Page 37 of Seven Nights

I drape my arms over his shoulders, lying when I say it is “for support.”

His gaze narrows. Throughout our encounters, he has tried to control my hands, keeping them away from his body, either with the restraints, entering me from behind, or making me grip onto something like that damn marble table the entire time he fucked me in his office.

My smile peeks out, retreats, peeks again.

Griffin offers an indulgent eye roll.

Then I get stupid and move one hand so that my palm covers his collarbone, my thumb sweeping outward along its surface.

“Turning you around now,” he rumbles.

He forces me close to the wall, the tile mercifully warmed by my back before my nipples are pushed against it. With one arm against my stomach for balance, he soaps up my backside. His hand takes little dips around the front of my torso to tease my breasts and the perimeter of my mound.

It takes me several minutes of this delicious torment before I realize that he has settled on how to discipline me for this most recent disobedient act. These almost touches, the glide of his now erect cock through the valley of my ass, that soapy finger teasing the nervous pucker between my cheeks as he nibbles on my ear—it is all incredibly pleasurable and all part of his plan.

By the time the soap and shampoo are rinsed from my body, I am aroused and achy with the need for him to fuck me. But I know he won’t.

“Don’t move,” Griffin warns as he leaves me facing the wall. “And don’t look.”

He steps out of the shower. I can hear the whip and whisper of him moving a towel around his body. When it stops, he helps me out of the stall and props my back against the wall. A towel covers him from belly button to an inch above his knees.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as he dries me off.

A quick, dismissive glance up from Griffin tells me “sorry” won’t work.

With my body and hair dry, he carries me to bed, propping my injured leg with pillows, tucking me in and turning away.

“My cane…”

I stop when he locks the bedroom door.

He is staying, it seems. At least for a while.

Griffin turns the room’s lights off. I relax into the mattress, closing my eyes and listening to him finish in the bathroom. The next time I am aware of him, he is sliding naked into bed next to me. The only light comes from his iPad as he programs alarms at two-hour intervals. With that task done, he places the device on his nightstand and rolls onto his side, facing me.

I have no idea what to expect next. He has warned me that his time is worth two thousand dollars a minute. Going by our contract, mine is worth only five dollars for the same unit of time. It’s been more than twelve hours since our last encounter. That’s thirty-six hundred fuck doll dollars down the drain.

“Do you want—”

He brushes a thumb across my lips.

“Don’t move,” he warns, getting up from the bed.

He goes into the bathroom, runs some water in the sink. Both rooms are dark, so I don’t know what he is doing. I don’t like this darkness, I associate too many bad memories with the absence of light. But everything Griffin does with and around me has a purpose. The room is dark because he specifically wants it that way.

This authoritarian intent makes me remember the days when my mother was at her worst, when my father would withhold her medicine just to watch her with a smug gaze as she descended into madness. On her worst days, she would pull me into the closet with her, the lights out. Fancy gowns and house dresses would brush against my head as she held me to her, her body shaking in fear.

We were hiding from monsters. No talking, no light.

The only monster was my father. I blamed him for the darkness and the silence.

Would it help if I told Griffin this?

Would he change what he does or exacerbate it as a means of greater control?

Am I even capable of starting such a painful conversation with a man who will only be in my life a few more days?

I hear his footsteps from the bathroom to the dresser. He opens a drawer, closes it a second later. I jerk with the wrong kind of anticipation when he pulls the blanket down my body.

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