CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BENNET
"So, what's going on with you? I'm glad you didn't cancel our session again this week." Dr. Amara crosses her legs and sets her notepad on the table beside her.
"Because I'm one inconvenient day from a grippy sock vacation." I deadpan.
She looks at me over her glasses but doesn't react specifically. "Would you like to talk about what's brought you closer to that edge than usual?"
"Where do I start?"
"Anywhere."
Dr. Amara has been my therapist since the week I landed in LA. She has explicit details of my life: who I was, who I became, the name change, the night that started all of it. I've only ever kept one thing from her, and that's the virginity.
It's always been a point of embarrassment. The older I got, the more embarrassing it became, which is its own specific trap — too embarrassed to talk about it, too damaged to fix it, going in circles for a decade.
I sit forward and put my elbows on my knees.
"I'm a virgin, Dr. Amara."
She remains silent.
"I had a date the other night. Things started to get physical — the intention wasn't sex, just making out — and I couldn't get through it without a panic attack that my date had to talk me through." I look at my hands. "She was kind about it. More than I deserved."
"Tell me about what’s been going on leading up to that night," Dr. Amara says.
“Okay... Well...”
For the next twenty minutes or so, I walked her through my past few days, though I skipped over the encounters with Blaire where I couldn’t control my anger, figuring those details weren’t relevant to anything she needed to understand about my panic attack.
Yet she seemed to zone in on that part of the story, anyway.
“So, you haven’t told Blaire who you are?”
I shake my head. “No, I haven’t.”
“Why is that?”
“She doesn’t deserve to know Bennet Sullivan.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her pick up her notepad and jot something down. I usually gave no real thought to anything she wrote, but today it bothered me, for some reason.
“How did you feel when you saw her again for the first time?”
“I didn’t feel anything. She’s no one. A non-issue.”
“Then, why not tell her who you are and have your board hire a different firm?”
I started to answer and stopped. I feel my anger starting to rise and I look up at Dr. Amara directly. "Is there a point to all these questions? I think we've gone off track."
"What do you see as on track for today? Is there something specific you'd like to talk about?"
I drag a hand through my hair. "No offense, but I'm starting to question my choice in being here at all. So, no. There's nothing specific I want to discuss today."
She's quiet for a long moment. "You seem angry today, Bennet. Are you?"
A small mercy landed in my lap when my watch buzzes.
I look down at the notification — a message from Claudia that I'm needed in the conference room.
I stand and button my jacket before extending my hand to Dr. Amara.
"I'm sorry to cut this short. I'm in the middle of an acquisition and didn't realize I'd been double booked. "
Luckily, Dr. Amara's office is in my building.
Well, not luckily. That was strategic on my part. Having a therapist ten floors down usually would remove every excuse I've could try to use for canceling.
"I'd like to finish our session this week, Bennet." She stands and takes my hand. "Shall I reach out to your assistant?"
"Sure. That'll be fine."
She holds my hand a beat longer than a handshake requires, which is her way of saying what she didn't get to say out loud today. I pretend not to notice. She pretends I'm not pretending.
I walk out.
The elevator ride down gives me exactly enough time to do what I always do after a session with Dr. Amara — put everything back in the box, seal the lid, and become Bennet Sullivan again before the doors open.
I'm almost convincing myself that it's working.
"Claudia, let Mr. Kincaid know I'll be there shortly. Just need to grab my laptop from my office."
"Yes, sir."
I push through my office door, round the corner, walk into my restroom without thinking because it's my office restroom and I've never once had a reason to knock.
The devil herself is standing at my sink.
Naked from the waist up.
She doesn't even see me. She's facing the mirror with her back to the door, both hands scrubbing something under the running water, and I stand there like an idiot watching her reflection because my feet have stopped cooperating.
The wet garment she's working on requires effort, and the effort requires movement, and the movement is making her breasts do things I'm going to need to actively not think about for the foreseeable future.
I breathe out sharply.
My cock did not get the memo and is standing at full attention like it has somewhere to be.
Absolute traitor.
"Why the fuck are you in my office naked, Mrs. Monroe?"
"Oh god!" She screams, yanking the wet garment up against her chest and spinning around to face me in one motion.
"I — fuck. I'm so —" She blows a strand of hair out of her face and tries again.
"I bumped into someone in the hallway and spilled my coffee down the front of my blouse.
Leslie brought me here to wash up. She said you wouldn't be back until afternoon. "
But she's topless. Is she not wearing a bra today? I don't need that fucking information. Did I do something horrible in a previous life to deserve this specific Friday?
Her breathing is uneven, her face flushed, and the blouse she's pressing to her chest is doing precisely nothing to erase the image that is now permanently seared into my brain.
I look at her for exactly five seconds longer than I should.
Then I grab my laptop off the desk and walk out without a word, doing my level best to arrange my jacket in a way that preserves what remains of my dignity as I make my way down the hall to the conference room.
"Claudia." I slow at her desk without breaking stride. "Please reschedule my appointment with Dr. Amara. As soon as possible."
"Of course, Mr. Sullivan."
Fuck Blaire Alexander.
***
The moment my apartment door shuts, I sink into my couch and start jerking my cock at a rapid pace. Precum slicks my palm as I drag it over my length.
I knew the moment I got home tonight; I had to find release. I didn’t care how, but I needed it.
Tonight is my first official public outing with Blaire and I have been in a deteriorating mood since I walked into my own restroom this morning and found her standing at my sink without a shirt on, and the mood has not meaningfully improved over the course of the afternoon that included one meeting I barely tracked, two calls I half-listened to, and a rescheduled therapy appointment that cannot come soon enough.
I needed to take the edge off before tonight.
I pull up a video on my phone, suddenly registering that my entire library is blond-haired, light eyed women with similar features.
That is going to need unpacking in a future therapy session, because right now I am hard and already close to the edge in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
I'm not usually like this. I've never been some sex-crazed, constantly-needing-release guy.
But my balls started tightening the moment I walked into that restroom this morning, and the image of Blaire at my sink has been burning a hole in my brain every single minute since.
All I've been able to think about all day is hate fucking her over that sink, getting my mouth on those gorgeous tits, making her moan loud enough for the whole floor to hear and. ..
"Oh....fuck," I groan as I squeeze my cock, my orgasm right on the edge.
I hate her for reducing me to this. Some primitive, desperate man jerking off to nothing but the memory of her perfect tits.
Fuck, she's so goddamn hot. Eighteen-year-old Blaire has nothing on the woman I saw today.
Her full lips, the little weight she's added to her frame. Fuller in all the right ways.
I feel frenzied. Out of my mind. Ready to fucking lose my shit with the electricity bouncing through me.
I let go of the base of my cock and pump hard, up and down, over and over until my cock swells and I curl forward, coming all up the front of my stomach, groaning the entire time. "Fuck....oh fuck."
Holy shit, it’s been too long since I’ve done this.
I fall back on the couch, let go, and stare up at the ceiling, finding my breath one slow pull at a time.
God, I hated that. I hated everything about it.
The desperation of it. The fact that it took approximately four minutes.
The fact that I needed to do it at all. That my brain couldn't conjure anything except her standing at my sink with her hair down and her chest bare and that expression on her face when she turned around and found me standing there.
I have a fake date with her in ninety minutes.
I get up, peel off my shirt, and head to the shower.
I fucking hate her.