Chapter 6

Six

Charlotte

I’m sitting at my desk at work, inhaling the scent of my freshly delivered roses.

Old Charlotte would have sent these back to the florist without a second thought.

New Charlotte? Not so much.

The sight of them on my desk makes me think of Dean. Everything makes me think of Dean. It has been a week since I met him for the lunch break of the century at the rooftop pool. And if I thought the intimacy between us was running wild before, I now know it was only on the brink.

I’m not myself anymore.

Sitting in this chair, I feel naked. Exposed. Sensitive. Every single nerve.

There is one word on the card that came with the flowers.

Behave.

When I read it, I stopped being able to breathe. My pulse is still thumping and they arrived an hour ago, as soon as I set foot in the office. He dominates me, this man. Yet I sit here feeling like a powerful goddess with the world at her fingertips. Exultant. Cherished.

Looking around the office, I notice a group of my co-workers whispering, looking over their shoulder at me, and I can’t say I blame them. These days, I stumble into this office in a sexual stupor, my bottom lip indented with teeth marks, my hair wild from having the life kissed out of me on my way out the door of Dean’s townhouse. I’m hyperaware of my body every second of the day. Even my hair brushing over my collarbone can make me shudder. Make me think of him. Dean. Doctor Fletcher. Sir. Daddy.

I catch my reflection in the monitor of my computer, which has gone dark as I’ve been daydreaming—and my God, I barely recognize the sex kitten staring back at me. I’m wearing a gray strapless pencil dress that goes all the way to my knees—but it looks painted on—and boosts my breasts up like a sultry offering. There’s a slit running up to my thigh and I’m already imagining the doctor’s hand trailing up that exposed skin, dragging it higher, higher.

I’m already imagining how he’ll command me. How roughly he’ll enter me.

Staring at my reflection, I have no choice but to acknowledge that I’m slipping.

Fast.

I’ve started spending the night. Yesterday I didn’t even make a pretense of cleaning, as I’m being paid to do. I’m accepting gifts. When he calls me an Uber so I don’t have to take the train to work, I go willingly. Gratefully.

It’s a slippery slope and I’ve already tumbled halfway to the bottom.

Through the window of my office, I can see the hospital looming in the distance—and I know that’s where I’m supposed to be. Reading through Dean’s personal files has ignited an even more powerful burn inside of me, made me chomp at the bit to put the words into practice. To learn more and become a surgeon, like I’ve always dreamed of doing. It would be so easy to accept the gift Dean wants to give me. If I’m starting to cave after such a short period of time, where will I be in a year? Living in his house? Spoiled out of my mind and attending medical school?

Letting out a worried breath, I lean back in my chair, ordering myself to get started on my tasks of the day. But just as I open the required reference file, another delivery is made to my desk. This time, it’s an orchid. It’s beautiful. Vivid. Still sprinkled in moisture.

My heart is back to flying off the handle.

Because I love him. I absolutely, one hundred percent, am in love with Dean Fletcher.

I’ve always been infatuated, but this? This is the real deal. I know him now. I’ve let my guard down and he’s done the same with me. We’re…joined. Fused. Attached.

An image occupies my brain suddenly. Dean’s head tipped back on the pillow, laughing at something I said. Peppering me with questions about myself while I do the same, in reverse. Sometimes we talk until the darkest hours of the morning, whispering as if we’re going to get caught. I think of how he pulls me into his arms when I start to yawn, tucking me into his body protectively, stroking magic fingers up and down my spine until I fall asleep. And I’m not sure how I was living without him before. I’m under his spell and I don’t want to come out.

Lips pressed together, I reach for the card attached to the orchid, reading it with stunned breathlessness.

Liver transplant surgery at 11. I’ve put your name down for the viewing gallery.

Come watch. D

I’m already surging to my feet, my hip knocking into the desk and nearly upsetting my coffee. I open the bottom drawer of my desk and take out my purse, hanging it on my shoulder, trying to calm down as I approach my boss’s office. Surgery. I’m going to watch a live surgery. And not just any transplant. This one will be performed by the Messiah himself. I read online once that Dean only allows an audience of medical students once a year—and they have to enter a lottery to win a seat. There’s no way I can pass this up. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

I tap lightly on my boss’s door and open it, stepping inside.

