32. Wyn

The combination of being in Derek's office and the question he just asked me has me feeling some kind of way. Spoiled. I feel spoiled. Spoiled for choice and spoiled in general simply by being in proximity to Derek. My heart is hammering like a drum. All that talk of not needing me to teach him anything else scared the daylights out of me. My heart almost stopped when he said it. It was the very thing I've been dreading, but I seem to have received a reprieve.

I'd better make sure I put it to good use.

"Well," I say thoughtfully, "you could do with a little edge, a little bite, a little something…" Oh fuck, don't tell me I can't say this. Don't tell me I've spent years getting off to the thought of it, but now that my opportunity to get what I want—from the very man I want it from—is here, I'm going to choke. Please, God, no. "Hard." My voice cracks horrifically.

Derek, understandably, looks very confused. He leans forward, one side of his top lip inching up. "Hard?"

"Rough," I squeak.

He leans his head back slightly as if to get a better vantage of me. His lip, curled in confusion a second ago, curls in something completely different now.

Now, I know rough isn't a clear instruction. It isn't even a full sentence. I'm going to have to say more. There's no doubt about it. Obviously, I'm going to have to say more. And I will. Any minute now, I will.

"I, you, I want you to, to, to take me." Oooh, there's that squeak again. "To just, like, grab me and like, push me around, and, and do what you want with me. I want you to, to…"

"Own you?" he finishes for me. A blend of red-hot humiliation and arousal tears through me. Own me. Fuck yes. I couldn't have put it better myself. That's what I want. Derek's eyes darken and dance. Shadows shimmer. Tiny cracks appear where there used to be pain. They quickly light up and turn to heat. They start to burn. "But, bunny," he says reasonably, casting his gaze around his office, at the LA skyline, at my desk in reception, and then back to me, "I do own you."

A terrible, vicious spike of lust hits me right in the chest. The sensation heats and expands, flowing forcefully down to my dick.

"How much?" he asks. "How much to show you who you belong to?"

I can't vouch for my voice, so I do a little shoulder shiver and blink a lot.

"A thousand?"

I shake my head.

"One five?"

I shake my head and swallow hard.

"Two thousand."

I don't shake or swallow, but my jaw clicks loudly.

"Two five?"

I'm at serious risk of hyperventilating or possibly fainting, so I give a sharp, single nod.

"Two thousand five hundred dollars." He lets out a low whistle. "Damn, boy, that's a lot of money."

He has his negotiation face on. His eyes are laser-focused, his lips curled in a slight snarl. When he looks like this in meetings, he's about to start negotiating in earnest.

"Take it or leave it," I say shakily. I know I look like a wreck. I can feel it. To disguise it and add an air of professionalism to the whole business, I attempt a careless, one-shoulder shrug.

He doesn't reply.

He simply stands and moves toward me at lightning speed. He has me by the upper arm before I've gathered my thoughts and pulls me to standing, kicking the chair I was sitting on back several feet. The space around me feels cavernous and too small at the same time. His chest is so close to me, I could lean down and rest my head on it if circumstances were different. He takes my jaw in one hand and holds it firmly, forcing me to look at him as he tugs my bow tie. When it's loose, he drops it onto his desk and starts working on my shirt. He's rough. The buttons are tiny, his hands are huge. If they don't give way easily, he makes them. Ripping and sending them flying into the air. Each time it happens, my desire doubles and doubles again.

He relieves me of my pants in the same way. The fabric is yanked off me, chaffing my skin as he pulls.

I'm naked in seconds. Shaking like a leaf as he takes me in. He looks at me exactly the way he looked at his office and the reception area earlier. Like a man surveying his property.

Like I'm his.

It feels right to be looked at like this by him. More than right. It feels right and wrong. Wrong in the very best way.

Exactly as wrong as I've always wanted to feel.

I watch, shivering, as he drops his jacket onto the floor. It slides off his shoulders and drops and lands on timber with a soft sigh, quickly followed by his shirt. His hands move down, drawing my eye to the solid mass of his chest. Dark hair. Hard muscle. Strong man. Big man. I stand, helpless and frozen, burning, as he pulls back the tail of his belt and loosens the prong from the punch hole.

