Authors: Kennedy Ryan
Sofie
I
miss Trevor already. It’s impossible that after just a few days of having him in my bed I can’t sleep without him, but last night I found myself wide awake, wondering how much longer before I would have him hard and warm at my back. I knew if he was with me, I’d have slept like a baby, feeling cared for and protected. Not to mention he’d probably have fucked me into exhausted oblivion. Man, was he worth the wait. He’s insatiable and can’t get enough of me. It’s
so
mutual.
I have enough work to keep me busy, and a cold, lonely apartment awaits me at home, so I’ll stay at the office as long as possible.
“I’m knocking off,” Stil says from the door. “You coming?”
“Nah.” I glance up from a prospectus one of our potential charitable partners sent Marlee. “I want to nail down at least our first four charitable partnerships before the site goes live. We’ve got the Walsh Foundation, of course. I want to talk to the team about Restore, one Trevor introduced me to last week. So that just leaves another two.”
“You can do that tomorrow, Sof.” Stil approaches the desk, purse already hanging from her shoulder. “Besides, I could use a ride home, and you got the wheels.”
I roll my eyes but grin.
“Have Baker take you home. You’re not far away. By the time he swings back through, I’ll be ready.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. Twenty minutes tops.”
“Okay, better be.” She heads back toward the door.
“Oh, Stil.”
She turns, brows up, waiting for what’s next.
“Um, could you pull the team together tomorrow?” I lick my lips and meet her questioning eyes. “Geena, Connor, Bill, you, and me.”
Stil walks back to the desk slowly, a frown on her face.
“Why do we need your manager, publicist and the lawyer, Sof? What’s going on?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?” I try to reassure her with my smile, but it’s so phony it probably does nothing to put her at ease.
“If there’s something we need to handle, then—”
“Tomorrow, Stil.” I drop the smile and put on my “I mean it” face. “It’ll keep until tomorrow. Just see when they can swing by to chat and make it happen, ’kay?”
We’ve been together too long for my flimsy assurances to assuage her concerns, but I’m not prepared tonight to go into the scandal that is about to capsize my life. It’ll be hard enough tomorrow, because what turns my life upside down ripples through all of theirs. The concern on Stil’s face, in her eyes, only deepens, but she knows I’m done discussing it, so she goes.
Even so, when she leaves, the thickening silence in my office presses against my ears, squeezing away the peace of mind company manufactures. When Stil and my small staff buzz around the office, the laughter and conversation and energy cloak my fear and camouflage my uncertainty. With them gone, Trevor gone, just me here alone—the quiet exposes all, and I can’t hide from my own unease.
I stand, walking around and doing what I’ve always done to settle my nerves. Shaking my hands like I’m about to dive into the water for a race or climb in the boat for a regatta. As an athlete, I had all these little rituals to prepare for competition: doing a hundred jumping jacks, eating one of Millie’s Denver omelets, and, of all things, clipping my nails. But there’s no ritual to prepare for the standoff that’s coming with Kyle. I lean against my desk, rubbing the back of my neck where all my tension seems to gather.
I hear a sound in the outer office, and I lift my head.
“Stil, I told you I’m fine,” I call out with a small smile. “Go on home.”
Footsteps approach my office, confident and heavier than Stil’s. For a moment, my heart lifts just the smallest little bit, irrationally hoping that by some miracle Trevor is here.
“Bishop?” The name slips past my lips before my brain reminds me that he is indeed in South Africa. He called me from there today.
“Is that who you’re fucking now, Sofie? Trevor Bishop?”
What a betrayal of hope. Not Stil. Not Trevor. It’s the man from my nightmares. The man whose handsome face and plastic smile disguise the lecherous violence Shaunti Miller experienced. That I experienced.
Kyle closes my office door behind him, and the sound of it clicking locked lands in my chest like a live grenade. The pin has been pulled, and it’s only a matter of time before it blows. My composure disintegrates under his stare, which mesmerizes me like a snake poised to strike. The venom is in his eyes, and it paralyzes me, just as surely as if it’s rushing through my bloodstream, attacking my central nervous system. My limbs lock, my breath seizing in my throat.
