Chapter 26
“I should have asked you first.”
Sam looked back at where Ophelia was perched on a stool at the counter as he prepped for dinner.
He’d picked out her clothing for the evening, and she’d let him without complaint.
She wore a soft, gray cashmere sweater and a pair of black yoga pants.
Beneath the prim outfit was the laciest set of underwear he’d been able to find.
She hadn’t let him look as she’d put on the lingerie, but she had allowed him to put in her pearl earrings for her, a delicate task that had felt oddly more intimate.
“Why?” he asked, scrubbing the fresh produce they’d bought that afternoon.
“Because!” She rubbed the water spots off a fork with agitated movements. “Consent is important. I signed you up without even considering what you wanted.” Her scrubbing became more vicious. “You do want things, don’t you? Because of the… the virus?”
He grinned with his back turned to her, touched by her obsessive concern over his feelings. No one had ever wondered if he felt anything before. And why would they? They’d locked down that part of him. If he gave them half a chance, they’d do it again.
“I want one thing.” He set the produce on a paper towel and turned back to her.
She rubbed the fork too hard, losing her grip on it. It sailed past his head and clattered against the stove, and she yelped. He gave her an arch look, taking a perverse delight in her sheepish expression.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, squirming and looking down.
He said nothing, picking up the fork and rinsing it off again.
She’d been lost enough the night before to forget her compulsions, even pressing her dirty hands against her mouth, but the agitation of the coming event had roused her instincts again.
It was her way of self-soothing. In time, he would continue to guide her toward better coping mechanisms, but for now…
she was already so far outside of her comfort zone.
He wouldn’t throw her into the deep end when she was struggling to keep her head above water.
“I’ll tell him I changed my mind.” She lifted her phone off the counter.
He leaned across and slammed it back down. “You will not.”
“Sam,” she griped, trying to tug out of his grip. “This is insane. I never should have sent the text! I was just so angry, and I didn’t think about…”
“About having to follow through? About taking my cock for the first time while your useless fiancé watches from the corner of the room?”
She gasped, her face flushing bright red as she wrestled him for the phone. “Do you have to say things like that? I’m calling it off!”
“Oh, no, you aren’t,” he countered, carefully applying his superhuman strength to pry the phone from her fingers.
“Sam!”
She chased him around the counter as he held the phone over his head, her socks sliding on the polished floor when he abruptly changed directions. He laughed at her frantic attempts to match his speed. When she got frustrated enough to clamber over the counter, he ran for the bedroom.
“Sam!”
“Ah-ah.” He scolded as she tried to climb him to reach the phone. “Behave, or I’m going to crush it.”
She subsided at once, glaring at him. “You can’t seriously want this. You can’t stand him.”
His smile grew. “Yes. That’s exactly why I want nothing more.”
She huffed, throwing herself down on the bed face-first.
“This is insane,” she whined, her voice muffled by the sheets.
He slid his hand up the back of her thigh, dipping his fingers between them. Stooping over, crowding her, he massaged her through the seam of her pants. Her fingers knotted in the sheets as her breathing grew erratic.
“Tell me you don’t want me to fuck you,” he purred, rubbing circles over her sensitive flesh. “Say those words, and I’ll give you the phone.”
She shuddered beneath him, turning her face to the side so their eyes met.
“What if I don’t like it?” she asked in a small voice that pierced him.
His hand fell still. He pulled it away from her core, instead sifting his fingers through her hair as he lay down beside her. “You’ll like it. And if you don’t, tell me to stop.”
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
“But you… you don’t have to listen to me,” she said, her eyes darting away and back again.
He frowned. “No, I don’t. But I will. I admit to a perverse kind of pleasure in tormenting you, but not with sex. Haven’t I stopped every time you’ve asked?”
She blew out a breath, relief lighting in her eyes as she nodded slowly.
“I always will.” He smoothed his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone. “You’re safe with me, Ophelia. You’ll always be safe with me.”
She leaned forward and kissed him sweetly at that, a chaste but lingering press of her lips.
“We don’t have to do it, but it would bring me great satisfaction to claim you in front of him. To help you spite him.”
She wriggled closer to him, tucking herself beneath his chin as she molded her body to his. “You’ll really stop?”
“Yes.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“And if he shows up and I don’t want to do it anymore?”
“Then I’ll kill him instead.”
She drew back in horror, gaping up at him. He laughed.
“I’m teasing you.” He put the phone back in her hand, curling her fingers around it. “If you really want to text him, do it. But I think you’ve earned your revenge, petty as it might be. I want to give it to you.”
She looked down at the phone in her hand. “I’ve never really been the vengeful type.”
He believed that, just as he believed she may have more cause than most people to be vengeful, if her parents were any indication.
“You’ll never have to be again now that I’m here. I seem to be programmed in a way that lends itself quite effectively toward vengeance.”
“That’s so not comforting at all,” she muttered.
But there was a flush on her cheeks that suggested she might be just a bit pleased by the idea of him meting out punishment to her enemies.
A distant ping startled her. He sat up slowly, eyes narrowing in realization.
“The holopad,” she murmured, sliding off the bed.
He followed her to the living room, reading over her shoulder as she studied the new messages.
She wants to do it
Fucking finally
I don’t know about this
Logan, this is what we’ve been waiting for
I know, I know. It just feels wrong
Ophelia scoffed. “Now he has a conscience? Where was that when he tried to corner me with Brandon?”
“What did you say?”
She looked up at him and quickly away, cheeks flushing again. “It’s nothing.”
He caught her chin, forcing her gaze back up. “Explain.”
When she was done, Sam wasn’t sure he would be able to abide by her rule of not murdering anyone. He paced a rut into the rug, contemplating all the ways he could kill both men without her being the wiser.
“Why do you think the others want me to do it?” She was curled up on the couch, knees tucked under her chin.
He stopped his pacing to consider the question. “I’m not sure. We saw them at that club. Perhaps they’re hoping you’ll become part of their lifestyle.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I mean… why me? I’m not exactly the kind of woman you’d be desperate to get in bed.”
He moved with inhuman speed to kneel at her feet, startling a gasp out of her.
“Of course, you are. Haven’t I been doing just that?”
Grabbing her ankles, he dragged her legs over the edge of the couch to either side of him. He’d just hooked his fingers into the waistband of her pants when the doorbell rang.