Donovan, however, remained calm. He picked another grape from a stem. “You’re on birth control,” he said, before throwing it in his mouth.
I was on the pill. Not that I’d ever told him that. But pregnancy wasn’t the only reason to use a condom. I bristled. “And you assumed...?”
He tilted his head toward me. “You had a safe word. You didn’t use it.”
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.
“I didn’t want to use my safe word,” I said after I’d thought it through.
He gave me the devil’s smirk, the one that said he’d known I’d come to that conclusion all along. “Then what are you fussing about?”
“I’m not fussing. Just…” I trailed off. How was I supposed to ask about STDs? The deed was over and done. The only thing I could do now was get tested. I wrapped both my hands around my tumbler and took a sip, trying not to wonder about how many women Donovan might have slept with previously without a condom.
The thoughts slipped in anyway, making my stomach twist. It hurt to think about him having sex with anyone else, let alone to imagine him being so intimate with someone that he’d go bare.
Which meant I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
But how could I stop?
“I haven’t had unprotected sex in over ten years,” he volunteered.
My head snapped up to see if he was kidding. His expression said he wasn’t.
“Oh.” Since Amanda, probably. He’d used condoms with every woman he’d been with since his fiancée? I liked hearing this. I hated how much I liked it.
“And,” he went on, “I haven’t fucked anyone else since you came into town.”
While the first announcement had been a surprise, this one was a shock. “Why?” I asked, my voice thin.
“You know why.” He pierced me with his gaze. Unflinching. Unapologetic.
My pulse sped up, and I wasn’t sure if I was excited by his words or alarmed. I didn’t know why he hadn’t slept with anyone else. I could make guesses and all of them were dangerous answers to dwell on. They didn’t fit into a Just Sex relationship, and that made this conversation thin ice. The safest thing to do would be to ask him point blank to explain, but I wasn’t ready to skate out that far on this pond.
But I was ready to skirt the edges. “I haven’t slept with anyone else either,” I confessed.
“I know.” He grinned as he devoured a piece of Gouda.
“You’re so cocky.”
“I’m perceptive.” He picked up the tray of food, holding it out as if to ask if I wanted any more.
I declined it, too focused on the topic. “You can tell I haven’t been with anyone else? How?”
“Because I just can.” He reached over to the ottoman, grabbed a leg and dragged it until it was close enough to put the tray and his now empty glass on top.
I watched, trying not to drool as his back muscles stretched and flexed. “Like I said—cocky.” Confident was more accurate. Conceited, even. But he made it sexy. Made me want to shed my clothes at just the nod of his head.
Or, in this case, his clothes.
He returned to his spot next to me, our backs propped up by the bed. Our arms lightly grazed each other as I brought my tumbler up for another sip of scotch, and I had a feeling the warmth running through my veins had more to do with him than the liquor. Though I’d barely been nibbling at the tray of food, I felt suddenly awkward without it between us. There was no longer something to “do”. No longer an object to build a pretense around, and now there was nothing to distract me from the sexual tension that constantly surrounded us.
If he felt it too—and I was sure that he could—I knew he wouldn’t let it sit long before addressing it; before either deciding this night was over or deciding I needed to be beneath him. Donovan was a guy who took the reins, which was something I admired about him, and I waited anxiously for him to do so.
That motherfucker, though, was as patient as the day was long.
Sure enough, it seemed like forever before he leaned over to me and put his mouth so close to my ear that I could hear him inhale and feel his exhale rush along my skin.
“How are you doing?” he asked, trite words spoken in the sexiest rumble.
I bit my lip and pressed my thighs together, as if that could ease the need between my legs. “I’m okay.”
He circled his nose around the shell of my ear, not exactly touching it but almost, sending a shiver down my spine. “I’m absolutely going to fuck you again, and I’m going to need a better answer than okay first.”
“It’s kind of hard to think of more complicated words when you say things like that. When you’re this close.”
“Let me fix that.” He sat back against the bed, and I had to stop myself from pulling him back down toward me. The only reason I didn’t, in fact, was because he rested a hand at my lower back, anchoring me. “Earlier tonight, we had what some might call rough sex and afterward you cried in my arms. Now I need to know—how are you doing?”
Ah. He meant earlier.
My cheeks quickly heated. How unsexy was a woman who couldn’t take the kind of sex she’d insisted on having? “God, this is humiliating.”
“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?”
That earned him a small smile. Lower, unbeknownst to him, my stomach flipped. I’d done all the things he’d mentioned, found them crazy hot. Would do them again in a heartbeat.
