Page 55 of The Moment We Know

She was literally having sex with him against his will.

He said something but Paige couldn’t make out the words. They actually sounded distorted, like they were coming from underwater and she welcomed the disconnect; she was afraid to hear what he was actually saying.

Her limbs stiff and almost uncoordinated, she climbed off him, stumbling slightly in the process, and started grabbing her clothes. She put them on in the order in which she found them, barely realizing that she had bypassed her bra until it was too late, and by then she didn’t give a shit. All the while David’s voice played in the background, like white noise, with a few words like ‘don’t’, ‘stop’, and ‘please’ partially breaking though, but not enough to make a difference.

She didn’t stop to listen, nor did she stop to look at him.

Feeling numb, almost like she was on autopilot, Paige practically ran out of the bedroom and down the hall. She didn’t even hear David yell her name as she grabbed her purse and left.

Chapter 21

David heard the loft’s door open and close and couldn’t believe his fucking ears.

“Paige!” he yelled, frantic. “Come back!”

Barely a few seconds later, he heard her car start and pull out of his parking lot, and something that felt a lot like shock set in as he realized she had really left.

What the ever-loving fuck had just happened? He tried to wrap his head around the last few minutes, but couldn’t do it. He kept seeing her as she climbed off his dick, horrified, and then her almost robotic movements as she got dressed. She had been oddly calm and detached, even while he was losing his shit, all of his pleas falling on deaf ears.

The evening that he’d been so looking forward to was now pretty much a nightmare.

Spotting his phone on the nightstand, he said, “Siri, call Paige.”

“Calling Paige,” Siri responded.

When it went to voicemail, he left a message. “It’s me. What happened? Please come back so we can talk—or at least call me back so we can talk.”

When he hadn’t heard from her in one minute, he called again and left another message, much like the first. He was trying to sound calm, but with each message he had to leave, he was sounding more agitated. By the time he’d left ten messages, he was pretty sure he sounded like a lunatic.

David lay there, trying to focus, his thoughts split between concern for Paige and concern for his current situation. It didn’t take him long to decide the more immediate problem of freeing his ass needed to be dealt with first, before he could do anything about Paige. He spent several minutes trying to reach the clasp of one of the cuffs with his teeth, but they were just out of reach. Then he tried to maneuver his hands through the cuff openings, but only succeeded in making his wrists swell, turn red, and generally hurt like hell. His final effort to break one of the headboard slats by pulling on the chain, also ended without success because his headboard was apparently made to last. He did manage to gouge the wood and damage the walnut-stained finish, though.

After admitting defeat, he stared up at the ceiling, not knowing what to do and forcing himself not to panic as the minutes kept ticking by with no sign of Paige. He had to believe that she was coming back, but the when was an unknown, so when she hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes, he started to get nervous. Already, he felt like he had to pee, and since he couldn’t get up to do so, the urge became increasingly intensified. The last thing he wanted to do was piss himself—and his new bed—even if he did have a waterproof mattress cover on it.

With a sigh, he came to terms with the fact he needed help, and since there was only one person he could turn to, he did the last thing he wanted to do.

“Siri, call Dick.”

“Calling Dick,” said Siri.

Evan’s phone rang four times, at which point David was almost ready to have a stroke. What if—

“Hey, man,” Evan answered. “What’s going on?”

David could hear the sounds of people talking in the background, along with music playing. “I need you to come to my place, immediately. Sooner, if possible.”

“No can do. I’m at work.”

“I don’t care. I need you here.”

“You sound weird.”

“Just get over here.”

“Why?”

“Jesus. I don’t have time to explain.”

“Well, maybe I don’t have time to come over, then.”

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