He leans sideways to see me around his computer monitor, giving me a blatant once-over that makes me want to gag. He’s a child compared to my boyfriend. A twenty-one-year-old kid who made millions on an app that deletes unused apps and wears shirts that say “Iconic” or “Byte Me,” and he’s generally just snarky and sarcastic to anyone who engages him. Normally I avoid him like the plague unless I’m being given an assignment, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“I’m not feeling well,” I say, rubbing at my throat. “Achy. Shivering.”

With a smirk, he pushes up his glasses. “I have that effect on women.”

Inwardly, I cringe while he laughs at his own joke. “It’s my period,” I lie.

He melts back behind the screen, as if I’ve just summoned the devil. “Go.”

Coward.

“Thanks!”

I grab another coffee downstairs, needing something to do with my hands in all the excitement. It’s a beautiful day, so I decide to walk to the hospital and I’m still slightly early when I arrive, the crisp sterility of the surgical unit giving me a sense of homecoming. A sense of belonging. There is a group of medical students waiting to enter the viewing area for the surgery and they are clearly very curious about me, the girl dressed to seduce her boyfriend. One of these things is not like the other. And being here, seeing them in their scrubs, I’m hit with yearning so fierce, I have to focus on my breathing to get through it. I want to join them.

Slipping. You’re slipping.

Desperately, I try to remember why I promised my mother I’d never allow a man to support me. It’s only a matter of time before they lord it over you. Make you believe you’d be nothing without them and their money. They want you to be weak, so they can feel strong, but they’ll also punish you for that weakness.

Repeating those words to myself usually helps, but I can’t seem to apply them to Dean anymore. They don’t fit. But my mother also fell into a trap like this, didn’t she? Making excuses for her boyfriend? Do I have blinders on because of our intense physical relationship?

The door to the viewing gallery opens and the medical students file inside, me taking up the rear. I find a spot to the right, one row back, and try to absorb everything at once. The surgical team preparing the patient, making sure their tools are lined up, each one accounted for. And then Dean strides into the OR, hands gloved and raised in front of him, so he won’t touch anything and contaminate the latex. The lower half of his face is hidden by a mask, head covered with a scrub cap, dark hair sticking out at the back.

He towers over everyone. A presence.

“That’s him,” one of the male medical students whispers. “The Messiah.”

“Holy shit, he’s intimidating,” says a student with a red scrunchie.

“I couldn’t believe it when the notice went out about the lottery—the second one this year. He usually only does one. Wonder what changed?”

“Maybe he got a girlfriend who softened him up,” suggests red scrunchie.

“He did,” I say, automatically—then promptly flush to the roots of my hair.

And that’s when Dean looks up at me through the gallery glass, sharp brown eyes climbing the length of my thigh, so thoroughly exposed by the slit. It dances along my bare shoulders, dipping to my breasts. His head shakes slightly, just a slight tilt, and my entire body grows enormously warm. Because I know what that tilt means. It means I’m going to pay for wearing this dress later. It’s probably going to end up in tatters.

For the next four hours, I’m pretty sure I don’t move a muscle, my eyes focused on Dean’s hands, the methodical movements of the scalpels and clamps.

This is the surgery that should have given my father another fifty years of life.

This is the reason I want to be a surgeon.

I can achieve that dream, sooner rather than later. Is that what he’s trying to show me?

That question fades as I become more engrossed, along with the students. And I’m not just riveted by the surgery, but by the man. His authority, his confidence, his focus. A genius. The man is a genius, a saver of lives. He’s my lover. The power he exerts in the OR is detailed and focused, whereas he’s unleashed when we’re together. As he stitches the donor recipient up, completing the surgery, all I can think about is Dean’s harnessed energy. His control.

I listen to the students whisper about him in awe…and God help me, I’m turned on—in this longing, worshipful manner that I feel everywhere. In my throat and chest and loins. He’s the Messiah and I’m his girlfriend. I’m the one who is free to reward him, praise him, like he deserves. My body is already preparing to do so, growing damp and pliant at my core, every inch of my skin feverishly warm.

A hospital intern arrives to clear out the gallery and the medical students file out first, still giving me curious looks. Before I can walk out the door, I’m stopped by the intern who says flatly, “Please follow me, Miss Beck.”