But what had happened with Theo…
I didn’t even know what was the most embarrassing about it. That the assault had happened in the first place? That I had fantasies centered on it? That I still thought about it so much now?
I set my tumbler down, drew my knees up and put my hands in my lap. “He probably doesn’t even remember me,” I said, staring at my French tips. “He was drunk, and I wasn’t important. Just a nobody girl from a college party that happened over ten years ago.”
“You mean Theodore Sheridan,” Donovan said smoothly.
The hair at the back of my neck stood up at the mention of his name. “Yes. Him.” Donovan had the luxury of talking about him without his blood turning cold. Without his throat going dry. “I know he doesn’t think about me when he walks down dark alleys. He doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat with me on his mind. He doesn’t worry that I’m out in the world; that he could bump into me at the bank or at the airport or at Starbucks. He isn’t afraid that I’ll look him up one day on a whim and try to find him.”
I’d almost searched for him so many times but always stopped myself in the end. It would only give me something new to resent or fear or worry about, and I suspected that wasn’t healthy.
Still, the restraint didn’t make me well. And maybe he was the real reason I hadn’t kept pushing to get back into a good school after The MADAR Foundation pulled my scholarship. Because he didn’t just make me scared of him—he made me scared, period.
I leaned my chin on my knees and refused to look at Donovan, determined not to let him see my eyes filling again. “I’m sure Theodore Sheridan doesn’t live a single day afraid at all.”
Though his hand had remained steady at the small of my back, Donovan had been quiet the whole time I’d talked. After I finished, he let only a few beats of silence pass before he said, adamantly, “He’s not going to come after you. You know that, don’t you, Sabrina?”
I shrugged.
“Sabrina?” He leaned forward, trying to get my eyes on h
im.
I turned my head and rested my cheek on my knee. “I know it,” I said, forcing a smile. “In my head, I know it. Just, sometimes it still feels like he could.”
“He’s not. I promise you that he’s not.” He searched my eyes, as though if he searched hard enough he could find the way to make me believe it. “It was years ago, and Theodore Sheridan is not looking for a random girl he came across at a party. Like you said, he probably doesn’t even remember you.”
They were harsh, true words. I was forgettable and nobody. I got it. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right. He scared me though. The kind of scared that runs several layers deep. It doesn’t go away easily, and it comes up sometimes. When I don’t always expect it.”
I sat up and wiped the leaking tears from under my eyes. “So, I’m okay. Really. What we did tonight just stirred up that fear and brought it to the surface, but I don’t regret it, and I’d do it again.”
I blushed; this time it spread down my neck, not because I was humiliated but because I’d brought up what we’d done. The game where he forced me to fuck him. The game that I loved.
Moisture pooled between my legs just thinking about it.
It had been the best sex of my life, and I’d done nothing but cry about it. Donovan probably didn’t even know how much I’d loved it.
With cheeks still red, I side-glanced at him. “I want to do it again. Not right now. Not always. But definitely. It was everything I’d imagined it would be. More, actually. I’m sorry that I ruined it.”
With a mischievous lift of his lip, he reassured me. “Trust me, you didn’t ruin it.”
I stayed locked in his gaze, and I realized then that he had me. Really had me. Like a fly caught in a web. From the outside, it seemed so much more tenuous and fragile, this hold of his. Like getting near him was risky but wouldn’t do any long-term harm because I’d manage to break free. What was a web anyway but mere strands of thin silk?
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.
On a sudden impulse, I climbed into his lap, straddling him. He brought his knees up behind me, creating a natural seat. Marveling at the smoothness of his skin, I ran my hands over the firm peaks of his pecs and down the ridged planes of his abs.
“You scare me, too,” I whispered. A thrill ran down my spine as his cock stirred beneath me.
He ran a single finger from my cleavage up to the base of my throat. Lightly he pressed against my windpipe. “I like that I do.”
“But it’s different.”
He continued trailing his fingers up my neck until he got to my chin. There he stopped and rubbed his thumb back and forth across my lower lip. “Because I stopped Theo? That doesn’t mean I’m any less vile.”
“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.
“You’re not vile,” he groaned. He drew his wet thumb from my lips and placed his hand firmly behind my neck so he could pull me down toward him.
“Then neither are you,” I managed before his mouth crashed against mine.
Our lips played with each other’s. Our tongues tangled. He licked deep inside my mouth, getting lost behind my teeth. He bruised me with the pressure of his nips along my jaw.
He was content to just kiss me like this for a long time. Well, not just kiss me. I lost my shirt—his shirt—right away, and his hands wandered up and down my body. Everywhere. Fondling my breasts. Pinching my nipples. Teasing past the crack in my ass.
