Meanwhile, Dayton displayed his love without fear. It shone in the fierceness of his eyes and the torturous slip of his tongue. And, how strange it was, having a lover who brought her simultaneous misery and happiness.
Kenna fell apart and by the time she’d collected herself he had joined her on the sofa. Legs splayed, he undid his belt and soon he was kicking his pants from around his ankles. She felt her throat bob when he removed his boxers. He wrapped a hand around himself, producing slow strokes. It was something she had witnessed a handful of times but the eroticism of the act hadn’t waned.
“Come here. Come here where you belong.”
His tone dripped with need and the command sent a jolt between her legs. She climbed onto him as if she were being timed, tearing her blouse over her head and tossing it on the floor. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she slowly took him in. Inch by inch. He groaned and Kenna ground her hips, encouraged by his response.
Everything questionable in her life faded into nothingness. There was only the fire blazing through her core.
With two fingers, he snapped her bra and tore it from her frame, freeing her breasts. But his eyes stayed glued to hers as she rode him, their heavy breathing thickening the air around them.
The moment it was over, their illusion of intimacy shattered. Kenna didn’t linger for cuddling on the couch or offer cursory kisses. She crossed the room and, with her back to Dayton, started getting dressed. Her fingers fumbled with the button on her jeans, missing the notch every time.
“Did you drug me?” She focused on the blank white wall. It was the only way she could ask the question.
“What? When?”
His scoffed response changed her mood on a dime. Calm morphing into hostility.
“You know exactly when. The first time I went to your house. We haddinner. Did you or did you not drug me?”
“Did your pal Ivy turn you on to this?”
“Answer the question, Dayton.”
This time last year, she would have been scared out of her wits to shout at him with such reckless abandon but she felt she’d gained some kind of footing as his lover and employee.
He looked her dead in the eye, unblinking, and she may have run into the street, half-clothed, if she weren’t so desperate for answers.
“I put a couple drops of GHB in your wine.”
“I watched you make our drinks.”
“It was in the bottom of your glass before I poured the wine.”
Arms wrapped around herself, Kenna sank to the floor in her bra and jeans. “Why would you do that? Why?”
“You were always so tense. I wanted us to have a relaxing evening together.”
“Which apparently included raping me.”
“I’ll admit, I was hoping the drug made you more receptive to intimacy but I never planned to—”
“The way you say things sometimes.” Kenna produced a hollow laugh like Ivy had in the alleyway. “You didn’t plan to. What does that mean? You might have done it on a whim?”
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
“No? Why wasn’t that thought running through your head when you slammed me against a door and held me in a chokehold while I hadGHBswimming through my system?”
The long-winded retort had her going blue in the face. She took a series of deep breaths but it didn’t lessen the strain in her cheeks, her neck, and Lacey’s face flashed through her head as Kenna came dangerously close to feeling like she was taking her final breath.
“I panicked. You were getting too close. I didn’t want you to see … who I really am.”
“Well, congratulations, because I have no clue. You drugged me. You drugged Ivy. Maybe you did kill Lacey. You’re clearly capable of acting without feeling anything.”
* * *
Tears clouded her vision the entire drive to her apartment but she didn’t give them permission to fall. Kenna had shed far too many tears for Dayton—perhaps more for his lovers—and she would shed no more.