And these were the words I wanted him to mean. More than I’d realized.
Afraid to make the wrong move, afraid to guess wrong, I told him, “I don’t know what you’re telling me right now.”
“I’m telling you to come home with me.”
Twenty-Seven
Donovan’s car was parked with the hotel valet. It wasn’t the car that his driver normally drove me in. Instead it was a silver Tesla. I couldn’t say definitively since I’d always sat in the back of the Jag, but I was pretty sure this was the most sophisticated and modern car I’d ever been in, and watching Donovan handle it expertly through the city streets was captivating and stunning.
We rode in silence, the energy between us electric and barbed, making it painful to sit in. My breasts ached. My pussy throbbed. My skin wanted to touch and be touched, my body wanted to be fucked and roughed up and bruised and bumped around.
I still had anger in me. And pain. They were strong emotions that heightened my arousal, and they needed an outlet. Donovan had wordlessly promised to provide one when he’d invited me home with him, and the anticipation grew exponentially every second that passed.
As we headed toward Midtown, the anxiousness drove my brain into overthinking mode. I wondered about trivial things, like did he only have a chauffeur for the women he didn’t want to deal with or did he sometimes use those services himself? And where did he keep his cars?
There were so many things I didn’t know about Donovan Kincaid. So many things I wanted to know and yet didn’t need to know. And if I knew them, would I lose the attraction? Knowledge banished fear. If I understood him, would I lose the fear that drew me to him in the first place?
I already knew the answer, and it was almost as frightening to face as the question.
Because in between the banal thoughts, others wove in, more vague in form and heavier in weight. Thoughts like how the things I felt sitting next to this man right now were wider and deeper than lust and desire. They didn’t stop at what we’d already shared—the dirty sex, the filthy fantasies. They moved further into other realms. He’d looked out for me at the office. He’d worried about me in a dark alley alone. He’d come for me tonight—I was sure of it even though he hadn’t said so outright. I cared that he’d come for me. I cared that he’d worried. If he suddenly didn’t, I’d hurt.
Donovan Kincaid had the power to hurt me.
And not just with his hands or the rough way he treated my body—those possible ways had always fascinated me. But he could also hurt me by not caring, could cut me so much deeper. Could scar me so much more permanently. I realized that now. And that was terrifying.
So I was still scared. He still scared me. Now he just scared me for different reasons.
Eventually, we pulled off in front of a luxury building in Upper Midtown called the Baccarat. I hadn’t been there before, but it seemed to be a hotel. A small thread of disappointment entered the weave of emotions inside me. I’d gotten the impression that Donovan was taking me to his home, that we were moving toward something more intimate between us.
But that hadn’t been exactly what he’d said.
It was already happening. I was already opening myself up to be hurt by assuming that we were becoming something other than what he’d so adamantly stated we were.
I was too vulnerable.
Panic started to twist and braid in my chest.
We left the car with the valet, and as we walked through the elegant, crystal-adorned lobby, he took my hand in his. I stared at our fingers interlaced, suddenly aware of how thick the air felt in my lungs and how my heart sounded as loud as my heels on the marbled floor. After a nod at the doorman, we got in the elevator. The doors had closed, and we were on our way up before I realized we hadn’t actually checked in.
The car stopped at the fifty-sixth floor, and Donovan led me to the suite doors almost immediately across from the elevator. He dropped my hand to retrieve a key card from his wallet and let me in.
As soon as I crossed the threshold and he turned on the lights, I realized I’d been wrong about the hotel situation.
“You live here?” I asked as he helped me with my coat. I didn’t let him answer before heading toward the floor-to-ceiling windows at the other side of the open space behind him. It was a luxury residence, not a hotel room. The main space was white and large with a huge fireplace, furnished sparsely with modern sofas and a conversation area. The floor was dark wood covered with rich-toned rugs.
But the highlight was the view. Even in the dark, I could tell that the windows framed Central Park in the near distance.
The place was both elegant and masculine, and though I would have expected Donovan to have more black in his color scheme, I knew it was his house before he responded.
He responded anyway. “Yes. I live here.”
He lived here. These were his windows, his sofas. This was his view. This was his fireplace.
I studied more of the apartment. There was a formal dining room at the opposite end of the main space and the kitchen beyond that. A staircase led to an upper floor where I imagined his bedroom was located. There weren’t any portraits, but a few art pieces decorated the walls. An impressionistic ink painting of pine trees hung above the fireplace. An abstract oil canvas of orange water lilies filled the wall of the dining area.
The paintings could have been chosen by an interior designer, but neither of the designs were what I’d imagine for a man like Donovan. And there was something about each of them—the stark loneliness of the pine trees, the frankness of the lilies—something about their honesty that made me certain that he’d picked them out himself.
I shouldn’t know that about him.
I shouldn’t know something so intimate about a man I was supposed to have just sex with.
These things exposed him, but they made me feel like the one who was exposed. As if he understood that the more I knew about him, the more I’d feel for him. And the more I felt for him, the more he could use my emotions as his toy.
My heart started racing. My palms began sweating. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay. I needed escape, but I needed him too—with every part of me, I needed him. Needed him to fill me and fuck me and bend me and break me, and, oh god, it was going to hurt when he did.
I needed to run.
I spun around and found him standing behind me, watching as I scrutinized his quarters. He’d taken off his jacket and loosened his tie. His eyes narrowed and glistened, pinned on me like I was a rabbit through a riflescope. As though he could read every minute thought racing through my mind. As though he knew I wanted to escape. But every crease on his face said he was determined that he wouldn’t let me.
He took a slow step in my direction.
I took a cautious step away.