Page 140 of Their Arrangement
I pressed my palms to my thighs.
Hard.
The ache in my chest was a drumbeat now. The one in my pants worse. Thick. Hot. Unrelieved.
I adjusted myself.
Still hard.
Harder.
The whiskey had done nothing.
My phone lit up.
Security feed.
Ping: Barron’s office—door opened.
Five minutes ago.
Then: closed.
She was still in there.
I imagined it again. How he told her to bend. How she shook when he touched her. Whether she cried. Whether she came. My jaw cracked from clenching too tight.
And still?—
Still all I could hear was her voice from the night before.
Thank you.
She said it for me. But would she say it for him too? Would she say it softer? Would she mean it more?
I pressed my fists against my thighs until I saw stars.
Because that thought?
That thought made me want to ruin her. Not from anger. Not from hate. From something deeper. Something darker. Something I wasn’t sure I could come back from once I touched it.
I wanted to take the obedience she gave me and drag it out of her in pieces. On her knees. In silence. In tears. I stood again. Too fast. The chair tipped. I didn’t fix it. Didn’t care.
I paced. Back and forth. Five steps. Turn. Five steps. Stop. Breathing hard. Harder. Every inhale felt like fire. Every exhale like something I couldn’t name.
I imagined walking out to her desk. Grabbing her by the wrist. Pulling her back here. Making her look me in the eye and say it again.
Not thank you. Not this time.
“Please.”
I found her alone. Break room. Corner seat. Glass wall at her back. She held a coffee cup in her hands, untouched. She wasn’t scrolling. Wasn’t typing. Just staring. Like she was trying to remember who she was before all of this started. Before I started.
Her blouse was buttoned again. Corset still visible beneath the silk—if you knew where to look. And I did. I knew every seam. Every line. Every shiver she thought she could hide.
I stepped inside the room. Silent. Predator quiet.
She looked up. Flinched. Just once. But it was enough.
