Chapter Forty-Eight
Rheda
The reaction doesn’t start in my head.
It hits lower. Sudden. Violent.
My stomach drops hard enough to make me sway, the meaning of his words arriving a second too late to stop what they’ve already done. They’re less like sound, more like impact.
Fear kicks in violently. The weight of the situation claws down my spine.
“No, I didn’t!” My mind kicks in a beat later. “I didn’t—”
The blackness in his eyes shiver as though they have a mind of its own.
Something thuds behind me. The first impact doesn’t sound like anything I recognise at first. It travels through the room before it reaches my ears, a deep, concussive force that rattles through my body. Then it comes again, louder this time, and I understand.
Someone is trying to break in and failing.
I twist and shove past Deogal, straight for the door. My hand slams around the handle and I yank. Nothing. I pull again, harder, shoulder driving into the metal, panic already climbing into my throat. The lock doesn’t even react. It stays dead.
My breath catches.
I glance over my shoulder.
He’s still there. Just standing near the glass, watching me. Smiling like he knew exactly where I’d run.
“No.” I back away from the door and bolt for the other side of the room—for the door he came through. I hit it too fast, fingers fumbling for the handle, dragging, pulling, twisting. Locked.
“No, no, no—” I slam my fist against it once. Twice. Three times, the sound cracking through the room, sharp and desperate. “Open the fucking door—”
“So desperate to leave, Doctor?” He coos, voice hot against my neck. “Didn’t you miss me?”
My entire body locks.
For a second, I don’t move. I can’t. Because if I don’t turn, if I don’t confirm it, there is still a version of this where it isn’t happening yet. But my body kicks into gear before I can stop it. I spin around too fast, the movement clumsy, desperate...and he’s already here.
I stop so abruptly it almost throws me off balance, my body jerking back on instinct, but there’s nowhere to go. My back hits the door, the impact knocking the air from my lungs as I flatten against it without meaning to.
Behind me, the door shudders under impact. I feel it through my spine, through my shoulders where they press into it, and for a moment I cling to it, to the noise, to the proof that there is still something outside this room trying to reach me.
But it changes nothing.
The door is still locked. The glass is still intact. No one is getting out.
My hand lifts slightly, then presses back against the surface behind me, as if I can anchor myself there, as if I can borrow strength from something that doesn’t give. All I find is the same cold, unresponsive barrier.
My throat tightens, words catching before they can form properly.
“Stay back,” I manage, but there’s no weight behind it.
“Hush now.”
He presses a finger to my mouth. It’s thick, rough, and in one slow drag he smears the lip balm across my lips and down my chin.
The pad of his thumb traces back up, slick and deliberate, pushing over the swollen seam of my mouth. I clamp my teeth together, jaw locking in one pathetic, useless attempt to stop him.
His other hand snaps to my face, hard enough to make my head knock back against the wall. Fingers dig into my jaw, brutal and certain, thumb forcing into one side, fingers crushing the other until pain splinters hot behind my eyes.
I try to hold it. I do. But agony is persuasive.
My lips part on a broken breath.
His finger penetrates my lips. It’s so violating the way he explores my mouth with the tip of his finger, like he’s dragging his fingerprint across every cell, marking his territory.
Bite him. My mind screams immediately, panic flaring violently.
“Do it.” His voice is low, rough, cutting straight through the noise in my head like it belongs there more than my own thoughts do. “Bite me, and I’ll punish your slutty little mouth.”
My body reacts before I can stop it.
Dread hits sharp and immediate, driving straight into my lungs, stealing the next breath before I can take it. My eyes burn, vision blurring at the edges as something tightens painfully in my chest, the pressure building too fast to control.
No.
No, this isn’t possible.
This isn’t...
A tear slips before I can stop it. I feel it track down my skin, hot against the cold air.
He moves, too fast.
I don’t see the transition. One second there’s space between us, the next there isn’t.
Something warm brushes my face, sudden and intimate in a way that makes my entire body recoil before I can process it properly.
His tongue. The realisation hits a fraction too late.
He drags it across the tear before I can pull away, the contact invasive in a way that sends a shock straight through my system.
My breath stutters violently.
“What are you—”
“You taste so fucking good, Doctor.” He groans, and the sound does something unspeakable to me.
“Please stop,” I try.
