39. Mandy
MANDY
The first guy I had sex with after I got free was a disappointment.
So was the second.
By the third, I’d figured out the problem wasn’t them. It was me. To me, sex isn’t about connecting and cuddling. It’s about control and release.
My body belongs entirely to me. I decide what happens to it. I decide when it starts, when it stops, and when I walk away.
Which is exactly why I should fuck Hendricks.
Get it over with. Get him out of my system. I already know I’ll be disappointed. Reality rarely lives up to five weeks of sexual frustration, and at this point, I’ve built the man up into some kind of orgasmic urban legend.
Fine. Whatever. I need my brain back.
We have a girl to find, Ashford breathing down my neck, and a clock running out. I can’t keep losing IQ points every time Hendricks looks at me like he’s imagining me naked.
I nod. “So I’ll fuck him.”
Scratch the itch. Kill the curiosity. Get back to work.
Simple.
Problem solved.
Which is what I’m telling myself as I sit in the dark long after he leaves, my heart hammering against my ribs.
That was supposed to be enough. The power play. The control. The knowledge that I could push him to the edge and watch him refuse to fall. I should feel victorious.
Instead, I feel hollow.
Because now I know what his voice sounds like when he's barely holding himself together. I know the look on his face when he’s dying to cross the room but chooses not to.
No one’s ever stopped for me before. Not when I said no. Not when I was too scared to say anything at all.
Hendricks did, and somehow that’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced. I want to hand myself over to him and see what he can do.
I don’t know what scares me more: if Hendricks makes me lose control, or if he can’t either.