mean what I was pretty sure he was saying and still exist with what he’d said in the past.
And these were the words I wanted him to mean. More than I’d realized.
Afraid to make the wrong move, afraid to guess wrong, I told him, “I don’t know what you’re telling me right now.”
“I’m telling you to come home with me.”
Twenty-Seven
Donovan’s car was parked with the hotel valet. It wasn’t the car that his driver normally drove me in. Instead it was a silver Tesla. I couldn’t say definitively since I’d always sat in the back of the Jag, but I was pretty sure this was the most sophisticated and modern car I’d ever been in, and watching Donovan handle it expertly through the city streets was captivating and stunning.
We rode in silence, the energy between us electric and barbed, making it painful to sit in. My breasts ached. My pussy throbbed. My skin wanted to touch and be touched, my body wanted to be fucked and roughed up and bruised and bumped around.
I still had anger in me. And pain. They were strong emotions that heightened my arousal, and they needed an outlet. Donovan had wordlessly promised to provide one when he’d invited me home with him, and the anticipation grew exponentially every second that passed.
As we headed toward Midtown, the anxiousness drove my brain into overthinking mode. I wondered about trivial things, like did he only have a chauffeur for the women he didn’t want to deal with or did he sometimes use those services himself? And where did he keep his cars?
There were so many things I didn’t know about Donovan Kincaid. So many things I wanted to know and yet didn’t need to know. And if I knew them, would I lose the attraction? Knowledge banished fear. If I understood him, would I lose the fear that drew me to him in the first place?
I already knew the answer, and it was almost as frightening to face as the question.
Because in between the banal thoughts, others wove in, more vague in form and heavier in weight. Thoughts like how the things I felt sitting next to this man right now were wider and deeper than lust and desire. They didn’t stop at what we’d already shared—the dirty sex, the filthy fantasies. 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.
And not just with his hands or the rough way he treated my body—those possible ways had always fascinated me. But he could also hurt me by not caring, could cut me so much deeper. Could scar me so much more permanently. I realized that now. And that was terrifying.
So I was still scared. He still scared me. Now he just scared me for different reasons.
Eventually, we pulled off in front of a luxury building in Upper Midtown called the Baccarat. I hadn’t been there before, but it seemed to be a hotel. A small thread of disappointment entered the weave of emotions inside me. I’d gotten the impression that Donovan was taking me to his home, that we were moving toward something more intimate between us.
But that hadn’t been exactly what he’d said.
It was already happening. I was already opening myself up to be hurt by assuming that we were becoming something other than what he’d so adamantly stated we were.
I was too vulnerable.
Panic started to twist and braid in my chest.
We left the car with the valet, and as we walked through the elegant, crystal-adorned lobby, he took my hand in his. 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.
The car stopped at the fifty-sixth floor, and Donovan led me to the suite doors almost immediately across from the elevator. He dropped my hand to retrieve a key card from his wallet and let me in.
As soon as I crossed the threshold and he turned on the lights, I realized I’d been wrong about the hotel situation.
“You live here?” I asked as he helped me with my coat. I didn’t let him answer before heading toward the floor-to-ceiling windows at the other side of the open space behind him. It was a luxury residence, not a hotel room. The main space was white and large with a huge fireplace, furnished sparsely with modern sofas and a conversation area. The floor was dark wood covered with rich-toned rugs.
But the highlight was the view. Even in the dark, I could tell that the windows framed Central Park in the near distance.
The place was both elegant and masculine, and though I would have expected Donovan to have more black in his color scheme, I knew it was his house before he responded.
He responded anyway. “Yes. I live here.”
He lived here. These were his windows, his sofas. This was his view. This was his fireplace.
I studied more of the apartment. There was a formal dining room at the opposite end of the main space and the kitchen beyond that. A staircase led to an upper floor where I imagined
his bedroom was located. There weren’t any portraits, but a few art pieces decorated the walls. An impressionistic ink painting of pine trees hung above the fireplace. An abstract oil canvas of orange water lilies filled the wall of the dining area.
The paintings could have been chosen by an interior designer, but neither of the designs were what I’d imagine for a man like Donovan. And there was something about each of them—the stark loneliness of the pine trees, the frankness of the lilies—something about their honesty that made me certain that he’d picked them out himself.
I shouldn’t know that about him.
I shouldn’t know something so intimate about a man I was supposed to have just sex with.
These things exposed him, but they made me feel like the one who was exposed. As if he understood that the more I knew about him, the more I’d feel for him. And the more I felt for him, the more he could use my emotions as his toy.
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.
I needed to run.
I spun around and found him standing behind me, watching as I scrutinized his quarters. He’d taken off his jacket and loosened his tie. His eyes narrowed and glistened, pinned on me like I was a rabbit through a riflescope. As though he could read every minute thought racing through my mind. As though he knew I wanted to escape. But every crease on his face said he was determined that he wouldn’t let me.
He took a slow step in my direction.
I took a cautious step away.
Another step from him. Not really a step even, more like a prowl.
I kicked off my heels, ready to take off. A quick scan of my surroundings said I wouldn’t get far without him catching me, which didn’t matter. I wanted him to catch me. Just…I couldn’t stand still anymore, couldn’t stand frozen in his trap while the panic and the fear and the lust and desire overwhelmed me. Couldn’t stand there waiting for him to take me. I needed to move.
Dirty Filthy Rich Men Page 23