“Oh…” There’s a wild fluttering in my veins. “Thank you.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m being brought to Dean—and I’m correct.

His spacious office is empty when I enter, the intern closing the door briskly behind me. I run a finger along the polished edge of his desk, over the golden nameplate that proclaims its owner. On the other side of the window, the Chicago skyline is a silhouette against an orange-pink sunset, casting the office in a dreamlike glow. Slowly, eyes closed against the inundation of lust coursing through me, I tug down the bodice of my dress until my breasts are almost popping out and I lean back against his desk to wait.

Five minutes later, the knob turns and Dean steps inside, freshly showered and wearing street clothes, his jaw rigid with tension.

Hunger.

With deft movements, he closes the door with a click and engages the lock.

And I wasn’t planning on this. I wasn’t. But I obey my instincts when it comes to my relationship with Dean. My lust gives me no choice. So I drop to my hands and knees, crawling to him, the breath sawing in and out of my lungs. When I reach his legs, I change to a kneeling position, my fingers fumbling eagerly with his belt buckle, his zipper. He cups the side of my face a moment, then fists my hair with ownership, eliciting a sob from my mouth.

“What is this, Charlotte?” Dean rasps.

“I don’t know,” I whisper, leaning in to rub my cheek against his erection through the black cotton of his briefs. “I want to serve you. I n-need to.” I kiss the thick curve of him. Obscene, open-mouthed kisses that dampen the material of his underwear. “My Daddy is so mighty,” I whisper, trembling. “Let me worship him.”

Dean’s head falls back on a strangled moan, his erection pulsing against my lips. “God yes, little girl. Look at you. You’re dying to suck it, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Go on. Nurse yourself on it. Mouth fuck me. Please.” He pants. “But don’t do it out of gratitude over the viewing. I don’t need you to do that. I just want you happy.”

“I know,” I whisper, meaning it. “No gratitude.” I kiss his arousal. “Just devotion.”

His chest heaves, his fingers working the buttons of his shirt quickly, taking it off, his pecs and abs taut with anticipation. I exhale a warm breath along his happy trail, teasing that dark hair with my tongue. And keeping my eyes on him, I peel down the sides of his briefs, whimpering at the enormous sight of him, running my lips up and down the smooth, vein-riddled sides, sipping at the tip. Kissing. Licking. Just eager to please him in any and every way. I scoot as close as possible on my knees, until they reach the toes of his wingtips.

Then I slide him into my wet mouth, moaning, stroking him with my hands. I taste the menthol of his soap and the distinct saltiness of Dean when he’s ready for sex. I’ve never taken him in my mouth before, but I’ve tasted the flavors elsewhere on his skin and if I could wear them like perfume, I would. I’d spray it inside my panties, on my nipples, on the insides of my thighs. I’d luxuriate in the essence of him as I’m doing now, bobbing my mouth up and down his stiffness, struggling with little choked sounds to get him down my throat, so I can give him the gift of my awe, my admiration, my surrender.

“Jesus, Charlotte,” he grits through his teeth, fist twisting in my hair. “Ahhh Christ, you’re…you’re throat fucking me. I can’t last like this.”

I blink up at him innocently, then take him an inch further, his growl loud in the sunset-lit office. I’m in the middle of absorbing the vibration of his pleasure when I’m picked up and tossed down on his desk. On my back. My head hangs over the lip of the smooth wood closest to Dean, my knees open to the skyline. And he’s back in my mouth, driving his pulsing member between my lips, his fingers tracing the bulge he creates at the front of my throat.

“Oh my God,” he rasps, his breath coming in short bursts. “Look how much you love Daddy. Look at what a good girl you are.”

I cry out around the invasion of him, the heel of my hand pressing down on the mound of my sex, trying to combat the hot clenching sensation. It hits me over and over and over until I’m positive I’m going to have an orgasm from having Dean in my mouth. From the glorious taste of him, the way he grunts like an animal every time that knot appears in my throat. The way he creates a pumping rhythm, having a filthy sort of intercourse with my mouth, his balls tight, pressing snugly to my face.

