13. Dawson
Dawson
I wake up in my own room on Saturday morning, thankful not to have to see Harper right now. It’s a delicate line I’m walking. I want to be around her constantly, to feel her warmth around me and completely envelop every one of my senses with her.
But the more I’m around her, the angrier I am. Fucking Malik. Sending her flowers? Trying to buy a bride off of my father? Everything about him is appalling, and I have to think of some way out of the situation.
After I shower and change into some athletic shorts and a T-shirt, I walk into the kitchen to find Harper sitting in loungewear, doodling in her sketch pad while eating cereal.
She looks over at me and doesn’t say anything.
She and I have barely said two words to each other since I destroyed the bouquet in her office.
For once, I’m lost for words. A part of me wants to continue my torment of her, making her squirm and miserable while we work together. It brings me such joy. I just can’t bring myself to do that with her at the moment.
“I know it’s the weekend, but that doesn’t mean you have the day off,” I say, grabbing my protein powder from the cabinet and putting together a shake before my run.
“So I don’t get a single day off?” Harper asks, dropping her spoon in the bowl.
“You’ll get off when I don’t need you,” I say, pulling out my phone and texting her over a list of tasks to complete. “I’ll be gone for a couple of hours, and I want all of these done by the time I’m back.”
Harper rolls her eyes and folds up her sketch pad before dropping the bowl in the sink and heading to her room to get dressed for the day.
I head out of the penthouse, knowing she’ll be busy for at least a few hours while I try to vent some of my frustrations on my run. It’s hot and humid, which makes every movement even more punishing. That’s exactly what I want right now.
I move as quickly as I can, feeling the burning in my muscles as I move back and forth rhythmically, trying to keep the same pace as I climb steep hills and wind through the streets.
All I can think about is this deal with Malik. My frustration has grown ever since we met him at the nightclub, and this anger is threatening to consume me entirely. If I can’t do something about it, I’m going to implode.
Why Malik of all people? There’s plenty of other people in the game with men just as capable as Malik’s. My dad knows who Malik is. He knows what selling Harper to him is going to be like.
Malik is cruel, and so is everyone he surrounds himself with.
All of them are brutal and maniacal with their women.
They look at them as objects to own and trade between each other.
I’ve heard plenty of rumors about their wives showing up bruised and battered, punished for the smallest mistakes they make.
How could Diana approve of him handing her over like this? I know she doesn’t care for Harper’s appearance, but she clearly has no love for her daughter at all.
I wish I could spare Harper from this in some way, but I have no idea how.
It seems hopeless. I don’t even know why I care so much about it.
Sure, Harper is beautiful, and I like fucking her.
But I need to focus on my business. I can’t focus on something I have absolutely no control over.
I can’t let it keep getting to me like this.
But even when I try to force this thought out of my mind, I imagine her being handed over to a monster like Malik, and I just can’t let it happen. That’s a reality I refuse to live in.
When I’ve had enough torturing myself, I go back to the penthouse and hop in the shower. I let the cold water wash over me, cooling down my virtually overheated limbs as the water massages my aching muscles.
The shower did nothing to help me calm down, which isn’t that surprising. Nothing’s been able to.
I towel off and get dressed, storming through the penthouse in search of Harper to make sure she’s done everything I asked of her. I wasn’t gone that long, so it seems nearly impossible that she got everything done. That might play perfectly into my hands.
I find her in her room, dressed in more professional work attire, sitting on her bed with a sketch pad in her lap. I cross my arms when I look at her, shaking my head.
“Are you kidding me? Did you just completely ignore everything I told you to do?” I ask, slamming the door as I make my way inside.
Harper looks up at me with annoyance in her eyes, standing up and dropping the sketch pad on the bed before walking out of the room. I follow her as she makes her way into my bedroom, opening my closet door and showing off my newly laundered clothes that she had delivered from the dry cleaner.
“Item number one,” she says dramatically as she points to the finished task. She immediately leads me to my home office, where I have a brand-new mouse and ergonomic keyboard both already set up in front of the desk. “Item number two.”
I follow her through the rest of the penthouse as I see that she’s completed every task I’ve given her. When she’s done with her tour, we stop in the living room, and she folds her arms in front of her with a smug smile.
“Maybe you should double-check before you barge into my room just to be an asshole,” Harper says, raising an eyebrow as if challenging me.
I narrow my eyes at her and take a step closer, pushing her toward the couch. She backs up with something almost playful in her eyes as she waits for me to continue whatever we’re about to start.
“I believe your contract mentions something about insubordination,” I say.
“I did what you asked me to do,” Harper retaliates, looking up at me with the annoyance growing on her face.
“Yeah, but doesn’t talking back count as insubordination?
” I pause and wait for her to say something, as soon as she opens her mouth, I continue.
“As your boss, I say it does. Because of that, I’m going to have to give you some disciplinary action.
I can’t have my employees disobeying the rules, can I? ”
She looks up at me with curiosity in her eyes, and I reach down to unzip my pants, freeing my rapidly inflating cock in front of her.
Her eyes widen, and I see a wide range of questions crossing her mind.
