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Chapter 1
Disobedient little upstart. Sexy fucking brat.
Alex stared at himself in the mirror and tried to get his impulses under control. He couldn’t hurt her. No matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much she deserved it.
These weren’t the jungles of Borneo, or the sands of Afghanistan. This was New York City. When someone crossed him here, the rules of engagement were more civilized, if not just as cruel.
The longer he looked at himself, the less he liked what he saw. His eyes had been brown once. Now they were black and hollow, two big dark holes to oblivion.
He could taste his prey. The scent of her perfume wasn’t enough to mask her sweat and pheromones. They were drawn into him with every breath, spreading across his tongue as intimate precursors of what had always been an inevitable joining. He could taste many things, but two stood out among them all: fear — and desire.
She was scared. She had reason to be.
She was too young for him. Twenty-four years old to his forty-two. He was old enough to be her father, and he was twice her size. She was curvy and soft. He was big and hard. During the day, his muscular body was usually hidden by the clean lines of a suit which made him look safe and civilized. That suit had been discarded. His shirt hung open, revealing his thick torso, muscled, tattooed, and hairy. His pants were still on, tented by the erection he’d been fighting for what felt like hours.
Through a sliver in the almost closed door, he could see her big blue eyes reflected in the mirror, watching him warily. The bonds he’d wrapped around her ankles and wrists were still in place. They were for her benefit, not his. She wouldn’t listen to him. She kept trying to call for help, as if there were a force for law in the world which could stop the consequences she’d set in motion from catching up with her.
This didn't have to go any further. She was under control, he told himself. There was no need to escalate things. The gag in her mouth was keeping her quiet, stopping her from making more trouble with her sassy mouth.
“You don’t have to hurt her,” he murmured to himself under his breath, his cock throbbing at the idea of doing just that.
She deserved to be punished. She had been taunting him from the very first day they met, giving him every reason to make her scream, relying on the veneer of professionalism the office provided to get away with little more than a raised brow or a curt warning.
But she didn’t have the office to protect her anymore. She had fallen through the cracks of good society and landed on his bed. He took one last look at the monster in the mirror, and turned toward his captive…
Months earlier…
“Just, like, three more steps. Maybe six. Maybe nine. Definitely not ten. You’re almost there.”
This was what her therapist called positive self talk. It was her homework before next session.
Sophie willed herself half a step forward. She was really pissing off a lot of people who were trying to get to work on time, but they flowed around her like fish shoaling around a rock in the ocean.
She would have loved to have been at home watching a nature documentary with a very large glass of wine filled right to the meniscus. But it was 8:59 on a Monday morning, and that sort of behavior was termed “problematic” according to her therapist who kept hinting she was on the verge of addiction. Verge was the operative term though. It was fine to want to be half a bottle of chardonnay deep. It just wasn’t okay to actually be half a bottle of chardonnay deep. Feelings weren’t actions. Thoughts weren’t feelings. And other crap that did nothing to help her in this precise moment.
All she was trying to do was walk into a building. She did that all the time. But most buildings didn't have this big sense of destiny around them, like a forcefield.
But this was her first day of work. Once she stepped inside, her day of work would have started. She was going to have to impress people and not fuck things up. That was a lot of pressure.
Of course, logically, she knew it was stupid to be nervous to go into work. She’d been to four interviews, plus a panel interview. If she was going to freak out and panic, it should have been earlier. But earlier she was just applying for the job. Not getting it. Not having to actually do it.
“Get yourself together, Sophie," she lectured herself between smile-gritted teeth.
Not going to work had consequences, like ruining everything she had worked for her entire life. She had spent an entire week celebrating when she got the job, only to freak the fuck out right now. This was very not good.
