He was checking in, and I knew what he needed to hear. “I’m all right.”
Except, I realized, that there were tears streaming down my face. I’d cried a bit through our struggle, but these were fresh. As soon as I recognized them, they fell faster, quickly turning into rivers.
Wordlessly, Donovan sat up and quickly scooped me up in his arms, cradling me as the weeping turned into sobs. He let me cry like that, running his hand through my hair, smoothing the tangles he’d created, neither trying to shush me nor question me.
I couldn’t have explained if he’d asked, but I did know it had to do with Theo. Partly I was still confused. Confused about what was wrong with me that I wanted Donovan to reenact this terrible thing that happened to me. Why I liked it when he was rough and mean and animalistic. Why it turned me on so goddamn much.
And partly it was that I was actually remembering Theo. My body remembered him in ways my head didn’t. My fear remembered him. My panic remembered him. And as much as I didn’t want to think of him while I was with Donovan, I had. How could I not? I’d nurtured and groomed this fantasy over many years, and it had come to grow independent of that night. But the roots were still entangled with that other thing—the thing that Theo had planted with his assault.
But I didn’t know how to tell that to Donovan.
I had to tell him something, though. So when I calmed enough to get out words, I said, “I wanted that. I did. I’m not crying because I didn’t want it.”
“I know.” He kept strumming his hand through my hair.
I lifted my chin from his chest to look at him. “How do you know that?”
He let out a soft breath and met my eyes. “Because it’s what I’ve always recognized in you.”
“Because it’s in you too?” It was almost a whisper. Almost like I hoped it more than I believed it could be true.
He wiped several tears from my cheek before answering. “Yes. Because it’s in me too.”
We were quiet again, me cradled in his lap, my head tucked under his chin. I rubbed absently at his cheek, knowing I needed to start to think about pulling myself together. We didn’t have the kind of relationship where I could stay. We didn’t have the type of relationship where he would hold me.
We didn’t have a relationship at all.
But we were both naked and bare right now, even though we still had most of our clothes on. I was already raw. How much more vulnerable could I be?
“I don’t want to leave,” I said.
Not even a beat passed. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay.”
Chapter 28
Donovan led me upstairs and into a master bedroom with hardwood floors and an entire wall of windows. The king-size bed faced the view which overlooked the city and, in the near distance, Central Park. There was a fireplace on the far wall, and a gray headboard behind the bed, but the rest of the design was white, clean lines like the main room below.
The bedroom wasn’t our destination, however. I was led next to the en suite where he started a shower for me. While I undressed, he pulled towels from a linen closet and set them on the counter.
“Take as long as you like,” he said when I was naked and steam began filling the room.
I wanted to ask him to stay. There was a part of me that thought I needed him to help me recover from whatever it was that was going on inside of me. And from the searching way he looked at me, I had a feeling there was a part of him that wanted to stay too. Or wondered if he should.
But I didn’t ask. Because I didn’t know what was going on in his head at the moment, and there was a possibility that he needed time alone. He usually did after we had sex, after all.
And maybe I needed time alone too.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I needed. But I knew I didn’t want to go home yet, and I was grateful that he’d given me some time before he kicked me out, even if it was time spent without him.
I lost track of time in the shower. I lost track of thoughts. I didn’t worry about sorting out my brain or my emotions. I just turned the water as hot as I could stand it and stood under the rain showerhead and let it pour over me until I felt like I could move again. Then I used some of Donovan’s shampoo and body wash, cleaned up quickly, and got out smelling like him, which made me smile unexpectedly with every inhale.
After drying off, I realized that my dress and bra were missing. Donovan must have taken them out with him when he’d left. I squeezed the water from my hair as best I could and, with a towel wrapped around myself, left the bathroom to look for him and/or my dress.
I found him first, in the bedroom looking out the window, one arm braced against the glass, a tumbler of scotch in the other, and as soon as I saw him, the breath left my lungs. He’d changed out of his suit, and now he was wearing a pair of dark sweats that hung loosely around his hips, and nothing else. His feet and chest were bare, and I couldn’t stop staring at the toned ridges of his abs, at the dips and curves of his biceps, at the sharp V lines that disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants.
It was a relaxed version of Donovan. As relaxed as he ever got, I suspected. And there was something so sensual about it. Something so inviting and intimate and alluring.
It did strange things to my body to see him like that. Made my blood hot like I was still in the shower, made me shiver as if I’d been out in the cold.
He turned when I opened the door and studied me as I studied him. I was probably the one who should speak, should thank him for the shower and all that, but I’d lost thoughts of everything but the way my heart felt racing in my chest like it did.
So he was the one to talk first. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to get you dirty again.”
Goose bumps erupted along my arms. “I’ve never seen you with your shirt off.” I sounded like a lust-driven teenager. Felt like one too.
He didn’t seem to mind. “If I’d known it would elicit such a reaction, I would have stripped sooner,” he said with a smirk.
“Would you really?” I had the distinct feeling he liked the power it gave him to be dressed when I was not. Or maybe that was just me.
