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And with those words he turned enough into more. He pulled me down as he lifted himself up, burying his cock deep in me, sending my hormones flying into the “feel good” stratosphere. Sending another part of me soaring there as well – the part of me that was more emotion than sensation. The part of me that was more soul and essence than pleasure receptors.

It was good that, even with me on top, Reeve controlled our rhythm because I was too overwhelmed, too in the clouds to be in charge of anything but the attempt to remain present. It was tempting to let go of that as well. To let myself drift and be taken care of. Let the pleasure buoy me until it crashed over me and swept me under.

But I stayed with him, because that’s where he wanted me to be – with him. It was like he expected me to release and enjoy, but first I had to take the ride. With him.

Admittedly, I almost missed it. He gripped my hips and lifted me up and down, stroking his cock with my cunt, almost as though I didn’t even need to be there. As though I were a sex toy, a warm body. So why did it even matter if I used him the same way?

Except, that was only one element of our fucking. There were also the words that had preluded. And, when he stood and pushed me back against the desk, bracing me between his body and the edge, when he lifted my thighs so that he could pound into me harder, deeper – that’s when I was sure that the other element actually existed and wasn’t in my head. The element that kept me anchored to him.

It was his eyes. More specifically, the way he never broke contact. He looked at me the entire time he moved inside my body. Looked at me with an intensity that didn’t falter. Looked at me as though I were of value. A man had never looked at me like that while he was fucking me the way I liked to be fucked. I liked it rough and dirty. I liked to be debased and humiliated and commanded. Liked to be manhandled like a doll with no apology for how the sharp wood edge of the desk dug into my back or how the unbridled thrusts of his cock felt like they were ripping me apart.

How could someone do those things to me and still gaze at me with appreciation? With something akin to affection?

How could I let someone do those things to me and feel better about myself than I ever had? Feel more for him than I had for anyone I could remember?

Most of the time before this night and after, Reeve didn’t show that to me. Usually he took me from behind so we never had to look at each other at all. Often, he’d make me come. Hard. Again and again. And sometimes it would be base and primal and only about him. He was always rough. Always raw. He fucked me however he wanted – fucked my tits, my mouth, my cunt. He’d tell me when he wanted my ass in the future, he’d take that too.

And then sometimes, rarely, in the middle of the night, he’d be sweet. Pulling me into his lap, kissing me, caressing me. Letting me fly but anchoring me with his eyes. Speaking words he’d never dare say in the light of day. Words that I’d never dare say in return.

It was these times that I felt the most connected to him. It was these times that he scared me most.

CHAPTER 17

After Amber and I had left Liam, we’d spent a couple of years in Mexico at a luxury resort. We had gotten a permanent room by banging the manager, and, on occasion, his son. The rest of the time we’d bang the men who stayed there. Retired men with loose pockets who were ready to sleep with anyone for the night. Finding a blond young thing was the highlight of their trip.

We were no longer a package deal, at that point. Sometimes we would share men. More often, we wouldn’t. It had been riskier than staying with one man the whole time. Being a mistress. There were times during low season when we didn’t get as much attention as we would have liked. The all-inclusive meal plan at the hotel kept us eating, but we hadn’t always had money for other things. Things like waxes and pedicures and birth control. Once every couple of months we’d had to splurge on antibiotics from the local clinic to clear up whatever STD we’d managed to contract. Twice, I’d sat with Amber until they took her back to terminate a pregnancy, waited until she came back out so I could walk her to our room. Then we’d take a couple of nights off, sit on the beach, drink. And not talk about what it was that we did.

But as risky as it had been to our health, I’d thought it was safer. Emotionally safer. No one could get too close. No one could know me enough to really know anything about me at all. Or so I had told myself.

I’d been twenty-one when Amber first rescued me from a bad situation.

It had happened the way many hook-ups had back then – at the bar. Amber and I would go to the lobby for the nightly shows and then sit at the counter and wait for someone to approach us. Someone always did. The men were usually older than my father, but one night a preppy college boy named Aaron had found me instead. He told me he was spending the summer selling risky stocks for his daddy to the rich old guys at the resort, and I’d thought, We’re so alike. Both preying on the deep-pocketed wrinkly Republican men in different ways.

I had liked feeling a kinship with someone. And Aaron seemed to like me as well. He bought me pretty things from the gift shop. Took me out on his father’s yacht. Took me to bed. He was cocky and conceited, an asshole really. But I liked him, liked the kinky things he did. Sometimes he’d tie me up or put clamps on my nipples. Sometimes he’d put a collar on my neck. Sometimes he had hit me, and it was really sensual when he did. Sometimes he had hit me, and it only hurt.

Other times he had invited other men to take me to bed. Men who were possibly interested in going into business with him but needed an incentive. Aaron made me the incentive. When I didn’t want to, when the men were too eager, too arrogant, I’d tell him no. And he’d tell me to do it anyway. More than once I came back to him bruised and bleeding, and he’d tell me he loved me, tell me what a good girl I was, tell me how I’d earned him another hundred thousand. Then he’d throw me a washcloth and tell me to clean myself up.

When I was staying with Aaron, Amber and I would meet by the pool each day, and I’d smile and explain away the marks on my body. At any point I could have told her what was going on, but what would I tell her? It wasn’t like my relationship with Aaron was abusive. At least, not most of the time. I had loved a lot of the things he did to me personally. I had craved them. The rest, I figured, was what I should expect to live with if this was the person I truly was.

As summer had come to an end, Aaron became more desperate to make as much money as he could. His father had given him some goal that should have been impossible, but with me as his secret weapon, he was closer than he’d imagined he could be. He became obsessed with reaching it. Which meant he was more forceful with his demands for me. He pushed me to entertain more clients. He pushed me to let them do more and more depraved things to me.

And when I wasn’t enough to win their accounts, he took it out on me. One night, his abuse pushed me to my limits. He used me in ways that a woman should never be used. I screamed, but I wasn’t sure I ever said no.

I spent the next day in Aaron’s room, curled in a ball on top of sheets that were bloody and soiled. When he left to do some work, I didn’t leave. If it had occurred to me to get help, I was in too much pain to do so. Then when he returned that evening, he was apologetic. But cruelly so. In the way that I would have loved if I weren’t so wounded.

I was barely conscious when Amber appeared. I wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten there, but I heard her yelling and crying. “Get off of her,” she’d shouted, over and over.

Her voice brought me to lucidity and for the first time in hours I was aware of what was happening to me. Aware that I was being hit and beaten and tortured while being fucked.

Amber wasn’t a threat to him. He had no reason to stop. “She likes it,” he had said. “Didn’t you know that about your friend? She loves to be hurt. And she’s better than a whore because she takes it for free.”

She had pulled at him. Clawed at his shoulder and I’d remembered thinking I should help her. Or I should explain that Aaron was right. This was what I liked. And even when it wasn’t, it was what I accepted.

But then his weight became heavy on top of me, and his movements still. I looked up over his shoulder and saw her standing with a nearly full bottle of tequila, blood dripping from the glass. Blood dripping onto me. Blood that wasn’t mine but his.

She’d rolled his rigid body off of mine, not bothering to check his pulse or if he was breathing before she’d wrapped me in a blanket and took me to our room.

I went in and out of sleep for the next two days, but each time I had woken up she had been there, taking care of me. She fed me, brought me painkillers she’d swiped from someone or other. She cleaned me up, wiped away the blood and semen from my skin with a warm washcloth that she never let get cold.