Chapter 46
Dakota
My fork scraped against my plate, dragging through the sticky pool of syrup surrounding my half-eaten pancakes.
It was a late breakfast, but it was the weekend, and I’d had a long night.
It was my first time actually spending the night at Micah’s house.
Usually, I had dinner with Mason and Micah, then I was driven home later, only to be brought back at some time the next day. But last night…
Fuck.
Micah was drinking coffee, scrolling through emails on his laptop. It felt incredibly domestic—until I remembered he was my professor, and he’d just shared me with another man for some reason I hadn’t yet worked out. We’d never discussed it before. He couldn’t know I knew Mason, could he?
“Are you gay?” I blurted, unable to hold the question in any longer. It’d been bugging me since last night, among other things. Straight men presumably didn’t go out of their way to taste cum, did they?
Micah’s eyes slid over to meet mine. “Bisexual,” he answered calmly.
In the context of last night, that reveal wasn’t shocking. But compared to the months I’d known him, when I wouldn’t have guessed he was anything but straight, it felt different. Maybe I was finally learning things about him.
“And do you want…him? Do you want Mason? I just don’t know why—”
“No. I don’t.” He cut me off, piercing me with his cold gaze. Tension sizzled in the air.
“Why did you kiss me like that, then?” I pressed, needing some sort of reason.
I still couldn’t work out how the men knew each other, and Micah wouldn’t tell me when I tried to ask him. His answer was always something vague. Business. He was extremely skilled at dodging my questions, always maneuvering the conversation away from giving me any of the answers I really sought.
“To remind him who that perfect little mouth belongs to.” Micah wouldn’t take his eyes off me, his jaw flexing. My face was getting warm. “Your lips are mine. Your tongue is mine. Your throat is mine. If he thinks he can come in your mouth without my influence, he’s dead wrong.”
“Is he bisexual too?”
“How would I know that?”
“Well, I’m just—I just don’t know why you wanted me to do that to your friend in the first—”
“He’s not my friend.”
I paused, lips parted on my sentence that got cut off. “What?”
“Mason hates me.”
Well, I could’ve guessed that. I’d only said ‘friend’ as a placeholder, because I didn’t know what else to say. They didn’t act like friends last night, or any of the nights prior. The whole thing was so fucking weird, and it seemed to be torturous for all three of us so…why?
“He hates you?” I questioned, trying to clarify. “Do you hate him?”
There were a few seconds where neither of us spoke, and an itchy feeling crawled over my skin. Something felt wrong, different. He’s not going to tell me the truth.
“No. I don’t hate him.”
“Okay, then—”
“You don’t either, do you?”
My face paled and I rolled my lips together. He doesn’t know. He can’t. Mason wouldn’t tell him, and neither would I. “I don’t even know him, so I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Sure seemed like you were really enjoying that blowjob.”
“Which you told me to do,” I reminded him, nausea making me shaky. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home. “Without even asking me beforehand if I’d be okay with it.”
“But you were okay with it, weren’t you? Huh?” He raised his brows. “You didn’t tell me no, did you? Seemed you were pretty okay with it to me. More than okay, even. You were pretty goddamn wet when I fingered you afterwards.”
It felt like he’d slapped me across the face.
“Are you calling me a slut or something?” I stood up, my chair sliding backwards across the wood. “Did you want me to be your sex doll robot who has no reaction to anything other than you?”
Micah looked back at his computer, then clicked on another fucking email, disregarding me. If he was angry about this, it was nobody’s fault but his own.
“Why would you do that?” I seethed. “Why would you—why, Micah? You made me suck another man’s dick in front of you, and now it feels like you’re mad at me for it. You told me to!”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Then what? What are you?”
He pressed his lips together, refusing to answer me again. I hated it. I hated him.
For the first time, I found myself resenting the fact that he was my professor.
I couldn’t escape him, not unless I wanted to let myself fail his class.
It was only the middle of the semester, and no matter what, I was going to be stuck watching him lecture, listening to him talk with my group mates during lab, turning every one of my assignments into his goddamn hand.
I couldn’t just break up with him—if we were even together at all.
I felt overwhelmingly helpless.
I took a step away from the table, my gaze zipping around the room, my mind racing. Micah loudly slammed his laptop shut, then stood up. Oh, shit.
