The exhaustion from that man had become physical. He had either made something up or someone had told him something, and that was it. He dug in like a mule. He couldn't see past the tip of his own nose. How did Theron even trust him with running the company? Or maybe he just wants to get rid of me because I don't play along.
All these tangled questions were tiring. I was tired of proving things I hadn't done. It had always been this way. I'd simply accepted that there's almost no justice in this world.
I took a hot shower. After the alcohol, it relaxed me a bit more than usual. But the fatigue left behind after the meeting with Dave wouldn't let go.
I went to Derek. Took with me a folder I had prepared in advance.
To my surprise, the door to his apartment was open. The light was on inside, but Derek himself wasn't there.
That could mean only one thing.
I went up to the roof. The door wasn't locked. Derek was standing at the very edge, looking down.
"Tough day?" I asked once I realized he hadn't even noticed me behind him.
"A little," Derek replied, turning around. "Don't tell me you've got something for me again."
"A little," I echoed his tone and stood next to him.
I didn't look down. I did not look down. I looked at the city as a whole. At the foreign bustle. Everyone was busy with their own life.
"Dave just promised to kill me. And I think this time it's not a test," I said calmly, lifting my head to the sky.
I took a deep breath. The cool air filled my chest, and something inside cleared a little.
For the first time today, I didn't feel pain. Just cold. And that felt better.
"At least the pay's good," Derek replied, not looking at me.
"True enough," I smirked.
For some reason, everything dark and fireproof in me always surfaced on this rooftop. There was no need to keep my back straight or pretend here.
"Sometimes, when I'm working, I forget everything that already happened." My gaze was still clinging to the night sky. Not to the stars. Just to the emptiness.
"That's good," he said. "What's in the folder?"
"A few documents. Just in case. Bank accounts. Brittany's statements. My authorization so you can handle them until she comes of age." I handed him the folder without taking my eyes off the sky.
He took it silently. No questions, no emotions.
Then suddenly, he stepped closer and gripped my hand tightly.
"Let's go inside. Your hair's wet. You'll catch a cold."
The first and possibly the only time he touched me.
Not because he wanted to. Because he felt it was necessary.
He walked me back to the apartment, and we said goodbye.
He said he'd try, if it ever came to that, to deal with the documents.
I nodded. That was enough.
I waited until I heard Derek's door close.
Then I simply left mine unlocked. No lock. No latch. Nothing.
If someone wanted to come in, let them. I was tired even of my own reflexes.
I changed into a loose T-shirt, pulled on a pair of shorts, and lay down.
The cold, the alcohol, and the leftover anger at everything and everyone did their work quickly.
Sleep took over before I even had a chance to think.
***
The noise woke me.
The room was still dark, but in that darkness I immediately felt movement.
My eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, and the silhouette beside the bed became clearer. A faint light from the window caught the outline of a figure.
He extended his hand. Something glinted.
A gun.
It was pointed at me.
I could not see the face, only the silhouette. And I did not need to. There were no questions left.
"Do what you wanted and leave," I said in a hoarse voice and turned onto my side.
A tension began to grow in my chest.
Was it really going to end like this?
Was I still not ready? Still too weak?
My pulse sped up, but nothing happened.
"You have completely lost your mind," a furious voice sounded behind me.
Theron.
What? Why was he here?
I turned sharply, and the figure stepped closer. In the dim light from the street his face appeared. It was him.
Theron had just aimed a gun at me.
Something flared inside me, not fear but something hot and vicious.
He turned away and began to walk around the room like a predator in a confined space.
"What is wrong with you. One thing is to endure pain, another is to ignore danger this irresponsibly." His voice was cold and angry. He paced back and forth, then stopped and stared at me. "Have you completely lost your mind. Principles. Pride. Why did you say nothing. Why did you not lock the door?"
I stayed silent.
What could I say?
I was tired. Tired of proving I was right. Tired of defending myself. Tired of fearing what perhaps I should have simply accepted.
"Do you understand what would have happened here if I had not come." Theron stepped to the edge of the bed. Even through the darkness I saw how his eyes burned with fury.
"Yes," I answered his anger at last. "Your dear brother would have come and simply killed me."
I pushed myself up on my elbows and stared directly at him. As angry as he was. Without fear.
You aimed a gun at me, do not forget.
"You know perfectly well that I did nothing. He snapped only because I refused to play along with his delusions of grandeur. You know that yourself. But you did nothing."
I paused. He said nothing.
"What else was I supposed to do. Justify myself. Complain?"
My voice sounded calm. Too calm.
But inside everything boiled. I wanted to scream. I wanted to say out loud everything.
What the hell did you come with a weapon for.
Why were you the one I did not defend myself against, and the first to aim a gun at me.
But I did not say it.
Everything connected to Theron stirred emotions in me.
Not warm or proper ones, but others. Torn, sharp.
If it had been Dave standing here, I would not have cared. But this was Theron. And the very fact that he had even imitated this, had aimed a gun at me, stirred up everything inside me that I had kept locked away for so long.
After my loyalty. After everything.
He put the gun back into its holster and leaned closer to me.
