39. Binding Terms
39
Binding Terms
Sophie
The moment Elle’s gone, Evan releases my hand, and I pull away, putting space between us.
We watch one another warily, and I’m thankful for the physical barrier of the counter that stops me from throwing myself into Evan’s arms and begging him to take me into my bedroom.
I asked him to come here, after all.
I’ve made the opening move, white pawn up first. Now it’s his turn to retaliate.
But he doesn’t. We’re alone now, and he makes no effort to round the corner of the kitchen counter, to trap me against the cupboards and help himself to what I’ve practically begged him to come feast on.
“Still working at your father’s office, then?” I ask, my voice coming out tight.
He laughs. “No. I’ve been demoted. I’m now helping out at a small imprint in the West End.”
“Publishing?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Didn’t think that’d be your cup of tea.”
“It’s fine,” he says mildly.
“I like it, actually.”
“You do? ”
“Yeah. I think you’d like it too. It’s full of moody, uptight academics, so, you know.” His eyes trail up and down the length of me, appraising, unhurried.
“Guess in that sense, it is my cup of tea.”
He doesn’t look like he’s lying.
There’s a weird affection in his tone, and his shoulders are relaxed.
He doesn’t look unhappy, which—while I would never actively wish for his misery—is a bitter reminder that I’m probably the first one to have broken the no-contact embargo because in the end, he was happier without me than I was without him.
I swallow thickly, and Evan, who’s still watching me closely, tilts his head ever so slightly.
“How about you? Killing it in Harvard?”
“I’m doing alright.”
“I heard. Harvard Law Review, right? You must be swimming in offers.”
A tiny spark of hope catches in my chest. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”
He gives a mild smile.
“We both work for KMG, don’t we?”
I lean against the counter, drawing closer.
“Is that why you’re here? Because we both work for KMG?”
“I’m here because you asked me to come.”
The fact that he doesn’t bother to lie is delicious and mortifying in equal parts.
Inexplicably, I want to cry, and maybe laugh, and above all, I want to be in his arms. I’ve waited for so long, and there’s nowhere else in the entire world right now I want to be, nothing else that could bring me more satisfaction, more pure happiness.
I catch my breath. Why won’t he do it?
Why isn’t he touching me, reaching for me?
Doesn’t he want to hold me, take me, have me?
I know he does, because he’s not even bothering to conceal the desire from his expression, not even stopping himself from looking at me like he wants to devour me.
I want to be devoured.
Devour me.
“Sorry,” I say, licking my lips nervously.
“I was drunk.”
“I know.” There’s a hint of bleak amusement in the curve of his smile, as if he’s thinking, of course you were .
But he doesn’t say that.
There’s a beat of silence.
“You’re sober now.”
“Yes.”
I think of what he said to me, last time I saw him.
About the wound inside me, and him being the knife planted in it, and how right now, all I want is to feel the deep stab of him right into my heart.
God, is he going to make me beg.
I don’t want to beg.
But he doesn’t say anything; he watches me, weaponising the silence between us like I know oh so well how to, except that this time I’m the victim, I’m the worm caught on the hook, wriggling in terror and discomfort.
I step around the counter, one hand still gripping the corner.
Evan turns ever so slightly and watches me, keeping me pinned under a lazy gaze.
“Well,” I say thickly.
“It’s late.”
He nods.
“I know. I should go.”
“Why?” I step closer—just one step, just one tiny step across the cool tiles, but a step that somehow feels like crawling on my hands and knees through miles of broken glass.
“You’re already here. You might as well stay.”
He says nothing, silent as if he’s considering it, and his jaw twitches, moving under some inner tension I can’t see.
I take one more step; nothing between us now except a few inches and the thinnest veil of self-control imaginable.
My pride and fear and desire, as raw and touchy as exposed nerve endings, make me hot and restless with horrible energy .
“Unless,” I bite out, “you’re going to take the coward’s way out.”
His eyebrows rise, and he steps into me, amused, eating up the space between us, trapping me between the corner of the counter and his body.
He doesn’t close the distance.
He waits arrogantly.
Does he really think I’ll be the first to break?
I reach out and grab him by his fine grey shirt.
“You’re going to pretend you don’t want to, Knight?”
“I’m done pretending.” His voice is quiet, calm.
Deeper. He’s changed; he changed while he was away from me, becoming a more refined version of the thing I knew him as.
It’s destabilising, and terrifyingly, it makes me want him even more than before.
