Sine Qua Non

Chapter Seven

There are consequences for being a bad girl.

Jay cleaned her apartment furiously but no matter how many dishes she wrapped up or clothes she folded, she remembered the photo she had sent Nicholas and his response. Or rather, his responses . He’d called her twice. One had been a video call. It hadn’t even been six yet, so he would have still been at work. Possibly even at his desk.

Heat crawled up her face at the thought.

Especially when, this morning, there had been yet another message.

Don’t think this is over.

God, what had he been thinking, opening that at work? What if someone had seen it? No matter if the mental image of his control splintering in public made her breath come up short—it was his job . Not that she was blameless. She had been so fucking stupid, sending that to him, of all people.

Do you want him to blackmail you again, Jay?

She leaned back against a box of things she had wrapped up from her sleeping area. She had been about to tackle her books and some of her smaller knickknacks, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking and her current predicament wasn’t helping. Thinking about the past had rekindled her conflicting feelings for Nicholas and the alcohol had only added fuel to that fire.

For years, she had lived under the threat of his blackmail, never quite knowing if he would follow up on his threat, and now she’d just handed him the means to control her again.

It’s the excuse you wanted, isn’t it? To come back and never be able to leave.

No matter how hard or how fast she ran from the past, it always caught up to her. It was the monster chasing her in her nightmares, but it wore a seducer’s face.

Fate really was an ouroboros. Even her mother was back to her old games. It wasn’t enough to have the last word, she needed to hound her, lay down the guilt card. Remind her that it had been weeks since they’d talked—like they had weekly fireside chats over cocoa, instead of continual demands to exploit her stepbrother for money.

Jay had scrolled through her mother’s texts with a sinking heart, even the ones she hadn’t let herself look at. They were worse than she thought. With every word she read, she could feel pieces of herself flaking away.

You took me by the hand and led me to my own ruin , Jay wanted to tell her, in addition to so many other things. You told me I would be safe.

The fastest way to put out her mother’s rages was to starve them of oxygen. But her mother was tenacious. She could wear away at you like sandpaper until your resistance was raw and bloody. No, Danielle Beaucroft had clawed her way out of the mid-tier strip club she’d worked at for far longer than she should have, and married a man who had draped her in diamonds and designer clothes. Nothing, for her, would ever be enough.

All those years she had defended her mother’s choices, but now she just felt like a fool. She had let herself be demeaned and used, and hadn’t even noticed until Nicholas himself had pointed it out. Which was a big fucking irony, since he had demeaned and used her, too.

She’d just half-convinced herself that she liked it when he did.

And now, thanks to her, he could do it all over again.

There was still no food in the apartment and she didn’t really feel like shopping. Cooking had been her go-to means of self-comfort, the smells of caramelizing food and spices giving her a nostalgia for a homelife she’d never had, but Jay didn’t feel like standing over a stove, either. When she got hungry enough, she bought herself some red curry from a food truck parked down the street, but she felt the invisible tug of her mother’s impatient words with every step.

You aren’t walking away from this, Jay.

Desperately trying not to think about Nick or her mother, Jay boxed up half the living area, using some of her old sheet sets and throw pillows to cushion the rocks from her collection so they wouldn’t break or shatter during transit. But when she came back from the bathroom to find yet another missed call from her mother, something inside her snapped.

Because she had never gotten to walk away, had she? Only her mother had.

Arming herself with the reminder of the wine from last night, Jay took a long swig right from the bottle as she sat down in the blue chair and dialed her mother’s phone number.

“Justine? Is that you?” her mother’s voice was distant, like she had the phone on speaker. “It’s about time you called. I was beginning to think I didn’t have a daughter anymore.”

“Are you driving?”

There was a pause. “No.”

Jay combed a hand through her hair with a sigh. Faced with the prospect of a confrontation, she could feel her courage rapidly deserting her. She was pretty sure her mother was lying but she needed to choose her battles carefully and that wasn’t what she wanted to fight about.

“Why do you keep calling me?” she asked at last. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t think you cared. It’s been weeks. I was starting to worry.”

“About me?” Jay asked, as she kicked her legs over the arm of the chair and stared, upside-down, at the entryway to her apartment. “Or the money you keep asking me for?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, baby. You’re my daughter.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Of course I care about you,” her mother said, with a stiff air of injured dignity. “Even after you said you would help me before leaving me out to dry. Not that it seems to matter to you that your brother was going to take me for everything I was worth and leave me out on the streets.”

Middle class living is not ‘the streets,’ Mom . But apparently this was the narrative her mother had committed herself to, and she seemed to like the sound of it. As if she were some suburban Blanche Dubois, languishing away in genteel poverty.

