“You’re going home. I’m going to the office.”
“I’m not letting you go to the office alone, Cupcake.” The switch from man-after-sex to man-out-for-blood is chilling. Gone are the bedroom eyes and the loopy self-satisfied smile. His gray eyes are chilling, his jaw set, his body taut.
“You think I’m going to let you out there at night, alone?”
“You don’t get to dictate my life. Here, you can take Truman.” I hand him the dog. “I have to catch up on work and do press releases.”
“Work from my study.”
“No, I—”
“I’m not arguing with you, Cupcake.”
“I’m not arguing with you either. To the Prism offices, please.”
When the limo pulls up in front of the Prism PR offices, McCarthy climbs out of the car first.
“I can manage,” I tell him as he takes my wrist, tugging me out of the limo.
He slams the car door. “I told you,” he says, heading to get the office door for me, “I’m not leaving you alone.”
Friends, when I said I was going to the office, I had no intention of actually working. I was probably going to rub one out in the wellness room then drink hard pear ciders left in the fridge and try to decide whether to spend money on a hotel or accept my lot in life and ask Zephyr to come pick me up and take me back to Mom’s.
Now McCarthy is standing silently in the dim office, two steps behind me to the left, while I fumble around on my laptop and pretend to work.
“What do you have to finish?” he finally asks as I painstakingly type out a social media post caption.
“I have to make sure everyone knows you made a donation. McCarthy does have a heart. Yay!”
I post the photos of McCarthy and Sable at the charity gala on social media then schedule additional posts for the next day too.
I fight the urge to sit and scroll mindlessly through the glitzy posts by the people I went to college with, including all my sorority sisters who dated good-looking, if dumb, fraternity brothers from rich families with nice parents and now have beautiful kitchens and happy children.
“Are you finished?”
“Um, just, you know, revising the ten-step plan.”
He slams the laptop lid closed and spins me around in my chair, jerking me to a stop with his arms on the armrests.
“You’re not as good a liar as you think you are, Cupcake.”
“Stop doing this to me,” I hiss at him, overwhelmed. “I know you don’t like me. Just call Sable and have sex with her, and leave me out of it.”
“I don’t want her. I don’t want to fuck her. You know why? Because she’s not you.”
“Stop it!” I clap my hands over my ears. “I know you’re just telling me what you think I want to hear just to manipulate me.”
He grabs my head, his hands over mine, and kisses me furiously.
“I’m not trying to manipulate you. You don’t need to be manipulated to give in to me, because I know all I have to do is tell you that I want to fuck you on your boss’s desk, and you’ll say yes.” He laces his fingers with mine.
His teeth scrape my chin, his lips against my tongue in my mouth then up to kiss my nose, my forehead, my cheek under my eye.
“Don’t tell me you don’t want to sit in that office when they’re chewing you out, knowing I made you come on that very desk.”
He pulls down the stretchy collar of the cheap dress and goes for my tits. His mouth is hot and wet as he sucks sloppily on my nipples.
“Sh-sh-shit.” I gasp, scrambling back in the chair, my tits hanging out.
