Oh, god. Why did that look fill her with so much shame? He held her gaze while he squirted lube onto his fingers.
3
A tear trickled down her cheek, and Anton was immediately beside her to wipe it away. “Shhhh, Vivian. Do you not find me attractive?”
“Yes, but . . . ”
“Do you not enjoy the way I’ve made you feel so far?”
She looked away from him. Her body strained to have the completion he could give her. The completion she hadn’t felt with Michael for too long. But like this? With a stranger, under duress?
“Give in.” His lubed fingers stroked the swollen and moist folds of her sex, eliciting a moan. Her hips bucked of their own accord to meet those long, expert fingers as they teased her opening.
“Please . . . ” It was a breathy sigh.
“Please what?”
She knew she should say ‘please stop, please don’t’, but suddenly the only thing she wanted was for Anton to fuck her with those gorgeous, elegant fingers. To hell with all the bullshit and protests spinning inside her brain.
He stopped touching her, and she looked up to find him watching, waiting for her to say it. A blush crept up her neck and into her cheeks.
“Please, Anton. Make me come.”
A feral grin lit his face, and his fingers went back to work. Massaging, teasing, then finally plunging inside. As he penetrated her, his thumb caressed her swollen clit. Vivian’s breath came faster as her body lurched and spiraled out of control. He finger-fucked her harder as she convulsed around him.
Anton retreated to the sink while she sat up and tried to cover her nakedness. She couldn’t believe she’d let him . . . Well, let wasn’t the right word. Was it?
“You may get dressed now.”
She scurried behind the oriental screen flushed with embarrassment, both at what she’d just submitted to and the casual way he dismissed her now.
“You may require these.” His hand, the hand whose digits had just been inside her, draped a pair of red lace panties over the panel.
She grabbed them and dressed quickly, trying not to think too hard about what had just happened. When she came around the screen he was leaning against the massage table.
Vivian smoothed her skirt down for the millionth time that day. “Are you going to let me go?”
“For now.”
What did he mean for now? As if he had any power to bring her back here. I’ll never let him do this again. The thought felt like a lie in her mind. Already her pussy ached from the absence of his fingers. Already she wanted to buck her hips at him in a vulgar invitation for more. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“You will make an appointment to see me every Tuesday and Thursday at three thirty. Do you understand?”
Her startled eyes rose to his. “I most certainly will not.”
“That is your choice, of course. But if you don’t, I will be sending your husband a carefully-edited version of this.” He clicked a button, and the flat screen television switched from the spa information to a recording of her begging Anton to let her come.
She looked quickly around the room, searching for the hidden camera that had captured everything.
“Turn it off,” she said, unable to stand watching her own desperation on replay.
“So then, I’ll see you Tuesday?”
“Yes.” If he edited the video, she’d never be able to make Michael understand what had happened and why it didn’t look like rape on the screen.
Vivian walked three blocks before hailing a cab, not wanting to get in the back seat of someone’s car while she could still feel the wetness between her thighs.
Michael’s voice carried from the kitchen when she got home. “How was the therapist appointment?”
She dropped her purse on the kitchen island. “The doctor made me uncomfortable.”
Michael looked up from his financial papers, concern in his eyes. “Really? Why did she . . . ”
“He.”
“Excuse me?”
“The doctor was male.”
“Oh.”
“Didn’t you know the doctor was a man?”
Michael shrugged. “It never occurred to me. A friend at the club gave me the card. The doctor’s name was Lindsay, and the cards were lavender. Kind of girlie. I just assumed.” He laid the papers on the table, his eyes narrowing. “Did he come on to you?”
Vivian looked away as she felt her flesh heating again. “No. I just wasn’t comfortable.” She wasn’t about to tell him about Dome and Anton.
“We’ll find you another doctor,” he said as if everything were settled.
Vivian crossed her arms over her chest. “No we won’t. I did your thing. I tried it. I’m not going to therapy because you want sex. Get a mistress like a normal man, and leave me the fuck alone.”
He arched a brow, his expression darkening. “I don’t want a mistress. I want you.”
“Well, you can’t have me. I’m not your sex toy that you can just take off the shelf whenever it suits you.”
His chair scraped out, and he advanced on her. “Do not try my patience, Vivi.”
She stared him down, unwilling to let him win again. “Don’t bully me, Michael.”
He looked for a moment as if he would do something rash. Backhand her, maybe. Or perhaps lift her skirt and bend her over the kitchen island to take what he wanted. Like Anton had. She held her breath, half-hoping he would.
“I’m going to the gym,” he said, instead.
When Michael had gone, Vivian went to take a bath in the downstairs tub. She lathered and scrubbed her skin raw, trying to erase what she’d done. No, what Anton had done. She was the victim, here.
But even as she thought it, she wasn’t sure she believed it. Was she reframing this so she didn’t have to feel guilty for what might be classed an affair of sorts? No, he’d planned to do what he’d done with or without her consent. He’d shown her how her avenues of escape had been shut down. Her consent didn’t matter.
Was she trying to scrub his violation off, or her own internal submission to the way he’d played her nerve endings like a well-tuned instrument? She absently turned on the jets and found herself sliding down, twisting her body until the pulsing water vibrated against her clit.
Gripping the side of the tub, she pressed herself harder against the stream. Her mind drifted to Anton’s hands inside the most private parts of her, fanning the flame of a desire she couldn’t remember feeling before. Her breathing sped faster as she came, then sagged against the tub, waiting for the pounding in her chest to slow.
She jumped when she heard the front door and fumbled to turn off the jets, trying to get her breathing to appear normal, trying not to look like a woman who’d had her second great orgasm of the day.
The bathroom door burst open, and she threw a towel over herself. Michael looked annoyed by the display of modesty but didn’t comment.
“Have you seen my cell phone? I thought I had it with me.”
“Why do you need your phone for the gym?”
He rolled his eyes and shut the door behind him. A few minutes later, the front door slammed again, the car started, and she was alone.