Unethical

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

Sarah

I stand in my kitchen and absently stir noodles as my tormented mind circles, dissects, and lays bare the most insane thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

I. Fucking. Kissed. Maxim.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to the mouth of an absolute sociopath. My client. And this was after he came clean about committing murder. Why did I do that?

I have no idea, and I can’t begin to psychoanalyze myself right now. We had a moment. A singular moment where I forgot who he was and who he was to me. I’m his fucking therapist .

But when he was standing there, his eyes boring into my soul and his warm lips still a recent memory of mine, I could only think of how he looked in front of me. How he stole a kiss from me first. I liked feeling wanted, just like I did on the trail behind my house. And in my bed. Maxim was present in a weak moment, that’s all. That’s it.

Right?

A tendril of steam whips across my skin, and I rip my hand away from the pan. This has to stop. These people are infiltrating my mind and infecting me with their psychosis, and if I’m not more careful, I’ll succumb to my own version of mental illness. Maybe I already have. Hell, I was wanton enough to come on my stalker’s face and kiss a known felon in my place of employment.

I sigh and drop my head to my hands. My place of employment. My livelihood! I risked it all because Maxim was riding on the coattails of a deranged madman who is hellbent on making me come. I kissed a client, all while knowing he could file a complaint about me or get my license revoked or, at the very least, have me suspended from practice. Fuck, this is all I need to add to my plate full of shit sandwiches.

I know damn well Maxim will use that kiss against me. It doesn’t matter that I pulled away the moment our tongues touched, then told him this could never happen again. That sinful smirk on his face told me everything I needed to know. He won’t chalk it up to a little lapse in judgment. He won’t be a nice fucking person about it and understand that I was weak and hurting. He’ll take the weapon I handed him and use it against me the first chance he gets.

Turn him in first, my intrusive thoughts whisper. No one will believe him from prison.

But that’s more unethical than initiating intimate contact with a client. It’s my fault I kissed him, and I can’t turn him in because of my piss-poor judgment call. He might have kissed me first, but I’m a professional. I’m the responsible one.

I grip the wooden spoon and stir my dinner again.

You liked it, the intrusive thoughts say, loud and clear. That nagging voice filters through my consciousness and forces me to confront my actions head on.

Yes. I liked kissing him. I wanted to keep going. I wanted to take it further. But I couldn’t. We can’t. If I had met Maxim outside of work, this wouldn’t be a problem, but our situation is what it is and it can’t be changed. His deranged ass walked into my office and took a fucking seat.

I lower the spoon again and put my back against the edge of the counter. The warmth from the stove radiates toward my left side, but a different heat radiates from somewhere else.

My hand eases toward my pencil skirt and slips beneath the waistband, finding the wetness that gathered within the warmth. Thinking about Maxim isn’t helping me stay ethical. I trespass back into another forbidden landscape as I rub my fingers between my slit to thoughts of him. I lean back and stroke tightening circles over my sensitive clit to what never happened in the office.

What if he hadn’t listened to my “no”? What if his hand went to my throat and he pushed me back against the wall? What if he kept kissing me? What if his mouth went lower? His hands? What if they drove up my skirt and he fucked me right there in my office?

Moans softly pour from my lips. I don’t stop these thoughts. I let them run rampant. I let them ravage me until my heart thumps against my chest and my breathing grows ragged. My muscles tighten and tense.

My dinner is burning on the stove, but I don’t care. As the smoke alarm blares, I spread my thighs a bit, drop the back of my head against the cabinet, and let myself come to the thoughts of Maxim railing me. Demolishing me. Making me his.

As soon as I come, as soon as the brilliant high wears off, I turn off the stove and run to the bathroom. I vomit up bile and my ethics as I stare at my come-coated fingers wrapped around the rim of the toilet. I’m absolutely horrified and disgusted by my thoughts and the fact that I’m going to places I would never have dared dream of before Maxim. Places where my core values are burned in a pit carved by my sinful desires.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper.

The smoke alarm continues screaming, almost an omen of what’s going on in my head. Alarms mean you need to run, to get out, and that’s what I should be doing. But here I am, coming in the flames instead.