I snort. “He’s punishing us. Something crawled up his ass and he’s taking it out on us.”
Adam’s laughter echoes off the walls.
We find the room and swipe my pass by the door.
The design lab supply room is its own warehouse, more than a dozen rows lined with shelves and drawers of computer chips and LEDs, microcontrollers and wires. There are boards and chips and tools and soldering equipment.
It’s a dream, or it would be if someone kept on top of organizing it.
We go to different aisles in search of the components we were sent here for.
A moment later, I’m pressed up against one of the shelves by a very hard, very angry professor.
“What are you doing?” His voice is a rasp, his body taut and distracting as his best parts line up with mine.
“Sourcing a bunch of bullshit my professor sent me to find.” I cock my head. “Wanna help?”
His eyes are dark, his lips thin. “I didn’t send you. I sent him.”
“And why is that? Because I’m on speaking terms with Adam?”
“According to you it’s because something crawled up my ass.”
Shit. Of course he heard that.
“It’s not my ass you should be worried about,” he finishes, and my eyes narrow.
“If you want to help the team, help us. We don’t need to be lectured at, and we don’t need to build circuits until our fingers are cut.”
“Hey, Liv? You find the stuff on your half of the list?” Adam calls.
“Working on it!” I call back.
Sawyer moves closer. His hand is gripping my right arm, tugging me against him. “I’m not here to play games, Olivia.”
“Really? Because I’m here to work on a project that’s going to determine my future. Your presence is optional.”
We stand motionless for a moment, and my heart is racing. I push on his chest but he’s not moving. He grabs my other wrist and pulls me so close that I feel his breath on my neck.
“My father left you a sum of money. A very generous sum of money.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The attorney said she called you before the gala, which you failed to mention when we saw one another. Apparently you thought you could hide that little fact from me.”
So that’s what this is about.
The truth that I had no idea is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it.
“You’re right,” I retort. “I wanted his money. I was hoping he’d die and leave me a bunch of cash.”
“Stop it. You’re being a brat—”
“I didn’t know he had a son, but given what he left me, clearly I was better to him than his own child ever was.”
His face goes white.
I’ve struck a nerve. In this man who claims to care about nothing, I’ve snuck beneath his defenses and hit him where it hurts.
Regret slams into me. I wanted a reaction from him, but not this one. I’m about to take it back when Adam’s voice interrupts from a few rows away.
“Liv, I think I found it.” He’s far too close for how our professor is currently boxing me against the shelf, chest heaving. “But I need to go get one more thing on the list. It says there’s stock here but I don’t see any. I’m going to check in the supply closet, maybe it got moved there.”
Sawyer and I stare each other down until I hear the click of the door.
My throat works. “I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t want your apology.” He turns away and the moment his touch is gone, I miss it.
“Then what do you want, Professor? What makes us even?”
Because no matter what’s between us, there’s no excuse for what I said to him.
Sawyer is being a jerk but I wasn’t playing fair. He brings out a side of me that’s impatient and needy and angry and vulnerable.
“You mean it.” His eyes flash.
“Anything.” My pulse thuds in my throat, but I’m not afraid of him. “You want to punish me, do your worst. But when we walk out of here, we’re on level ground.”
What I’m afraid of is that he’s going to leave and I’ll lose him forever.
We’re trapped in a hopeless cycle. I can’t have him, I shouldn’t want him, but I still do, and maybe he feels the same way.
In the tension of his body, the clench of his jaw, I want to believe he gives a shit. I want to believe he cares.
He turns it over and I see the moment he decides.
He pulls me to a low file cabinet at the end of the aisle. “Bend over.”
“If you want more lace to jerk off with, you can go to Victoria’s Secret and buy it yourself.”
His low chuckle lifts the hairs on my arms. “This time, it’s not fabric I’m taking.”
If he’s not stealing my underwear again, then what…
I do as Sawyer asks, folding at the waist and lying there, the cool surface of the cabinet against my face.
“It’s not my ass you should be worried about.”
My body throbs, reminding me he hasn’t touched me in more than a week.
Is it messed up that part of me wants him to fuck me right now? That as much as I want to walk out that door, I want him to spread my thighs and sink into me from behind, his possessive hands holding me open and his raw groan at my ear?
Sawyer flips up my skirt and I feel my bare cheeks in the open air.
If his heavy exhale is a warning, his words are an alarm.
“Have you ever been spanked?”
The breath trembles between my lips, heat curling low in my stomach. “No.”
I’m afraid now.
Not of the pain. But every time we do something new, it leaves a mark on me I can’t wash away.
He might be angry with me but he’s turned on, too. It’s a kind of power—the only one I have.
It’s not. I can leave.
But if I do, I shut a door I’m not prepared to close.
Because part of me still hopes for him. For us.
“You took advantage of my trust. There are consequences.”
His trust. Those two words make my heart kick.
He did trust me, if only a little. He did let me in, if only for a moment.
He sets his watch on the cabinet next to my face, the second hand ticking silently.
“One minute. You last, we’re done for today. The team can go home.”
He’s giving himself a time limit to break all the rules. Even the ones he hasn’t broken with me already.
“Unless you’re tapping out,” he finishes.
It’s one minute.
One minute to see if there’s something here I missed. Sort the truth from the lies, the ones he told me and the ones I told myself.
One minute to silence both our judgments and feel the connection that’s always been real between us.
The stakes have never been higher, and it’s not only because Adam could come back at any time.
“I’m not tapping out.”
I said I’d play. But Sawyer has to start.
The first smack lands on my right ass cheek.
It’s sharp. I yelp, more in shock than in pain.
I brace myself for another, focusing on the stinging spot on my skin that seems to spread with each moment.
But the second smack comes on the other side.