AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Obviously, there is a little more to it than that. My life may be in shambles. A re
al shit-show. But I haven’t lost all common sense.
It was nothing like I thought it would be. Giving in, I mean. Giving over to it and to him. Max Hastings made it easy.
The second I was through the door, he came at me. It was written on his face—he wasn’t leaving it for me to decide. There was no question in his mind what was going to happen next.
I recall being a little disappointed. There was a part of me that had wanted to take the lead, just to spite him. The part of me that despises Max Hastings. Him with his smug grin, his happy, perfect little family, and his need to have the upper hand. I hate the way he’s so sure of himself—the way he thinks he knows everything.
I wanted to show him. He doesn’t know me at all.
And so I tried. I really tried. Then something interesting happened. Something unexpected. Almost as though he were reading me, as though he knew my innermost thoughts, something in him flipped. Like a switch. Something scary, something he seems to be able to turn on and off. Something animalistic. Something predatory.
Something I’ve never seen before.
Except maybe in myself.
I was mesmerized. How could I not be? It was fucking creepy, the way he stared at me. Like I was the first meal he’d eaten after a weeklong fast. Like he was going to chew me up and spit me out, only to do it all again.
Pretty much from the second I stepped inside that room, all I could think about was that I needed to get out. Bolt. Tell him I’d changed my mind. Do whatever it took to put myself on the opposite side of that door.
Yet, I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
I can’t even begin to explain it, not even for a million bucks. I couldn’t say why I didn’t turn and run. Even if someone held a gun to my head, I couldn’t come up with a reason for staying. Not even for a cure to my father’s disease. And yet, something deep inside, something all knowing, tells me I really should have gotten the fuck out of there.
Mind control, that’s what it was. Hypnosis maybe. Whatever it was—my feet were cemented to the floor. It was like being in the middle of a really good story. It was like I needed to—no, like I had to—see what was going to happen next.
And, then, I did see. I saw the expression in his eyes, hungry and desperate, but controlled, as he stripped me out of my clothes. Carefully, and methodically, almost like he wanted to put me on display.
For whom, I don’t know. He was different in that room, in a fucked up sort of way. He was gentle, so gentle. Delicate. Like I might break if not handled with care. Like I was something to be afraid of. It was uncomfortable—it was disturbing, really. The slowness, the diligence of it all. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t what I’m used to.
I imagined waltzing into that room, all filled with heat and passion. I imagined there’d be fumbling, and uncertainty— thanks to the careless desire that led us to the Belmond in the first place.
But no. The moment my bra came off, he slowed things way, way down. I hadn’t even known such a thing to be possible. I figured he’d be in and then out. He is a physician, after all. They’re known for that.
I suppose that’s what I found most odd about it all. I’d expected it to be like the rest of my life. Actually, I wanted to tell him to get on with it. I didn’t have much time, and I was pretty sure he didn’t either. I started to mention my appointment with the shrink, if nothing else as a bit of a warning—just so he knew what he was messing with.
Then, like any good lover, like any good story, he surprised me.
“Don’t speak,” he said, as he peeled my panties down my thighs. “Please.”
He took me by the hand and led me to the bed. I was restless, not like myself at all. I realized then that what I’d really come for was a fight and he was in essence silencing me. Is there anything worse than that?
I felt like screaming: this is not who I am. It wasn’t just the practicality of it all, or how he had me pinned in all the ways that count, but on account of the fact that he’d reserved a suite. As though this was something other than what it was. Later, far, far later, when I brought it up, he said, “It’s all they had.”
I don’t know whether he was lying. Maybe I don’t even care.
Anyway, then, right then, in that moment, there hadn’t been time for questions. Not only because he’d demanded silence but because he’d shoved me violently back onto the bed, before deftly and one-handedly spreading my knees apart. When he thought he had me where he wanted me, he stepped back and observed me, as though he were committing to memory what he saw.
I assume he was satisfied, because he undressed while I lay there, speechless. I started to stand, to tell him never mind, that I’d made a mistake in coming. Actually, I did say the latter part.
He shook his head. “You haven’t come yet.”
He pushed me back on the bed. Next thing I knew he was on top of me, gripping my face, his mouth on mine, kissing me so hard it hurt. So hard I couldn’t breathe. For a second I thought I might ought to be scared. I thought…who even knows you’re here?
But I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t anything. I wasn’t Laurel Dunaway, with the dying father or the husband who is sometimes cruel and who needs her too much. I wasn’t the thirty-six-year-old who has little interest in starting a family and a waning desire to build a business.
