Her groan came out muffled around the gag. Patrick slapped her breast, then picked up the stress ball.
“Exit,” he reminded her, and pressed it into her palm.
Cassie nodded, and they stared at one another for a moment. Something passed between them, although she wasn’t sure what. Affection? Respect? She wanted to try to say it, to spit out the words wreaking havoc in her head, but she couldn’t, rendered silent by a toy he’d put there.
With a lethal calm to his voice, Patrick leaned in and hissed, “Now, up on your hands and knees before I force you there.”
The threat in his words had her shaking harder. Cassie turned over and held herself up on all fours.
“Trembling like a little flower,” he said through harsh breaths. “Trust me, my dear. You haven’t begun to shake yet.”
When he knelt behind her, she heard a cap pop open, and then cool, thick liquid drizzled over her backside.
“I’m gonna have a little fun now, and if you don’t struggle, you might enjoy it too.”
Anxiety and excitement mounting, Cassie clutched the ball and pushed back against him. He spread his fingers across the middle of her back and pushed her downward until she was stretched out on the bed.
“Legs open,” he instructed, and she widened them as far as they could go, her head to the side on the pillow. Cassie closed her eyes as Patrick stroked between her thighs and back into where she was aching.
Heaven. Agony. So much and not enough. She moaned into the gag, feeling herself get even sloppier.
“Your pussy is so greedy,” he said, thrusting in and out. “So sloppy.”
She trembled, surrendering to it all. Her jaw hurt but the rest felt so good—the pressure of his elbow on the small of her back, his incessant plunges inside her. She spread her legs wider and rocked against the comforter, needing friction at her clit.
“So desperate to come you’re fucking the bed.”
She exhaled hard. Patrick’s free hand crept downward until one finger—his pinky?—made a lazy path through the lube on her cheeks, searching, seeking. He slipped it along her back opening.
“Now, you’re gonna take this,” he murmured. “And I’m going to stroke that tight little ass of yours until you’re coming all over my fingers.”
Cassie held tightly on to the stress ball. Her breathing sped up, and she tried not to clench as his finger slipped past the first tight ring of muscle. It burned, but along with it came a deep plunge into her pussy from his other hand. He slid a little deeper into her backside, and she let out a long, muffled groan.
“That’s it.” He sounded almost amazed. “There you go. I knew you’d like it.”
She did. It felt strange and violating and wrong, but incredible at the same time, and her discomfort dissipated as he found a rhythm. One finger, then the other. In and out, working in opposition. His forearm pressed into her lower back, forcing her to take, to feel.
“Now, what was that you said before, about not being able to help but come?”
He stopped fucking her with his fingers and twisted his body around. Cassie heard a buzzing sound. The bullet vibe switching on.
Easing his hand beneath her, he fitted the vibrator against her clit. The quick, steady pulses rocketed through her, but Cassie’s gasp was silenced by the gag. She was sweating now, her hips bucking. Patrick’s pinky rode even deeper into that unfamiliar back passage as he penetrated her with his fingers once again. Cassie whined loudly. He was kidnapping her body, her mind lost to the way he was working her. Her face was a mess—she could feel drool everywhere—but she couldn’t care, not when it felt like this.
She was seconds away from coming when Patrick bent lower and whispered, “Take it, whore, and come. I don’t care if you want to or not. We both know you’re going to.”
Cassie broke apart, the climax so intense she screamed around the gag. Patrick pushed her down as she writhed, forcing her to take more. She clutched the pillows and arched away in an instinctive reflex, trying to escape from the vibrations, but he made her endure it until another orgasm seized, hot on the tails of the first. When he finally, mercifully, slid his fingers free and removed the vibe, Cassie sagged against the bed.
“That looked like you enjoyed it immensely,” he mused as he toweled off his hands.
Her throat was too raw for her to reply. It was the closest to her fantasy she’d ever experienced, but it was missing something. Missing the fear, missing the sense she couldn’t escape, that she was being taken against her will.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. The shame at wishing he’d been even harsher made tears spark in her eyes. She tried to stop them, but the dam was broken, and she couldn’t hold them back.
She shoved the stress ball in his direction and pinched her eyes shut.
“Okay, shhhh. Hold on, I’m taking the gag off.”
He unlatched the strap, and Cassie yanked the gag out of her mouth, curled into herself and started to sob. The only respite was the warmth of his body as he wrapped the towel around her and tucked her head beneath his chin.
“I’m here,” he said. “I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’m here.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she babbled, her voice scratchy. “That was great. Incredible, actually.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because of the things I want. They’re fucked up.”
“What—orgasms?”
Cassie snorted despite her tears. “No, it’s…”
She teetered on the edge, the words waiting to come out the way you’d wait to careen off a cliff. Sharing this awful truth with anyone, let alone Patrick, had always felt impossible. But this was all just sex, wasn’t it? And there was something about being with him that felt anonymous. A step outside reality where she could whisper her sins to the darkness, and he’d absolve her of them, taking her secrets with him when their time together was done.
“…My fantasies disgust me.”
Cassie knew he’d heard it—the meekness in her voice, the sound of her armor peeled away. But he held her more tightly. “Why?”