Jay drew in a deep, angry breath, blinking away the sight of all the piled-up boxes in her apartment. Thinking of all the times she wasn’t sure if she was going to make her rent payment for the month, and the nightmares she had about being forced back to the place she’d run screaming from. Thinking of all the tears she had shed from feeling so fucking alone.

And all this time, her mother had flounced around, doing whatever she wanted. Only calling when it suited her and her needs. She never even asked me what happened that night , Jay realized, the knowledge hitting her like a splash of icy water. Even Nick, as callous as he was, had asked.

She’s looking for a reaction from you , a voice like Nick’s whispered. Don’t let the bitch think she’s made you weak.

“Why did you ask me to go to Nicholas?” It was the first time she had put her nebulous suspicions into words, and the sound of them in the silence was ugly and jarring. “What did you think I could possibly do that would make him change his mind?”

There was another pause, longer this time. Jay thought she heard murmuring in the background. “Because you were close.” Holding onto the phrase she’d chosen before, the first time she’d called Jay at this very same apartment, she went on, “You were the only one he listened to.”

“Not since he was ten. I hadn’t spoken to him for almost nine years when you—is there someone there with you?” Jay asked abruptly, as the sound of voices rose again.

“No,” her mother said shortly. “I’m just out. Running my own errands—like a normal person. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what that’s like, now that you’re back living at that house. You didn’t exactly check to see if it was convenient to call first.”

“And you did during the fifteen times you called me?” Jay said. “Answer the question.”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, Justine. My god, you always did think you were better than me, didn’t you? Resenting me, looking down your little nose at me just for doing what had to be done.”

“You mean marrying Damon? Wow, great job on that one. Maybe one of the songs in your sets should have been ‘Stand By Your Man.’”

Her mother scoffed. “At least I got paid for it.”

Jay made a sound like she’d been punched. She sat up so suddenly that the floor jolted. As she put her now-unsteady feet down, she struggled to hold onto the wine bottle and anchor herself against the tumultuous maelstrom her apartment had become.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know damn well what it means. You’re not that innocent.” There was a burst of static as her mother breathed out an angry laugh. “Do you think I’m blind, as well as stupid? Maybe you didn’t see what he was like when you left, but I did. I knew . That wasn’t a man regretting the loss of his sister .”

Jay set down the bottle. It fell over and rolled, sloshing wine over the carpet, but she didn’t notice. “What are you accusing me of?”

“He denied it, too.” She sounded smug now. “But men don’t shell out ten grand for something they don’t think they can ride or screw.”

Someone next door pounded on her wall in reproof. Possibly because of the shouted ‘fuck’—she knew they had children. If she were slightly distressed, she might have been embarrassed. But right now, she felt as if she were trapped inside a glass box and the walls were slowly closing in, squeezing every molecule of air from her lungs.

At least I got paid for it.

“Even when he was a child, he was a nasty little freak,” her mother was saying. “You could tell what kind of man he was going to be by the way he would just stare through you. Sometimes I looked into those empty eyes of his and I knew that he was dead inside. But he loved you, didn’t he? You made him love you .”

“Oh my god, are you jealous? Jealous of Nick ? You were supposed to love me, Mom. You were supposed to protect me. From them. From everything. And instead you—” She broke off, struggling to draw in a choked breath. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Did you throw me at him like some kind of sacrificial lamb? Is that what you’re telling me? You used me as a pawn to get your fucking money because you saw me as some kind of—burden?”

There was another one of those staticky bursts. “He was never going to hurt you.”

(Don’t defend her. She sold you to me.)

Pain exploded in Jay’s right hand. She could feel the plastic of her phone resisting, ready to crack. That made two of them. “And that makes it better that you sold me out?”

“Don’t act like we were on the same side. It was always the two of you against me. You were embarrassed of me and he—he just hated me. But he was never on your side, either. Men like him and his father only care about one side on a woman and it’s the same one you turned on me.”

Oh my god .

“I suppose he didn’t give you anything after all that. I figured he wouldn’t, when I didn’t hear back from you. He really is his father’s son.” She laughed angrily. “A cheat and a liar, screwing everything that moves. That’s his real inheritance.”

“That’s not true.” The words felt like shards of glass in her mouth. “Nick’s nothing like his father. Damon was a fucking monster. Nick is—”

“Yes, that’s right, go ahead and defend him ,” her mother said nastily. “Make me the villain. You’ll only end up on your ass just like I did. A stupid little whore, just like your whore mother—that’s what you always thought of me, wasn’t it? Oh, how I embarrassed you in front of your little friends. But a smart whore gets paid, Justine. That’s the difference between you and me.”

