hot anger pours into me. I’ve had just about enough of everyone in my life telling me what the fuck to do. How the fuck to feel. What I can and cannot control. Which version of the truth they think they can get away with.
My father and I were never on the best terms, that’s a given. He ruled our house with an iron fist, and I always resented him for that. But I obeyed, because it’s what my parents expected from me. Because the bible said so.
Honor your parents somehow became shorthand for blindly obeying every single rule. For letting them tell you what to believe and how to behave.
They shouldn’t have treated you like that.
No, Father Gabriel—fucking Gabe—they shouldn’t have. But they did.
Everyone did.
Everyone still does.
Will it never end?
Or has it only gone on this long because I’ve let it? Because I submitted where a normal, sane human being would long ago have thrown off their shackles and stormed the plantation?
My veins thrum with sullen rage as Zachary carries on talking, his mouth an inch from my ear. “I don’t care how you do it, but you will get us that data, and you will—”
My eyes fly open. “No!” I yell. “If you want it so bad, get it yourself!”
His fingers tighten even more as he grinds his hips into me. “Did you just shout at me?”
I freeze when his hard-on presses into my belly.
Oh my God. He’s enjoying this!
I almost laugh at the thought. Of course he’s enjoying this—his dick was twice this size when he was spanking me, what the fuck am I expecting? He gets off on other people’s pain, so I guess humiliating them, torturing them, it’s all the same.
“Gabriel’s busy.” I swallow and try not to let the feel of his cock distract me. “He told me so last night. He’ll be busy this whole week.”
He rakes his gaze over my body, and then glances to the side. Curiosity, of course, gets the better of me.
It’s ten past one.
His class starts at half-past.
We both look back at the same time. He moves against me again, and this time it’s obvious he wants me to feel his erection. My heart spasms with panic while my inner thighs contract with the urgent need to close and deny him access.
Dear Lord, all he has to do is dip down, and he could be inside me. If we were both naked of course. But he’s wearing slacks, and I’m in this monstrosity of a dress, so—
“I know what you’re thinking,” he murmurs. His mouth twitches, and then he’s biting down on his lower lip, drawing that tender flesh through his teeth. “But as much as I’d like nothing more than to fuck you against this wall, we both know this isn’t how it happens.”
A heatwave crashes over me. I let out a mangled, “What?”
He releases my throat, dragging that hand over my breast. He squeezes so hard that I yelp in pain, and then catches his lip between his teeth again.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he murmurs, crushing me with his body again. His hand coasts down my belly, and I feel him move his erection aside so he can burrow his fingers between us.
“Fucking you.”
He wriggles his fingers through the folds of my dress. I quiver when he makes contact with my bare skin an inch above my underwear.
If he hadn’t been pressing my wrists to the wall, I might have ended up on the floor. The lower his fingers move, the more strength leeches from my body.
“You know where it will happen, don’t you?” His voice drops low. Rough, guttural. He barely sounds like himself. “In our special place, down there in the dark.”
His mouth touches the side of my neck and despite everything, a shiver dances over my bones. He slides his lips over my skin, and then grazes my jaw with his teeth. I twist my head away, terrified at how hard my heart is pounding.
His lips follow, and he nips at my jaw again. A moan slips out of me before I can stop it, and in response he groans and dips down.
“That place where no one can find you. Where no one can hear you scream.”
I gasp and jump onto my tippy toes when the crown of his cock presses against my underwear. A hard, aching throb pushes into me, almost as if he’d already broken through that flimsy barrier. He grabs my jaw and wrenches my head back to face