Page 88 of High Sea Seduction

When I sense her disinclination to further our talk, I want to respect her need for an end to the subject, but I can’t let it go. Not yet.

“Tell me about your professor. Did he see you?”

Again, she tenses. “Yes. He was the one who took me down to where Leo was. But I don’t know whether he was involved personally.”

I grip her hair and angle her face to mine. “You were drugged. How would you know?” Her eyes cloud over and I feel like a big shit. “Keely, I hate to state the obvious, but he knew you were there. He knew what would happen to you when you were taken to the east wing. And he still let it happen. Whether he was involved or not, he was culpable.” And now on my list. “What was his name?”

“Elliot Harding.”

The way she says his name makes my senses burn. “What aren’t you telling me, Keely?”

She blinks a few times before she says, “During my first semester, I thought Harding was coming on to me. He would ask me to stay after class, or ask me to come to his office. He always had a legitimate reason and he didn’t do anything sleazy, like stand too close or leer down my top. But… something in his eyes made me feel uneasy, like a subliminal promise of filth and pain that felt a little too, I don’t know… raw?”

“Kitten, let’s dispense with the graphics, okay?”

Her eyes widen at the violence in my voice and she swallows. “Okay. Well… anyway… I confronted him about it one day.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say, by the time I left his office, I felt like a piece of fossilized shit. He didn’t raise his voice, or threaten me in any way. But I knew if I dared to repeat my suspicions to anyone else, I would be finished.”

“But you were right to trust your instincts and confront him then.”

The look she gives me is full of self-recrimination. “I was right. But what good does that do me now? Deep down, I knew going into that basement would end badly. But I went anyway. For god’s sake, would you ride an elevator with a guy who calls himselfMoriarty?”

“Yes. Because I’m better than Sherlock.” My joke falls flat when the corners of her mouth turn down.

“I wasn’t. I lost three days of my life because I ignored my instincts.”

I flip us over so she’s lying beneath me and slide my fingers into her hair until she has no choice but to look at me. “This is why you tried to throw yourself in the ocean,” I seethe. “You think killing yourself is the answer?”

Her mouth quivers before she firms it. “Since there’s only one way to answer that definitively and I’m still alive, I guess I don’t know.”

I kiss her hard, and roughly, trying to infuse her with fuck knows what. All I know is that I can’t let her think ending her life is okay. Never mind that I may have contemplated the same path. Never mind that I forsook that path because living was a far better punishment than dying.

I kiss her until she moans, and her nails dig into my back in a plea for either oxygen or fucking. I don’t grant either. Not until she’s out of her frantic mind.

Then I flip us back around, tuck her into my side, and pull the covers over her body.

“Go to sleep, kitten.”

She exhales in astonishment. “Mason. You can’t leave me like this.”

“I need you to have something to look forward to tomorrow. Even if it’s only the prospect of being fucked to within an inch of your life.”

I snap my fingers in a timed sequence and the room darkens.

Her arm jerks around me, then her hand heads south to grip my rock-hard cock. Her body undulates against mine and I thicken in her hand.

“God… Mason, please. I need you.” Her voice quivers with her need and I almost waver.

“I’m not in a good place right now, baby. Let’s get some sleep. I promise I’ll give you double of everything you need in the morning.”

Although my whole body is on a razor’s edge of need, I infuse enough steel in my voice for her to heed my request. She strokes me a couple more times, before her hand reluctantly returns to curl against my chest.

Sleep isn’t on my churning horizon anytime soon, but I fake it until she settles, soft and pliant around me, and her breathing deepens.

In the darkness, I let my furious growl loose.

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