In the space of two blinks, he’s across the room standing right in front of me, pushing the hair back from my face almost tenderly. His hands land on the desk before I can move, long arms bracketing my hips, trapping my body between his tall frame and the desk.
“Sofie Baston.” His breath, cool and minty, settles over my lips. “It’s good to see you again.”
I cautiously straighten from the desk, but he doesn’t move, so the motion presses our chests together. I can’t struggle with this man, not with Jell-O in my knee caps and cotton in my mouth, so I settle back against the desk, creating a sliver of space between us.
“How did you get in here?” My voice comes out calm and low, no hint of the fear prickling my insides.
“Oh, I just took the elevator. My security detail is in your reception area, if you’re concerned about that.” His firm lips quirk. “We’re safe in here.”
Trapped in a room with a powerful man who raped me, who raped others, and the only security is here to protect
him
. I’ve never felt less safe. I stare back at him, making no sound or moves. I hate that fear paralyzes me, but I can’t help it. The last time we were alone together, he tied my wrists, pried my legs apart, and ruptured me from the inside out. I thought those years of therapy cured me of this, but I fooled myself. I’m as frightened as I was on prom night. I’m just better at hiding it.
“What do you want, Kyle?”
“What a loaded question.” A thin layer of lust films his eyes as they run up and then down my body. “So many possibilities with a woman like you.”
“What do you want, Kyle?” It sounds no less confident when I repeat it, and it’s no less a lie than the first time I said it.
One of the hands trapping me moves to my waist and slithers down to cup my ass. Everything in me rejects his touch. The hairs on my neck stand on end. My skin pebbles with goose bumps. My stomach heaves, but I’m afraid if I move, he’ll hurt me, jerk me, and I can’t invite his violence. My strength failed me against him before, and I’m afraid to test it again.
“Your father tells me there’s some confusion about what happened between us that night all those years ago.” He dips his head until his lips brush against my cheekbone. “We need to deal with that.”
He’s actually here to silence me. His balls are actually big enough that he came into my office to intimidate me, to charm me the way he does the public, to convince me that I’m confused. I crane my neck away from him, doing my best to escape his lips, his breath, his words.
“There’s no confusion, Kyle.” I force myself to meet the veiled malevolence of his stare. “How could there be when we both know you raped me?”
He inches forward, pressing his arms tighter against me, making sure I know he has me caged. Nausea roils in my stomach and floods my mouth with water as his erection presses between my legs. As much as I’m trying to disguise it, he senses my fear, and it’s turning him on. He leans into my ear, his whisper burning my skin like acid.
“I didn’t rape you, bitch. The way I remember it, you begged for it. I was your first, and there’s a certain attachment to the man who pops your cherry.” He laughs gruffly. “The way I remember it, when I told you I didn’t want anything more than that one night, you threatened me with lies about rape. When you never followed through, I assumed you’d come to your senses. I was dismayed when your father warned me today that you haven’t come to your senses at all.”
His words sledgehammer me. My parents wanted to believe that lie so they can move forward with their agenda. In some corner of my heart, the last hope for support from my parents fades to dust.
“You really are something, though.” He squeezes my ass, his breath releasing in a hiss. “I take a certain pride in knowing I had you first. I’ve never forgotten how tight your pussy was that night. How wet you were for me.”
“I wasn’t wet for you, motherfucker,” I spit back. “I was so dry I bled when you rammed that tiny dick inside of me.”
His eyes ignite with the violence he suppresses. His nostrils flare with it. The hand cupping my ass clenches into a fist, dragging me closer until his hardness digs into my thigh. If he could punch me in the face, he would. But he’s smart enough not to leave any marks, smart enough not to say anything incriminating.
“I bet you wouldn’t bleed now, would you, Sofie?” He pumps his hips slowly into me. I jerk back, pushing against his arms on either side of me, but they don’t budge. “I may have been your first, but I certainly wasn’t your last, was I? It must have been good because it really whet your appetite.”
He licks behind my ear, laughing when I gag.
“Who’s going to believe a whore like you was raped by a man like me?”