Jay was suddenly, incandescently angry. “How dare you. He loves me. He loves me and he offered me everything—the whole ten million—all of it. He cut me a check and put it right in my hand. He even—” a shaky laugh escaped her “—god, he even said I could give it to you .”

There was a charged pause. “What?”

“I told him no, obviously.” Jay rubbed at one of her eyes. “I tore it up and told him I didn’t want it and that I didn’t want you to have it, either, and do you know what, Mom? I am so glad that I did. I’m not going to be bought and sold like a fucking piece of jewelry.”

“You tore up the check ?”

“Did you ever love me? Or was I just another stepping stone on your quest for a better life? Never mind,” she said abruptly. “Don’t answer that. I think I already know.”

“Justine—”

“Have the life you deserve, Mother. I won’t be in it. Screw you.”

She hung up on her mother, tears running down her face. She swiped them away, fruitlessly, as more rushed in to take their place.

“Shit,” she said, in a small, broken voice. “So that’s it then.”

As terrible as Damon had been, she had always been able to hold onto the hope that maybe her mother hadn’t really known what he was like. Her mother was selfish and vain, but she was also desperate, and her life had been hard. Both of their lives had been hard.

And after all those years of watching her mother cultivate an air of girlish innocence that she’d never really had, Jay had told herself that it was desperation that caused her to want to hold onto a cruel and distant man. Desperation that made her turn away when everything come to a head, and Jay had found herself in her stepfather’s crosshairs.

Not hatred.

Not resentment .

Nausea rose in her throat, bitter and hot, as that memory of blood and darkness and cheap holiday glitter slammed into her like a wrecking ball. All this time, she had seen Nicholas as the fox in the henhouse, the surprise traitor. But apparently her mother had been picking feathers out of her teeth for years.

What did it say about her now that her first instinct was to turn to him ? Despite everything, the soothing sound of his low voice in her ear had lulled her back to sleep from the very nightmares he’d helped cause, and she had never felt as safe as she did when she was in his arms.

(I wish it had always been like this between us)

I do, too , she thought desperately. God help me, I do.

Even if it wasn’t good for her, he was the only thing she’d ever had that was just hers.

Jay picked up her phone again, swiping away the text her mother had already left, not wanting to see the words before they could burn themselves into her brain.

I talked to Mom . She typed before she could think better of it. With her eyes blurry with tears, it was easy to ignore what she had sent him before. She knew, Nick. She KNEW this whole time.

Jay stared ahead unseeingly at her wall.

You were right about her. You were right about everything.

She closed her eyes briefly, before swiping at them again with the back of her wrist.

I don’t know what to do.

She set her phone down and that was when she noticed the wine. With a curse— that’s coming out of your deposit, Jay —she picked up the bottle and swallowed down what was left, before tossing a wad of paper towels on top of the spill to absorb the worst of the stain.

Her phone didn’t light up. After a while, she stopped expecting it to.

Instead, she crawled into her bed and she cried herself to sleep.

*****

“How was the sensitivity training?”

He resisted the urge to make a remark about deprogramming as he toyed with one of Meghana’s yarn figures. “As I said before, it’s given me a lot to think about. Particularly with regard to some of the shortfalls in our company.”

The corners of the HR director’s mouth tightened. “Such as?”

“Such as an emphasis on the diversity our company claims to want to champion.” His suit creaked as he leaned forward. “I’m sure we have data on the demographic makeup of our employees. We’ve sent out enough opt-in surveys. Someone should do a deep-dive into that and work on some spotlight panels for cultural inclusivity.”

Meghana’s frown deepened thoughtfully. “That isn’t a bad idea.”

“Of course it’s not. It’s a very good idea—it was Jay’s.” He watched her expression become guarded. “She has a lot of good ideas that aren’t being utilized as Arthur’s secretary.”

“I believe the role is called ‘administrative assistant.’”

“Don’t we have a VP role open?” he mused, keeping one eye trained on her face. “What are the optics of having her run for it?”

“Does she want to run for it?”

“Yes,” he lied. If Jay hadn’t considered it already, he would see to it that she did. His conversation with Annica had been good for one thing: it had given him an insight into how other people viewed Jay’s role in this company, and how that might be perceived if her relationship with him were outed while she was still a lowly subordinate.

If she was going to marry him, she needed a better job.

Meghana sighed and rubbed at her temples. “It wouldn’t look particularly good considering your history, but it’s not completely unfeasible. She’s a very good employee and came highly recommended from her previous employer.” She shot him a look that said, Don’t get any ideas . “The endorsement would look better coming from Arthur than it would from you.”

“I understand.”

“And there would have to be paperwork.”

