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 him.
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.