Time stretches and drags out. I've been here before, and I'm somewhere brand new. My vision focuses and distorts. I see tanned skin and raven hair flecked with silver. Veins protruding and deep lines on his knuckles. My heart thunders, the sound swooshing so loudly my vision blurs when I see Derek's face. Shapes and features turn hazy. All that remains is the shape of him. Huge. Towering. Broad shoulders. An arrogant tilt to his head. The white flash of a grin and a dark, ominous presence sinks to the floor and snakes toward me, slowly circling and winding its way around me, squeezing tighter. Hotter. Tighter and tighter until I'm dizzy.

"Wyn." Derek's voice enters my body at the tip of my cock and vibrates up my shaft. "Brace yourself with both hands on the glass. Widen your stance and hold firm. You're going to need to because I'm about to make your knees buckle."

Oof

I do as he says, tottering unsteadily to the floor-to-ceiling window that faces west. There's a jungle of buildings. Angular and tall. Framed in the distance by a canvas of blue. A cerulean dream where the sky meets the sea. I place my hands, palms flat, onto icy glass, trying not to look down or think about the fact I'm willfully exposing myself to half of downtown LA.

"It's mirrored," says Derek, who seems to have picked up mind-reading at around the same time he started tapping into my deepest fantasies. "We can see out, but they can't see in."

That reassures me enough that I look down to see tiny ant-people scurrying along on the street. Umbrellas are out. It's raining. People are walking quickly and running for cover. Vertigo, or unbridled lust, makes my legs and whatever's between my ears turn to sponge.

A soft, low rumble shakes the floorboards beneath me. Derek is breathing behind me. No, not breathing, it's lower, louder—Derek is growling behind me, disturbing the air and shaking me gently by my cock and balls.

I mewl pathetically and rest my forehead on the glass.

"Ass out." It's coarse and crude and just what I want. What I need.

I shuffle back and arch my spine, spreading my legs wider.

Derek hisses behind me.

The first time he touches me, it's with his tongue. He licks my shoulder all the way to my neck. My head lolls to the side to give him more access. He takes it with his teeth. A light graze, a sharp pinch. A low moan that comes from my core. The next time he does it, it's harder, wetter, and he pairs it with the quick, expert thrust of a slick finger straight up my ass. That's hard too. He drills me twice and then adds another finger. It's a lot, thick and hot. I let out a small sound of protest.

It's what he wants.

"Shh, bunny," he sneers, "you need this. You're going to thank me for it later. You'll see."

I stand still, or as still as I can with my legs shaking this badly, as he opens me. He's quick and rough. Just a little rough, but rough enough to make my mind swim. He's different. I can feel it, even though I can't see him. If I could, he wouldn't be looking at me the way he usually looks at me, looking and learning. Studying me. Right now, he's not learning. He's in his own wheelhouse.

Derek MacAvoy knows the business of ownership like no other.

He curls his fingers inside me, down toward my pelvic bone, causing a burst of stars to glitter and light up the expanse of blue before me.

"Who do you belong to?" he asks almost kindly.

"You," I slur with no hesitation.

"That's right, and don't you forget it. In fact…" He drifts off just long enough for me to hear the smile in his words. It isn't a kind one. "I'm going to make sure you don't. I'm going to make it so you can't move. Can't walk, can't sit. I'm going to make it so you can't shift without feeling where I've been."

My eyes slide closed, and I groan. Loud and long. I don't even try not to.

"And, bunny, I want you to tell me, okay? Every time I hit hard, every time it hurts, every time you think you can't take anymore, I want you to tell me you're mine. I want to hear you say the words. Got it?"

I nod, head loose on its hinges, falling a little too far back and forward.

There's a loud clatter, plastic on timber, as he tosses the bottle of lube on the floor. A soft squelch. A big hand circling a big cock.

I shudder, distantly wondering whether it's wise to provoke a man like Derek MacAvoy into a rut.

Fortunately, I don't have much time to wonder. Derek reaches down and peels my cheeks open with both hands before notching his head firmly inside me. He does it roughly too. The stretch is quick. A sharp sting and then pressure so deep I feel it in my face. He thrusts, slow but true, stuffing me to the hilt. He draws back and snaps his hips, filling me as deeply as I've ever been filled. His pace is fast, leaving me struggling to catch up, struggling to absorb the sensation without losing my mind. From the start, I cry out with each thrust, long, hollow wails that threaten to break the glass.

Derek doesn't stop. He doesn't slow. He wraps a hand around my neck and holds me. Not choking. Not squeezing. Owning. The next fuck is hard. Harder than before. It shakes something loose.

"Yours," I rasp. "Yours. Yours."