“Probably not.” As I’d thought. He pointed to a small tray on the ottoman in the sitting area. “I brought some cheese and grapes. What can I get you to drink? Wine? Gin?”
I gaped for two seconds. I’d expected to come out of the shower and be sent home. This hospitable side of Donovan surprised me. Elated me. How long did this mean I could stay?
With a glance at the tumbler already in his hand, I said, “Scotch, please.”
If he was startled by my choice, he didn’t let on. He simply smiled. “Scotch it is.”
He set his own drink down on his nightstand, but I stopped him before he disappeared out of the room. “Where did you put my dress?”
“I hung it up. You can get it later.”
So he really wasn’t kicking me out…yet.
When he left the room, I was the one that was smiling.
Spotting his discarded clothes draped on the back of a chair by the fireplace, I exchanged my towel for his dress shirt. I rolled the sleeves up and grabbed the tray of cheese and grapes and scanned the room for my seating choices. The chairs faced the fireplace. Eating on someone else’s sheets was tacky.
I ended up choosing the floor at the bottom of the bed. The area rug extended far enough that I wasn’t sitting on hard floor, and this was the best way to enjoy the view.
Donovan returned a few minutes later and seemed mildly surprised to find me where he did. He handed me my drink, his brow raised.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from him. Without him pressing, I rushed to explain my choice. “I wanted to look out the windows.”
Apparently that wasn’t the cause for the brow raise. “I offered food and drink. I didn’t offer clothes.” Though the way he looked at me now, his gaze searing as it traveled down my bare thighs, I didn’t think he really m
inded all that much.
“You’re dressed,” I challenged before bringing a grape to my mouth.
His eyes flicked from my own to my lips. “My house, my rules.”
“I guess you’re going to have to enforce them then. Because I’m kind of comfortable as I am.”
His jaw ticked, but he didn’t push further. Instead, he retrieved his drink and took a seat next to me, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
God, those legs. Those arms. That body. Just sitting next to him made me crazy with desire. Made my pussy pulse with want and—
“We didn’t use a condom.” It hadn’t occurred to me until just then. Quickly, gears shifted from lust to panic.
Donovan, however, remained calm. He picked another grape from a stem. “You’re on birth control,” he said, before throwing it in his mouth.
I was on the pill. Not that I’d ever told him that. But pregnancy wasn’t the only reason to use a condom. I bristled. “And you assumed...?”
He tilted his head toward me. “You had a safe word. You didn’t use it.”
I had to think about that for a minute because the thing was that protection hadn’t occurred to me while we were having sex either. Which was weird. I’d never had unprotected sex.
But if I had thought about it, would I have interrupted the game to tell him to suit up?
No. I wouldn’t. Part of the fantasy was about letting Donovan do whatever he wanted to me. Letting him take me however he wanted to take me. And if he wanted to take me bare, then he would take me bare. It wasn’t up to me.
“I didn’t want to use my safe word,” I said after I’d thought it through.
He gave me the devil’s smirk, the one that said he’d known I’d come to that conclusion all along. “Then what are you fussing about?”
“I’m not fussing. Just…” I trailed off. How was I supposed to ask about STDs? The deed was over and done. The only thing I could do now was get tested. I wrapped both my hands around my tumbler and took a sip, trying not to wonder about how many women Donovan might have slept with previously without a condom.
The thoughts slipped in anyway, making my stomach twist. It hurt to think about him having sex with anyone else, let alone to imagine him being so intimate with someone that he’d go bare.
Which meant I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
But how could I stop?
“I haven’t had unprotected sex in over ten years,” he volunteered.
My head snapped up to see if he was kidding. His expression said he wasn’t.
“Oh.” Since Amanda, probably. He’d used condoms with every woman he’d been with since his fiancée? I liked hearing this. I hated how much I liked it.
“And,” he went on, “I haven’t fucked anyone else since you came into town.”
While the first announcement had been a surprise, this one was a shock. “Why?” I asked, my voice thin.
“You know why.” He pierced me with his gaze. Unflinching. Unapologetic.
My pulse sped up, and I wasn’t sure if I was excited by his words or alarmed. I didn’t know why he hadn’t slept with anyone else. I could make guesses and all of them were dangerous answers to dwell on. They didn’t fit into a Just Sex relationship, and that made this conversation thin ice. The safest thing to do would be to ask him point blank to explain, but I wasn’t ready to skate out that far on this pond.
But I was ready to skirt the edges. “I haven’t slept with anyone else either,” I confessed.
“I know.” He grinned as he devoured a piece of Gouda.
“You’re so cocky.”
“I’m perceptive.” He picked up the tray of food, holding it out as if to ask if I wanted any more.
I declined it, too focused on the topic. “You can tell I haven’t been with anyone else? How?”
“Because I just can.” He reached over to the ottoman, grabbed a leg and dragged it until it was close enough to put the tray and his now empty glass on top.
I watched, trying not to drool as his back muscles stretched and flexed. “Like I said—cocky.” Confident was more accurate. Conceited, even. But he made it sexy. Made me want to shed my clothes at just the nod of his head.
Or, in this case, his clothes.
