Ian: Don’t you? Are you touching yourself, Grace, just thinking about it?
On all things unholy.
I could feel sex dripping from his fingertips, and he wasn’t even there.
Want clamored through my senses, every nerve alive. I shifted on the bed, my body on fire, so needy I was close to panting.
So close to touching myself and telling him that’s what I was doing. That I was wishing it was him doing it to me.
I knew exactly how that would end.
I really had to put an end to this conversation. It was heading down a path of no return. One where the two of us were gonna collide, and the result of that was not going to be pretty.
He could so easily crush me.
Wind me up and leave me spinning.
Chasing after something that I could never have. But my heart had taken control, and my fingers were tapping out a reply.
Me: No. I’m not. But I wish you were.
It took a couple seconds before another text came through.
Ian: Is that an invitation? Because you know I am. My cock is so hard, I can barely see. You should feel it, Grace. What you do to me.
Me: I wish it was my hands.
Ian: Let’s forget these wishes and make it a reality. I want inside of you. I bet your pussy is just as perfect as the rest of you.
Oh goodness.
There was nothing I could do. I was touching myself. Imagining exactly that. That gorgeous man crawling over me. Pushing deep. Taking me.
Three texts blipped through, I had no idea how much time in between, my mind lost to the vision of what that would be like.
Letting myself go in a way that was so out of character for me.
I shattered. Body jerking as I bit my lip to keep myself from calling out his name. I was panting by the time I made it back to the waiting messages.
Ian: You are, aren’t you?
Ian: Touching yourself?
Ian: Fuck. That’s so hot. I want to see it. Your fingers dipping inside your body while I watch. What could one night hurt, Grace?
Reality slowly seeped back into my consciousness, and I struggled with what to say. How to end this when really, I wanted everything the man was offering, even when I knew it was going to hurt me in the end.
Me: I’m not much of a one-night kind of girl. I’m afraid it might hurt a lot.
Ian: I’d tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid, but that would be a lie.
I hesitated, contemplating how to answer, wishing there was a way when it was clear we’d hit a dead end.
Me: Then I think this should be goodbye.
Ian: I guess it is midnight. You’d better run, Cinderella. It seems to be what you do best.
Nine
Ian
Groaning, I peeled my eyes open to the blaring alarm. Darkness still permeated my bedroom, just the barest hint of the approaching morning hinting at the edges of the window. I slapped at my phone to silence it, feeling totally wrung out and off.
Not sure what the fuck I’d been thinking last night.
Pressing that girl the way that I had. Needing something I had no right to go after and wanting to pursue it, anyway.
Seriously. What the hell was wrong with me?
Grace had thrown up so many red flags that I should have been out of the game.
Whistle blown.
But it had started feeling like something that wasn’t close to being only a distraction or a diversion. Didn’t feel like amusement or entertainment.
It’d grown into something bigger. Something that, for the first time in my life, had me wanting to step out and take a chance. Ask for more. Even when I knew I had so little to give. So little to offer.
God, I was fucked up in the head because I didn’t know this girl, and she sure as shit wouldn’t want to know me.
She didn’t know my true nature.
The demon inside. The monster that raged.
Didn’t matter anyway, though, did it?
I’d pushed her, and she’d pushed right back.
Shutting it down.
What I should have done the second she had that foreign feeling rising up and taking hold. The compulsion to possess and protect.
Flopping over onto my back in the middle of my enormous bed, I scrubbed my palms over my face and prayed it might break me out of this fuckery, bring me to my senses, knock me back into reality.
I blew out a strained breath toward the ceiling, dick still goddamned hard from just the few minutes I’d spent talking to her last night. Me picturing her in her bed. Probably surrounded by some Pinterest shit. Chic and modern and pretty.
Just like the girl.
I’d officially become a pussy. A pussy who was picturing a girl’s fucking bedroom.
I needed to get laid, and I needed to do it fast so I could scrape this girl from my mind.
Forcing myself to sit up on the side of my bed, I sighed and grabbed my phone so I could check my emails.
It was routine.
What I always did to prep for the day.
Peoples’ emergencies always seemed to spike in the middle of the night.
Annoying but true.
My life centered around other peoples’ drama. Their heartache. The goal pretty much to turn around and cause more.
Payback and revenge in the form of dollars and wealth. It was always what it amounted to.
Money.
Greed.
I guessed I’d landed myself in the right industry, after all.
A breath left me on a gush when I saw I had a shit-ton of unread texts. Heart rate kicking, hammering like a beast.
The messages had come in about two hours earlier. Probably right after I’d finally drifted into a restless sleep after spending hours aching in my bed. Dying to get lost in that body and those legs and that mind I could feel sucking me inside.
I quickly read through them.
Grace: You’re right. The real problem is that I want to say yes.
Grace: But I also wasn’t lying when I said I have too much going on in my life.
Grace: The truth is, I’m scared. I’m scared of losing anything else. I’m scared of being hurt. I’m scared of putting myself in danger. I’m scared that, once you know me, you’ll walk away.
Grace: But I need you to know something. I might be beaten down. Crippled and fractured, but that doesn’t mean I’m broken or crushed. That has never been me. Someone who is too timid to live her life. Someone who is too terrified to step out and take a chance.
Grace: But sometimes taking those chances might be risking too much.
Grace: I just want you to know . . . someday . . . someday . . . I will get the chance to live again.
My chest tightened.
Painfully.
And I wondered what that might be like.
To live again.
To fully breathe.
To give rather than to take.
To love rather than to hurt.
I just didn’t know how the fuck that was possible when it was the only thing I’d ever known. But there was something about this girl, something overpowering, overwhelming, too perfect and sweet and enthralling, that made me want to try.
* * *
I wove my way through the crowd on the packed sidewalk. Hands shoved into my pockets, the evening air gathering around me, heart manic where it knocked against my ribs.
Hard and fast and desperate.
I was a fool.
I was a fool.
But I didn’t care.
Didn’t care about anything but the girl whose back was to me as she fumbled to lock the door to the salon, shutting down for the night.
Blonde waves tumbled down her back. The girl wore white jeans, a black sweater that draped over one delicious shoulder, and the sexiest pair of boots I’d ever seen.
Everything soared.
This surge of energy and light and need.
Standing there, ten feet away, I had the sinking feeling that I didn’t recognize myself.
Most disturbing was the thought that maybe it was my soul recognizing hers.
Without looking my way, she froze, like she felt it, too, a tremor rolling the length of her spine.
Slowly, slowly, she turned to look at me.
A battered Cinderella.
A broken angel.
And there I stood, the devil in sheep’s clothes.
Got the sense that she’d felt the demon all along. From the moment she’d first seen me. Because she breathed out in surprise, eyes a charge of lust and fear.
I welcomed it when it slammed into me.
Held it.
Just like I wanted to hold on to her.
Ten
Grace
“Ian.” His name was a whisper that fell from my tongue, my mouth parting on fear and need and a breathy sigh.