I repeat the same word over and over. I say it until he's fucked me onto my toes and my face is squished against the glass. I moan it and cry it, and when his hand wraps around my cock and starts jacking me hard, I scream it.

I scream it as Derek's stride stutters and grows erratic and my own peak crests and crashes into me. My vision fades to white and then black. No hint of gray. I shoot for my life, for the ages, for every single version of me.

Pleasure rolls through me again and again, wringing me out until I'm limp and the only thing holding me up is a huge pane of glass and the dick I'm speared by.

He pulls out, and I crumple to the floor. He does too. We sit side by side, our backs against the glass. Feverish skin soothed but not cooled. Neither of us talks for a very long time. I'm overloaded. Overstimulated. My mind is whirring, and every emotion known to man is jostling for position. I'm happy and sad. Sated and shocked. Angry and ashamed and crazy about the man who's just paid me to feel all these things.

Eventually, Derek lifts my chin and makes me face him. He's not completely back to himself though. His eyes still crackle with fire.

"Wyn," he says with a slow smile, "I would have paid double."

That does it. I vault to my feet, an athletic maneuver I had no idea I was capable of, as every emotion I've felt in the past two months explodes out of me.

"Really?" I yell. "Really? Well, the joke's on you, you douche, because I would have done it for free."

I tear around the room blindly as I search for my clothes, my physical and emotional nakedness no longer amusing or in any way enjoyable.

"Wyn." I ignore him and move faster. Finding my pants and kicking my feet into them. Jumping around as I pull them up. "Wyn, stop!" The idiotic part of me that wants to please Derek no matter what freezes. "What did you just say?"

"You heard me."

He blinks slowly and looks at me as if he's never seen me before. "But, but then, why am I paying you?"

"I don't fucking know!" My voice creeps up and starts growing breathy. "How the fucking hell should I know? You said…I said…you said…"

I can feel I'm about to start crying, and I hate that for me. I put my shirt on, one arm and then the other, and do up the two buttons that remain attached to the garment. I turn my head and look down so Derek can't see me cry, but I don't move.

Derek gets to his feet and stands in front of me, running a finger along my jawline and tilting my chin. "What do you want, Wyn?" There's a seriousness in his voice that's paralyzing. It's impossible to ignore. Impossible not to obey.

"I want it all, you ass." Dark eyes approach and retreat. I understand in this second, right as I stand here, that this thing between me and Derek, the way it was, the way it's been, is over. There's not a damn thing I can do about it, so I go for broke. I don't hold back. I unleash the full force of myself on him. "I want the whole package. I want romance and…" I desperately want to say love, but I can't make the leap, "butterflies. I want heart palpitations and grand gestures. I want…pizza. You know the first bite of pizza? Well, I want it. And, and, I want a home that's a house, and, and tiny, miniature little people, and, did I already say grand gestures?"

Shit. I did, didn't I?

I'm completely out of breath, and when I try to rectify that, a loud sob bursts out of me. I'm fumbling this badly, and I sound so goddamn stupid I can hardly believe myself. I should stop talking now. I definitely should. I'd love it if I could, but we all know that's not very likely. "I want to be wooed." The wooed comes out as such a long, pathetic sound that it sounds like something the wind made by rushing through the space between tall buildings.

Derek reaches down and steps into his pants, zipping and buttoning up before looking at me. I stand immobile as I try to decide whether to throw something at him or tender my resignation with immediate effect.

"How many?" His voice seems to come out of nowhere. It startles me so I have a hard time deciphering the words. "How. Many?" he asks again, clearer this time.

Kids? He's talking about kids. He is, right?

Right?

Oh fuck, it's hard to breathe.

"You know, just two or three. Or one. Definitely one. There has to be one, and I guess if that one turns out okay, and it's possible to have more, I might want to consider having another one."

"Done," he says so softly I think I must be hallucinating.

I put the rest of my clothes on, socks and shoes, and Derek gets his stapler off his desk and staples my shirt closed where the buttons have been lost. I'm pretty sure I've dropped into an alternate reality, but I like it here, and I'm loath to make any sudden changes lest it upset this strange balance we've landed on, so I take my leave.

"Wyn," Derek calls after me. "What are you doing?"

"The expense report," I say as though he's the one who's taken leave of his senses. "I said I'd have it done before the start of business tomorrow, and I meant it."

There's a low tremor. A deep, throaty chuckle. "All right, fine, but don't take too long. Wooing will commence at eight p.m. sharp."