"I waited for you to say at least one word. But no. You stubbornly kept going your own way and then exposed yourself with your unlocked door," his voice grew quieter, lower, heavier. He leaned closer and closer. "I saved your life just now. So from this moment it is mine."
He said it so low and so confidently that my breath caught.
Not fear. Not horror. Something much worse. A tremor.
He stood up, threw his jacket onto the chair and the holster with it.
In one movement he pulled the blanket off me and tossed it aside, then dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed.
With a sharp pull he drew me toward him by both legs. My T-shirt rode up. I immediately felt everything exposed: my stomach, my thighs. Instinctively I tried to pull the fabric back down, but Theron caught my hands, locked them together and raised them up.
"So you do not care whether you get killed or not," he said quietly with a faint smirk. "But you are embarrassed by your bare stomach?"
My breathing grew uneven.
Wounds. Scars. The things I had hidden for years.
He saw all of it. Looked carefully. Without disgust. Without pity. He simply studied.
Even in the darkness I noticed a trace of surprise in his gaze.
I tried to pull away, to cover myself, but he held me tightly, stronger than I could resist.
With his free hand he traced one of the old scars, the mark left by a heated poker.
I shuddered. Not from pain, but from a sensation I did not even want to acknowledge.
I had always considered my wounds disgusting.
Ugly.
Something that should never be shown to anyone.
And he, a man surrounded by perfect, glossy women, ran his fingers over my scars as if he was not looking at flaws at all, but at something ordinary.
He ran his fingers over the other scars. One after another. Slowly, as if they needed to be counted.
Every touch seemed to shoot into my spine. A small tremor escaped my body with each new contact.
"So this is where you hide all your emotions," Theron exhaled quietly.
He was enjoying it. My reaction. My shivers. My helplessness. It was too obvious to ignore.
He leaned closer to my stomach, to where the scars stretched. I tried to pull away instinctively. But he tightened his grip on my hands even more. Without anger. He simply did not let me escape.
He kept leaning lower.
And when I had already braced myself for another sharp remark or rough touch, he…
licked one of the scars.
Carefully. Almost gently.
Then the second. And another.
I froze. My nervous system burned out in a second. I could not breathe evenly, each of his gestures scorched my skin as if it was not his tongue but heated metal.
He rose and pushed my hands farther up, above my head. Securely. Fixing them.
"Since that very evening I have been trying to stay away. Trying too hard. So that I would not take you again on whatever work desk was nearby." His voice was low and hoarse. He looked into my eyes. Openly. Harshly. Without a game.
He wanted me.
Maybe only physically.
But that alone was enough to send my long dead ego into chaos.
This man, cold as ice, had just admitted he wanted me. He desired me even if that sex had been an accident.
I did not hold back.
I let my offended, damaged ego decide for me.
"But I am not going to take you against your will," he murmured, sliding his free hand along the scars on my waist. "So if this is unpleasant for you, this is your last chance."
He looked straight into my eyes.
Waiting.
His hand kept sliding along my skin. Along the broken lines of someone else's actions.
"Hands," I said quietly.
He let go. Stepped back. Took it as a refusal.
But my ego had long since made the decision for me.
It pulsed inside me like a broken alarm. He chose me.
Someone like him.
Without disgust. Without pity. Without pretense.
He began to slowly move away, and in that moment my fingers grabbed his tie and pulled him sharply back toward me.
"I did not say no," I breathed.
And without waiting for anything else I pressed myself to his lips.
The response came instantly.
It was not a kiss. It was a seizure.
His tongue did not simply touch. It invaded. Hard, commanding, without pauses.
As if something inside him had been held back for far too long.
A beast.
He controlled my breath, my body, me.
Theron was not playing. He wanted. Now. Me. Entirely.
And that was enough.
For the body. For the ego.
For the part of me that did not seek love or understanding. Only recognition.
Theron seemed to feel that he had gone too sharply.
He pulled away. He stayed on his knees between my legs, watching as I tried to steady my breath after that onslaught.
He slowly slipped the tie from his neck.
Unbuttoned his shirt. Threw it onto the floor without looking, without caring where it landed.
And only then did I truly see him.
Even in this dim, half-lit room his body cast clear lines, dry, tense.
Not bulky, not overworked. His stomach was pure anatomy, without fat, without excess.
His shoulders, his arms, everything in him moved with precision, restraint, confidence. His muscles and the faint ridges on his abdomen caught the light from the street.
And he had scars.
Not as many as I did. But they were there.
Enough to understand he was not just someone who gave orders. He had been through something.
He wore his scars openly.
Without trying to hide them.
As if they were simply part of the structure.
After he took off his shirt, his hands moved to me.
He began pulling off my shorts and underwear. I did not resist. I simply lay there, hypnotized by his body, his breath, the certainty in every movement.
Not because I could not.
Because I did not want to.
Yes, there was raw, dense desire between us. No excuses. No pretty words.
And I was no longer going to push it away.
But I still hadn't taken off the T-shirt. My hands froze.
It didn't work.
The past reacted faster than I did. It clenched inside and wouldn't let me finish the motion.
