“I have an assignment for you today.” He reaches back, pulling his drawer and sliding out a small, caramel-colored notebook wrapped in leather and hands it to me. “This notebook, by the time you’re finished, will contain your deepest, darkest, wildest sexual fantasy. The one you’re afraid to tell anyone. The one that scares you. You’re going to write it down for me. Every last detail.”
My face burns at the thought. “I don’t even know what that is. I don’t think I have any fantasies…”
“Bullshit.” He folds his arms. “Everyone has fantasies. Yours are probably so deep and so repressed it’s going to take a little time before you find them. But they’re there. Trust me. The thing you want most, the thing that heats you from the inside out and pushes every last button you have, you’re going to share that with me. And your reward, Bellamy? Is that I’m going to make it come true.”
The dimples of the soft leather cover tickle my palms, and I flip the empty notebook open, fanning the pages.
“I don’t know if I can do this. Not that I don’t want to. I’ve just never–”
“I won’t give you an unreasonable due date,” he interrupts. “Set it aside. Think about it. Dig deep into the darkest corners of your mind. A day will come when I’ll ask you for this notebook, and I’ll know if you just wrote some bullshit, plagiarized fantasy.”
I nod, agreeing but racking my empty mind for some kind of a sign that I even have a deep, dark fantasy.
“This is an exercise in both trust and submission,” he says. “Trust me with this, submit to my request, and you’ll be rewarded.”
***
Dane stays busy the rest of Monday. Tuesday I see him once in the morning and again in the afternoon in passing. He’s colder than before, and I don’t care what he says, I’m blaming it on Saturday night.
I spent most of Wednesday in a daze, avoiding him in order to avoid the sting of him avoiding me.
My notebook sits empty, the pages naked as the day I first saw them. It’s tucked in my top drawer at work, waiting for inspiration to strike.
Wednesday night I head to Bible study and walk my younger siblings to their respective classrooms. Here I’m just the “nanny,” and they’re just children from my neighborhood. That’s what I’m supposed to say if anyone asks why we always come together. Most of the time people leave us alone. They all think we’re LDS here, obviously, since it’s an LDS church.
By the time I head to the chapel for the adult study group, I catch the back of a blue checked shirt that can only belong to one person.
“Cortland,” I yell. “Wait up.”
It’s been over a week now since I last heard from him, and I haven’t seen him since two Saturdays ago. I’m not complaining, and I’m definitely not trying to rock the boat, but my ego is feeling dangerously curious for reasons even my mind can’t fully comprehend right now.
He turns around. We make eye contact. He keeps going.
“Hey.” I walk faster, grabbing the back of his shirt. “What’s going on?”
Cortland turns to face me, jutting his lips together and shrugging his shoulders.
“You’re not going to talk to me?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you meet someone else?”
He lifts a brow like he wants me to think he did and then shakes his head again.
“Can you just talk to me? I’m not mad. I’m just curious. You were obsessed with me, and then you went radio silent.”
Cort’s hands fly in the air in protest, and just when I’m positive I’m going to get a word out of him, he walks backward into the temple, disappearing behind a set of stained glass windows.
The entire thing has Dane written all over it.
There’s no other explanation.
I’d love nothing more than to thank him first thing in the morning, but apparently I’ve had a bad case of the plague all week.
With my Bible tucked neatly under my arm, I head into the temple, securing a spot in the far back, away from my former suitor, and spend the entirety of the hour with one thing on my mind.
No, one man.
Dane.
TWENTY-SEVEN
DANE
“What’d you do?”
Bellamy waits for me outside the elevators first thing Thursday morning.
I grip my briefcase and step off. “I’m going to need you to be more specific.”
She’s smiling, so at least there’s that. “I went to Bible study last night. Cortland wouldn’t say a word to me. Literally. Not a single word. He was a freaking mime. I’ve never seen him that way.”
I square my jaw. “Weird. Maybe he changed his mind about you? People do that, you know. One minute they’re obsessed and the next minute they discard you like yesterday’s trash.”
“No, no.” She walks in step with me, her words hurried and excited. “Something had to have happened. He wouldn’t just do this.”
“Are you upset?” I unlock the main doors and let her through first. “Heartbroken?”
“Hardly.” Her voice has a slight squeal to it, and she hasn’t ceased to smile since the second the doors parted and I saw her standing there in her waist-cinching pencil skirt and the red heels she knows I like on her. “This is the best thing that could’ve possibly happened.”
“Maybe a bit of an overstatement.” I lead her down the hall to our offices. “But I understand what you’re saying.”
“I know it was you.”
I stop, staring ahead at my door, my key pressing an indentation into my fist. If I tell her I helped her, she might get the wrong idea. The last thing I need is for her feeling like I’m some jealous boyfriend when all I ever wanted to do was the proper thing. A woman being harassed and coerced by a jackass like Cortland McGregor called for a slight intervention. The stars aligned. Opportunity knocked. I simply answered.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” I slide my key into the lock and twist it.
“Thank you, Dane.”
***
I don’t trust myself to fuck Bellamy this week.
Not after last weekend.
Not after I accidentally made love to her.
That’s exactly what it was too.
I could spew all the lies and bullshit about going easy on her and taking her virginity and not wanting to ruin her first time, but the fact of the matter is, I made love to her.
I tasted her arousal. I caressed her flesh. I claimed those cherry lips. I plunged myself into her with an animalistic hunger I’d only ever experienced once before.
It can’t happen again.
End of story.
TWENTY-EIGHT
BELLAMY
“Dane’s looking for you.” Brenna peeks her head into the filing room where I’m seated on the ground organizing an enormous stack of paperwork Marlene handed me the second I asked if she needed help with anything.
Lesson learned.
“He’s back?” I climb up, heart racing. I’d looked for him earlier, but his office was empty. He must’ve left without saying anything to anyone because even Marlene had no clue where he went. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
I brush the carpet fibers from my knees and strut down the hall, stopping when I see him standing outside my office. His face is twisted, pained almost, like a wince, but not a physical wince, it’s more emotional.
He opens my door, ushering me in, and locks it behind us.
Dane lunges for me, his fingers yanking the hem of my blouse out of my skirt. “Who am I to you?”
I giggle, but not because I’m trying to be cute. “What? Why are you acting like–”
“Answer the question.” He yanks my top over my head before pressing his mouth into the flesh of my neck. His teeth nip my skin before his lips pull my flesh between them. The fiery sting tells me it’s going to leave a mark.
Dane spins me around, placing my hands behind my back and wrapping the shirt around them, tying it tight. He bends me over my desk, his hands gripping the back of my hips.
“Who owns you?” He leans over me, the heat of his words warming my bare back. His fingers tug at my skirt, inching the fabric up until my thong-covered ass is exposed. He snaps the band of my panties, sending a sting rivaled only by the slap he gives my exposed cheek.