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I do. I go down his body.

“I’ll destroy your virgin cunt.” In one shove, he pushes my face down his cock, winding his fist in my hair as he fucks my throat. I cough, I gag. Spit. He’s getting impossibly harder in my mouth. “When I decide it’s time. When you beg for it. Now, bea good girl and look at me. That’s it. Desperate and mine. All mine.”

It’s sick to be turned on by this. He degrades me and humiliates me, uses me up. I suck him, craving it. For long minutes, I give him as much pleasure as he’s taken from me. I give him everything.

Until—“Fuck.Fuck. Yes. Close your eyes.” His jaw tics. “Close your fucking eyes.”

James pulls me off him by my hair. I hear his hand stroking his soaked cock before he comes, emptying himself on my mouth, my nose, my eyes.

I’m drenched in him.

I’m eerily calm.

“Beautiful.” He leaves me there, held up. He must be looking at me. I hope so, even though it’s wrong to wish for it. “Wearing my cum. So fucking hot. It’s infuriating, how gorgeous you are.”

He doesn’t mean that I’m infuriating. I know.

He means that he’s lost control. He means that he’s not himself.

I would’ve told him that he had it all wrong. He’s being exactly who I’ve come to expect of James.

A gentle man wouldn’t have shoved his clean fingers into my mouth so I’d take more of his cum. Even as he carries me to the bathroom, when he gets to washing my face, he isn’t being tender.

Methodical, yes. Careful not to hurt me and get everything off me, sure.

Not gentle.

Maybe I don’t need gentle.

Maybe I never did.

Maybe, possibly, what I’ve dreamed of my entire life is to curl up in bed against the big, bad wolf and take my chances with him.

For tonight, I do just that.

18

JAMES

Light flashes from my phone on the bedside table. The one on Ophelia’s side.

Her side.

Her bedside table.

Hers.

Ridiculous.

Hersisn’t a concept that exists in this house. In my world. Even if it feels so good to have her in my bed. Like this, huddled in my arms, her body wrapped around mine as I lie on my back.

The phone isn’t onherbedside table.

It’s there. Just there, exactly where I put it before I drew her a bath this morning. I didn’t mean to put it on one table or the other. I took it out of my jeans pocket. Placed it there. That’s it.

When I carried her to the bath, and settled her on top of me, and washed her, I forgot about it altogether. When I ran my hands through her hair and stroked her soft skin with a washcloth and soap, I didn’t remember that there was a world outside of this one.

What I did do was try to make sense of why I took such good care of her.