I reached for his belt. To distract myself, shift attention, occupy my hands.
But he caught my wrists.
"Patience," he said with a quiet smirk. His voice still carried that calm tension.
For a second I felt greedy.
As if in this room it was me who was rushing. Me who couldn't hold back.
And that strange, unfamiliar feeling only fueled everything already boiling under my skin.
He lowered himself between my legs. His fingers ran across the scars. Silently.
He examined them. Touched them with his lips. Slowly.
"Did it hurt?" he asked. His breath touched the inside of my thigh. Hot. Heavy.
"Only at first," I whispered, barely forcing out the words.
"How long?" he asked.
At first I didn't understand what he meant. Because at that moment he was already kissing me there.
Without warning.
Too precise. Too precise.
His fingers gripped the skin of my thighs. His lips and tongue worked right on the hottest point.
Confident. Unhurried.
I stopped breathing.
"How long did it last?" he repeated, pausing. He looked straight at me. He waited for an answer.
"Seven years," I exhaled, breaking into a half-sob in which everything mixed together: touch, pain, memories.
He froze. For a moment.
I froze with him.
Fear rose inside me. He would leave now. He would get scared. One second, and it would all be over.
I tried to crawl back, but he gripped my thighs tightly and pulled me back.
"You gave consent. Too late to run," he said. He was smiling. Not condescendingly. Hungrily.
He leaned down again.
His hands held me even tighter.
His fingers slid over my heat. Slowly, without pressure.
He continued kissing my scars. Sometimes lightly biting the inside of my thigh.
I couldn't steady my breath.
Neither my body nor my mind obeyed me anymore.
His fingers did not stop moving, already bringing me to the edge, while his lips hungrily kissed and bit my body.
My hips moved toward his fingers on their own, and he gently entered me with two of them.
From the pleasure I breathed out, as if quenching a thirst that had tortured me after such a long wait.
I could not tell whether he felt satisfaction from what he saw.
But he did not stop. His fingers moved deeper, stronger.
His touch drove me insane, from his fingers to his kisses, even the bites felt like bliss. I drowned completely in this pleasure, emotions overpowering reason. Moans escaped me without control.
His touch was gentle, and I felt something powerful and sweet approaching, ready to overwhelm me. Each of his touches brought pleasure, washing away every doubt in waves. No one had ever known how to seduce like this, how to touch like this. All previous relationships paled in comparison, lies meant only to take my money.
What else could Theron want besides my physical closeness. And I did not object to that. Our attraction was mutual, and that was more than enough for me.
And now his gentle and deep touches simply knocked me down.
I did not want him to stop for even a second. It was not enough for me. I wanted him fully, completely inside me.
I was losing myself. Moans broke out one after another, more and more often. The bites, the breath, the warm heaviness of his mouth, all of it shifted reality, pulled me out of it. I tried to hold on. To control my breath, the sound, my body.
Useless.
Wave after wave, and the orgasm overtook me. I instinctively squeezed his hand between my legs, and he sat up, simply watching how I fell apart in the wave of release.
"Finally I saw your sweetest emotions," he said with sly satisfaction. As if that had been his only task.
I pulled his hand, the one I had trapped between my legs, toward me. He did not resist. I pushed him onto his back, and even then he obeyed. Would he really let me take the lead. Something in me did not believe it, but I did not stop.
Unbuttoning his trousers, I realized he was already aroused. I pulled them off along with everything underneath. Even in the dimness he looked like a perfectly built athlete. I saw the scars, but I did not focus on them.
To see him the same way he had just seen me.
To uncover his reactions.
To erase that eternal cold composure from him.
To reach the point where he would lose control.
I wrapped my hands around him, already hard and standing. His eyes immediately glistened. I sat on top of him, positioning him between my legs and sliding my heated and wet core along him. Finally his breathing faltered. I continued to move without letting him inside, and watching his arousal became a new kind of pleasure.
"Do not play with fire," he said and pulled me to him.
I lay on his chest and looked into his eyes darkened with desire. He gripped my hips, guided them, and entered me. My whole body shuddered with pleasure. This was exactly what I had wanted so badly.
"Yes," Theron groaned very quietly and low. "This is exactly what I wanted."
As soon as I began to move my hips, he pulled my face to his and sealed it in a kiss, deep and passionate. I did not stop moving, and he let out a faint groan into my lips. He tightened his hold and pressed my hips to him. His unsteady breath against my mouth excited me even more.
"I thought I would come just from your moans," he said without a hint of embarrassment.
That confession caught me slightly off guard. Could I take it as a compliment.
He threw me onto the bed on my back. And slowly pulled at my T-shirt, sliding it off me.
"I waited a long time, so do not think we will stop after once." His insolent and captivating smile hypnotized me.
And for some reason in that moment I was no longer ashamed of my body, my scars, my trembling. There was no fear. Only heat and the desire to fall into the night so deeply that in the morning it would be impossible to tell where his power ended and mine began.
And for the first time in a long while, a thought flashed through my mind, one that felt strange even to me.
"It is good that my plan to die today failed exactly because of him."