“Because I want to be treated as an object. You don’t think that’s fucked up?”
“Should I?” He rubbed soothing circles over the towel. “We like what we like. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us.”
Us. That helped a bit. Calmed her at the same time as it bolstered her nerve.
“I’ve always been ashamed of the things that turn me on.”
“I don’t see what there is to be ashamed of.”
She wiped her face and looked up at him. Hiding had always been easier than trying to trust someone, or even understanding her desires herself. But here, in his arms, she felt safe enough to try.
“Because I want to be taken against my will. That’s the messed-up part. I’m a woman. I’m a lawyer. I’m half Cuban, for fuck’s sake. Everything I’ve ever known tells me I shouldn’t want what I do.”
Patrick went strangely still. “You’re half what?”
“Cuban,” she repeated.
He leaned away from her. His expression wasn’t what she expected—blinking and stunned, and not in a good way.
“But your last name. Allbright, it’s American.”
“German, technically. My dad’s a native Floridian. My mother is Cuban.” She was annoyed, but his disbelief wasn’t a surprise, so she did what she always did to prove it. “¿Te he sorprendido? Pobrecito bebé, deja que mamá lo bese.”
Did I surprise you? Poor little baby, let mommy kiss it.
As quickly as if she’d stung him, he pulled away and swung his legs over the bed.
Cassie’s skin prickled as she stared at his bare back. “What just happened?”
“I need a minute.”
“For what?”
“Hearing you speak Spanish—it…took me by surprise, okay?”
Wait, seriously? Everything she’d said and he was f
reaking out because she was biracial?
Cassie’s armor began clipping back into place. She sat up and wrenched off her shoes, not wanting to be anything resembling sexy anymore, at least not for him. “Was discovering I’m technically a minority such a blow to your rich-white-man frame of mind? You can’t believe you’ve been fucking a half brown-skinned girl this whole time?”
“Jesus. No, that’s not it at all.”
“What is it then?”
“I’m—I just…fuck!” He jumped to his feet. Cassie thought he was going to leave when he tugged on his boxers, but then he began to pace, marching back and forth in silence. She threw her shoes to the floor and hauled the blanket up to cover herself, kicking the toys off until they hit the ground with a thump.
She crossed her arms. “You have two options, Patrick. Explain yourself, or get the hell out of my apartment.”
“All right!” Patrick stopped pacing. “All right,” he said more softly. “I’ll tell you everything.”
18
Staring at Cassie on the bed, Patrick felt genuinely sick.
She was holding the blanket like a taut shield over her body and her eyes were hot enough to make him think she could set him on fire and dance on the ashes. But that wasn’t the thing making him panic. He could take her up on her offer to leave—he’d walked out women’s doors for far less—but he wasn’t going, not now. This thing between them wasn’t ending like this. And not letting that happen meant telling her the story he’d never spoken aloud to anyone.
He made a slow path back and forth in front of her bed. Where else to start but the beginning?
“My mother was an alcoholic,” he said. “She’s been sober for years, but she was drunk for most of my teens, and my twenties. Not that I could blame her—” even though he did, “—if I were married to a philandering jackass, I’d drink myself into oblivion too.”
Cassie was quiet for a moment. “Your father cheated?”
Her question came out a bit detached, as if she were examining a witness on the stand. He didn’t mind. If anything, it made talking easier. “Repeatedly.”
“And your mother knew?”
“She did, but she numbed herself to it by drinking. They had a shitty relationship.”
“Did they fight a lot?”
“No. They barely spoke to each other, even less to me, and when they did, it was cold. Empty. I spent most of my childhood desperate to get out of there.”
He’d hid it well, though, behind the smiles he’d learned to paste on. They covered his feelings of shame, the emptiness he faced at home. He never invited anyone over, save for Jack, too embarrassed for anyone to see what life was like behind the wrought-iron gates.
“That sucks,” Cassie said, still distant. “But what does this have to do with—”
“You?” Patrick stopped pacing and caught her tight nod. God he did not want to talk about this. But she’d laid out the options—tell her the truth, or walk out the door. “I’m getting there.”
She eyed him carefully, mistrustful. Patrick leaned back against her bedroom wall.
“I went to Princeton—Dad’s alma mater—with the explicit instruction I follow in his footsteps and get a degree in Economics. So I took literature classes instead, just to piss him off.”
“He ran a publishing house. How would that be an issue for him?”
“Because he wanted me to be like him, a perfect little copy.”
She looked at him, her arms tight across her chest, her body language closed off. “I know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “Rich-kid problems, right? I had money so I shouldn’t have complained. But I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted to be something more.”
Cassie held still over another beat of silence, then asked, “What did you want to be?”
“Last week, you asked me what my passion was. If you’d asked me that question twenty-five years ago, my answer would’ve been different.”
“It wasn’t sex? You didn’t fuck your way through college?”
“I was a virgin in college.”
“Seriously?” Patrick flicked a glance at her, but she just shrugged. “Sorry, I find the idea of you being a late bloomer hard to believe.”