Nicholas nodded, barely listening. Arthur would endorse her—he loved Jay. He thought she shone like his wife. And while Meghana seemed hesitant now, promoting a woman from within always got corporate hard. His father’s conduct had left a visible taint on the company’s reputation that they were all desperate to scrub off, and Jay, with her squeaky-clean image and genuine warmth, had the authenticity that corporations desperately craved.

And she won’t be a “kept woman” if she’s netting a cool six figures of her own, will she?

Yes, he thought, with satisfaction. This solution was going to fix everything.

“Speaking of signing—” Meghana slid a paper across the desk “—I need your signature on this form. It’s your notice of completion, for our records.”

“And then we’re done. No more sensitivity training.”

It hadn’t been a question but Meghana chose to treat it like one. “Yes, this marks your program as officially complete.”

Fucking finally . “Good.” He scrawled his name on it and asked, “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Nicholas swung out of the chair eagerly, grateful to be out of that too-colorful office and its oppressively correct and sterile atmosphere.

His phone lit up with a text and his mouth curved into a smile when he saw it was from Jay.

There you are , he thought. Couldn’t stay away from me, could you, little bird?

I have big plans for you.

She’d probably finished packing early and was texting to let him know she was returning home. He could arrange her transportation, see to it that she had dinner and a warm bath—and then pay her back for that photo that she’d sent him in her underwear.

Maybe I’ll tie her to the bed and fuck her tits, since she’s so eager to show them off , he thought, stirring at the mental image of a bound and helpless Jay spread out over his sheets.

His smile disappeared as he scanned the texts. “Oh, fuck.”

“Mr. Beaucroft?”

He looked up. Stacey was staring at him with a look of concern. “It’s nothing,” he said gruffly. “I just forgot to pick up my dry cleaning.”

What the hell did she say to you? he typed.

Jay didn’t respond.

He called her phone.

It went to voicemail.

“Fuck,” he said again, glancing around surreptitiously. So she wanted to play this game, did she? Running away, the way she always did. Icing him out. Not this time, Jay .

He grabbed his briefcase off his desk and began cramming papers into it one-handed, keeping his phone pinned between his cheek and shoulder as he made a call to the nearest airport, wondering, even as he did, how much it would cost to have his stepmother put in an oil drum and buried alive somewhere in Coachella Valley.

*****

A police siren woke her up.

This sound was a familiar part of the city soundscape. Growing up in San Francisco in the 90s, Jay had often stared up at her water-stained ceiling in terror wondering if it was her mother that was being taken away. Her mom always laughed it off, of course—“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Jay, don’t be so dramatic”—but how was she supposed to turn off her worries just like that when her greatest fear was being left alone?

It had been different in the house. She had woken up there, too, but Nicholas would take her into his arms and whisper, “It’s all right, blue jay. Daddy’s here” and stroke her until she fell asleep.

His tenderness had awakened something inside her that threatened to devastate, even as it promised to satisfy the deep- seated craving she had to be loved with a savagery that bordered on ruthless. And if she let herself accept that love, she would also have to live with the fear that it could be taken away or wielded against her.

She turned and banged her hip on the corner of a box, making the contents rattle. She lurched to straighten the fulgurite, imagining, as her fingers traced over the rough, brittle surface, the lightning that had caused those minerals to crystalize. She could almost picture the flash of blinding brilliance jettisoning from the heavens, only to be imprisoned between layers of dull, dead rock.

It made her cry, actually, which was so stupid.

Because all of this was her own damn fault.

A knock sounded on her door just as the tears started running down her cheeks.

She jumped like she’d been shocked, glancing at her clock. Past ten. Who could it be? She barely saw her neighbors and didn’t even know their names—she certainly knew none of them well enough that they would be pounding on her door to summon her this late.

Her unease from before returned, backed by fear. She made sure to keep the security chain latched as she cracked open the door, which didn’t have a peephole, and found herself staring into a familiar pair of piercing grey eyes that left her feeling faint as the owner of them slowly came into focus.

“Oh my god, N-Nick?”

He put his hand on the wall, next to the jamb, like he was considering forcing her way in.

“Open the door.”

Jay stared at him dumbly, unable to process the sight of her tall, wealthy stepbrother standing in the dilapidated hallway of her not-so-cheap apartment. He was wearing distressed dark-wash jeans and a blazer that was perfectly tailored to his broad shoulders. A backpack hung loosely over one of them and in his other hand was a yowling cat carrier. That was what broke through her glaze of shock and made her fumble to undo the chain. Someone might see—

“What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping back, as he shoved the door open with a bang that made her wince. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”

“I took some personal days.”

“To come here?”

He set the carrier down, fixing her with a look. “What do you think?”

