swore again, reaching over and tugging her hand from around the bedpost. He moved away from her and started to untie her hands. “You should have told me.”
“What exactly?”
“You have blood on your legs,” he said, his tone grim.
“Oh. That.”
“The fact that you were a virgin should have come up,” he growled. “How the hell were you a virgin?”
“You’re so sure I was?” she asked, feeling shaken. Unsure of what to do with herself.
“Yes,” he said, though he didn’t sound sure now.
“You an expert?”
“I’m not. That’s the thing. Never done that before, but then, that’s why it seemed different.” He turned away from her and discarded the condom in a wastebasket by the bed.
“Or maybe I just feel different. Maybe I’m just different,” she said, only realizing after that the statement sounded just a little needy.
“Are you going to tell me you weren’t a virgin?”
“I don’t get why you’re angry,” she said.
“Because!” he shouted, turning back around, his chest pitching sharply. “You let that be your first time? What the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t I warn you?”
She bit the inside of her cheek and rubbed her wrist, where the tie had left red marks on her skin. “You don’t even know my name. Why would I tell you how many men I’ve been with?”
“Or haven’t been with.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “I got what I wanted.”
He curled his lip. “How could that have given you anything you wanted?”
“It just did. Also not something I need to share with you. My reasons are mine. And I’m sure your reasons for getting off on telling a woman to get on her knees and suck your dick are yours. But you know what? It’s none of my business.”
“You should go,” he said.
“Actually,” she said, getting off the bed, her ankle rolling thanks to her damn four-inch heels, “I should. I... Thanks for the sex, or whatever it is you people of sophistication say in situations like this. I am just a poor, hapless virgin, so I’m at a loss.”
“Get your clothes.”
“I’m not taking orders from you right now,” she spat, bending down to get her dress. “If you’re in the mood to give orders, though, order me a car. How about that?”
“No problem.” He bent down and picked his pants up, tugging his phone out of his pocket. “Send the car up front. You’re just picking up my friend for now.”
He hung up and she stood there, her dress crushed against her breasts. He was still naked. Still beautiful beyond reason.
And still bleeding emotion. It was hemorrhaging between them. Their needs mixing, mingling into one giant pool of regret.
“I have a feeling we’re both a bit too many levels of screwed up to be able to deal with each other,” she said, looking down at the ground. At her feet, still clad in those patent-leather black high heels.
“I imagine you’re right.”
She stepped into her dress and zipped it up. And they stood there. Like two strangers. Like he hadn’t been inside of her only a few moments ago.
Like he hadn’t left marks on her. Inside and out.
His phone buzzed. “That would be your car.”
“Spiffy.” She turned, and the moment she couldn’t see him anymore, her heart squeezed so tight she thought she would suffocate. “Hey, before I go,” she said, turning partially, “did you want my name?”
He shook his head. “I don’t need it.”
More than that, he didn’t want it. She could see it. That he was almost afraid of it. Afraid to put a name to the virgin he’d just violated, or whatever the hell issue he was having. Afraid to have a name for the woman he was throwing out only minutes after having sex with her.
“Katy,” she said, her hand on the doorknob. “My name is Katy Michaels. It was nice to have met you.”
My name is Katy Michaels.
Those words kept echoing in his ears. They had been for three days.
Because he knew that name.
Sarah had talked about Katy. Her younger sister. One of her inspirations for working so hard. One of the reasons, in the end, why she’d put up with Jason’s abuse instead of leaving the firm.
Because there weren’t a lot of ways out of the pit of poverty. Not easy ways. Many needed a hand-up, that was for sure. But there were very few people willing to give one without strings attached.
Which had been the situation Sarah had found herself bound up in, and he hadn’t even realized it.
She’d been sending money to her younger sister. To her younger brother.
Katy had been in school; he knew that much.
He was a dick. There was no way this could be worse. None at all. He’d used her to feel in control of his own miserable life, a life that he was in the process of exploding so that he could make right what had been done to her sister.
He’d chosen to, for the first time ever, unleash his domination fantasies on a woman and it turned out to be Sarah’s younger sister. The sister Sarah had protected with everything in her.
Sarah had died, in all likelihood, under a stress she never would have endured if she hadn’t had Katy and their brother to take care of.
And he had debauched her. Holy hell, it was like he was destined to screw up everything. Like he was destined to be the villain no matter how hard he tried to avoid it.
One slipup with regards to his self-control and he’d done the worst thing imaginable.
“Stephanie,” he said, approaching the reception desk in the front of his father’s office, “is my father in?”
“Yes, he is, Mr. Treffen, but he’s in a meeting.” The woman looked down and Austin noticed that she seemed dull. Tired. It made his chest ache. “I can let him know you’re here and see if he wants to interrupt?”
She lifted her hand to brush her hair behind her ear and he noticed finger-shaped bruises curving around her wrist.
And he saw a flash of his hands on Katy’s hips. He wondered if he’d left bruises behind, too. If he were any different from his father, a man who used others to his own ends. For his own pleasure.
Even if it left them damaged beyond repair.
Then he saw red.
“I’ll be interrupting the meeting, thank you, Stephanie. I find I’m not in the mood to wait.” He strode past reception. If Stephanie were arguing, he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the blood in his head.
He kept seeing flashes of his night with Katy.
And he wondered now if Sarah had gone through something similar. But he wondered if she’d ever been told she could say stop. Or if his father had unleashed all of that on her without ever giving her a choice.
It made him sick to think about it.
He walked down the long, bland corridor, the walls closing in on him as he went. Then he heard a familiar voice and stopped cold outside his father’s door.
It was cracked slightly, and he couldn’t see the