That was what I imagined, anyway. That was what I was allowing just once, just tonight—this game, this fantasy. While I often used Donovan to calm myself from nightmares and panic attacks brought on from memories of my sexual assault back in college, it had been years since I’d let myself think of him just because.
For a while it had become too common. Those obscene thoughts had been my friends in the months after my attack. But then it had gone too far. I’d let Donovan go too far. After that, I’d banished those sick fantasies to the darkness where they belonged.
But tonight, alone and a little bit drunk, I soaked in the hot water and I imagined that he was with me, watching as I pinched my nipples, pulling them until they hurt and made the space between my legs throb.
Fantasy Donovan liked that. Liked how I gasped. Liked how my back arched.
“Touch me,” I begged him, my voice echoing against the bathroom tile.
“No,” Fantasy Donovan said in my head. “I won’t.” Because even though I could ease the ache with my own hand, I knew that there was no way to pretend it was Donovan’s—not even in my own mind. “You do it.”
“But—”
My fantasy protest was interrupted by the buzz of my phone on the ledge of the tub.
It was after ten. People didn’t call after ten unless it was an emergency or a wrong number or my sister.
I picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but it was local. Curiosity and alcohol got the best of me. “Hello?”
“They were blue,” Donovan said, his voice so low and husky in my ear I had to press my legs together.
He had my number. Why did he have my number?
“What were blue?” I asked.
“Her panties.”
It took me a beat before I realized he meant Sun’s panties. I groaned inwardly. I didn’t want to know.
Except, I kind of did want to know. So even though I was too drunk for this, for conversation, I picked up my glass and settled back into the tub. “And you’ve already left her house?”
“I’m not a guy who stays the night.”
“Of course you’re not.”
I heard a puffing sound. Was he lighting a cigar? I imagined that he was, that he was reclining in a leather chair in his study, maybe, overlooking the city, his tux rumpled but still on.
“Actually, I didn’t even get out of the car,” he said.
“Then how did you…?” I trailed off.
“We had the car ride.”
“But how did you manage—” I cut myself off sharply. He’d fucked her in his car. With his driver in the front seat. “I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do.” His smile was apparent in his tone.
“I really don’t.” I really did. I wanted to know every sick, twisted detail, even as it pained me to hear. Even as it made me hurt with desire.
“I’ll tell you because you do.” Another pause. Another puff? “She was all over me the minute we got in the backseat. Rubbing against my thigh while sucking on my ear. Which is fine, but not really what I like.”
I’d seen her all over him as they drove away. If I thought he might be lying, that one image was enough to back him up. Besides, why would he lie?
I brought my tumbler to my lips but didn’t take a swallow yet. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what you do like.”
He made a sound that indicated he thought it was a funny remark for me to make. “Oh, Sabrina, I think you know.”
Teeth, I thought. Nails. “I think I don’t care.”
“Biting. Nipping. Nothing too soft. Something with a bit of pressure.”
Vividly I could remember the way he’d reacted to my fingers digging into his back. “I’m not paying attention.”
“You will.” Another pause, this time with movement, and now I pictured him cradling the phone while he pulled off his shoes and socks. “Anyway. You saw the dress Sun was wearing. I could easily flip it up. It wasn’t tight like yours.” He hesitated, letting it settle in that he’d thought about that—that my dress would have been more complicated.
I tipped my glass back and let amber whisky silence the guh that formed at the back of my throat.
“I rubbed her there,” he continued, “with two fingers, along the crotch of her panties while I bit into the flesh of her shoulder. She wanted more. She kept pushing her cunt against my hand, trying to get me to give her more.”
“Did you?” I wanted him to say no. Was that terrible? That I cared?
“Not yet. She was too impatient, and she needed to be teased. So I pushed her into the corner of the car. Hard. She yelped. She bumped her head on the window. I suppose it hurt.”
Jesus. “Didn’t your driver notice?”
“Possibly.”
“He wasn’t concerned about her welfare?” I sounded angry, and I was, but not at his driver so much as with myself. How could I listen to this? Why did it make me ache with envy? Why did it turn me on so goddamn much?
“I pay my driver to keep his eyes forward. Okay, he probably sneaks a peek in the rearview mirror and goes home and beats off later, but that’s a perk of the job. Satisfied?”
No. I was far from.
“So. Where was I? She was in the corner. I pulled off her panties, discovered they were blue, and then pushed up her knees so that her feet were on the seat.”
Involuntarily, I raised my legs so my knees were bent and my soles were planted on the bottom of the tub.
“Then I leaned down, put my face between her thighs and licked along her slit,” Donovan said leisurely. “Slowly, Sabrina. She loved it.”
I closed my eyes and imagined it. Not her, not Sun. But imagined Donovan licking, slowly. Imagined loving it.
“How could you tell?” I asked, hoarse from desire and alcohol.
“She shivered. So I did it again. Then I found her clit. I touched it lightly with my tongue, like a feather, until it was plump and swollen like a tiny little peach. And then I sucked it into my mouth and made her writhe. She came so hard her knees vise-gripped my head.”
The envious ache inside had turned into a throb that I couldn’t silence, spreading wide and long through my limbs, making every cell cry out in yearning. Did he know that he could do this to me? He had to.
Why did I let him?
Scotch. I blamed it on the scotch.
“All of that in the twelve minutes it took to get to her apartment. Fortunately Sun’s not a squirter, so it was easy cleanup.”
My eyes shot open. “She didn’t return the favor before she left?”
“No.”
“What a cunt.” I’ll admit I said it with a smile.
“Don’t be like that, Sabrina. It’s sexy to hear you lash out at her, but it’s not fair. She did offer.” He was patronizing and condescending and it was strangely erotic, but there was something else in his words that caught my attention.
“You weren’t interested?” I took another sip of my drink, prepared for his answer to be flippant or cruel or for him not to answer at all.
“I wasn’t hard for her,” he said flatly.
My heart skipped a beat. “But you were hard?”
“Yes, Sabrina. I was hard.”
Oh, god.
I put my drink down and splashed my hand in the water before running it over my face. “Why did you call me, Donovan?”
“Why did you come here, Sabrina?” He sounded as angry and as desperate as I felt.
“You were in Tokyo.”
“And then I had to be in New York.”