“Then I use my body to make you do it,” I answer between clenched teeth. “And I punish you for making me take it to the next level. I make you heel. If we do things my way, you don’t get away with defying me.”
I watch her carefully. Not every woman's okay with even minor degradation language or the idea of having sex the way animals do it. With the male dominating and the female being held down.
But Red . . .
Red just stares at me. And trembles.
A mirroring shiver runs down my own back. We’re not even kissing. I've only got my hand around her throat. But I’m fighting myself not to blast past the only boundary she’s established with me.
“Griff, I have something I need to say.”
I know she’s about to ask another question, but I can’t do this with her. Not anymore. Not without . . .
I release my hand from around her neck and pull my sweatpants up over my throbbing cock. I’m going to have to beat off to get to sleep. And sure, I’ve had to do that every evening since I invited her to stay, but tonight it pisses me off.
She’s in my head. How did she get in my head?
“No movie tonight,” I bite out. I spring up from the floor and head toward the door with a weird feeling gonging inside my chest. “I’m not in the mood for Will Ferrell.”
“That’s a first,” she says with a chuff, rising to her feet as well. “But we don’t have to—”
“I’m not feeling a movie tonight,” I say before she can suggest something else. I go to stand by the open door. “You can watch Elf by yourself or do whatever. But I can’t have you in my dad’s office without supervision. I don’t know you like that.”
She blinks, then squints a little, like she’s trying to figure me out.
But in the end, she doesn’t protest, just averts her eyes and says, “Sorry if I went too far and made you uncomfortable.”
She thinks this is about my boundaries? A new kind of outrage thrums through me.
But I can’t answer her. She’s already inside my head. No way I’m letting her in any further by admitting that I’m too turned the fuck on to keep talking with her—to even do something as innocent as hanging out on the opposite side of a couch to watch Elf.
I don’t hear the rest of whatever she has to say.
So I let her walk out past me. Let her have the last word.
I watch her sashay down the hallway in one set of those Christmas pajamas she’s been swapping out every other day since her first morning here. Then I go to my room.
And did I think I’d make it all the way to the bed?
Wrong again, Griff. I barely get the door closed behind me before I’m fisting my cock. Images of her flood my mind as I jerk it with rough strokes for what can’t even be a minute before I shoot my load onto the wood floor.
Then I stare at the pool of jizz I’m going to have to clean up, breathing hard.
And even though I know her name, I wonder once again who this girl is . . . and what the hell is wrong with me?
She doesn’t know who I am. And suddenly, I don’t either.
CHAPTER 13
RED
Did I go too far?
I spend the rest of the night outwardly watching Elf. But inside I’m churning and turning in my head over everything Griff said—including the part about no longer wanting to watch the movie with me.
A spark I hadn’t realized I possessed lit up inside of me when Griff wrapped his hand around my throat.
And I’ll admit, I wasn’t just trying to act like a sexual badass who was up for anything—you know, the opposite of Boring Bernice. I was honestly curious.
But maybe I said too much. He acted like I couldn’t be trusted even to hang out in his father’s office alone. And I’m pretty sure it was me, not Will Ferrell, he suddenly went cold on.
What had I been thinking, trying to give him that blow job? I don’t have much experience with them, but I thought I was doing a good job—until he made me stop.
And while I was getting super turned-on by our conversation about boundaries, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he wanted one of those experienced roadhouse women—the kind who knew exactly how to handle the bikers they followed upstairs. Not someone who admitted to barely knowing what a safeword was.
The constant replays looping inside my head make me feel cringier and cringier until I have to go to bed early myself to get away from them.
The next day, I wake up at my usual hour and do the same things I’ve been doing pretty much every morning since I decided to take Griff up on his offer. I read some more of the latest Clara Quinn book. Not just because she’s a distant cousin, who I, like all Black southern girls with huge extended families refer to as Auntie, but also because she’s my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer of all time.