Jay did not know what to think, so she stepped past him to shut the front door before bending to undo the one on the carrier, half-expecting him to grab her. He didn’t, but just him being in the room had her shaking so badly that it still took her two tries to undo the latch.

Her poor cat immediately darted under her bed. Jay wanted to hide, too.

Conscious of the tears on her face and Nicholas’s silent anger, Jay removed the top of the carrier, and took the three-quarters empty jug of cat sand out of the front hall closet to fill the now-converted litter box. She was glad for the task. It bought her time, because she could feel his eyes on her, heavy and accusing, and she was not sure how to speak around the lump that had formed in her throat. Too much lay between them and the thought of broaching any of it left her feeling paralyzed, especially while he was looking at her like that.

“I asked you a question, Jay.”

“I—I d-don’t know.”

You know how to beg, though , that voice in her head whispered.

She glanced up sharply from filling the box, all of their exchanges from the last week filling the silence that hung between them. He was still watching her and the muted fire in his gaze made her instantly aware of the fact that she was on her knees in front of him, clad only in her sleep shorts and a threadbare shirt with no bra.

Jay swung to her feet so quickly that she got a bit of a head rush. “If this is about what I said earlier, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have overreac—”

His hands shot out to grab her, spanning beneath her ribs. Her voice faded into a croak. She wanted to back away, but there was nowhere to back to, so she put her hands on his chest, flat. To push him away, or so she told herself, though once she touched him, neither of them moved.

“You know why I’m here.” He breathed in once, deeply. The look on his face shifted from anger to something she was far more familiar with, that made her fingers bite into the fabric until she could feel the minute shift of his pectoral muscles. “Let’s not play games for fucking once.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You are.” His voice was quiet, vicious. “You’ve been crying.”

She did push at him then, and he gripped her tighter.

“I came here because you called me. Because I care about you.”

The floor jerked beneath her feet. “Nick, I—”

“I really don’t want to hear your excuses, Justine.”

The cold authority in his voice, and the way he lingered over her full name, did strange things to her body. Why is he calling me that?

She swayed slightly when he removed her hands from his chest and brought them to her sides. His grip was loose, but Jay was pretty sure he wouldn’t let her get away if she tried to run. Just to be certain, she gave an experimental wriggle and his fingers tightened, accompanied by a forbidding hum in the back of his throat that caused her pulse to spike.

Still holding onto her wrists, he gave her a nudge backwards. “Sit down.”

She backed obediently as he herded her to the tiny loveseat that sat catty corner to her favorite blue chair. Then he pushed down on her shoulders with the same practiced shove that he used on her in bed. Her legs buckled as if primed, and she collapsed on the faded cushions. The sound that left her was a little too harsh, and it made him look at her again, slow and speculative.

Jay hunched her shoulders, trying to hide how hard her nipples had gotten.

“I just got out of that fucking airport and you—” He paused, and she folded her arms. “I need to decide what to do with you.”

“What?” she scoffed. “Are you going to punish me?”

“Yes.”

Yes? He shrugged off his blazer and tossed it onto her chair. Their eyes met. Her fingers dug into her own flesh as she tried to control her breathing. He didn’t approach, though. Instead, he went to her kitchen nook and began rooting through her cupboards. The old T-shirt clung to his body with each twisting movement, highlighting the flex of heavy muscle beneath.

She stared at his arms. “What do you mean, yes ?”

“I’m going to punish you.”

Jay willed herself to be angry. She wanted to be angry. How dare he come bursting into her kitchen with all his talk about punishments ?

Pain flared on her forearms; she’d gouged herself with her own nails. Jay grabbed a couch cushion, hugging that to her chest instead. Sweat was making her top stick to her arms and back.

“What are you going to do?”

He didn’t respond.

“What are you looking for in there?” she continued, settling on a hostile tone that she hoped hid how thoroughly unsettled she was. “Maybe I can help you find it.”

He glanced over his shoulder briefly before ripping open a teabag. That look made her throat tighten until it felt like she was breathing in through a straw.

“It’s my apartment,” she went on recklessly. It was as if she were unable to stop, even though she was knew she was making things worse. “I know where everything is. You could ask me instead of bulldozing around my kitchen.”

With more emphasis than necessary, Nicholas dropped the teabag into one of her mugs, which he filled with cold water and then put it into a microwave. Watching his hands on her things, imagining them on her body, was making her antsy. God, why wouldn’t he say anything?

“I have a water boiler,” she blurted. “You don’t need to do that. Nobody who’s civilized heats tea in the microwave.”

“You fucking ran from me.”

The words fell like blades, looming between them until the microwave bleeped. Pulling his eyes away from her at last, Nicholas topped the mug off with more cold water before carrying it over to her, and she tried not to flinch at his nearness.