“Surprise,” he said. “I didn’t understand how a normal relationship worked, not after watching my parents. And I wanted my first time to be with someone I cared about. I wanted it to mean something.”
He didn’t look at her on the last bit. Admitting his naïve dream of finding love before he had sex was embarrassing enough without having to see Cassie’s expression of incredulity about it.
“So, you spent college a monk,” she said.
Patrick’s short huff of a laugh was hollow, without mirth. “Not completely. I fooled around, but nothing serious. My real love affair was with words.”
“I thought you don’t read much.”
“Not now. But back then, I spent more of my time reading than not.”
He recalled the quiet of it, the peace. The smell of old books in the library. He’d be immersed for hours, lost in a collection of sentences. The prose he’d read, the way the authors painted pictures with words, made him feel alive for the first time in his life. It was a world he’d wanted to bury himself in—to read and never stop.
“Your passion was with literature?”
“Spanish literature,” he corrected her. Now he made eye contact. Purposely—to make sure she was listening. “One course and I was hooked. After that I took every class I could—soaked it up, packed on the credits, even went from beginner’s to advanced Spanish in a semester. By my senior year, I was fluent.”
One plus of having a great memory. Languages were super easy to learn.
Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Fluent?”
He raised one right back. “Don’t believe me?” She didn’t seem to, so he narrowed his eyes and leaned over the bed. “Pobre pequeña princesa, deja que papá la bese.”
Poor little princess. Let Daddy kiss it.
It was a purposeful turnaround of her snarky comeback before, and oh, did it do the trick. She shifted under the blanket, a pinched V between her brows. She was angry at being bested, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she’d gotten a bit turned on. But now wasn’t the time for that.
“My father was pissed but told me at my graduation I could ‘still be an asset to the company anyway.’” Patrick remembered the anxiety, the frantic need to do anything but lead by that bastard’s side. “I was supposed to come home, shadow him and move into a management position. I skipped town instead.”
“A multimillion-dollar business was your birthright, and you ran away from it?”
“Like I said, I didn’t want to be like him.”
And yet, he’d become that way anyway. Wealthy. Angry. Sleeping around.
God, he was disgusted with himself.
“I came home for Jack and Eve’s wedding, left a note for my parents, emptied the one bank account I had access to and was on the next flight to Spain.”
He could see the rugged coast of it now—the mountains and medieval architecture. He could smell the food, hear the music. The rushing current of the waterfall outside the bedroom he’d spent far too many nights in.
“What did you do there?” she asked, anchoring him in the present.
“I backpacked around, taking on odd jobs and staying in hostels until I landed in Asturias.”
“Spain was where you learned to dance, wasn’t it?”
His glance back at her was sharp. “Spain was where I learned a lot of things.”
She shifted again, this time uncomfortable. Cassie was nothing if not good at understanding the subtext: Spain was where he’d gotten so good in bed.
“So what happened? Did you gamble away your inheritance at a casino in Madrid or something?”
“Not quite. I got a job in a bookstore and stayed with the man who owned it. He took me in, and treated me like family.” Patrick’s jaw tightened, his eyes meeting the floor. “And then I met Sofía.
”
One, two, three beats of quiet. “Who was she?”
There was a flat note of jealousy in her voice, peeking through despite her attempt at being casual. If he hadn’t felt so damn nauseous he would’ve enjoyed it.
“She was a cashier at a high-end clothing shop in town.” With wild, thick hair, and a body he’d dreamed about for weeks. “It was love at first sight for me. But I didn’t have the guts to talk to her.”
“You? Shy?”
“I told you I was a late bloomer. I was terrified to approach her. She didn’t speak much English, and wasn’t in town on the weekends—at the time I didn’t know why—so I wrote her a letter. A long, lovesick schoolboy’s poem.”
His face burned at the memory of the words he’d written in Spanish, asking for her name, her time, her heart. How trusting, how foolish he’d been, pouring his soul out on paper like that.
“No one’s written me a love note before,” Cassie said.
“Well that’s insane. Somebody should’ve.”
“I would’ve had to have been in love for that to happen.”
Patrick’s gaze snapped toward hers. “Never?”
Cassie shook her head. He didn’t know how that was possible, but after what she’d shared about her past relationships, it wasn’t such a surprise. He wanted to go to her, to touch her, but she hadn’t moved her arms from her middle, and he wasn’t ready to sit yet either.
“Well, love isn’t the fairy tale people say it is.”
Patrick could hear the bookshop’s bell tinkling happily, the elated leaping of his heart when Sofía finally walked through the door, yellow peasant blouse and beaming smile and his note in her hand. The past rattled in his skin, too many emotions to fit inside. He started to pace again.
“Our first in-person conversation lasted for hours. We went to a café, and talked until they closed and she asked me to go home with her. I was so excited, I could hardly breathe.”
“Was she your first?”
Patrick nodded. “And having sex made me fall even harder.”
He couldn’t go there, couldn’t play back those feelings. He moved instead, cut a narrow path between the foot of her bed and the TV across from it. Ten steps from the windows on one side to the door on the other, glass frames on one wall, exposed brick above her headboard. It was cozy. Comfortable.
Her Claim: Legally Bound Book 2 Page 18
