The waiting had been hell. Just as Jay had intended. With so much pent-up sexual frustration, merely hearing his voice did something to me. Another thing he’d likely intended. But not enough to make me forget the rules, the boundaries I’d made for myself.
I paused, picking up my black clutch, putting the lipstick tube into it. “No, you won’t,” I argued, suddenly protective over my space, unsure if I wanted this man to inhabit all areas of my life, the ability to imprint his presence there.
“I will. This is not up for discussion.”
I swallowed roughly. This was my apartment. It was my right to be able to control who came in and who did not. It was a right single women in the city needed, power over her own space. It was the prerogative that woke me up at three in the morning, convinced someone had breached my threshold and polluted my safe space.
“My apartment is my space,” I stated firmly. “I’m sure you don’t know anything about this, because you’re a man with power and money, but there are few places a woman can truly feel safe. A place without men’s gazes, without the prospect of something happening to her, like a man pressing her up against a wall because he thinks it’s his right to do so.” I took a sharp inhale, trying to collect myself. This was not the time to sound weak. “I understand that I have agreed to you controlling things. Me submitting to you, letting you in to intimate parts of me. My body is yours. But my personal space is not.”
There was a pause. A long one.
“I understand,” he affirmed finally.
Though he didn’t sound any different, there was something in the way he’d said the words to make me believe he wasn’t just saying them to appease me. There was a darkness to him to be sure, but I wondered if there had also been pain in his past. Trauma. There must’ve been, for him to become this man. I figured that a healthy, happy home life with two parents didn’t breed a man like Jay. A man with a deep-seated need for control.
“Be downstairs in three minutes,” he commanded. “A moment later, there will be consequences.”
I couldn’t help but grin as my thighs clenched together in anticipation.
Four minutes later, I was downstairs.
He didn’t say anything when I got into the car.
Not even a greeting.
Not even a comment about how hot I looked. And I looked hot. Then again, he was a devastatingly handsome man with millions of dollars who’d probably been with countless amounts of hot women. Perhaps he was jaded to hot.
I, however, was no jaded to hot, even though my career was centered around disgustingly beautiful people.
Mostly empty, soulless people, of course. But Jay wasn’t empty. He was an abyss. Even though I barely knew him, I had a feeling he was deep. Never-ending.
He was dressed in all black, as usual. I’d yet to see him wear anything but a bespoke suit, another charcoal shirt—open collar, despite the fact tonight was black tie—the Rolex on his wrist glimmering each time we passed a streetlight.
Clean shaven, not a hint of stubble or five o’clock shadow. I wanted to see that. Something that was imperfect, unkempt. I ached to be able to run my hand over his chiseled jaw and feel the roughness of stubble. My desperation to know Jay, to be intimate with him, was overwhelming.
The need to have his attention, to gain his approval, was so all encompassing, I should’ve had my feminist card taken from me and been slapped firmly on the wrist.
But I wanted to be slapped.
By Jay.
I was doing my best not to fidget or stare at Jay, not wanting to reveal my desperation for him.
The silence in the car was the same as the other night. Heavy. Charged. But not awkward.
“You purposefully made me wait.”
It was the first time Jay had spoken in ten minutes.
I looked down at my nails, my stomach dipping at his words, but I didn’t respond. I wasn’t trying to play a game with him, but I didn’t know what to say. I had made him wait. Because I wanted the consequences. The prospect of him punishing me excited me, despite the fact that I had no idea what consequences were, and no experience with men ‘punishing’ me in any kind of way.
Unless you count my last ex cheating on me at a wedding I’d invited him to as a punishment for trying to trust a man who wouldn’t stop talking about his fucking Jaguar.
I wanted Jay’s approval, but I also wanted his anger. I wanted something beyond the cool façade that the rest of the world got.
His gaze flickered over me, fire trailing in its wake. “Yes, you purposefully made me wait,” he deduced. “You don’t know what you’re getting in to, pet. Yet you want to start by being punished.”