“I wasn’t running.”

“Oh really? Is that why you fucked me like you were saying goodbye? And then sent me a picture to bait me, like you wanted me to have something to use against you?”

The glacial calm scared her more than his anger did, because there was nothing there to fight against, only a cold, hard truth that had her sliding down towards the inevitable as he pressed the warm mug into her hands.

Mistaking the cause for her alarm, he said, “Oh, we’ll be discussing the photo, too—after you tell me what your mother said to you to get you so worked up that you decided to go full no-contact.”

“Nick—”

“Don’t Nick me. You’ve been giving me the runaround for days and I’m not putting up with it now.” He paused. “Not until I get to fuck it out of you.”

She nearly dropped the mug. The sting of hot tea on her bare thighs made her hiss. Nicholas took it from her trembling hands and set it on the end table.

Fuck it out of me. The cushion slipped out from beneath her arm.

Nicholas took that away, too, tossing it aside as he knelt in front of her. She backed from him and he put his hand on her bare knee, looking up at her from his spot between her legs.

“Tell me what your mother said.”

The left knee of his jeans was frayed and she wondered if it was intentional or he just liked the pair too much to throw them away. “I don’t want to,” she whispered, staring at the threads.

“I didn’t fly almost four hundred miles for I don’t want to , little bird.”

“You’re going to be angry.”

“I already am.” He drew his thumb over her kneecap. It sent goosebumps soaring up and down her legs, eliciting a dull throb from her clit. “Tell me anyway.”

Feeling winded, Jay gasped out, “She called me—a . . . a whore.”

“And?”

She glanced away, rubbing at her tea-dampened shorts. Her eyes were stinging and far too warm. “She said I was just like her, only w-worse because I was t-too stupid to get paid. She hates me,” she cried out, her voice rising. “She sold me to you because she—h-hates me.”

Her voice broke into a raw sob, tears escaping before she could stop them. His face was too blurry to see his expression but Jay recognized the offensive set to his shoulders.

“Oh, god—” her voice came out sounding clotted and pathetic “—don’t—”

“That dried-up old cunt .”

“Nick!”

“You’re really going to defend your mother to me now?”

“N-no, but—”

“Your mother, who gave me your number and home address for less than it costs to buy a fucking car , because she knew damn well what would happen if I showed up on your front step and maybe,” he finished, moving slowly to circle behind the couch, “she even wanted it to?”

There was a terrible silence, so loud it was nearly deafening. Her breathing left her in a shaky rush when one of his arms slipped around her waist from behind.

“She knew what I wanted to do to you.”

The words slid into her like a knife.

That wasn’t a man regretting the loss of his sister.

“No.” She jerked, breathless. “Stop it. I don’t want to hear this!”

“All right.” Jay stopped breathing when he dusted his knuckles over the front of her shirt. “Then let’s talk about what you sent me at work.”

Her breasts tingled. She pushed against him and he tightened his arm. “I was drunk.”

“You know what I think, Jay?” He let his free hand fall to her lap, pressing hard enough that they could both feel how wet she was now. Jay lurched forward again, and he spread her through her shorts, putting pressure on her clit until she gasped. “I think it turns you on to fuck with me.”

“It doesn’t.”

He blew into her ear: “Liar.”

Heat shimmered over her skin in a rolling wave as he slid his fingers against the crotch of her pants, soaking her through both layers of cotton. God, this was familiar. The shame. Her fingertips throbbed. Everything throbbed. She grabbed the arm around her waist and tried unsuccessfully to remove it from her body. “Why are you being such a bastard?”

“Because I don’t know what’s going on in your head. You still look at me like I’m a monster. The only time I know when I’m making you feel anything is when I’m i—”

He broke off, and when he withdrew, it was like a slap. “Fuck,” he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. And then slightly louder, as he stepped back into view, facing the direction of her cardboard boxes, “ Fuck .”

“Nicholas, don’t—”

“I don’t know what I—” His eyes scanned the boxes, an expression on his face that she would almost call trapped. Then he did a double-take. Jay, following the direction of his eyes, felt her heart sink as he walked towards the box that held all her rocks. “What is that?”

The word don’t rose to her lips again, but she wasn’t sure what it was that she wanted to tell him not to do.

He picked up the gypsum rose, and Jay nearly protested again, except that he held it as carefully in his large hands as he had the night he’d given it to her as a present.

Before everything had gone so terribly wrong.

“You told me you sold this.”

Jay looked away. His startled expression disappeared, and whatever vulnerable, desperate emotion she thought she’d glimpsed hardened before her eyes, just like stone.

