“No, what’s funny is that he thinks he can talk to you like you’re a high-priced escort.” He looked up at her thunderously. “Is that what happened? Did he touch you?”
“No! It wasn’t like that.” She grabbed for her jeans, hitching them up her hips. “Nick, it’s not just him. It’s this whole town. Everywhere I go, it feels like people are looking at me. Judging me. Judging us. At the gala—” She hesitated, the sharpness of his words—I could kill him—making her change direction. “People see a man like you with a woman like me and they—”
“What?” His voice was low, dangerous. He was still on his knees but his eyes—oh, god, hiseyes. She goaded him into being cruel, taunted him into punishing her, and now she was nolonger certain if he was playing or if it would even be her blood on the line. Not with eyes like that.
“They don’t think you’re letting me stay here for free,” she finished warily.
The dark gleam in his eyes winked out. He got up, dusting off his pants as she tugged her clothes back into place. Now that he was no longer touching her, she was more keenly aware of how well he weaponized his size and stature, and how easily he wielded both against her.
It bothered her how much she sometimes liked it when she did.
She did not want to be just another possession. Even if it was a prized one, put in a place of honor. Possessions could be thrown out like old clocks. Just because she liked surrendering control during sex, that didn’t mean she wanted to be a submissive wife.
“Do you understand?” she pressed, when he didn’t speak.
“Perfectly.” He licked his fingers in a way that made her falter as he tilted his head towards the hall. “My room. Now.”
“Tell me you’re not going to do anything stupid to Michael.”
His eyes narrowed. When he lunged, she didn’t even have time to dodge. He swung all five feet, ten inches of her up in his arms before she even had time to react or scream. That came in a belated burst as he carried her down the hall and up the stairs like a brute, kicking the door to the master bedroom open in blind haste, before tossing her down on the mattress roughly enough that she felt the memory foam kick up against her back.
He crossed his arms and tugged his shirt over his head, balling it off to the side. Catching her glance, he undid the button of his fly and dragged down the zipper.
“Take your clothes off. All of them. I don’t want to hear his name again.”
Jay stared at him as he waited, then glanced at the door. They had played out this game before—if she ran, he would chase her; if she fought him, he would hold her down. The line of consent ran so thinly between them that sometimes, Jay couldn’t see where it was at all.
Still on the bed, she squirmed out of her pants and underwear, heat suffusing her face when he didn’t look away. “I didn’t even sleep with him,” she said, gripping the hem of her star-printed tank top before pulling that off, too.
“I know.”
She unhooked her bra, folding her arms. A cold shiver snaked down her naked back as he walked closer. Her heart rate kicked up another notch when he reached beneath the bed and took out the handcuffs. When he pulled her hands away from her chest and nudged her backwards with the heel of his hand against her ribs, she felt like her stomach had gone into a heated freefall.
She stared at the ceiling as he shackled her to the wooden posts with their detailed bevels and scrolls. This part was always gentle, even if what came after it wasn’t. After fastening her left hand, he pressed a kiss to the back of it, as he had done so many other times before while restraining her.
“Why do you do that?” she asked suddenly.
“This?” He leaned over to kiss the back of her hand again, this time letting his teeth catch on her skin before pulling away. “Because I think you’re sweet.”
Sweet. The word felt like a thorn in her throat. People had called her that in high school, but it felt like a status that could be revoked at any time. Every time Michael had asked—pleaded,really—for her to sleep with him, she had said no, terrified that if word got out, she wouldn’t be the sweet girl. She’d be the girl who didthosethings. The sort of girl whose name got carved into bathroom stalls and blew boys beneath the bleachers.
You’re just like your mother, part of her brain had always whispered. When she let her stepbrother fuck her while wearing his dead mother’s diamonds, that voice had been deafening. It had screamed,Good girls don’t take off their clothes for men.
“I’m not sweet,” said Jay.
“You are.” She jumped when Nicholas swung over her hips. The coarse hair on his chest and thighs prickled against her sensitive skin as he leaned down, using his weight to push her into the bed. He bent to one of her nipples, biting gently. “You’re the sweetest girl I know.”
“No,” said Jay.
He glanced at her before turning to her other breast. “I bet he thinks so, too. Probably while jerking off to the pure little angel he secretly hopes you still are.”
Jay clenched her hands, forcing herself to take a deep breath. To not arch into that kiss that stung like a bruise. “Why are you so jealous?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Nicholas swirled his tongue over the skin he’d bitten, now tight with gooseflesh. Jay heard the tear of a condom wrapper, followed by a sound of low, masculine pleasure as he entered her on an agonizingly slow thrust. “He had you when I didn’t.” His hand slid down to grip her hip, biting into the girdle of bone. “You were his.”
“Ididn’tsleep with him.”
Her voice came out harsher than she’d intended, and his eyes lifted. His expression scared her and she pulled nervously at her restraints. When he was naked, she could sense theuntrammeled power that hummed beneath his skin; the tension he carried in those powerful shoulders and those long, strong legs. Some men looked smaller without their clothes.
