“I’m not offended,” he said. “I usually spend events like this thinking about it too. Planning what I’ll do to her later on. Wondering what color panties she’s wearing.” He closed the distance between us, and now I really could feel his breath against my collarbone as he whispered, “Tonight, I’ll admit, I find I’m a bit distracted.”
I inhaled him, breathed in that familiar smell of cologne and musk and his mouth was so close that all I had to do was turn and lift my chin. Would he kiss me? Did I want him to?
I stepped back, jolted aware by the question. Even asking it made me feel weak, let alone if I tried to answer.
My knees felt soft, like I couldn’t remember how to put weight on them, and I wobbled, but I didn’t fall. “I’m not sure what you want me to say to you right now.”
Donovan studied me carefully. “I’m not entirely sure either,” he admitted.
“Are you ready to go?” Sun asked. I hadn’t even noticed her approach. She was more alluring up close. Her lips were full, her posture sure. She looked familiar, but it might have been because she had the kind of confidence that made her appear important.
I stared at Donovan, certain desperation was apparent in my expression. He couldn’t leave now.
He looked right at me when he answered her. “I am.”
Sun linked her arm through his, and he escorted her out. Without an introduction. Without even a goodbye.
Chapter 12
I lingered a few minutes after Donovan and his date had gone before leaving the party myself, but apparently not long enough. They were still at the curb waiting for his car when I walked outside into the cool September night.
I hung back so I could watch them without being noticed. She’d dropped his arm, and the two of them didn’t even touch. It was as if they barely knew each other, let alone liked each other. Honestly, Elizabeth and Weston seemed friendlier than Donovan and Sun did. Maybe fake dates were a thing around here.
I chuckled to myself at the joke.
Then I stopped laughing.
Had he hired her?
He’d only been at the party for, what? Twenty minutes? Why did he even show up? To make sure I was there? To make sure I saw he had someone when I had no one?
I was reaching, making everything about me. It was pathetic and I knew it. Donovan had come to show support for his business partner’s engagement extravaganza. If Donovan wasn’t friendly with Sun, it was because he didn’t have to be nice to her to fuck her. And he would fuck her. I was sure of it. Who wouldn’t fuck her?
Someone walked up to Sun and seemed to ask her something, then handed her a pen and paper. Asking for her autograph, it seemed.
That’s where I’d recognized her. She was a model. I was pretty sure she’d even done some ads with Reach clients. It was probably how Donovan knew her. Of course that was the type of woman he’d date, even casually. A gorgeous, sophisticated model. The kind of woman I could never compare to.
Not that I was trying.
“Need a cab, miss?” The doorman at The Sky Launch asked.
“Oh, yes. Sorry.” I still didn’t want to be seen, but I figured it was safe now that Donovan’s car had pulled up. As the doorman whistled for a taxi, I dallied by the club entrance, watching as Sun slid in the backseat of the Jaguar first, then as Donovan climbed in after. When the car eased into traffic, I stared after them as long as I could and saw Sun close the distance between her and Donovan, practically crawling into his lap.
I didn’t care, and I did all at the same time. He could do what he wanted. It made no difference to me. I didn’t care who he dated or liked or fucked. But in a different time, in a different place, I did care because back then, Donovan had stained all my thoughts, not just the ones I hid away at night.
And now he was pulling me back to that time and place, making my mind face the past, forcing memories and fantasies to merge together in a nonstop reel of filth.
And he was going to fuck her.
And I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt lonelier.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long for a taxi. I gave the cabbie my address. As an afterthought, I asked, “Could you take me to a liquor store on the way?”
While New York City was lined with liquor stores on the way from Columbus Circle to my apartment, finding one where a cab could wait outside was nearly impossible. So when we passed one a few blocks away, I paid the driver, and he said he’d drive around and come back for me.
I suspected that was the last I’d see of him, but fine. I’d just catch another.
Inside the store, I passed the vodka and gin. I wasn’t a big drinker, but if I were to indulge, it would usually be a martini or a vodka tonic. That wasn’t what I had a hankering for tonight.
It took a minute for me to find what I was looking for since I’d never purchased whiskey, but I found it in the back, high up. There was an entire shelf dedicated to scotch—single malts, blended varieties. Each had a price tag to suggest that someone considered it to be quite superior, but hell if I knew which was a good brand.
I ended up choosing a Macallan because it had a name I could pronounce. A pricier bottle because that was more likely what Donovan kept at the office.
Outside, I flagged a taxi and was surprised to find it was the same one I’d been in before.
“Scotch?” the driver asked when he saw the box in my hand. “Figures you were a lady with refined taste.”
More like I was a girl with dirty taste—a dirty taste in thoughts and a dirty taste in my mouth. Hopefully getting loaded on scotch would clean up at least one of the two.
In my apartment, I kicked off my heels and stripped out of my dress so I was just in my panties and then found a tumbler in the kitchen for my scotch.
“Just this once,” I said to the empty room, lifting my glass up as if giving a toast. “Just tonight.”
I drank the first glass quickly, letting the burn of the alcohol scald away any lingering reservations. By the time I poured the second glass, I was fully on board with my plan. What would it hurt? It was only one night, in the shelter of my own apartment.
Donovan’s apartment, I reminded myself, and the thought made my nipples bead, as though he were secretly watching me. As though—because his name was on the building’s deed—he might own my privacy as well. It changed the way I moved.
The way I reached up to put away the scotch bottle was for him. The way I bent over to pick up my dress was for him. For his eyes.
Then, when I undressed completely and stepped into the bath, that was for him too.
That was what I imagined, anyway. That was what I was allowing just once, just tonight—this game, this fantasy. While I often used Donovan to calm myself from nightmares and panic attacks brought on from memories of my sexual assault back in college, it had been years since I’d let myself think of him just because.
For a while it had become too common. Those obscene thoughts had been my friends in the months after my attack. But then it had gone too far. I’d let Donovan go too far. After that, I’d banished those sick fantasies to the darkness where they belonged.
But tonight, alone and a little bit drunk, I soaked in the hot water and I imagined that he was with me, watching as I pinched my nipples, pulling them until they hurt and made the space between my legs throb.