Chapter Three
Delilah
The door creaks like it regrets its life choices. Which is fair. I am the regret. The drama. The walking court-ordered catastrophe.
Six men sit in a sad little circle of silver folding chairs.
Every one of them looks like they’ve tried to fix a woman with mediocre fingering and a motorcycle that doesn’t start.
The air smells like Drakkar Noir, spicy armpit, and unsupervised ego.
It crackles with masculine rage and protein farts.
And then I see him.
Ryker.
Sir Tight Jeans. Duke of Delts. First of His Name, Breaker of Restraints, The Patron Saint of Problematic Fantasies.
He’s lounging like the chair is his throne, one tattooed arm thrown over the backrest as if he invented posture porn. Legs spread in that “I have testosterone and no impulse control” stance. Chin tilted just enough to make my inner slut do cartwheels.
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
And I swear on Satan’s unwashed jockstrap, my knees buckle like a cheap bra under a high-speed motorboat handjob.
My brain pulls the emergency brake on all function and starts piping in slow, jazzy porn music. Every neuron is chanting sit on his face in Gregorian choir format.
“Hi,” I manage, to the group, but mostly to his thighs. His biceps. His forearms. Sweet Lucifer’s tattooed nutsack, those fucking veiny forearms. I want to lick every inch and learn who hurt him.
Across the circle, a man with wire-frame glasses and the sexual charisma of a soggy Triscuit adjusts a clipboard loaded with papers and judgment. He looks like the type who files his taxes in ink and has missionary once a year with the lights off and a small apology afterward.
He’s the therapist, I assume. Dr. Dickblock.
“You’re… new,” he says, like it physically pains him.
“I’m Delilah,” I announce, chipper and chaotic. I want to sound normal, but I probably sound like a slutty cult leader. “I’m here to support the judicial process. Personal growth. Emotional reflection. Boundaries.”
I’m also here to climb Ryker like he’s a jungle gym in a porn parody of Gladiator.
Dr. Dickblock blinks. “This group isn’t for… that.”
“Right,” I say with the bright, terrifying certainty of a woman who put glitter in her court binder.
“It’s about angry boundaries. And I am stuffed with rage.
Absolutely engorged. Just leaking unresolved trauma like a rage pinata.
You hit me with a stick and all that comes out is ‘fuck you, Bambi’ and passive-aggressive Instagram captions. ”
The man beside Dr. Dickblock mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
Ryker doesn’t laugh. But his mouth twitches.
It’s not a smile.
It’s a foreplay warning.
I mentally strip him out of that too-tight gym tee and imagine how many traffic violations his body could commit. I’m not saying I’d throw my life away for this man.
I’m just saying if he told me to rob a Walgreens in just a hoodie and nipple clamps, I’d already be halfway there.
Dr. Dickblock sighs the sigh of a man whose dick has never been sucked during an argument. “Fine. Sit down. We’re working on triggers today.”
I sashay over to the chair beside Ryker with the kind of confidence that says “‘I know I’m a lot, now try and survive it.” Then I sink into the seat with a little bounce, crossing my legs like I’m auditioning to be the downfall of someone’s marriage.
“Perfect,” I purr. “I’m surrounded by triggers.”
Ryker glances at me. Just a sliver of eye contact. But it hits like a sucker punch to the cervix.
And then he smirks.
Not a little twitch. A full-on “I know what you taste like in my dreams” expression.
Oh no.
Oh screw me slowly with a court summons.
I’m going to climb this man like a carnival ride that violates state safety codes. I will worship his dick like it’s a deity and I’m behind on my prayers.
And if this group is about processing anger? Then baby, slap a rage sticker on my forehead and call me emotionally unstable. Because I just found my new trigger.
And his name is Ryker.
“We were doing introductions,” Dr. Dickblock says, voice tight, one namaste away from choking someone out with his emotional support yoga strap. “Can you tell us your name and a little about why you were ordered to these sessions?”
I sit up straighter, spine clicking like a haunted music box, tits presenting like they’ve been personally invited to the Met Gala by Satan in a thong.
