Page 38 of Crush

Ember

There comes a moment in every girl’s life when she thinks, Why did I just do that with this guy?

This is my moment.

The Porsche’s surface squeals as I slide off it with sweat-dotted skin that still pulses with too-sensitive pleasure. I find my clothes in a pile near the front of the car, foregoing my bra and just tossing my shirt on, then shimmying into my underwear and black leggings.

I slide my tangled hair out of the shirt’s collar as I half-walk, half-stumble out of the garage on jellied legs, cursing Thorne with every step.

Too late, I’ve learned I’m weak with him. Weakened by him. I can internally vow to destroy him all I want, but it doesn’t mean anything if all it takes is his body or his touch to shatter my resolve.

Fine, so I’m physically attracted to Thorne Briar to the point of being blinded with pleasure. If I accelerate my plans and focus, I can still make this work. Maybe, I can use our uncontrollable urges against him.

Like he does with you.

A frustrated sound escapes my throat as I stalk through the wilted garden and shoulder open one of Weatherby Manor’s maintenance doors. I was doing so well, pissing him off by becoming malleable clay. Thorne’s disdain for anything weak is plain to see, especially when it comes to his fetishes. He desires adrenaline, willfulness, the need to push a girl to her limits.

A lifeless doll? Those are too boring to look twice at, never mind play with.

That’s what I thought, anyway, until I ruined it by responding to his goading like a tuning fork. At first, I thought he was going to force me. With the undercut of his tone and the intimidation of his exposed dick, Thorne could’ve trapped and overpowered me, taking my virginity with a single claiming thrust.

I won’t tell anyone about this, but the fear he elicited in my chest, the swollen surge of fight or flight clogging my throat—it only added to the moment. Thorne didn’t need to wrap his hand around my neck to feel the lack of air in my lungs and the complete ownership of it in his.

Thorne didn’t go there, though. He stopped just short of reaching the point of no return.

Instead, we had oral sex on one of Malcolm’s cars, on his property. I can now officially call myself a total idiot.

My hand trails along the brick wall. I use texture to guide myself down the darkened hallway, too chickenshit to turn on the light and possibly alert Dash.

Hanging a hard right, I enter Malcolm’s security area, a room supervised by Dash. He gets an alert on his phone if anything out of the ordinary happens, usually ignoring the triggers of a scampering raccoon or a car passing too close to the driveway.

Please, let him think I was a raccoon.

Dash could also be asleep with his phone on silent.

The thought of him watching Thorne and me in the garage, then sending it to Malcolm…

Trembling, I click through the most recent data, my focus pinging to each monitor to detect the exact point Thorne told me to strip.

There’s nothing here.

Frowning, I lean closer to the screens, my finger furiously clicking on the mouse in the blue-lit room. Where are we?

I’ve clicked into the garage camera mounted in the northwest corner, which gives a clear view of the large room. All four cars can be seen, and even me, scuttling into the garage in a crouch, my hair blindingly white in the camera’s night vision until it disappears behind the BMW’s trunk, where I wait, my heart pounding and my breaths escaping in small wheezes between my tense lips.

He’s coming.

Except … Thorne doesn’t come. In a blink, the screen pixelates, then goes back to an empty garage, save for the four luxury vehicles waiting to be used.

No having sex on the Porsche’s hood. No taking off my clothes in front of Thorne. No Thorne taking off his, his erection bouncing off his muscled abs as he straightens, daring me to look and accept the challenge.

I push back from the computer station, massaging my fingers into my closed eyes. “Fuck. Fuck!”

Thorne got to the footage first. If I weren’t so distracted by the chase and enamored with lust, want, and need to see him naked and to feel his fingers and tongue … I would’ve thought of this first. I wouldn’t have let him take me on camera.

Yet I did, and now Thorne has the memory of us, pixelated and in high definition for future use.

“Fuck!” I say again, then fly back to the keyboard, typing furiously and finding another camera angle.

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