“I think the truth is that you’re the one who’d rather pretend.” I open my mouth to protest, glaring up at him, but he continues in the same mild, firm tone.
“That’s why you only had the courage to text me when you were drunk, and that’s why you sent me that second text. Such a pathetic manipulation attempt, Sutton—you don’t think I know you’re capable of so much more than that?”
“Since when do you know me so well?” I sneer, but my entire body is in flames.
“I’ve always known you. From the first time I ever met you, I looked at you and knew exactly what you were. Clever, resilient, competitive, prideful, repressed, detached. You want power, but you also want justice. You crave pleasure, but you like discipline. You’re loyal but never soft. You’re passionate, but you’re cold as ice. And you’re stubborn, unforgiving and self-destructive.” I try to pull away as he speaks, but there’s nowhere to go.
“I know you, Sophie Sutton, I always have, and that’s the one thing you’ve always failed to understand. I know you, and that’s why I love you.”
“You love me?” My voice breaks halfway through the sentence.
Evan watches me, steady and unshaken.
He doesn’t even flinch.
A long, intolerable silence stretches between us, a silence that somehow feels longer than ten long months.
“Why else would I be here?” he murmurs.
My throat tightens. I swallow thickly.
“To see if I’m miserable without you.”
He laughs, low and rough.
“You were miserable with me.”
“I’m more miserable now.”
“So?” He tilts my chin up with two fingers.
“I’m miserable too. So what?”
“So stay .”
He says nothing, fingers still pressing up into my chin, raising my face up to his.
Is he going to kiss me?
He must be thinking about it, his blue eyes dropping to my lips with such intensity that I practically feel my mouth scorched by the bright blue flame.
He should kiss me—claim his prize.
He’s won, after all, hasn’t he?
I texted first, I stepped out from behind the counter, I asked him to stay.
But—“I can’t.”
“Why not?” I snap.
“Because I’m just a creature of flesh and blood, and there’s only so much self-control I can exercise.”
My chest heaves under the crushing staccato rush of my breath.
“What do you mean?”
His breath glides over my mouth as he replies in a low, rough murmur, “I mean that there’s no chance I’m staying the night without doing dirty, disgusting things to you.”
Please.
God, please .
“So do it. ”
His fingers slide away from my chin, lightly tracing my jaw, my neck, throwing back a strand of my hair over my shoulder.
I lean into him without even thinking, tipping myself up on my toes, dizzy and heady with want, with the heat of him, with the smell of his perfume and his skin and the sheer elation of being near him, being his .
I lean to press my mouth to his; he steps away, pushing me firmly back by my shoulders.
“Not like this,” he says.
And he has the bare-faced audacity to still sound calm.
I shove his hands off my shoulders angrily.
“Like what, then?”
He smiles.
“You can have all of me, or none of me. But I’m done being your in-between thing, and I’m done meeting you halfway. You want me, Sophie? Then be mine, and I’ll be yours. All of me in exchange for all of you. Equal investment, equal risk, equal pain and equal pleasure.”
I stare up at him, heart pounding, stunned into absolute silence by the fact that he’s come all the way here, after almost a year, driven for hours after a night of overtime work, come to me on Valentine’s Day night, only to throw down this gauntlet.
All of me, in exchange for all of you.
That’s not a reasonable proposition—that’s mutually assured destruction.
I shake my head numbly.
Evan lets out a soft laugh.
“Thanks for the tea.”
He turns and walks away.
I follow him out into the hallway, heart hammering, watching him as he shrugs on his coat.
My skin is buzzing with nerves, the voice in my head whimpering don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.
I cross my arms and glare at him.
“You’re really going.”
He shrugs.
“I have work in the morning.” He opens the door.
“Goodnight, then.”
He’s actually doing it.
He’s named his terms, and now he’s enforcing them.
He’s leaving . My entire soul rebels against it, outraged at being denied what I know is mine.
I have the urge to reach for him, to drag him back to me, to close the space between us and make him mine.
But what good would that do?
He’s told me I can have him—now it’s up to me to decide whether he’s worth the price he’s asking me to pay.
“You drove all the way here for a cup of tea?” I sneer.
He stops in the doorway, turns.
The corner of his mouth tilts ever so slightly.
He answers me with quiet, unbearable certainty.
“I drove all the way here because I wanted to see you, my gorgeous, vicious love.”
My heart drops.
Evan smirks, slow and wicked, and then he turns and leaves, closing the door behind him with a soft, final click.