I make eye contact with the group. All of them.
One by one. Just enough to imprint my presence on their souls without accidentally triggering a feral pissing contest. Except the guy directly across from me.
He’s got real rabid raccoon energy. I clock him as the type who drinks energy drinks warm and has punched a vending machine more than once.
“My name is Delilah P. Darling,” I say with enough sugar to rot a dentist’s teeth. “I answer to Darling or Delilah. Or, depending on the mood… other things.”
Rabid Randy cocks his head like he’s not sure if I’m flirting or manifesting a plan to key his truck and fuck his dad. “What’s the P stand for?” he grunts.
I smile, all venom and Revlon. “Poison. Or Persistent. Possibly Pestilence. My ex says it stands for Please Stop Texting Me, but he’s a little bitch.”
Dr. Dickblock clears his throat with the kind of moral judgment usually reserved for bad grammar and public masturbation. “And what brings you here?”
“Well,” I say, drawing the word out, warming up to lie, “I was court-ordered to learn some boundaries.”
A few guys nod like, yeah, fair.
“But then this enchanting man walked in,” I continue, locking eyes with Ryker, my ovaries whisper, fully unsupervised, “and I just knew, spiritually and vaginally, that I needed to learn about anger, too.”
Dr. Dickblock closes his eyes, hand to head.
“I felt it,” I say solemnly, tapping my cleavage. “Right here. Divine underwire. The archangel Gabriel flicked my nipple and whispered: go forth, my chaotic daughter. Become the rage slut you were born to be.”
Ryker doesn’t react. Not much. Just a twitch at the corner of his mouth like his dick heard me and started doing warmup jumping jacks.
I want to marry his triceps and let his delts name our future mistakes.
Dr. Dickblock stares at me a long beat. “Okay… thank you. Back to triggers, then.”
I’ve apparently been dismissed. Like I’m not the sexy main character in this court-mandated episode of Emotional Damage: The Group Therapy Musical.
Whatever. He can eat his clipboard.
Because Ryker, darling Ryker, is speaking.
He nods once, a motion so casual it punches me in the clit.
“Carry on,” Dr. Dickblock tells him. “You were telling us about what triggered you this week.”
Ryker cracks his neck. The sound of it alone could make panties combust. Then he turns to me. “I’m Jett Ryker,” he says, slow and sinful, voice all gravel and promises I’m legally not allowed to accept. “You can call me Jett.”
Well, there goes my last scrap of sanity. My pussy just eloped with his dick. They’re honeymooning in Vegas and planning a joint bank account. She’s got a Pinterest board titled “Our Horny Future.”
He leans back in the chair, legs spread in that ‘I will ruin you, but you’ll thank me’ way.
“So the fuckwit I was telling you about,” he starts, and honestly, I’m not listening. Not really.
Because I’m busy imagining his hands all over me, on my neck, gripping my thighs, writing declarations of war in the sweat fog of my bathroom mirror.
I am no longer in therapy. I am in a mating season hallucination.
One smirk away from crawling into his lap and asking for forgiveness with my mouth full.
I try to focus. I really do. I think he’s talking about a guy named Chad, a betrayal involving creatine, and some kind of gym thunderdome rules violation.
Doesn’t matter.
Because he just said, call me Jett.
And that’s basically the same as asking me on a date.
Jett smirks again. Just a flicker.
And in my head, we’re already married, in the courthouse where I get convicted of crimes against public decency, riding him like a mechanical bull on the defense table while a court stenographer tries to spell “oh fuck yes harder.”
The bailiff fans himself and sobs into a Bible.
The judge bangs the gavel and declares me legally insane and married.
I throw rice made of glitter and unpaid parking tickets.
Jett picks me up, bridal-style, and carries me straight to hell like a gentleman.
It’s not a fantasy. It’s a vision.
It’s beautiful.
“Miss Darling?” Dr. Dickblock says.
Time hiccups.
Oh. Right. Group therapy. Rage. Growth. Boundaries.
God, I want to lick Jett’s forearms until I forget my social security number.