Chapter 9 Sebastian
Sebastian
My car waits where I left it. A sleek black reminder of my precisely ordered life—a life that feels like it's teetering on the edge of something dangerous after what just happened upstairs.
Mia fucking Phillips
Her name alone sends a fresh wave of heat through my body as I slide into the driver's seat, grip the wheel, and try to remember how to breathe like a normal human being instead of a teenager who just discovered what his dick is for.
The drive home is a blur. I move automatically through the motions—turn signal, brake, accelerate—while my mind replays every second of being in her apartment.
The way she looked in that worn t-shirt.
The bare legs that seemed to go on forever.
The freckles across her nose. The way she said my name.
I barely register pulling into my building's garage, taking the private elevator to the top floor, or unlocking my door. It's only when I step inside and the automatic lights flicker on that reality crashes back.
And the stark contrast between my space and hers hits me like a punch to the nuts.
Where Mia's apartment was cluttered with life mine is a monument to emptiness. Sleek leather furniture in shades of black and gray. Glass tables with nothing on them but a single art book I've never opened. White walls bare except for one abstract painting that cost more than my first car.
No photos. No mementos. Nothing personal at all.
I drop my keys into the black ceramic bowl by the door. The silence presses against my ears as I shrug off my jacket, hanging it with mechanical precision in the closet where identical jackets hang in a perfect row.
My jaw aches. I realize I've been clenching it since I left her place. I roll my shoulders, trying to release the tension knotted between my shoulder blades, but it's useless. The tightness isn't just physical, it's something deeper, a coiling need that won't be stretched out by simple movement.
In the kitchen, I grab a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water, gulping it down like I've been wandering the desert for days.
It doesn’t help. I still feel like a man on edge.
Walking to the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the eastern wall, I stare out at the city below.
Lights glitter against the darkness, thousands of lives playing out in apartments where people laugh and argue and fuck and live.
Normal people with normal desires. Not men who get hard at the thought of controlling a woman's breathing, of holding her suspended between pleasure and surrender until she begs for release.
Not men who almost kiss their fellows in supply closets and show up at their apartments under flimsy pretexts.
"Fuck," I whisper to the glass, my breath fogging a small circle that quickly disappears. The memory of Mia standing in her doorway refuses to fade—red curls piled messily on top of her head, that damn t-shirt barely covering the tops of her thighs, her eyes widening when she saw me.
What would have happened if I'd given in to the urge that drove me there in the first place? If instead of backing away, I'd stepped forward. Pushed her against the nearest wall. Covered her mouth with mine and swallowed whatever sound she would have made.
My body instantly responds to the thought, cock hardening against the confines of my slacks. I press my forehead against the cool glass, trying to shock myself back to sanity.
What would Mia do if she knew the truth? If she knew that when I look at her, I don't just see a brilliant doctor or even a beautiful woman. I see someone I want to possess. To control. To take apart piece by piece and put back together under my hands.
She'd probably run. Or report me to HR. Or both.
I push away from the window and stalk through my pristine living room toward the bedroom.
It’s as stark as the rest of the place—king-sized bed with charcoal gray sheets pulled military-tight across the mattress.
No photos on the nightstands. No clothes thrown across a chair.
Just a single reading lamp and an alarm clock, its red numbers cutting through the dimness to inform me it's nearly eleven.
I should sleep. I should take a shower, crawl into bed, and forget today ever happened.
Instead, I sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at my hands. These hands that nearly touched her tonight. That wanted to curl around her throat and feel her pulse quicken beneath my palm. To tangle in those wild red curls and pull her head back until she gasped.
A groan of frustration tears from my lungs as I scrub those same hands over my face, trying to erase images that won't disappear. It's useless. Mia has gotten under my skin, into my blood. And I have no fucking idea what to do about it.
Except that I do.
I know exactly what to do about it—nothing. She's my fellow. My subordinate. Under my supervision and evaluation. The power dynamic alone makes anything beyond professional interaction completely unethical, not to mention potentially career-ending for both of us.
