Total pages in book: 225
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
I flex my fingers and stare down at my right hand for a minute as I haul in another big breath and slowly blow it out.
There’s eerie silence and either she’s shocked she hit me, she’s terrified of what I’ll do in retaliation, or perhaps both.
I stare at him while my heart tries to beat its way out of my chest. I’m terrified I’ve just made a grave error in smacking him.
He’s still halfway over me, left arm caging me in as he stares at his right hand and flexes his hand a few times.
While it’s dim in here with just Adam’s reading light on, the hall light also casting a glow across the bed, it’s easy to see the cold look on Derek’s face.
I’m braced, wondering if he’s pondering slapping me back.
Finally, his eyes snap to my face. I jerk back, bracing. They rove it for a long, frozen moment before he rolls off me and sits with his back to me. I remain still, terror-stricken as he gets dressed.
I finally work up the nerve to speak, to stand my ground.
“You crossed yet another line tonight, Derek. This is not okay.”
He stands, fully dressed, getting his shoes on before he turns and peers down at me.
“There is no line I won’t cross.” His eyes are still ice cold. “Don’t forget that. And I told you you’re safe with me, that I won’t harm you, but I’ll warn you here and now that if you strike me in anger again, baby, you might not like what happens. I’m a wildcard. You don’t want to push it. I’d tell you to ask anyone who knows me, anyone who’s crossed me. But you probably don’t want to try that, mostly because they’re either no longer around to do the talking or are too afraid to.”
He looks at me for a reaction for a long moment before he continues. “I want you at my office tomorrow. One o’clock.”
“I have to work,” I say.
No longer around? Around where? Anywhere? Does he mean he’s killed people?
“It’ll be a working lunch,” he answers. “I’m your only client so no reason why you can’t be there.”
He leans over and puts his hand to my face.
I remain as still as I can, but I’m trembling as he stares for a long moment.
“Don’t change the sheets. I want him sleeping where I fucked you for at least one night. Preferably two.”
I say nothing, but feel like ice-cold water is trickling through my veins.
“Dream of me some more, Chloe,” he says softly, then presses his lips to mine.
He turns Adam’s light off again, then leaves.
I wait a minute, maybe two before I rush out of bed, down the hall to the front door. It’s locked. I look out the window. No sign of his Mercedes.
It’s as if he was never here.
But he was.
He broke into my house. He was here. Here, in this house, having sex with me in the bed Adam and I share. Having sex with me while I was asleep.
And this means I’ve broken multiple rules from Adam’s hall pass rules list. Against my will. But I don’t know what to do to make Derek stop.
I move back to the bedroom and before I’m all the way there, I feel Derek’s semen leaking down my leg. I rush to the bathroom and let the water wash away not just the signs of him, but also the tears of frustration. But all of it, honestly, feels unwashable.
I find my vibrator not-so-innocently lying on Adam’s pillow. I must have missed him putting it there before he left. I grab it and instead of putting it back in the nightstand drawer, I storm to the kitchen where I angrily step on the trashcan pedal and whip it into the garbage before flipping double birds in the air and hoping the cameras caught it.
I stare at the piece of paper.
Who? Chloe and anyone I don’t know.*
What? Just sex.
Where? Just not in our home.
When? When you need it.
Why? I don’t want to lose you.
*I ask that it’s never the same person twice. Nobody you’ve been with before, so no emotional attachments. We won’t talk about it and discretion is sacrosanct.
He signed and dated it. He dated it weeks before the night I met her. She sat on this for a while before she even brought it up to Alannah Fisher. She never wanted to use it. But she did. On me.
I smile to myself.
Anyone he doesn’t know. He knows of my family, and he will know me.
Not in their home? I smile. Check. Not only in his home, but directly where he sleeps. She’s not real happy with me at the moment for my wake-up call, but the way she moaned my name in her sleep tells me I'm on the exact right path.