“So, you really can be cruel.” He ran his thumbs over the florets before setting it carefully back into the box, in a way that made her throat ache. It wasn’t until she’d released the breath that she’d been holding that Jay could admit to her fear that he’d been going to throw it. “You must have hated me.”

“I did,” she agreed, her voice a broken whisper.

“Not enough to sell the rock, though.”

Jay looked at her hands, willing them to stop hurting. Willing everything to stop hurting. “How could I? It was the only proof I had that anyone in that house ever loved me.”

“I still do.” Nicholas hovered over the loveseat, impossibly tall, before swinging onto the cushions. She scrambled back as he crawled towards her on his hands and knees. The rough denim of his jeans abraded her bare skin and the sensation of it pulsed like an electric shock between her thighs. “I tore myself apart when you left and I am not going to lose you again.”

The arm of the couch hit her back. She looked up at him, breathing so hard that she felt like she might choke on the sheer abundance of air in the room.

“Jay.” He leaned closer—she could see the stubble dotting his cheeks and chin, the bursts of color caught in his pale grey eyes. “We’ve wasted too much time trying to hurt each other.”

Jay shot him a trapped look, her fingers digging into the plush. The rasp of his breathing was all she could hear over the ringing in her ears. “No,” she said, denying them, denying this. Her heart was on the verge of implosion. “Nick, please—”

“Why won’t you love me?” he asked, his deep voice cracking.

Unable to put distance between their bodies, she turned her face away, bracing herself for the force she was sure was coming, the punishing grip on her wrists, but when it didn’t, and she glanced at his achingly familiar face, something inside of her cracked, and everything came pouring out.

“You want to control who I am,” she cried. “You want to . . . remake me. You’re always trying to put me into clothes I don’t want to wear or buy me things I don’t need, forcing me do things I don’t want. And I’ve tried to talk to you about it, but you don’t listen. It’s like you want me to be an accessory, like the watch you wear around your wrist—”

“That’s not what I want.” He ripped his shirt off impatiently and the graze of his bare shoulder against her bent knee sent another glittering jolt of desire racing through her. “I want the Jay who sits like a little princess at her desk and has everyone in her thrall, and this Jay—” He yanked at her shorts and underwear, causing her hips to buck involuntarily. “The Jay who claws my back up when I fuck her too hard and loves to call me Daddy.”

Jay looked at him—that was a mistake. Because the sight of Nicholas bare-chested and on his knees, looking at her body like a condemned man looking at his last meal, stole what little breath remained in her lungs. You’re the sweetest girl I know , he’d said, but sweet things got consumed until there was nothing left and she already felt like she was gone.

She tried, one last time, to protest, but the sound that left her seemed to snap what restraint he had remaining and he didn’t let her try a second time, hauling her legs up over his shoulders and doing things with his mouth that made her remember pitch-black bedrooms and passion as fatally bitter as cyanide. When his lip caught against her damp skin and she felt the cool press of his teeth, she bowed against him so desperately that he pressed on her abdomen to pin her down.

“Nicholas,” she cried out. “Oh god.”

“Fuck,” he said, in a slightly breathless tone that let her know that he wasn’t as unaffected as he was pretending to be. “I’m almost sorry to do this.”

“W-what?”

He pulled away, eliciting a frustrated groan from her as he unzipped his jeans. His erection sprang out of his pants, the head already swollen and glistening as it curved towards his belly.

“This.” He slid his fist up his cock, in smooth, quick jerk. “Take your shirt off.”

She gripped her t-shirt by the hem, trying to ignore the stickiness on her inner thighs, and the desperate ache building in her belly as she slowly peeled it off. Her nipples, already hard, puckered under his gaze, and her breasts felt sore and heavy.

Nicholas prowled up her body like an animal and kissed her so hard that they both fell back against the couch, making her aware of every dip and ridge in his hard, lean torso, and the drag of his heavy cock against her bare stomach. “I told you what would happen if you teased me at work.”

With a final tug at her lower lip, he took her hands by the wrists and at first she thought he planned to tie them, which sent another bolt of fear rushing through her like an icy river. But he put the heels of her palms on her breasts instead, compressing them beneath his own until she understood that he wanted her to keep them there.

“Nick,” she said, her voice small and uncertain.

The hard pressure of his hips was immobilizing and the unexpected intimacy of what he was making her do made her suddenly very desperate not to look at him.

But when she turned away, he put two fingers to her cheek to tilt her head back.

“Eyes on me.”

It was an addictive feeling, shame. Heady and disorienting, it poured through her like hot whiskey. She was a moth in a lantern, caged by the means to her destruction, and god, right now, she wanted to shut herself up with that flame and burn.

“Did I make you come at your desk?”