I can’t stand like this with him another second. The last time we fought, he won. Everything in me resists the thought of another losing struggle, but I have to risk it. I shove at his chest, pushing him back just enough to lift my knee and ram it into the bulge in his pants. He doubles over, blue eyes watering with pain. I rush around behind my desk, rustling through the drawer until I find a letter opener. He stumbles toward me, face still red, lips yanked back with a growl.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” I cock my arm back, letter opener gripped tightly in my fist. “This’ll hurt a lot worse than my knee, and when I’m done you certainly won’t be raping anyone else because that dick of yours will be tossed out my window into the street where it belongs.”
“Bitch.”
“You mentioned that.” A calm, foreign but real, settles over me. Wraps around me until I actually manage to smile at my assailant.
“You can’t stop me.” I chuckle, leaning forward across my desk to taunt him with my eyes. With this irrational confidence. “You’re the one with everything to lose, Kyle. Not me.”
“We’ll see about that.” His lips peel back, showing his teeth like an alligator. “Seems to me you have
someone
to lose now.”
My smile holds, but my heart stops. Trevor. I know that’s who he means.
“We found all kinds of shit on you, of course,” Kyle says, speaking easier now, his color returning to normal. “But him? Clean as a whistle. Not even a parking ticket.”
I swallow, my smile melting away.
“I’ll tell you right now, I got nothing on Bishop, but your shit will chase him away.” He grins. “You had twenty years to close the deal with Walsh and you never could, and he can’t hold a candle to this guy. This one? Oh, he’s a saint compared to Walsh. You think he’ll stay once the whole world sees what a slut you are? You think he wants that shit sticking to him?”
His grin drops, eyes almost earnest.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Sofie. Just tell me what you really want here, and it doesn’t have to get so ugly. This can all go away. You can go on with your life. I’ll be New York’s next senator, and your father will be a very happy man. I’ll make sure of that. Just don’t come out with this ridiculous story.”
I tell my story every chance I get. Every time I do, I raise a fist against my oppressors.
Halima’s words, her battle cry, rises up to squash what’s left of my fear and uncertainty.
“You raped me and you raped Shaunti Miller, and God knows who else,” I say, not even a lump in my throat. “And you’re going to pay for it. By the time I’m done, you won’t even get elected PTA president.”
His eyes narrow to reptilian slits, his lips falling back to bare his teeth at me. His face goes stony, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Why you little—”
“And I bet there’s someone out there you’ve raped who still has a criminal case against you.” I lean forward, fists resting on my desk, letter opener trapped in hand. “You asked me what I want. I want you to rot in prison, you miserable bastard.”
His hand raises like he might strike me, but he catches himself and runs that hand over his perfectly coiffed hair.
“I’d take that hit, Kyle, to have proof of your brutality, so go ahead.” I tilt my chin, offering my cheekbone to him. “Hit me like you did that night. You think I’ve forgotten the bruises I had the next day?”
“You’re crazy if you think anyone will believe you over me.” Disdain drips from his laugh. “Me, an upstanding citizen, a family man with a spotless record, or you, the slutty model who spreads her legs for
Playboy
and any man who’ll crawl into her bed?”
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we? We’ll have to see if your hollow marriage to your sweet wife is enough to get you out of rape allegations from one of the most famous women in the world.”
He goes white beneath his fake tan.
“If you want to walk away from this unscathed,” he says, “stop before you start.”
A chuckle gurgles in my throat, spilling into the tension of the room.
“You may be the political darling in your little neck of the woods, Kyle, but I’m one of the most recognizable faces
in the world
. You can’t just make me disappear.”
“Everything you’ve worked for will be destroyed. You’ll be a laughingstock.”
“You first, Kyle.”
“Bitch.”
“Son of a bitch,” I fire back. “You can’t do anything to me that hasn’t already been done. That’s the advantage of living the way I have. Everyone knows everything. I’m not Shaunti, and you can’t intimidate me.”
I stride past him to the door, legs no longer trembling. I unlock and open the door, peering into the reception area, where two oversize men in dark suits sit flipping through magazines. I look back to Kyle, still standing by my desk, crimson crawling out of his collar and over his cheekbones.