His fingers cup my face, and he drags me close to his lips. He presses a soft kiss against my eyelid, light, almost gentle. But his tongue curls out, catching my lashes, and then before I can stop him, he pulls my eyelid between his lips and sucks the tears away.
I whimper, my body finally obeying my mind. My knees give way, and I try to duck out of the attack, but his fingers suddenly curl their way into my hair. He holds me still.
He shifts back ever so slightly, angling my head so he can soak up my reaction. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?”
Ice drags down my body until I feel sick. I can’t reply.
“Your sleeping body is delicious,” he grins. “but I can’t wait to fuck your waking mind, too.”
I yelp. He squeezes tighter until another tear slips free, only this time he doesn’t taste it, just watches it hungrily.
“I asked you a question, sweet Doctor.” He hums. “Did you miss me?”
I want to lie. I know I should. But I can’t, the terror sweeps through me.
“Yes,” I hear myself say. As soon as the word leaves my lips, I regret it. I hate myself for responding so obediently to him, but the fear wraps its way around my neck until I’m choking on him.
He softens slightly. “Good.”
His knee drives between my thighs, forcing its way into the space I’m trying so hard to protect.
“No—” It comes out breathless.
His hand tightens on my jaw, the other anchoring me in place as he presses harder, relentless, until the strain burns through my hips. My muscles shake with the effort of fighting him, of trying to keep myself closed, but he’s stronger, heavier, immovable.
Slowly, humiliatingly, my knees are forced apart.
Spread open for him.
For a second I can only feel it—the exposure, the helplessness of it, the way my body has been arranged like it no longer belongs to me. My pulse pounds so hard it makes me dizzy.
He looks down between us, and somehow that feels worse.
“No, please—” I protest.
“Yes,” he interrupts sharply. “I need you. It’s been too long.”
He forces his knee higher, splitting me open around it, his hands already sliding to my hips like he owns the shape of them.
I yelp, sharp and helpless, when the pressure hits exactly where my body betrays me most. The spot that pulses with humiliation, with need, with something I’d rather die than let him see.
He drags me forward, then back, slow at first, forcing the movement, forcing me to feel every second of it.
My breath stutters.
Again.
Back and forth.
My body follows whether I want it to or not, helpless against the rhythm he’s chosen, against the friction that turns everything hot and unbearable.
I’m riding his fucking thigh like something desperate, something pathetic, and the worst part—the part that makes shame burn hotter than anything else—is the pleasure.
Electric enough to make my legs shake.
Wrong. God, so wrong.
And still my body reaches for it, traitorous and needy, answering him before my mind can even form the disgust. I hate it. I hate him. I hate the way my mouth parts on a broken sound I can’t swallow back. And I hate that some ruined part of me wants more.
“That’s a good doctor,” he murmurs.
I sink my teeth into my lower lip to catch the way my breathing changes.
He moves me faster, applies more pressure, like he knows exactly how to control me.
My fingers spread across his chest before I can register what’s happening. Somewhere between a punch and a push, I fist his jumpsuit. I push him away, but somehow, he gets closer.
A mewl escapes me.
I didn’t mean to let it slip, but it escapes anyway.
“Tut, tut,” He taunts. “Are you about to cum for me, Doctor? Dirty slut. You’re supposed to cure me. Fix me. But here you are fucking my thigh like a dog in a heat.”
His words poison my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will stop the torture, but the frantic grinding on his thigh is all too much. My orgasm is close. I shake my head like that will do anything. Hold my breath. Grip tighter onto him.
And then—I see stars. Explosions. My high hits me like a drug, instantaneous and violent, pleasure bursting through me in an array of waves. I chase the pleasure like it’s my oxygen. I become frantic.
Only when the seconds pass by, and my vision clears, do I see it. Him, hands held above his head, wearing that cocky, lobsided grin.
“What will the others think?” He whispers.
My face falls. Shame slams into me immediately. My lips part to say something, to protest my innocence, but suddenly he moves us. My body fights him instinctively. I buck and kick, and slam my fists into his chest, but he repositions me.
Cold metal meets my chest. I gasp in shock, my reflection staring back at me on the desk. I squeeze my eyes shut before I can see the tears falling.
He moves behind me. His presence, hot and angry, hands already moving to my arms which flail to fend him off. Time stutters and then, before I know it, cold bands are fastened around my wrists. Cuffs. Hand cuffs. Tied tightly, trapping my arms behind my back.
“No!” I scream. “No! No—”