I’m seconds from climaxing when Dean pulls out with a strangled roar, storming around to the other side of the desk like a furious God. “If you think you’re not going to be worshipped in kind, Charlotte, you haven’t been paying attention.” He yanks my backside to the edge of the desk, drawing me up into a sitting position by the neckline of my dress, bringing our mouths less than a centimeter apart. “You want to feel what happens when you come into my OR dressed to make my dick hard?”

“Uh-huh,” I push through tingling lips, my eyelids heavy, all of me pulsing hotly. “Please. Please.”

Dean guides his shaft between my legs, shoving aside my panties and impaling me with one rough drive, making me scream with a closed mouth, my eyes tearing from the sheer completeness of him inside me. There’s no pause between his first thrust and the next. I’m quite simply having my brains fucked out on the very edge of his desk, my bottom squeaking up and back on the polished wood, my high heels dropping to the floor one at a time.

This is not the carefully controlled surgeon from the operating room.

He’s an aroused predator and I’m his prey.

His medical degree from Harvard is the last thing I see before my head falls back, eyes closing, back arched. I whimper when he yanks down the bodice of my dress, allowing my breasts to bounce free for his enjoyment. And somehow, at the appearance of my bare breasts, he goes harder. Faster. Rougher. Snarling into kisses and bites of my neck. I’m going to have marks all over me and I don’t even care.

“I want them. Mark me,” I whine. “Hurt me, Daddy.”

And he does. So sweetly. So perfectly.

He jerks me off the desk, turns me around. Pushes me face down, yanks me up onto my tiptoes and reenters me from behind. After one groaning pump, he kicks my ankles wider and goes for broke, pounding me into the desk. He rakes his teeth down my neck and back up. He bruises my hips with those world-renowned fingertips. He changes me from the inside out, my heart flying, soaring, alive for the first time. Pounding with intimate understanding of this man while my body pays homage.

“Do you know what it does to me? Knowing my girlfriend’s wet, horny cunt is halfway across town where I can’t tend to it?” He shoves a hand beneath my hips, finding my clit with his middle and ring finger, stroking the bud with breathtaking precision. With such accuracy that my eyesight wavers, breath clogging in my throat. Oh God. My legs are already trembling with the approaching release. It’s going to kill me this time. It’s going to decimate me. “The sooner you are here with me the better, Charlotte. The tuition will be handled. I’ll find a special internship. Make sure you’re close to me all through medical school. I can’t stand being away from you. I need you here at all times. You obsess me. You and this tight pussy make Daddy crazy. Can’t you see that?”

As he says these words, he bucks in and out of me, his touch intoxicating on my bundle of nerves, drugging me, narrowing my thoughts down to finishing. That’s all I can think about, despite the tingle of warning on the back of my neck. I just need to dull the lust. Now, now, now. Or it’s going to slash me to ribbons.

I grip the edge of the desk and sob his name, the almighty ripples finally starting in my lower stomach and spreading like wildfire, choking off my air, tensing my muscles, on again, off again, my body trembling like a leaf. I drip around the shaft that continues to tunnel in and out of me, a squelch echoing in the room when Dean drives deep one last time, grinding upward and flooding me with liquid fire, both of us moaning through our climaxes, hands groping and grasping and clutching for purchase.

“Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte,” he chants into my neck, eventually drawing me off the desk, my back to his chest, his strong arms wrapped around me. I’m still coming down from the enormous height he propelled me to, but his words come back to me in pieces, tensing my muscles for a totally different reason.

The sooner you are here with me the better, Charlotte. The tuition will be handled. I’ll find a special internship. Make sure you’re close to me all through medical school. I can’t take being away from you. I need you here at all times.

Instead of treasured inside of his arms, I’m inflicted with the sensation of being trapped. On purpose. And indignation, hurt, betrayal speed through my vulnerable system, cutting me off at the knees. This whole time, he’s only been pretending to respect my aspirations of earning the money for medical school on my own. He never really intended to put up with my reticence forever, though. Did he?

“You know…” I tug my dress back into place, knocking his arms free. “You can play God with your patients, but not with me, Dean.”

He turns me around, his expression turning wary. “What are you talking about?”

“What you said. About the tuition being handled. Me being here sooner than later.” I stare at him through a veil of tears. “Were you just pretending to care about my wishes?”

