Page 28 of The Assistant
She tries to back away, but I hold her closer, taking a seat on the couch and getting myself comfortable as I move her closer to me. “It’ll be easier if you just do what I say.”
“I can’t...” Harper says, forcing herself to look away from my cock.
“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how,” I say, stroking my cock with my hand to tease it while I wait for her lips to part. I use my free hand to lace my fingers through her hair, bringing her closer.
She doesn’t resist that much at first. Her head lowers to my groin, and I feel her breath warming my shaft. She presses her hands against my thighs and tries to push away while I hold her closer with the excitement swelling in my chest.
“Dawson, no,” Harper says, slapping my hand away from her.
She backs away from me panting, her cheeks bright red. I watch her for a minute, not understanding what’s happening. The two of us have done things like this before. We’ve already gone much further together—a blowjob is nothing in comparison.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, feeling a little frustrated about the situation. This is a major boner killer, and I shove my cock back in my pants and zip them up. “You’re mine for the year, remember?”
She stands up and looks away from me, her entire body trembling and shaking. I watch her for a moment, stunned. I don’t understand what’s going on.
I move closer and put a hand on her shoulder to turn her around and get to the bottom of this. Only as soon as I touch her, she yelps and cowers away from me. She ducks out of the way like I’m about to hit her and falls to the ground by the coffee table.
I just stand here for a minute watching her, noticing how her entire body trembles as she brings her hands to her face to cover her eyes. She whimpers and cries, lifting her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
My fists instinctively ball at my side as I watch this unfold. This isn’t a normal reaction to something like this. This reaction has to have been caused by something. The idea of someone possibly hurting her or scarring her in some way to cause this makes my blood run hot.
Harper whimpers and cries while I watch her, and even though I want to create distance between us and prevent myself from being soft around her, I can’t stop myself from kneeling down beside her. I reach out to touch her again, and she backs away, looking up at me with wild, frenzied eyes.
“Harper, it’s okay,” I assure her in a calm voice. She shakes her head, tears streaming from her eyes as she watches me with horror. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and it does nothing to calm her. “Take a deep breath, okay? Just do as I do.”
I sit up straighter and put a hand on my diaphragm, taking a slow inhale in before exhaling. My eyes don’t leave her the entire time. It takes her a moment to let her breath become steady as she tries to mimic my breathing. After a minute of deep breathing, her crying settles, and she’s no longer whimpering in fear. She’s still shaking, but I imagine that won’t calm down for a little while.
“Will you tell me what happened that caused that reaction?” I ask her in a calm voice when she seems to be more in control.
Harper just shakes her head and brings her knees to her chest again, resting her head between them. “I can’t.”
I wait for a moment, hoping she might change her mind, then she looks at me with a heaviness in her eyes that makes my chest ache. “It’s not that nothing happened. I just can’t tell you about it because I’m not ready to talk.”
All I can do is nod and give her the space she needs to come to terms with discussing it when she’s ready. These are things you can’t force. As much as I want to know what happened, to fix what she’s feeling in some way, I have to wait for her.
We sit together in silence for a few minutes as she recovers from the trauma response, because that’s exactly what that was. There’s a pit in my stomach thinking that I might have caused this reaction in some way. I never meant to hurt her.
Harper sniffles beside me, and it reminds me of the night I heard her moaning during her nightmare. Looking back, I can see that her nightmare might not have just been because she went to bed hungry. I know she’s had a pretty difficult life. I don’t know all the details, but I can’t imagine growing up with someone like Diana was pleasant.
But now, I think there’s something more to it all. It has something to do with what just happened. There’s something in Harper that’s broken inside. I have my suspicions that it’s something to do with sex, and it infuriates me knowing that someone hurt her. I wish she would tell me about it so I could find them and do everything in my power to make their life a living hell.
How am I supposed to hand her over to Malik like this? Malik won’t care that she’s damaged, that there’s something much deeper going on with her than he could understand. He’ll see her and think that she’s his and take her any way he wants. He’ll brutalize her without any regard for her well-being.
I won’t let that happen. I can’t let another man like him hurt her.
“Are you going to be okay?” I ask, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. This time she doesn’t pull away from me. She nods and flashes me a meek smile as I stand up. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off to relax a bit? I’ll be in my office doing some work. Just stay close in case I need you for something, okay?”
Harper nods and stands up, dusting off her pants even though the floor is pristinely clean. I watch her go to her bedroom before heading to my office. I’ll make sure I don’t actually need her for anything, but for the time being, I need to make sure she’s safe here. I can watch her here, but I can’t if she’s out there in the world.
I’m not going to let anything happen to her ever again.
Chapter 14
Harper
I focuson my sketch pad to try to forget the memories that have been forced into the front of my mind once again. Dawson didn’t mean anything by it, and he stood by me and gave me the time I needed to recover, which was great. But I can’t let something like that happen again. He was patient this time, but what about the next?
A pit forms in my chest when I think about telling him the truth. Telling Dawson abouthim...