I touched him as much as I could in return, sweeping my hands across his torso and bucking my hips against the growing length of his cock. But mostly, I clutched onto his neck and held on for dear life. Because though this wasn’t the first time I’d kissed him or rode him or coiled my fingers in his hair, 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.
And while I didn’t know what he wanted anymore or what would come next, I was sure that I needed to hold on.
Eventually, he tightened his arms around me and stood up. I wrapped my legs around him, locking my ankles at his waist. Without breaking his kiss, he carried me over to the bed and laid me on it. He undid the drawstring on his sweats, and I moved up to my knees so I could get a good look when he dropped them to the floor.
Jesus, he was hung.
I’d seen his cock before. Of course, I had.
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.
I licked my tongue along my bottom lip. His eyes shone, the green flecks shimmering with satisfaction at the way I looked at him. With my eyes glued to his every move, he wrapped his hand around his shaft and tugged upward.
“Please,” I begged, my voice trembling, and I didn’t even know what I was begging for, but Donovan knew what I needed.
Wordlessly, he pushed me onto my side and curled up behind me. I immediately missed being able to watch him, but any objection I had to his chosen position was swallowed when he turned my chin toward him and devoured my mouth as he entered me with a long, slow glide.
He fucked me at a leisurely pace, his strokes pulling all the way out to the tip before pushing in again, deep. So deep. Balls deep. My nerves hummed from the intensity, but my orgasm couldn’t build enough to take off at this speed. It was luxuriously tormenting.
Soon, Donovan rolled onto his back, pulling me with him so that I was tight against his chest. It was harder to kiss him like this, but he had full access to my body, and he took advantage of it, playing with my breasts and rubbing at my clit in lazy circles, drawing my climax closer and closer and closer—
“Don’t come,” he commanded.
“I have to. I’m so close.” I was already on the edge.
“Don’t, Sabrina. I mean it.” His teeth sunk into the shell of my ear, a warning.
The haze around me dulled enough for me to think. “Then stop touching me like that.”
He was still massaging my clit, still tweaking my nipple in his other hand. “Uh-uh.”
The tension continued to build like a pressure cooker. I tried to sit up, tried to pull away from his attention, but he held me in place. “This isn’t fair.”
“My house, my rules. Remember?”
“Ah, fuck,” I moaned as his cock hit a particularly sensitive spot. “I. God. I can’t.”
“You will.”
Without him telling me what they were, I knew that my disobedience would have consequences.
And I wanted to obey him, for whatever reason.
Because I was in his bed.
Because it would make him happy.
Because it was natural.
So I fought against the growing tension, even as Donovan made it more and more impossible, increasing the tempo of his thrusts, pressing harder on my clit.
All the while he threatened at my ear, “Don’t do it, Sabrina. Don’t you dare come. Don’t you dare,” and he might as well have said, “Don’t you dare fall for me,” because pretty soon I realized it was just as pointless. Everything he did was leading toward that anyway. Everything he did was pushing me up, up, up and eventually, where else was I going to go? Eventually I’d—
“Now,” he growled.
—fall.
Just like that, on command, my orgasm tore through me, sending me spinning and spinning and spinning like a top—out-of-control and frenetic. Whirling so fast I was dizzy with euphoric, chaotic bliss.
He was right there with me, gr
unting out his climax in symmetry with mine. Both of us joined physically but experiencing our own separate rapture like we were two spiral galaxies revolving around each other in harmony.
It was beautiful. And perfect. And so much more than anything we’d shared before.
At least, it was for me.
It was a good feeling, a sweet ecstasy, and I didn’t want to disrupt it by thinking about what it was for him until I had to.
I closed my eyes to catch my breath.
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.
Twenty-Nine
The smell of freshly ground coffee brewing woke me up the next morning.
I lingered for several minutes, letting consciousness chase sleep away. With wakefulness, I remembered—I was different today than when I’d woken up yesterday. I breathed that in; let myself adjust as my emotions spread their wings inside me like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
I was different.
But who was Donovan?
There was only one way to know. With a yawn, I stretched my well-used muscles and stumbled out of bed to find him.
First, I had to find some clothes.
The shirt I’d worn the night before had disappeared so I had no choice but to invade his walk-in closet in search of my dress. As he’d said it would be, I found it hanging on the rack in front of a row of sharply tailored suits. It was obviously out of place, yet I liked the way my clothing looked next to his. I trailed my hand along the jacket sleeves as I walked toward the back of the room and inhaled. It smelled like him in here. Like his aftershave and the brand of shoe polish he used. I’d never get tired of that smell.
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