His eyes narrowed and he thrust harder, hitting her mouth. “Kiss me.”

Jay leaned forward and covered the blunt head of his cock in an open-mouthed kiss. A guttural snarl tore out of him as he ground his hips against her breasts, pushing his impressive length deeper into her mouth. Jay tongued him so viciously that he jerked back with a savage breath, his chest heaving. She wondered if he’d looked this feral when he was in his office, buttoned into his suit.

“Did you ruin your pants?” she asked.

Nicholas stared at her like she was a stranger. Then his jaw hardened and he thrust forward again, watching her mouth open as she took him in. There was fresh tension in him now, and she could sense his resistance in every fiber of his beautiful, stubborn body.

Who’s not very good at kissing now?

He must have felt her smile because he leaned down, pushing all her hair back, gathering all those coils in his fingers like it was precious gold, before holding her face in his hands.

“Are you enjoying this?”

“No,” Jay said, around his cock, and she heard him hiss as she traced her tongue over the sensitized glans. His eyes rolled back and she saw a muscle in his throat jump as he tried to fight his response, but his fingers traced down her jaw until he caught himself and pulled away.

“I don’t believe you. But right now—” He gripped the arm of the loveseat for better control as he slowly pumped his hips. His gaze began to drift and a muscle in his cheek tautened. “Right now, it feels so good that I really don’t fucking care.”

He’s close , thought Jay. She could tell. It was written in the line between his straight black brows, and the slight hollowing of those arrogant cheekbones.

When he came, he looked like he was in pain.

“Fuck,” he said again. His eyes swung towards her, and it was like watching light come in through a gothic window, spearing through all that terrible, twisted darkness. “Do you want to give me what I really want? What I fucking crave ?”

She gave a short jerk of ascent, her body braced beneath his.

“Tell me you love me.”

It was like he’d slapped her. “No,” Jay gasped.

“But that’s what I want,” he said, withdrawing. “I want you to be all mine. And I’d be so good at pleasing you, and making you happy. And all you need to do—is tell me yes.”

Fear wound through her, and so did something else; it was hot and feverish. This was the most dangerous game they had ever played, and its potential to destroy enthralled her.

“I d-don’t know how to give you what you’re asking,” she protested, hating that she was naked and on display like this, when she already felt so exposed. “I—I don’t know how to love someone. It’s like I’m broken. If I told you I loved you, it m-might be a lie.”

“Then lie to me.” He thrust again, bruising her ribs. “It’s not like I’m asking for your soul.”

But you are.

Jay squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at him. He didn’t seem to like that. He pinched one of her nipples, and the stimulation made her groan. “Please . . . don’t make me.”

“Do it,” he said, each word falling like a stone. “Or I’ll show that picture around the office and everyone will know what you’re like when you take off your prim little office clothes.”

Oh god. Her head spun, leaving her dizzied by the rush. It was so familiar, so addictive, that she felt lost in it. She missed the bitterness in his voice, and with her eyes shut tight, she didn’t see the way he was looking at her. All she could think was, he wouldn’t really do it , but also, how cruel that he would threaten to, especially now. I should hate him , she thought, and not for the first time.

“You wouldn’t do that,” she cried. “I’d hate you.”

“Say it, Jay,” he said. “I won’t ask again.”

The weight of him, the heat, the salty citrus of his skin—she couldn’t bear it. Her desire for him was like a knife twisting in her belly, as lethal as it was inevitable.

They had both grown up and yet still, she could deny him nothing.

She craved the knife.

“I love you, Daddy. I’m sorry I was bad.”

The sound he made—Jay shuddered as the seeping heat of his pre-come spilled over her collarbones and down her throat. That was why he’d pushed her hair back, she realized. So he wouldn’t get it in her hair. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely. “ Yes .”

The slick head of his cock pressed against her parted, trembling lips as he fell forward again.

“Say it again.” She could see the strain in his arms, the tendons popping out along his wrists. His eyelashes were a dark sweep against his swarthy cheekbones, and through the narrowed slits, his pupils were so large that his irises were nearly black. “With your mouth on me.”

“I love you,” she choked, struggling to speak around him as he finished in her mouth. The control must have cost him dearly. She had to shut her eyes again, unable to look at him any longer. It was like staring down a blaze from across the dark hallway of her soul.

Her stepbrother. Her demon prince.

The man she couldn’t let herself love.

“I love you,” she said again, sobbing the words. “I’m sorry, Daddy. Please. I’m sorry .”

His sigh came from somewhere deep in his chest and he thumbed some of the tears from her damp cheek with an absent affection that pounded through her body like a stake in the heart.

“I know, little bird,” he said, his voice rough and hoarse. “I am, too.”