I stand abruptly, needing movement, needing something to break this spiral of want and restraint and want again. The bedroom suddenly feels too small, too close, too full of a bed I'm desperately trying not to imagine Mia spread across.
I need a shower. A cold one. And if that doesn't work, I'll need to handle this the old-fashioned way, because there's no chance in hell I'm getting any sleep tonight with Mia Phillips haunting every corner of my mind.
The shower spray hits my back with enough force to sting, but it's not nearly cold enough to do what I need it to do.
I turn the knob further, gritting my teeth as the temperature drops.
The shock of cold water against my overheated skin should be enough to kill the hard-on that hasn't subsided since I left Mia's apartment.
It's not. If anything, it’s worse. I press my forehead against the tile wall and close my eyes, which is a mistake.
Behind my eyelids, all I see is Mia, looking up at me with those green eyes, her lips parted as she says my name.
Fuck it. The cold shower isn't working. I twist the knob back toward hot, surrendering to at least this small comfort if not the larger temptation.
The water beats down on my shoulders, loosening muscles tight with tension as I mechanically go through the motions.
Soap. Shampoo. Rinse. The routine should be calming.
Should reset my mind back to its usual ordered state.
It doesn't.
With each pass of the soap over my skin, I imagine different hands. Smaller hands, with long fingers that would press and explore with the same curiosity she brings to everything else. I shut off the water with force, shoving open the glass door and grabbing a towel from the heated rack.
Terrycloth slung low on my hips, I pad into the bedroom and pull on a pair of black briefs. Then I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, and stare at my hands again.
These hands that have performed surgeries. Diagnosed the impossible. Held lives in their literal grasp. And all they want to do right now is touch Mia Phillips.
I close my eyes, and it's like she's here in the room with me. The scent of her citrus shampoo. The freckles scattered across her skin like constellations I want to map with my tongue. The way her pulse jumped in her throat when I got too close.
"Enough," I mutter to the empty room, but it's a lie. It's nowhere near enough. I'm hard again, painfully so. I try to remember the last time I wanted someone this badly, with this much raw, unfiltered need.
I've spent years building walls around this part of myself. The part that wants more than the occasional nameless encounter. The part that craves not just physical release but the kind of surrender that comes from absolute trust. The part that wants to control, to dominate, to possess.
And here I am, breaking apart over a woman I barely know. A woman who works for me. Who challenges me at every turn. Who looked at me tonight like she could see straight through every defense I've built.
I give in with a groan that sounds like surrender even to my own ears. Shoving my briefs down my thighs, I take myself in hand, gripping my cock at the base and squeezing hard enough to hurt. The pain is grounding, a counterpoint to the pleasure that surges through me at the first stroke.
Behind my closed eyes, Mia takes shape. Not the Mia from tonight in her sleep clothes, but Mia naked and spread across this very bed. Her wild red curls a stark contrast against the dark sheets. Her green eyes wide and dark with want as I kneel between her parted thighs.
"Don't move," I hear myself whisper to the fantasy. "Not until I say you can."
I stroke myself slowly, methodically, the way I'd touch her if she were really here. Taking my time. Building the pressure. Making her wait for it.
In my mind, she writhes beneath me, desperate for more, but my hand on her throat keeps her still. Just enough pressure to remind her who's in control. Just enough to make her pulse jump beneath my palm.
"Please," imaginary Mia begs, her voice breathy and desperate. "Sebastian, please."
"Not yet," I tell her, and myself, slowing my strokes even as my body screams for release. "You'll come when I say you can come. Not before."
Pre-cum slicks my palm as I imagine sliding into her, feeling her envelop me inch by agonizing inch. Her back would arch, those perfect tits lifting toward my mouth. I'd take a nipple between my teeth, biting just hard enough to make her gasp.
My strokes grow faster, harder, matching the rhythm of my imagined thrusts. In my fantasy, Mia's eyes go wide as I hit that spot inside her, the one that would make her see stars. Her hands would grip my shoulders, nails digging into skin as she gets closer to the edge.