I managed to make it around the other side of the island in a few quick steps, putting some distance between us. But Micah moved closer and my pulse ratcheted up further, my fight or flight response set on a hairpin trigger. If I could make it through the kitchen and out the back door…
“Answer me! What are you, Micah? If you’re not mad at me for doing what you asked, then what?” I was practically shouting now. Good thing Mason wasn’t here to hear this.
Again, there was no response, which made me think he was lying about being mad in the first place.
It was messing me up inside, the not knowing.
Why was he so difficult to read?
I’m missing something, and I’m so afraid that what I’m missing is something vital.
I know it is. And I can’t fucking figure it out.
I noticed an empty glass sitting in the sink and I took a half-step in that direction, gears whirring in my brain. Micah moved with me, still several yards away, but only getting closer. What are you going to do when you reach me? Punish me? Hurt me? I don’t know what you want from me anymore.
I don’t even know who you are. I thought I did, but that was foolish.
Pulse pounding in my head, I shuffled to the side, arm slowly reaching toward the counter with the sink.
It was a stupid idea, but I didn’t care.
All my thoughts were spinning in my head, moving too fast for reason or rationality to slow me down.
If he wanted to be mad, I’d give him a reason to be mad.
My trembling fingers wrapped around the cup in the sink, my palm sweaty on the glass. I held it up, not severing eye contact, chest heaving with my anger. Micah’s eyes flicked to the glass, then back to my face, his brows pulled together.
Then I threw the cup on the ground as hard as I could, glass shattering everywhere.
A rush flooded my veins, searing wildly through me. Maybe with all the glass in the way, I could escape him. It felt good to be reckless, to do things I knew he wouldn’t like. My hands were shaking fiercely now, adrenaline dumping into my system.
I want to fuck up your life too.
For an instant, I was afraid he wouldn’t care enough to come chase me. That maybe I’d actually gone too far.
But Micah was quick.
In three long strides, he’d reached me.
A short scream burst out of me and I did want to run, but there was glass everywhere, and my feet were bare, and it didn’t even matter because Micah’s arms were already looping around my waist, picking me up. I was half-relieved, half-terrified.
He carried me upstairs half over his shoulder, not hearing any of my protests, then set me on the floor in his bedroom.
He sat on the edge of the bed, positioning me on my knees between his feet.
I glared up at him, even though I mostly wanted to rest my cheek on his thigh and close my eyes and just let him fix everything.
I’m so goddamn tired.
You can’t fix this. You can’t fix me.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, laying his palms on my shoulders. “Breathe.”
“Fuck you.”
“Try that again.”
My heart tripped nervously over a beat, but I steeled myself.
“I said fuck you, Micah.”
For a moment, he was silent. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even react to what I’d said. Somehow, that scared me more than anything else. A cold feeling slithered under my skin, gliding across my body.
I regretted saying it. Regretted throwing the glass. Regretted even sucking Mason’s dick in the first place. I want to go back to how it was before.
Then, before I could even blink, he’d yanked me off the ground.
I gasped with the pain of his grip, but it was already gone by the time I registered it, my body tumbling onto the mattress.
Micah ripped open a drawer on his nightstand and I flipped onto my hands and knees, crawling away, heart in my throat.
I had no idea what he kept in that drawer, and I didn’t want to find out.
“Stay the fuck where I put you, Dakota, so help me God!” he shouted.
I froze, tears springing to my eyes. Fearfully, I looked over my shoulder at him. He’d never yelled at me like that.
He was holding a bundle of black rope.
“Are you done?” he asked loudly, grabbing more rope. My chest flushed hot, blood rising in my cheeks. “Or do you want to keep fighting me? I can do this all day. Your choice.”
I hesitated, my mouth slightly open.
Indecision stole my brain from me, and I couldn’t think. Did I want to submit to him now? Or did I want to fight him? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know anything. Tell me the answer. I was caught, like a deer in headlights, prey being stared down by a predator.
“Lay on your back,” he ordered.
I was already doing it by the time he stopped speaking; I was already listening to him. Tears dripping down my cheeks, chest caught on silent sobs, lower lip wobbling, I obeyed him. I laid flat on my back, head on the pillow, my hair splayed around me.
Micah knelt over me, cupping my face with his hand, then he leaned down and kissed my forehead.
I squeezed my eyes shut, more tears coming now.