He returned to his spot next to me, our backs propped up by the bed. Our arms lightly grazed each other as I brought my tumbler up for another sip of scotch, and I had a feeling the warmth running through my veins had more to do with him than the liquor. Though I’d barely been nibbling at the tray of food, I felt suddenly awkward without it between us. There was no longer something to “do”. No longer an object to build a pretense around, and now there was nothing to distract me from the sexual tension that constantly surrounded us.
If he felt it too—and I was sure that he could—I knew he wouldn’t let it sit long before addressing it; before either deciding this night was over or deciding I needed to be beneath him. Donovan was a guy who took the reins, which was something I admired about him, and I waited anxiously for him to do so.
That motherfucker, though, was as patient as the day was long.
Sure enough, it seemed like forever before he leaned over to me and put his mouth so close to my ear that I could hear him inhale and feel his exhale rush along my skin.
“How are you doing?” he asked, trite words spoken in the sexiest rumble.
I bit my lip and pressed my thighs together, as if that could ease the need between my legs. “I’m okay.”
He circled his nose around the shell of my ear, not exactly touching it but almost, sending a shiver down my spine. “I’m absolutely going to fuck you again, and I’m going to need a better answer than okay first.”
“It’s kind of hard to think of more complicated words when you say things like that. When you’re this close.”
“Let me fix that.” He sat back against the bed, and I had to stop myself from pulling him back down toward me. The only reason I didn’t, in fact, was because he rested a hand at my lower back, anchoring me. “Earlier tonight, we had what some might call rough sex and afterward you cried in my arms. Now I need to know—how are you doing?”
Ah. He meant earlier.
My cheeks quickly heated. How unsexy was a woman who couldn’t take the kind of sex she’d insisted on having? “God, this is humiliating.”
“You’ve let me choke you with my cock, fucked me for a better grade, and sat without underwear in a formal restaurant, and this is what you find humiliating?”
That earned him a small smile. Lower, unbeknownst to him, my stomach flipped. I’d done all the things he’d mentioned, found them crazy hot. Would do them again in a heartbeat.
But what had happened with Theo…
I didn’t even know what was the most embarrassing about it. That the assault had happened in the first place? That I had fantasies centered on it? That I still thought about it so much now?
I set my tumbler down, drew my knees up and put my hands in my lap. “He probably doesn’t even remember me,” I said, staring at my French tips. “He was drunk, and I wasn’t important. Just a nobody girl from a college party that happened over ten years ago.”
“You mean Theodore Sheridan,” Donovan said smoothly.
The hair at the back of my neck stood up at the mention of his name. “Yes. Him.” Donovan had the luxury of talking about him without his blood turning cold. Without his throat going dry. “I know he doesn’t think about me when he walks down dark alleys. He doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat with me on his mind. He doesn’t worry that I’m out in the world; that he could bump into me at the bank or at the airport or at Starbucks. He isn’t afraid that I’ll look him up one day on a whim and try to find him.”
I’d almost searched for him so many times but always stopped myself in the end. It would only give me something new to resent or fear or worry about, and I suspected that wasn’t healthy.
Still, the restraint didn’t make me well. And maybe he was the real reason I hadn’t kept pushi
ng to get back into a good school after The MADAR Foundation pulled my scholarship. Because he didn’t just make me scared of him—he made me scared, period.
I leaned my chin on my knees and refused to look at Donovan, determined not to let him see my eyes filling again. “I’m sure Theodore Sheridan doesn’t live a single day afraid at all.”
Though his hand had remained steady at the small of my back, Donovan had been quiet the whole time I’d talked. After I finished, he let only a few beats of silence pass before he said, adamantly, “He’s not going to come after you. You know that, don’t you, Sabrina?”
I shrugged.
“Sabrina?” He leaned forward, trying to get my eyes on him.
I turned my head and rested my cheek on my knee. “I know it,” I said, forcing a smile. “In my head, I know it. Just, sometimes it still feels like he could.”
“He’s not. I promise you that he’s not.” He searched my eyes, as though if he searched hard enough he could find the way to make me believe it. “It was years ago, and Theodore Sheridan is not looking for a random girl he came across at a party. Like you said, he probably doesn’t even remember you.”
They were harsh, true words. I was forgettable and nobody. I got it. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right. He scared me though. The kind of scared that runs several layers deep. It doesn’t go away easily, and it comes up sometimes. When I don’t always expect it.”
I sat up and wiped the leaking tears from under my eyes. “So, I’m okay. Really. What we did tonight just stirred up that fear and brought it to the surface, but I don’t regret it, and I’d do it again.”
I blushed; this time it spread down my neck, not because I was humiliated but because I’d brought up what we’d done. The game where he forced me to fuck him. The game that I loved.
Moisture pooled between my legs just thinking about it.
It had been the best sex of my life, and I’d done nothing but cry about it. Donovan probably didn’t even know how much I’d loved it.
With cheeks still red, I side-glanced at him. “I want to do it again. Not right now. Not always. But definitely. It was everything I’d imagined it would be. More, actually. I’m sorry that I ruined it.”
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 25