One thing I catch, something that intrigues me more, is apprehension.
Here she is, once again squirming in front of me.
I might still be angry and frustrated, but this is what I need. This is the only thing that’s going to calm me down now.
“Open your mouth,” I demand, bringing my hand to her chin and tilting her face up toward my groin.
Her gaze moves from my cock to the smile growing on my lips with a sense of fear and dread mingling within them. She bites her lower lip and shakes her head, quickly turning her face away from me.
She tries to back away, but I hold her closer, taking a seat on the couch and getting myself comfortable as I move her closer to me. “It’ll be easier if you just do what I say.”
“I can’t...” Harper says, forcing herself to look away from my cock.
“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how,” I say, stroking my cock with my hand to tease it while I wait for her lips to part. I use my free hand to lace my fingers through her hair, bringing her closer.
She doesn’t resist that much at first. Her head lowers to my groin, and I feel her breath warming my shaft. She presses her hands against my thighs and tries to push away while I hold her closer with the excitement swelling in my chest.
“Dawson, no,” Harper says, slapping my hand away from her.
She backs away from me panting, her cheeks bright red. I watch her for a minute, not understanding what’s happening. The two of us have done things like this before. We’ve already gone much further together—a blowjob is nothing in comparison.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, feeling a little frustrated about the situation. This is a major boner killer, and I shove my cock back in my pants and zip them up. “You’re mine for the year, remember?”
She stands up and looks away from me, her entire body trembling and shaking. I watch her for a moment, stunned. I don’t understand what’s going on.
I move closer and put a hand on her shoulder to turn her around and get to the bottom of this. Only as soon as I touch her, she yelps and cowers away from me. She ducks out of the way like I’m about to hit her and falls to the ground by the coffee table.
I just stand here for a minute watching her, noticing how her entire body trembles as she brings her hands to her face to cover her eyes. She whimpers and cries, lifting her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
My fists instinctively ball at my side as I watch this unfold. This isn’t a normal reaction to something like this. This reaction has to have been caused by something. The idea of someone possibly hurting her or scarring her in some way to cause this makes my blood run hot.
Harper whimpers and cries while I watch her, and even though I want to create distance between us and prevent myself from being soft around her, I can’t stop myself from kneeling down beside her. I reach out to touch her again, and she backs away, looking up at me with wild, frenzied eyes.
“Harper, it’s okay,” I assure her in a calm voice. She shakes her head, tears streaming from her eyes as she watches me with horror. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and it does nothing to calm her. “Take a deep breath, okay? Just do as I do.”
I sit up straighter and put a hand on my diaphragm, taking a slow inhale in before exhaling.
My eyes don’t leave her the entire time.
It takes her a moment to let her breath become steady as she tries to mimic my breathing.
After a minute of deep breathing, her crying settles, and she’s no longer whimpering in fear.
She’s still shaking, but I imagine that won’t calm down for a little while.
“Will you tell me what happened that caused that reaction?” I ask her in a calm voice when she seems to be more in control.
Harper just shakes her head and brings her knees to her chest again, resting her head between them. “I can’t.”
I wait for a moment, hoping she might change her mind, then she looks at me with a heaviness in her eyes that makes my chest ache. “It’s not that nothing happened. I just can’t tell you about it because I’m not ready to talk.”
All I can do is nod and give her the space she needs to come to terms with discussing it when she’s ready. These are things you can’t force. As much as I want to know what happened, to fix what she’s feeling in some way, I have to wait for her.
We sit together in silence for a few minutes as she recovers from the trauma response, because that’s exactly what that was. There’s a pit in my stomach thinking that I might have caused this reaction in some way. I never meant to hurt her.
Harper sniffles beside me, and it reminds me of the night I heard her moaning during her nightmare.
Looking back, I can see that her nightmare might not have just been because she went to bed hungry.
I know she’s had a pretty difficult life.
I don’t know all the details, but I can’t imagine growing up with someone like Diana was pleasant.
But now, I think there’s something more to it all.
It has something to do with what just happened.
There’s something in Harper that’s broken inside.
I have my suspicions that it’s something to do with sex, and it infuriates me knowing that someone hurt her.
I wish she would tell me about it so I could find them and do everything in my power to make their life a living hell.
How am I supposed to hand her over to Malik like this? Malik won’t care that she’s damaged, that there’s something much deeper going on with her than he could understand. He’ll see her and think that she’s his and take her any way he wants. He’ll brutalize her without any regard for her well-being.
I won’t let that happen. I can’t let another man like him hurt her.
“Are you going to be okay?” I ask, gently placing a hand on her shoulder.
This time she doesn’t pull away from me.
She nods and flashes me a meek smile as I stand up.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off to relax a bit?
I’ll be in my office doing some work. Just stay close in case I need you for something, okay? ”
Harper nods and stands up, dusting off her pants even though the floor is pristinely clean.
I watch her go to her bedroom before heading to my office.
I’ll make sure I don’t actually need her for anything, but for the time being, I need to make sure she’s safe here.
I can watch her here, but I can’t if she’s out there in the world.
I’m not going to let anything happen to her ever again.