Chapter Seven
Brielle
In the aftermath, the office is colder than before. Or maybe it only feels that way because of the sweat cooling on my skin. I don't know. But I shiver as I stare at the marks on my wrists.
My skirt is a wrinkled wreck around my ankles. Every muscle in my body aches. Little spots of blood dot the rug, standing in testament to what we did.
Asher stands over me, zipping up and re-knotting his tie, not even bothering to fix his hair.
For a long, silent minute, he just stares at me, and I wonder if he sees what's in front of him—me with my legs splayed, my lips swollen, my hair wild, and my panties in a ruined tangle beside me—or if he sees what's beneath that.
If he sees my racing thoughts and the way satisfaction and shame crash together, crowding out every other emotion.
I curl up, hugging my knees to my chest, and try to pretend my body isn't pulsing with something wild and addictive. My thighs are sticky with blood, his cum, and my own juices. The pain between my legs is an electric throb. And God help me, I already want more.
I wait for him to gloat. To say something cutting.
Instead, he kneels.
The monster of New York, the CEO who breaks everything he touches, lowers himself to the floor, bringing his face level with mine. There's nothing left of the arrogance that usually pours off him. There's only a strange, taut concern that looks foreign on him.
He lifts my chin with a single, careful finger. "You okay, princess?" he asks, his voice raw.
I nod, but there's a tremble in it I can't shake.
He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and starts cleaning me up. He wipes my thighs with a tenderness that makes me want to puke. The fabric catches on my overly sensitive skin, and I wince, but he doesn't apologize, only slows his movement.
I watch his hands. I expect them to be steady. They're not. His fingers tremble so slightly that anyone else might miss it, but I'm looking for a flaw, for evidence he's less than invincible. I don't really expect to find one, but there it is anyway.
I just wish I knew what it meant.
He pulls my skirt up, tugs my blouse down as best he can, and stands to retrieve my shoes from where they skidded under the desk. When he comes back, he slips the heels onto my feet before tucking my ruined panties into his pocket.
"Can you walk?" he asks, more softly than before.
I try to stand. My legs don't want to hold me, but I'll be goddamned if I let him see that. I grit my teeth and rise, using the edge of his desk for leverage. He moves to steady me, but I shoot him a look that says I'll kill him if he touches me.
He holds up both hands, backing away.
We stand like that for a second: me, shaking and angry, him, tight-lipped and silent. There's nothing left to say.
He unlocks the office door and motions for me to go first. I step into the hallway, my heels clicking, every step an exercise in humiliation. But the office is empty, even the cleaning crew long gone. There's no one left to witness my walk of shame except the ghost of my former dignity.
He follows me onto the elevator, neither of us speaking as it descends. I see my reflection in the chrome doors…eyes glassy, makeup smeared, a bruise blooming on my neck where he bit me.
I look wrecked. Somehow, even though he's perfectly put together beside me, he looks just as wrecked as I do, with bites, scratches, and claw marks blooming to bruises all over his throat and jaw.
When we reach the garage, he hits the remote to unlock his car. "I'll drive you home."
I want to refuse, but the idea of limping to the subway, of being pressed into a crowd of strangers while I look freshly fucked and have no panties, is more than I can stomach.
I slide into the passenger seat, staring out the window as he pulls onto the street. The silence is corrosive. I count my breaths and pretend I don't want to reach over and claw his face to ribbons.
That is what I want, though. Because he made me forget myself. Because he made me believe, for just a second, that this could be real. Because, God help me, I don't regret a single second of what happened. I loved every rough, cruel, perfect moment, just like he said I would.
And I don't know what to do with that.
How do I teach myself to hate him when he feels like the only thing in the world that I might actually need?
How do I learn to guard my heart against him when he's a master at finding ways to burrow deeper?
I can't tell love from hate anymore, not with him.
I'm not sure I ever could. And now that he's been inside me, now that he knows the shape of my ruin, and the taste of my defeat? I'm not sure I'll ever truly be free.
He drives with one hand, his knuckles white on the wheel. The city flashes by in barely noticed bursts—bodegas, yellow cabs, a couple fighting under a broken streetlight. Everything feels both hyperreal and impossibly distant, like I'm somewhere else and right in the center of it at the same time.
