I can see the bite mark on the back of her neck from five feet away. Did I draw blood?
She’s blinking too and turning to look at me. Her face is a mess of mascara and tears. She looks fucking battered and broken.
By me.
Another voice rings out in my head. Not my father this time, but another monster even more insidious. If you do it right, you can break them and they’ll still beg you for more. That’s when you’ll know you’re a god.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, roughly jerking my pants up and shoving my dick back inside. “I’m so sorry.”
She starts to shake her head but I hold up my hands and then I turn and fucking sprint toward the door.
Four
MIRANDA
I’m still shaken the next morning as I sit in my office and check my lipstick in the small compact I keep in my desk. Cherry ripe red. My signature color. At least it has been for the last few years.
Back in college, I wore a shade called Pale Iris. It might as well have been called Insignificant Iris. Invisible Iris.
I wanted so badly to stand out back then. To be somebody. And when, right out of college, the budding mega-star in the business world, Bryce Gentry took notice of me, meager Miranda, minor Miranda, miniscule Miranda, it felt like the light of the universe was finally shining on me.
Like maybe finally, after a lifetime on the sidelines, I could be the star of someone’s show. Maybe even my own.
And look how well that went. Maybe that was what you got when you relied on someone else to find you.
I got swallowed up in him instead.
And he was the worst kind of man, the kind who will devour you whole instead of giving you the strength to stand on your own two feet beside him.
And Dylan?
What kind of man is he?
I check the rest of my face in the small mirror. I was in a rush this morning because I overslept my alarm after tossing and turning all night. After two back to back meetings, it’s the first time all morning I’ve had a second to myself.
In the mirror, my blue eyes look too large and cartoonish in my face. At least the circles under them from my restless night are only slightly visible after working my magic with concealer.
I snap the compact shut and run my hand from my temple down to my throat, brushing my fingers across the skin where Dylan’s hand gripped me so roughly last night.
I once read an article that said you can tell everything about a man by the way he fucks. And I wonder if, after last night, maybe it’s true.
I shudder again as I close my eyes and relive every moment. I bite my lip as I recall the feel of his huge cock breeching me. The merciless way he thrust into me.
But then his hand was on my clit, making sure I was right there with him. Occasionally I felt him pause like he was checking in on me before continuing.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
After all, how many years have I been searching for the perfect man? Someone who will be a bastard to me in the bedroom—or on the hood of my car—but could be a gentleman the rest of the time?
Of course I don’t know if Dylan Lennox is a gentleman the rest of the time. But I’ve read up on him. He and his brother Darren are the entrepreneurial duo who came on the robotics scene six years ago with a vengeance, taking up an impressive market share almost from the get-go.
Dylan’s never seen with women in public. Some speculate it’s because he’s still in the closet but I know the real reason.
It’s because of Bryce Gentry.
The mutual skeleton in both our closets.
When Bryce finally went to jail for his crimes two years ago after the man he was blackmailing, Jackson Vale, caught him trying to commit corporate espionage, all the dirt Bryce had on Jackson and everyone else in his blackmail files went public.
Including a story on Dylan Lennox that was a small blip in the flood of the Gentry Files, as they came to be known. A story about Dylan brutalizing a prostitute.
It was there and then gone the next day. Disappeared.
I made it my personal mission to follow every story that Jackson released. Because though the story might have disappeared, Jackson was my ex and we were still friendly. I contacted him and he gave me a copy of the files directly.
There were pictures of Dylan and the prostitute. Him holding her down, hands around her throat. Her crying and trying to shove him away from her. They were the kind of pictures that would have made any other woman shrink away and avoid Dylan completely.