“Oh, my God,” I breathed.
“I’ll enjoy watching what each one does to you, the way I make your body flinch, how I’ll leave you breathless and trembling. I’ll give you so many, I’ll savor it when you can’t keep count.” His smile was loaded with sin. “Yes. I will require that you count them.”
“Oh, my God,” I repeated in a rush. My mind was blank with shock, and I gripped the armrests of my chair, desperate to flee. But his voice was so powerful, it chained me to my seat. There was no other noise, not even the beating of my own heart. Macalister’s words were the only sound left on earth.
“Older men understand the way the world works. We know how to dress. What to eat.” His expression was beautifully perverse. “How to fuck.”
It was scary, what he’d said, but far more terrifying was the way my traitorous body responded to it. Heat pooled in unwanted places.
He put his fingers on the top of the box and inched it forward. “Open it.”
I used the last scrap of power left in me to speak, and it came out as a plea. “I don’t want to.”
One of the most famous Greek myths was Pandora’s Box. Pandora had been a mortal given a gift from the gods but told not to open it. Unable to keep her curiosity in check, she disobeyed them, and from the box sprang all the evils of the world, like death and sickness.
Whatever was inside the box before me, I was sure as soon as I opened it, I’d wished I hadn’t.
His look said I’d just turned down a once-in-a-lifetime offer, and I had better reconsider. “I’m giving you a gift.”
My hand trembled as I reached forward and tugged at the satin ribbon. The knot slipped free, and the ribbon unthreaded as I lifted the lid. The interior was black velvet with a gold fabric insert, and in the center was a black, U-shaped object accented in shining gold. The packaging was sexy and luxurious, filling me with heat and leaving me cold in the same instant.
“What is it?” I whispered.
His eyes were liquid. “Pick it up.”
I unseated the thing, which was smooth, flexible, and covered in slippery soft silicone. One side of the U was longer and much wider than the other end. I turned it over in my hands like examining it would help. Was the band actual gold?
When the thing hummed to life, the powerful vibrations nearly made me drop it, and once I realized what it was, I did. It stopped buzzing immediately after, and as I lifted my accusing gaze to Macalister, he set his phone down on the desktop.
He’d given me a vibrator.
And he had control of it.
“This is . . .” I started, not able to find a word that could encompass the way I felt. In the end, I went with one that worked, but was much too simple. “Inappropriate.”
He had the audacity to look confused. “Why?”
Had he lost his mind? “Because you’re married. Because I’m engaged to your son.”
“As I’m the one who orchestrated all of that, do you think I’m unaware?” He gave me a direct look, pinning me further to my seat. “What I’m offering tonight isn’t physical. There are different kinds of pleasure, just as there are different forms of sex. Some don’t require contact, or even a partner. Before you came here, you said you masturbate nearly every day, so am I safe to assume you have done so while in my home?”
Oh, my fucking God.
My mouth dropped open all the way to my toes.
The answer was yes, of course. I’d told Royce he wasn’t allowed to touch me, but the weeks had worn on me. Night after night I’d squirmed and writhed under my own hands as I thought about the man in the next room over. I’d had to keep my moans quiet so he wouldn’t hear what he was doing to me.
These days, the lock on my door wasn’t keeping him out. It was holding me back from caving and going to him.
I treated Macalister’s question like it had been rhetorical. If I said yes, it gave him even more power, and if I said no, he’d know I was lying. The guilty expression on my face gave it all away.
His knowing smile was sinister.
“The game is simple,” he said. “Every night at ten-thirty, wherever you are, you’ll turn the device on and use it. There are instructions in the box. I control the speed and tempo, and the session will last as long as I think it needs to. When it’s over, you’ll text me the number of orgasms you received.”
My eyes were so wide they had to be as big as dinner plates. “No.”
He ignored me. “These are the only orgasms you’re allowed. If you need an additional session outside of our regular time, I will do my best to accommodate that. But from now on, it will be my responsibility to provide you with pleasure, and you will give me absolute command over your experience.”