Page 55 of Sadist

“You said—” I cut myself off and shifted, trying to pull myself out from under her, mortified by how gullible I had been.

A warm hand closed around my ankle.

“Octavia.”

“What?” I spat.

“I’m coming to find you after.”

My ears were ringing from the violent storm of emotions that I usually avoided like the plague, so I chose to focus on the way her thumb was running up and down my ankle in soothing strokes.

“I need you out of the country in case this goes to shit. But I am coming to find you once it’s over.”

“You…are?” I breathed, struggling to pull back the hot flare of anger. Tears were threatening, and Irefusedto give in to them.

She rolled, prowling up my body as she pushed me back against the pillows and settled herself between my legs.

“Yes,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss me. “You think I’m letting you get away after showing me how devastatingly good your tongue can be, my Sweet?”

I leaned back as her lips brushed mine, raising a brow and hoping she couldn’t see how emotional I was. “Just my tongue?”

She grasped my hand, pulling it between us, and I sighed softly as she shifted her hips, my fingers slipping through slick, delicate skin and finding her clit.

“Fine,” she breathed, rolling her hips against my touch. “Your fingers are adequate.”

“Theodora,” I said, my voice wavering ever so slightly as I tried to sound offended. “Let me remind you what had you chanting my name like a fucking prayer last night.”

***

It didn’t happen all at once. Cohabitation snuck up on us like everything else had. We developed a rhythm that seemed as natural as breathing. We ate together, trained in the gym…when she wasn’t using the equipment to ruin me.

I cooked more than once after sending her off with a shopping list that had her grumbling under her breath, desperate to eat something that wasn’t from a tin, only forher to slather it in ketchup—which is a fucking war crime in my opinion. I had watched in horror as she wolfed down the lasagna-ketchup-soup abomination that had taken me hours to create and mere seconds for her to defile.

She’d laughed. A real laugh. Like something fractured had finally snapped into place…and then she fucked me into a boneless mess on the picnic table, under the fairy lights. But it was the nights that I adored most, when she seemed to relax in the darkness and tell me about her life. There were silences too. Quiet stretches where we didn’t need to say anything, where the air felt full of something neither of us could name. It was almost enough to make me forget that my funeral was creeping closer—the day I would leave the country—and had to trust that I’d left enough of a mark on her to make her follow…

It was Friday, the night before the funeral, when I came out of the shower to find a yellow envelope sitting on the bed next to my neatly folded clothes. I didn’t say a word. Just wandered out to where Theo was busily working in her office and placed it on the desk between us like a loaded gun.

Her hand slid up the back of my leg as she finished reading the latest media release that had just popped up, a picture of my face plastered front and center, and it felt…easy. In a situation that was so exceptionally complicated…when she touched me, none of it mattered.

“What is this?” I asked quietly.

She dragged her gaze from the screen to the envelope, then up to me. “Passport,” she said, her thumb skating along the curve of my arse. “New name. New papers. Plane ticket. Funds. Everything you need.”

I glared at that fucking envelope like it was the devil itself.

“We’ve discussed this, Sweets,” she murmured. “The best time for you to go is while all eyes are on that funeral. That PRfirm is blowing this up to be the most televised event of the year—no one is going to be looking for you at that airport.

I gingerly picked the package up, ripping it open and peering in. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, eyeing the neat stacks of money alongside the passport and a thin folder of papers.

“You can’t take more than ten grand through customs undetected,” she said, “I wanted you to have cash in case you needed it, and there is an account set up for you at your destination with more—the details are all in the paperwork.”

I blinked at her. “Where is that coming from?”

“One of my personal accounts,” she said, winking. “Oh, and don’t bother arguing, you will lose.”

“Theo!” I hissed.

“To quote you,” she said, clearing her throat. “Get fucked.”

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