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Fuck, I’d wanted to help her, but maybe I’d acted like an asshole. In hindsight, I was pretty sure I’d acted like an asshole. I wished I could backtrack, and not snarl at her.You enjoy being hurt.Her masochism wasn’t a weakness or a bad habit that I should be shaming her for, especially in this situation.
As I watched, she disappeared around the corner that led to her office, into her scientific world I didn’t understand. I got out my phone and started composing a text.
Ella, I’m sorry that I…
But I stopped and deleted it. That wasn’t what I was here for, as she’d said. Apparently, I was strictly for lunch and sex dungeon scenes, not that I remembered agreeing to that. Maybe that was all I deserved, because I was an asshole, and said things likeYou enjoy being hurtwhen she was genuinely being hurt.
Ugh. Horrible. For the first time, I felt like I’d hurt her in a non-consensual way.
Chapter Nineteen: Ella
Iwent homeafter work and ate ice cream for dinner, then showered and crawled into bed in a soft cotton nightgown, trying to escape my thoughts. I didn’t understand why Devin had freaked out about Leo, why he made me feel guilty that I didn’t fight back. That hurt my feelings and made me feel small.
I knew through my research that everything was vast and temporary, and when you really thought about it, nothing existed at all. That would make anyone feel small. Somewhere in the universe, every moment, worlds were ending. Earth would end someday, turn into a frozen rock drifting through space, no rotation, no sun, no seasons, no days, no hours, no memories of people we knew. Why did we mark time, when it all came to nothing? Why did we care?
Later. Sooner. Now. Never.
Meaningless.
Someone was knocking at my door.
I climbed out of bed, grabbing my glasses on the way out of the room. I squinted through the peephole to see Devin standing there, his broad, angular face in profile. Of course it was him. No one else would have gotten past the doorman, but what to do now? I hadn’t expected him to come. I had no words prepared, and very little energy. I was wearing a nightgown with kittens on it.
“Open the door,” he said, so I did.
“I don’t want to talk about Leo.” I turned away from him as soon as he entered, cowed by his outsize presence in my living room. “I don’t want you to try to help me.”
“You already told me not to help you. That’s ‘not what I’m for.’”
As he said it, his fingers wove into my hair. I closed my eyes and lifted my face for his kiss. It landed, as hard and forceful as I expected, and I leaned against him as his body aligned to mine.
“No one should hurt you,” he said, pulling away and making me meet his gaze.
“No one but you?”
“It’s not the same thing.” His fingers tightened, moving up my arms. “I want to protect you. Not because I’m falling in love with you, because I’m not. It’s because of what happened to my mom. I couldn’t defend her, but I can defend you.”
I cringed inside, cringed away from his goodness and strength, the depth of personality hidden beneath his Domly alpha attitude. No falling in love. That was our agreement.
“Why did you come here?” I said, my voice on edge.
“To explain why I can’t let it drop, why I lost my shit when you confided in me.”
“But I need you to let it drop.” I squirmed in his grasp. “It’s my life. My career. If you get in my business, you’re just like him. I’m trying to be a big girl.”
“Are you?” He got that twitching curve to his lips, the lazy smile that always unnerved me. We were in a fight, weren’t we? I was angry with him, angry that he was good, and trying to help me yet again. Kindness and sadism didn’t belong together. “How big are you?” he asked, promising bedlam. “As big as me?”
“No.” I forced the word out through a rising wave of lust.Don’t do this, I wanted to beg him.Don’t make me feel so many feelings for you.But he was only being himself. I was the weak one, the one who was becoming obsessed, who was starting to wonder how I could live without him if he disappeared from my life.
“You should go,” I said, even though I didn’t want him to go. My lips wanted more of his rough kisses. My pussy throbbed from the way he held me, and the way he crowded my personal space. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“So do I.” One of his hands moved down to cup my ass, drawing me forward against his erection, hard and stiff beneath the denim of his jeans. “I think I might want to hurt you a little first.”
“Yes, because Ilike to be hurt,” I said, repeating his scornful words from earlier, the words that had made me feel bad. Yes, I was angry with him. No, I didn’t love him. I didn’t even like him. I didn’t. I really didn’t.
Ididn’t.
He ignored my resistance and kissed me again, roughly, nipping my lower lip. My hands, which had been trapped against his chest, moved up to circle his neck. I clung to him in capitulation as he ravaged my mouth, and a moment later, I was lifted in his arms, big hands under my ass, drawing me up against him.How big are you? As big as me?
