My body wants to recoil despite the pulsing, radiating heat between my legs. No. It’s so much. Too much. I look at the ground because I feel almost humiliated standing here before him.
I don’t know how to stand up for myself. I never learned. Never tried, but this is wrong. So wrong.
“It’s unfair to do this. Unfair to put me in this position. Unfair to watch me without letting me see you in return. Then fire me for…”
He touches my cheek, stopping me. Then he moves my hair away, and tips my chin up so I’m facing him again. “Do I look like I give a fuck about fair?”
A shudder shakes me from deep in my belly. Wrong rearranges itself into right. A thick stream of wetness begins to trickle down between my legs, sticky and hot. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you don’t give me any fucking choice.”
My toes curl. That heat. That danger. I don’t know what is happening to me, but everything he does, everything he says—it’s like I’ve always needed to hear it, even though I shouldn’t want it so much.
Closer. And closer. The way he caresses my cheek isn’t gentle. There’s a demanding roughness to it as he rubs it with the heel of his palm and slides his fingers to the back of my neck, keeping me still. Holding me prisoner with a touch. His muscular thigh presses against my much smaller, softer one. His erection presses into my belly through the terrycloth. And I suck in breath.
“You feel that?” he says. “That’s your fault, my little fire doll. Like I said, you give me no choice. You know that, don’t you?”
I don’t think I could speak if I even knew what to say. I’m so scared, so out of my depth. I know nothing of the world. I know nothing of men. I have no idea what to do. But I know even as much as he scares me, he draws me closer.
Entices me. Beckons me.
“Answer me.”
I press my lips together and manage a nod.
He reprimands me with a growl. “Wrong. When I ask you a question, you fucking answer it out loud.”
His breath warms my quivering lips.
The question. My god what was the question?
“Ask…ask me again.”
“You know you give me no choice, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I stutter, adding, “I’m sorry.”
“I fucking hated you for how you made me feel. Now...”
What? Now, what?
Right rearranges into wrong again. What is happening here? His words, they’re like little gifts of lava. So beautiful and so terrible. My head is spinning. He’s saying terrifying things, but it just makes me want him even more. I want him to want me. I want him to hate me. I want everything. “Please don’t hurt me.”
He laughs a little, cold and heartless. “You sure you mean that?”
Oh God. “I don’t know. I—” I swallow, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’m so confused.”
“That day you arrived, you weren’t what I expected.”
“Wasn’t I?” I manage, forcing myself to look at him again. Feeling the way his gaze digs into me like claws.
He shakes his head and runs his palm down his thick stubble. “They said you’d be 21. A brunette. You’re neither.”
I am desperate to find my footing, but I cannot. On top of all this, he’s figuring out I wasn’t the one who was originally supposed to come.
Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal.
“I—I,” I stammer, “I lied about my age. And I am a brunette. But I always wanted to try being a redhead. So I—I, I decided, new job, new look…” I trail off helplessly. I don’t even know if I’m making sense now.
Without breaking my stare, he presses his hand between my legs, cupping my pussy through the robe, then parting the fabric with his fingers. His middle finger slips between my lips into my thick wetness. I grab his wrist as if to stop him.
But I can’t. And don’t.
He grunts when he feels me. I hiss and gasp, trapped in some hazy and needy place of yes and no.
“You’re not a brunette. I’ve seen that for myself.”
The curtains. The drapes. Damn it.
“Please, Mr. Philipe. Dane. I need this job.”
He runs his fingertip up my clit, and I rock backwards, my equilibrium lost. I steady myself, gripping his forearm. So thick. So strong. So powerful. “How much do you need it?”
“Desperately.” The word comes out as half a sob. He makes a circle around my clit and I feel my knees begin to buckle. God, his touch. It makes me feel like I don’t belong to myself at all.
“That’s a powerful word, right there. Desperate.”
I search his face for any hint of softness. Any sign of comfort. There’s none. I fight to keep back the tears. “I know.”
He slips his hand away from my pussy, cracking his neck side to side slightly. Giving me space, giving me a breath. It doesn’t help. Now my entire body is shaking. Pulsing. Needing. A tear slides down my cheek.