I don't look at him until I realize we're not heading toward my apartment. He's taking us north, in the exact opposite direction.
"You missed my turn," I say, my voice flat.
He doesn't answer. He just keeps driving, his jaw set and his gaze fixed straight ahead.
I glance at the dashboard. The navigation screen shows a route that clearly isn't mine.
He's taking us to his place.
"I said, you missed my turn." I raise my voice, a hard, hysterical edge to it.
"I heard you."
"Then what the fuck—"
"You're not going home," he says, cutting me off.
The words are so matter-of-fact, it's like he's telling me the goddamn sky is blue. I clench my fists in my lap, feel my nails dig crescent moons into my palms, and try not to panic. I can't go home with him. I won't.
"I'm not going home with you. Turn around, Asher."
He ignores me.
I reach for the door handle. We're doing forty on a service road. It's not fast, but it's fast enough to break a leg. I think I'm willing to risk it if it means not spending the night in his bed. If it means not walking into places in his life that feel a little bit like intimacy.
He must see something on my face because he curses, an edge of panic in it.
"Don't," he says. The word isn't a command or a threat. It's a plea.
I pause, my hand on the latch, and stare at him.
There's real fear in his eyes, not for himself, but for me.
It's the same way he looked at me the night of the accident, right before the garbage truck slammed into us.
And right after, when he was trying to pull me out of the wreckage, his breath a wild, panicked rasp.
He was scared that night, in a way I'd never seen fear before.
I guess maybe I can still make him feel something other than hatred. Fear. The realization makes my stomach churn.
He pulls over with a screech, the car jolting as he wrenches it to the shoulder. We're half on the grass, half on the gravel shoulder. He leans over, his arm a bar across my chest.
"Don't," he says again, quieter now. "I can't—" He swallows, stops himself, and then starts over. "Don't do that."
I want to kiss him. I want to cry for him. Mostly, I want to crawl out of my skin and never look back. Maybe then the shame of that night will stop burning. Perhaps then we won't both stay broken, bleeding over something we can't go back and undo.
He watches me, waiting to see what I'll do.
I let go of the handle, flexing my fingers.
He exhales a long, uneven breath, like he's been holding it for a year. His hand drops to his side.
"I'll take you home," he says, almost to himself.
He pulls the car back onto the road, this time making every single turn that leads to my apartment. The rest of the drive is silent, except for the click of his blinker and the distant sirens that always haunt this city.
When we reach my building, he parks in front. He looks at me, but I refuse to meet his eyes.
"I won't allow anything to happen to you," he says, so low I have to strain to hear him. "Not if I can help it."
I want to believe him. I really do. Maybe that's why he's so dangerous.
I want to believe there's softness and goodness and love in him.
I want to believe that I matter to him. And every single time I let myself believe it, even for a second, he does something monstrous to prove me wrong.
He does something awful, just to remind me that he'll never forgive me for what I broke the night I decided to take both of our lives in my hands.
So I do what I always do: I hurt him before he can hurt me. "What could possibly happen to me that's worse than you, Asher?" I ask, hating myself for saying it even as the words leave my lips.
He doesn't answer. He just sits there, his hands locked on the wheel, his face a mask, as I open the door and step out.
I turn and walk inside, counting each step until I'm out of sight. Only then do I let myself breathe.
Only then do I let myself cry.
I don't remember riding the elevator up, or walking down the hall, or fumbling to type in my lock code. It's not until I'm inside, with the lights blazing, that I can even breathe.
I stand in the entryway, my chest heaving, pain and shame crawling under my skin.
My hands shake as I peel off my blouse, careful not to tear the buttons.
I glance at my reflection in the mirror over the credenza and catalog the damage.
There are already bruises in the shape of fingerprints on my hips, another on my throat.
My thighs are still red and sticky, dotted with bite marks where his teeth caught my skin.
I drop the blouse and my skirt in a heap, step out of my heels, and head straight for the bathroom. The light is too harsh, but I don't turn it off. I want to see. Maybe it's the only way I'll remember that there is nothing soft in him.
Maybe there's nothing soft in me, either, because I loved every brutal second of what we did.