52. Dex

This is worse, somehow, than him touching me. It's claustrophobic and stressful and the oddest kind of exciting. It's no surprise he's risen to the top of Europe's largest privately-owned company, because I bet this man gets every single thing he wants.

So to be captive within the frame of his body, to have every ounce of his attention on me, is shocking in the most literal sense of the word. It's as if a current is running through my entire body.

He surveys me for a moment through blue eyes that are heat and ice all at once. Then: ‘You didn't have a problem with us being a package deal the other night.'

‘I was so turned on,' I stammer. ‘You have to understand, I was so far gone when you—I—Darcy was doing such an amazing job. I was in this state of extreme… arousal, and?—'

My hands are flapping and I'm as disgusted with myself for the frailty of my argument as Max seems to be. But it's true. He could have done anything in that moment, and I would have found it arousing. Someone could have pissed all over my leg and I probably would still have come.

He took advantage of me during a moment of weakness, and, while I don't necessarily blame him, I don't wish to remember or ever, ever repeat the circumstances of our… moment together.

He leaves me to trail off ineffectually, pathetically. Those blue eyes stray to my mouth, and he licks his lips.

‘Finished gaslighting yourself?' he asks finally. ‘Please don't stop on my account. It's fascinating to watch, honestly.'

I scowl at him. ‘I'm not gaslighting myself,' I spit.

He laughs. When he does that, he's impossible to look away from. ‘I don't think I've ever seen someone narrate their own life quite so unreliably.'

That's just rude. ‘I don't narrate unreliably. I'm telling you my experience of the other night.'

‘Right.' He braces on one hand and uses the other to stroke along his jawline like he's assessing his stubble growth. ‘Let me get this straight. You've been avoiding Darcy because you feel uncomfortable that I kissed you when you were in a vulnerable, aroused state.'

I nod, though I don't appreciate the sarcastic undertones I'm picking up. ‘Exactly,' I say, staring at the long, capable fingers moving over his jawline.

‘Because you're straight,' he continues, and I swear his face moves closer at the same time that he drops his hand and full-on cups my entire scrotum through my trousers, and I am as incapable of forming words as the day I was born, opening my mouth in a silent scream as my palms claw uselessly at the wall behind me.

All there is his face, so close and so strikingly symmetrical, and his eyes, which I now realise see right through my spineless, jellyfish soul, and his hand, so warm and firm and vicious, closing in harder, rubbing against my cock with his palm, and that's all it takes for the blood to vacate my brain and my heart and every fucking organ except my greedy dick, which swells immediately, impossibly, in his grip.

‘So you don't like it when a man touches you,' he insists, and like? What does like even mean, because it has nothing in common with this dizzying, all-consuming ache as the heel of his palm locates and grinds against my crown with the cruelest precision.

‘I'—fuck—‘I…'

‘Thought not,' he agrees, and for a hideous, infinitesimal moment I think he'll withdraw that blessed pressure, that he'll call my bluff and deny me, which would be even more humiliating than him busting me in the first place.

But he doesn't. He leans right in so his breath whispers along my jawline and teases my earlobe, and his entire hand, heel and palm and fingers working in sync, rubs at my once delusional and now, so swiftly, traitorous cock.

‘You didn't like it when you sucked my thumb like a fucking rent boy, did you?' he croons. I wouldn't be capable of answering him even if I wanted to, which I absolutely do not. Thankfully, and also mortifyingly, my body seems to be giving him all the answer he needs.

My head hits the wall with a thwack, and my eyes roll back in my head, and I want him to rub me, abrade me, like this forever with the seam of my boxer briefs chafing against the tender flesh of my crown and my own humiliation roaring in my ears.

His words roll on, callous and dismissive, and I know they'll haunt me for the rest of my days. ‘You didn't like it when you watched me stroking my cock, did you, or when I bit your lip, and you didn't like it when I fucked your mouth with my tongue, and you definitely didn't think about what it would feel like if I stuck my dick in there instead, did you?'

I groan at that, thrusting my hips into his grip, desperate for as much friction as he'll give me. ‘Please,' I moan brokenly, not knowing what I'm begging for. ‘Please.'

He pauses at that, stops rubbing, stops talking. He lifts his head and looks at me, and I stare back at a face I already know I'll never be capable of erasing from my mind, no matter how hard I try.

‘Please what?' he asks, and his voice is softer, more openly curious, stripped of its acerbity, its mercilessness.

I freeze.

He waits.

This is it. This is fucking it. There's no going back from here. I'm rewriting my future with four words, and I don't care, because I don't care about anything in the world right now except making this ache go away.

I open my mouth. ‘Please make me come.'