Page 55 of Safe Word

I gritted my teeth against it and palmed my dick through the fabric. Damn it, I was so hard I knew what I was going to have to do when the call was over.

‘Hm?’ I rasped, trying to sound distracted. Trying to sound decent.

‘Is there anything else you needed?’

So many things – all of them wrong.

I took in a slow breath, as if it could anchor me back to sanity. I knew she didn’t mean it like that.

And even if she did… Scarlett’s face flashed in my mind – her appointment tomorrow. Her role as the safe, clinical channel for my mess of a head.

I almost pitied her.

Because she would get the fallout from what this call had stirred.

‘No,’ I said finally, trying to make it sound like I’m in control of myself. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Good night.’

‘You too.’

The line went dead. But me?

Not even fucking close.

I glanced down at the ache pressing hard against my waistband, throbbing like a curse.

Yeah.

I was going to have to take the edge off.

And I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking about Paula. But her voice clung to me. Sleep-rough and soaked in sin.

And whilst I came apart, the images of Scarlett and Paula spliced together in a haze of contradiction. Boundaries blurred, projections collided. These women should never have existed in the same frame. But tonight, they did.

Scarlett had her hands around my neck, Paula had her mouth at my ear – both undoing me, ripping me to shreds.

I gripped myself harder, trying to outrun this fractured fantasy I’d never consented to. But desire never sought consent. It invaded. Hijacked.

And right now, it was rewriting every boundary I’d drawn.

It was Scarlett’s name I sucked in on a breath.

But it was Paula’s I bit down on when the release hit.

ELEVEN

An hour had passed, and my fingers were hovering over the keyboard as if they’d forgotten how to move. The cursor blinked back at me impatiently and accusingly.

Cain’s voice echoed softly in the back of my head.

Did he use that voice with other women? I wondered.

He hadn’t flirted. Not exactly. But the way he described Damien guiding Chloe… it wound me up. And now I could taste him in every sentence I wrote.

Chapter Twenty of Cain’s manuscript.

I’d been staring at the title. Not a word written. Not even a sentence started. The screen glowed back at me with a blank intensity that felt too personal, too accusatory. As though it knew what I was really thinking about. Not plot or pacing.