Her eyes snap to mine, wide, glassy. “That’s not?—”
“Not fair?” My mouth tilts. “Baby girl, nothing about me is fair.”
She bites the inside of her cheek so hard I see the muscle flex, desperate to hold back whatever words are clawing to get out.The silence stretches, and I savour it, leaning back just enough that the space between us becomes its own leash.
My fingers drum against the table, slow, steady. Each tap makes her flinch. Tap. Her lashes flutter. Tap. She grips the hem of her dress. Tap. Her knees shift a fraction wider before snapping shut again.
“Funny,” I say softly, almost conversational, “how you’re still sitting here. If you hated this—if you hated me—you’d be gone. You’d have run the second I said one.”
Her throat bobs. She doesn’t run.
“You want to know what I see?” I let my voice drop, low and rough enough to drag shivers across her skin. “I see a good girl fighting like hell not to break. I see those thighs pressed tight, pretending you can cage what’s mine. And I see how much you want me to snap and take the choice away from you.”
She gasps, jerks as if I slapped her with the truth.
“Say it,” I taunt, leaning in an inch, my smirk a blade against her pride. “Admit it. Tell me you’re already wet for me while you sit at my table pretending you’re still in control.”
Her hand trembles on the table, curling into a fist. Her mouth opens, closes.
I lower my voice to a near growl, the words just for her.
“Two and three-quarters.”
“Two and three-quarters,” I breathe again, just to feel her shudder.
Her chest heaves, a shallow, panicked rhythm that tells me she knows what’s coming. She’s stalling, biting her lip so hard it’s going to bruise, fingers clawing at the table like she can anchor herself against the inevitable.
But inevitability is mine.
I lean in, slow enough that she has every chance to beg, to plead, to lie through her teeth. She doesn’t. She just quivers,caught in that space where her body betrays her long before her mouth dares.
I let the silence stretch until it’s suffocating. Until her knuckles go white and her lashes tremble against her cheeks.
Then I say it.
Low. Final. A verdict.
“Three.”
Her whole body jerks as if the word was a hand around her throat. She inhales sharply, broken, like she’s just been shoved off a ledge.
“Up,” I order.
She doesn’t move. Not at first. Not until I push my chair back, the scrape of it on the floor louder than her pulse. I stand, looming over her, forcing her chin up until she meets my eyes.
“I said up.”
She rises on shaky legs, her thighs brushing the edge of the table, her dress wrinkling where she’s been clutching it. I watch the way her chest trembles with every breath, the way shame and heat wrestle across her face.
“Turn.”
Her hesitation lasts a single beat before she obeys. My hand closes around her hip, dragging her back into me until she feels the full weight of what she’s done to me.
“Good girl,” I murmur against her ear, my voice so dark it makes her knees buckle. “You see how easy that was? How much you like being told what to do?”
She shakes her head, breathless denial tumbling out. “I—I don’t.”
I laugh low, wicked. My palm slides down her stomach, pressing just hard enough that she gasps.
