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He was still sitting behind the desk. He leaned back in Trent’s chair, folding his hands smugly over his taut, flat stomach.
“I suppose you think you’re pretty smart,” I said.
He grinned at me, and then the chair creaked as he stood up. He came around the desk and pressed me to the doorjamb.
“Feel better?” he asked.
I could feel his heat through our clothes everywhere he pressed into me. I could smell that he’d showered this morning. But I hadn’t seen him since the night he spanked me, and I wasn’t about to give in so easily. “I’m still broke,” I pointed out.
“Not for long.”
“I have no job,” I said.
“You’ll think of something.”
I shrugged, the motion creating friction between us. “I suppose there’s some… satisfaction in knowing that Trent is going to jail,” I admitted.
Max smiled. It was a wolfish smile, almost cocky, like I’d never seen from him before, and it was unbearably hot. This was not the Max I knew. This Max was bolder, cockier, ready to take what he wanted.
“You’re welcome,” he said. Then he kissed me, long and deep, his touch possessive and unmistakable.
He broke off slowly, and his fingers brushed my jaw. “No one messes with you,” he said. “Ever.”
I stared at him, my knees melting quietly to jelly.
“I’ll be home around six,” he said. “I’m going to cook dinner. There will be enough food for two. Join me if you want.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My ass still stings.”
His eyes went dark and intense. “You can yell at me about that,” he said. “Yell at me about whatever you want. It’s up to you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “You’ll find out what I decide at six.”
“Right,” he said. “See yo
u later, Gwen.”
Chapter 18
Max
Dr. Weldman listened in his usual silence, but when I finished he actually sounded impressed. “Max,” he said, “it may be unorthodox, but you’re making progress.”
I stared at the wall, the same as I usually did. “Maybe,” I admitted. “I feel different.”
“Interesting. How so?”
It took a minute for me to put my finger on it, but finally I did. “The fear,” I said. “It doesn’t seem so bad.”
He scratched on his notepad. I always wondered what he wrote on that thing. “That’s encouraging. I notice you didn’t say that the fear had gone away.”
“The fear will never go away.” I already knew that. I’d lived with it since the second I’d seen the wall of fire blast over the windshield of our SUV outside Kandahar. “You can’t kill fear. At least, I can’t. But I’m tired of it. I’ve let it run me for four years. I’m finally done.”
Dr. Weldman made another note. “So you helped your girlfriend with her job situation.”
I flinched. I’d felt so fucking good, doing that for Gwen—making her problem go away. I’d nearly devoured her on the spot, except that it would be weird and sort of creepy to fuck her in her ex-boss’s office. But it didn’t leave us any further ahead than we’d been before. She was still her. I was still me. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I replied. Not that I knew of, anyway.
“Pardon me. The woman you’ve been seeing.”
