The Woman from the Past (Grassi Framily)

“No dessert tonight. Or any night when you visit the coffee shop,” Colin said as our plates were taken away.

It wasn’t like dessert was anything to write home about anyway. If I was lucky, it was raspberry or peach sherbert. I was rarely lucky, though, which meant it was typically a plain yogurt parfait with berries and a tiny sprinkling of granola. Which was pretty much what my breakfast was most days, so it wasn’t much of a treat at all.

“Okay. I understand,” I agreed, getting up from the table and moving toward the door as he rose.

He usually just let me walk away.

Which was why my whole body jolted when I felt him move in behind me, his whole front touching my whole back. And that beautiful dress he made me wear provided almost no protection, no real buffer between us. I could feel his body heat right through the barely-there fabric.

His hand went around me, resting so that his thumb pressed up against the swell of my breasts in the center and his forefinger completely rested beneath it.

I never felt as stiff as I did right in that moment, fear and disgust creating a sick feeling in my stomach and a clamminess on my skin.

Colin leaned downward and used his free hand to sweep my hair off of one side of my neck so he could lean down and nearly press his nose to the skin there, taking a deep breath.

“I do prefer the scent of your soap to onions and vinegar,” he declared, and I had to bite my lower lip to keep it from trembling as my mind raced with all the ways this could go terribly. Just on the brink of freedom. “Go get some rest, Cameron,” he demanded, and I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not but his thumb brushed over the whole swell of my breast as he released me.

It took every bit of self-control I possessed not to run away from him right then.

I managed to keep my gait quick, but not overly hurried until I hit the steps in the garage, which I ran up, rushing into my apartment, locking the door, and falling against it just as a strange whimpering sob escaped me.

I bet he knew it, too. Even without seeing, without hearing. I bet he knew that was what he was doing to me.

He got off on that.

The sick bastard.

But it was okay. It was fine. I was fine. I needed to pull myself together. Nothing… much happened. Had things escalated a bit? Yes. It was a graze. Unwanted. Uninvited. But I could call myself lucky that it was only a graze. It absolutely could have been worse.

On that note, I got up, walking into the bathroom, and stripping out of the dress I now hated, then scrubbing at my neck with my unscented hand soap until the skin was almost raw and I was sure there was no trace of the soap from my shower left.

Only then did I seem to remember about the phone, and the call that was supposed to be coming in.

I got it out maybe two minutes before it lit up to say he was calling me.

“Hello?” I said, feeling weird since it had been so long since I talked on a phone.

“What happened?” Massimo asked immediately.

“What?”

“What happened?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“You sound off.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. What happened?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“How about we let me be the judge of that?” he asked.

“Great. Another man making decisions for me,” I grumbled, mostly to myself.

“Cammie…”