Page 73 of Degrees of Control

“Get your shit together, Hunter, or your father’s going to hear about this,” he’d snapped one afternoon when James nodded off in a board meeting. But David had always seriously overestimated his old man’s ability to care about problems that didn’t involve millions of dollars or big tits. No one was coming to reprimand him for his behaviour. No one cared.

James knew what was fucking with his head. He knew it the same way a junkie knew heroin was a waste of time and money. But ‘knowing’ and ‘doing something about it’ were two very different things. He felt trapped, stuck in a cycle of push and pull.

In the beginning, his arrangement with Charlotte was easy. There were no more hotel rooms, dinners, or sleepovers, she knocked on his door and they went into his lounge room to fuck. Afterward, he would shower and she would leave. That happened two or three times a week. They communicated by texts and only about the logistics of their hook-ups. Sometimes she wouldn’t even say hello when she saw him, the girl who had once begged him to talk about himself.

In bed she acquiesced to him without question, got on her knees when he told her to, came when he told her to. He still bought her lingerie. Ruby-red garters and tulle corsets, silk panties and faux-leather playsuits. He had it delivered to her apartment with notes. “Put this on and come over. Want my dick sucked.”

Charlotte was always wet when she showed up, always ready for him, but they became strangers in everything but sex.

She requested rougher and rougher scenes. James got hard at any given moment thinking about them. One night, he lit a bunch of candles, tied her to his kitchen table and trickled the wax over her skin until she begged to be fucked against the wood. One chilly Monday evening, he took her ass on his living room carpet, took it slow with plenty of lube. He drank down her pleasure and her pain as she pleaded with him, first to stop and then to never, ever stop. Looking down into her glassy blue eyes, he’d been filled with hot satisfaction. He’d fucked a fairy princess in her tight virgin ass. He was the best lay Charlotte had ever had,wouldever have.

Then she started coming around less and less. She told him her shifts at the studio changed, but James doubted it was true. She’d always made time for him before. He kept trying to come up with reasons why he couldn’t stop.

Some nights thinking about her drove him out of his bed and onto his weight bench where he worked until his body was numb. Wanting Charlotte became a constant hunger, an ache in his stomach that nothing could fill. When she left for Sophia’s bachelorette party in Vegas he got drunk at a bar and danced with a woman. The girl had looked up at him, her bright red mouth all but begging for a kiss, and he felt nothing. Zero interest. He walked home alone and blacked out on his living room floor, but not before he’d jacked off thinking about Charlotte sitting in his lap and riding his cock while she told him she loved him, loved him, loved him so much.

From that point on, James accepted he was fucked. He started making deals with himself. The next time he saw her, he would ask her out. The next time she came over they would talk—but then she was on his doorstep looking like a slice of pure heaven and the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t risk losing their sexual relationship, not when it was the only thing he had left. He’d kill to have her look at him like she used to, all nervous and excited. Kill to have her wearing cotton panties to bed and inviting him over to her apartment for dinner. Instead, she was slipping away even as he held her in his arms.

In his fucked-up headspace, he accepted an invitation to his Aunt Melina’s sixtieth birthday dinner. Sophia hadn’t spoken to him since her text message declaring he was a slut, so God knew why he agreed. Loneliness, probably. He was feeling pretty damn sorry for himself. Miraculously, the Hunters got through drinks and soup without too much drama. James was even beginning to enjoy himself, when the subject of Charlotte was raised.

Sophia smirked at him as she told her mother, the friendly andvery handsomeOfficer Travis Bartel was Charlotte’s date to her wedding. They met at a cocktail party she threw last week, she said, and apparently they hadreallyhit it off.

Aunt Melina smiled benignly. “That’s nice. I’ve always liked Charlotte, she’s such a pretty girl. Lovely manners.”

James couldn’t remember the drive home, it was a roar of jealousy so all-consuming he almost snapped his steering wheel in half. As soon he got home he collapsed onto his couch with four fingers of whiskey and contemplated his living hell. Charlotte was fucking someone else, some faceless prick of a police officer. She was going to her knees for him, lying in bed with him, calling him ‘Officer’ while he screwed her from behind. Maybe even—James’ stomach surged into his mouth at the thought—calling him Mr. Bartel. What if in bed she called him Mr. Bartel? Like him, but better and newer, a guy with all his parts intact.

A new man explained her dwindling texts, her new schedule. It explained everything except how. How could she do this to him? With joyless satisfaction, he realized that whatever Charlotte felt for this cop it hadn’t stopped her from seeing him. If she was sleeping with the prick, she was fucking them both. His jealousy burned as hot as the liquor in his stomach.

What if she stays here for him? What if I have to see her around the city with him, laughing and holding hands and know that I’ll never touch her again?

That was the worst thought of all. Sharp, inflexible, intolerable. He pulled out his phone, fingers shaking with fury. It was a Sunday night, Charlotte was usually free. If he was going to lose her, he’d make sure she knew exactly what she was losing in return.

Chapter 20

Charlie rapped on James’ front door. His instructions had been even more concise than usual. “Come over. No bra, bare pussy.” It made her think something might be wrong, but of course, that wasn’t her business.

She breathed lightly, trying to clear her head of emotional attachments to the man she’d once been dangerously close to loving. This was how they did things now and it worked. It worked even when it didn’t work.

James opened the door. He looked dangerous even by his usual standards, his jaw tight and his powerful body tense. “Come in.”

A kick of submissive adrenaline flooded through her but she could see his hazel eyes were hooded and there was the undeniable scent of liquor on the air. “Have you been drinking?”

In a flash, he had a handful of her hair. “Open your mouth again and I’ll gag you and fuck you right on this doorstep so all the neighbours can see, understood?”

“Yes,” she squeaked. “Yes, Mr. Hunter.”

He didn’t seem to register her use of his preferred name as he dragged her, not into his lounge room or his kitchen or his laundry, but to his bedroom. Charlie was more shocked than she could ever remember being. “James, are you sure this is okay?”

He picked her up, his handsome face blank as a plain white wall. “I said, shut your mouth.”

He placed her on his enormous California king bed. The sheets were navy, Charlie realized, thick and luxurious. Her gut clenched. Why was he choosing to do this now? In all the time they’d slept together she’d never even gotten close to his bedroom. She wove the thoughts away. Not her problem. Not her concern. He was the dominant, she was the slave, and mutual pleasure was the name of their game.

Because that’s been working out so well for you, hasn’t it, Bell?

She waved that thought away as well.

James tore away her clothes like a starving animal. He tied her hands to the headboard and proceeded to devour her. He ate her pussy, licked between her ass cheeks, pulled a bottle from his bedside drawer and rubbed oil into her breasts and thighs. He touched her again and again, stroking and massaging until Charlie was writhing with need. But he didn’t fuck her and he didn’t talk to her. He wanted something but she didn’t know what it was.

Eventually he pulled away, coldly eyeing her oil-slick body as he rolled a condom down his cock. “I know a secret, darlin’, would you like to hear it?”

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