He hesitates a split second before issuing a denial. “No.”

“You’re lying,” I whisper.

And he doesn’t bother denying it. “I thought once you realized you can trust me, we could open the discussion again.”

“Why? You planned to get your way no matter what.”

“Charlotte,” he says, reaching for me, visibly worried. Shaken by the hurt in my tone.

I dance out of his reach just before he can touch me, putting the desk in between us. It took so much trust to do the things we’ve done together in bed. The power I’ve given him over me, the control of my body, even the titles I refer to him by. All of it seems stolen now.

He never respected my feelings.

He was just humoring me.

If I let this continue, I’ll end up broken like my mother after her painful relationship.

“I don’t think I want to see you anymore,” I whisper, groping blindly for my purse. “I’ll have the cleaning agency refund your money. Don’t send me any more gifts. Please. It’s going to be hard enough—” I break off on a sob.

As I’ve been speaking, Dean has gone very still, but his eyes are another story. They’re like a structure fire, entire cities burning to ashes in their depths. “You don’t mean that, Charlotte. You aren’t really ending this.”

“Yes, I am,” I say shakily, swiping the moisture from my cheeks.

“No,” he says firmly, coming around the desk slowly. A god descending from the heavens to address his subjects. “The answer is no.”

I put some steel in my spine. “You aren’t the one deciding. I am. Just like I get to decide my own future. Not you.”

A beat passes. “I admit that I had plans to persuade you—”

“That’s what you’ve been doing this whole time. Being in charge of me. Being my Daddy.” His eyes flash wildly at that word. “You were positioning yourself as my decision maker so you could use our relationship against me.”

“Bullshit,” he grinds out. “Our unique relationship has nothing to do with my refusal to let your potential be wasted. It never has.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So if I wanted to practice at a different hospital once I graduate?”

Dean starts at that, grinding his jaw.

“That’s what I thought. This is about control. Just like my mother warned me about.”

“No,” he breathes, his chest rising and falling faster. “Charlotte, it’s about me being insanely in love with you and dying for the chance to make you happy. And yes, to keep you close. I would never use money against you. And if you think I would, you don’t know me.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I whisper, winded.

He loves me. He said he loves me.

More than anything, I want to get back on my knees and crawl to him. My body craves him even now, mere minutes after we were together. My heart is wailing pitifully in my chest, needing to be close to the man who makes it beat. But I can’t. I can’t. He broke my trust. If I give in this time, he’ll only do it again. It’s a pattern. Isn’t that what my mother always says?

Holding back a fresh sob, I break for the door, but he beats me there, wrapping his arms around me. Pulling me close and rocking me. “Stay. We’ll go home together. I’ll read you my medical files in the bath again,” he murmurs, seducing me with brushes of his mouth over mine, his beloved eyes imploring. Coaxing. “I’ll use my belt to secure you to the headboard of my bed and fuck you slowly for hours. Remember how much you loved that? Remember I had to wipe us down with a towel twice we were sweating so much?”

I moan, pitching forward, because my knees simply turn useless.

But I was born stubborn. I have that quality in spades, so I call on it now, summon it through the lust fog in which I’ve been caught for weeks. “No.” I push out of his embrace, keeping my eyes averted so I don’t look at him and cave. “It’s over.”

He takes a rasping breath and tips up my chin, giving me no choice but to meet his eyes—and they are destroyed. Ruins of their former selves. I’ve slayed him and it makes a new helping of tears well up in my eyes, guilt spearing me in the stomach. “I’m going to let you take some time to think, but understand me, little girl, it’s going to be a very short window of time. My sanity can’t stand much more than that—if at all. I’m only allowing you to walk out of here right now because my marks are all over your gorgeous body. You’re taken—by me—the bites and bruises are right there to prove it. You’re covered in me.” He backs me against the door, hard, making me whimper. “You go straight home and think about how much I fucking love you. How I live for you. And then you come back home to Daddy for good. Is that clear?”

I can’t answer that.

I can’t.

I reach down and fumble with the doorknob, escaping into the hallway by the skin of my teeth, Dean’s eyes burning into my spine until I turn at the end of the hospital corridor and break into the run, tears tracking down my cheeks.