I’d set my alarm for Sunday morning just like I do every Sunday morning. I call it my reset day. The day when I try to calm myself a bit before subjecting myself to a week of frustration at work. Normally, I pull on some yoga pants and head off for some Pilates before wasting my time at Starbucks for a couple of hours, planning vacations I’ll never take.

But today…

Today feels different.

I feel different.

Last night, I dreamed about Grayson Maxwell. Fantasized that we were intimate. Thought about him warming my bed. It felt safe. For once in a very long time, I wasn’t absolutely terrified of being close to a man. I’d woken up with his scent still stuck in my nose from seeing him the night before, and I masturbated to him. For once, it wasn’t Vaughn—that sick bastard—that I thought about while I got off. Perhaps I’m not as broken as I thought.

The thought thrills me. I almost bet if I were to thaw a bit, Gray and I could have that delicious rumble in the sheets. But I’d already friend-zoned him.

A girl can still dream about her sexy-as-sin boss who she’d like to fuck if this were another life and she wasn’t herself.

“Excuse me,” an irritated woman utters, dragging me from my daydream. “Is that seat taken?”

I’d been so lost in my thoughts, I’d forgotten that I skipped Pilates altogether and went straight to Starbucks after a long shower where I ended up using the showerhead to ease another ache. They seem to keep coming. Literally.

“Oh, uh—” I start but a masculine voice interrupts.

“The seat is taken.”

I jerk my gaze over and find myself staring into Gray’s ice blue eyes. His hair is wet, as if he just showered, and his chest is heaving as if he ran all the way here. The woman waddles off when he drops into the seat across from me.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says with a laugh as he sips on his coffee.

I can’t help but beam at him. “Are you stalking me?”

His eyes flicker with amusement. “I wish my story was as glamorous as that. I was actually in the neighborhood on my way to this market I recently found out about. Thought I’d grab a coffee first. You’ll never believe the hottie I ran into.”

With a snort, I shake my head at him. “You’re relentless. Were you really in the neighborhood?”

He flashes me a shy grin. “I was, but in all honesty, I was coming to see you. You were upset last night, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” His cheeks turn slightly pink. The boyish gesture has me thawing.

I chew on my bottom lip as I take in his appearance. He’s slightly disheveled. It makes me wonder if he was in a hurry to come see me. The thought is a warm one. How is it that this guy was cold and in his own world Friday, but by Sunday he’s someone I don’t mind spending time with? “I’m fine. That’s sweet of you to check up on me. Although,” I say with a slight shake of my head. “You’re a far cry from the prick I handed my notice in to on Friday.”

His smirk has the room feeling as though the temperature has risen. “Let’s just say someone pointed out my flaws. Now I’m trying my damnedest to make her realize I’m not a complete asshole.”

Even though we’re surrounded by a ton of people on this busy Sunday morning, I feel as though we’re all alone. Lost in our own little world.

“This whole having friends thing is weird,” I admit with a chuckle.

His long leg brushes against mine under the table and a spark of electricity darts its way to my core. I try not to shudder in pleasure.

Friends.

We’re just friends.

“I want to get to know you, Violet,” he murmurs, his hand boldly covering mine on the table. I stiffen but then relax when he adds. “As friends.”

A smile plays at my lips. “Okay. I don’t see the harm in that, I guess.”

“Come with me to the resort on Wednesday,” he murmurs and leans closer, his leg once again brushing up against mine.

My cheeks blaze crimson as I recall my dreams last night. Dreams where he touched me and held me. Dreams where we were naked and tangled together. “I, uh…”

He chuckles. “Down girl. I meant as colleagues. I’ve needed to travel out to the property now that I’ve acquired it from Mr. Collins. There’s some business stuff I need to take care of. I’ll require the aid of my hardworking assistant.”

Embarrassment floods through me. Of course he wants to look at the property. I assumed he meant he wanted to take me away for a romantic weekend. God, I’m such a flake around him. If he wasn’t so damn good-looking, I wouldn’t get so tongue tied. This whole friends thing will take some practice. I’d guess that most friends aren’t as severely attracted to the other, like I am to him.

“Yes, I’ll go. I knew what you meant,” I tell him firmly, despite the burning heat still lingering on my cheeks and throat.

He flashes me a crooked grin. “Come on. Grab your coffee to go.”

Once we’re outside in the cold drizzle, he pops open an umbrella and holds it above us. It’s small, so I have to lean into his side to keep from getting wet. Together, we start walking down the busy sidewalk.

“Gwen and I watch football on Sunday nights. She likes to cook. Spends hours making all this finger food, even though we’re the only ones there to eat it,” he says with a chuckle. “You should come over tonight and watch the game. As friends of course.”

My gut instinct is to tell him no but then I remember I’m attempting to try new things here. Friendship is one. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to try and get to know Gwen a little better.

“Okay,” I concede. “What should I bring?”

He guides me over to his white Range Rover. “Yourself. That’s all I want.” The husky way in which he says it has me frowning at him.

“Gray…”

Pulling open the car door, he laughs. “Stop reading so much into everything. We both want you there.” I slip into his vehicle, that smells just like him, and ponder what I’m even doing right now. This was not a part of my Sunday plan.

“Where are we going?” I question once he slides into the driver’s seat.

He shrugs as he zips down the road. “I need to do a little shopping. You up for a quick visit to the mall?”

Considering we’re now going in the opposite direction of my home, I can’t help but agree. It would be rude to make him turn around to take me home. “Yeah, the mall sounds fun.”

The seat warmers in his car have me feeling relaxed as ever. I’m enjoying the passing sights and the music that’s playing and the comfortable quiet between us. So much so that it isn’t until a song that Vaughn used to play when we were fucking comes on the radio, that I feel ice begin to creep into my bones. I hadn’t realized how little I think about him when I’m with Gray until now.

“Can you change it?” I ask, my voice breathless.

My eyes close and I can almost feel the weight of Vaughn as he pins me to the mattress. The way he’d wedge his knee between my thighs until his cock was settled against me. How he’d hold me down and fuck me slowly at first. I’d get lost in his gentle touch until he’d turn dark on me. Until he’d hit me or choke me unconscious or do something equally brutal.

“Violet, babe, you’re scaring the hell out of me right now,” a voice growls.

I snap my eyes open to see Gray glaring at me at a stoplight. My hand shakes as I swipe a lock of hair away from my face. Not meeting his gaze, I say, “Nothing. I was just daydreaming.”

The song has long since been changed and the light has turned green. This time, the silence inside the car is thick and heavy. I can sense him brooding about what just happened. Sickness roils in my belly.

“You can talk to me, you know,” he says gruffly. “That’s what friends do.”

Not about this.

I can’t ever talk to anyone about this.

“Maybe one day,” I lie as I twist my fingers in my lap.

He reaches over and covers my hands with his much larger one. His pinky innocently grazes against my clit through my yoga pants, causing me to jolt. I sneak a glance at him. His jaw clenches as he maneuvers the road with ease, his attention ahead of him. My nipples harden, and I know my panties are now damp.

What is wrong with me?

I’m a pervert.

He’s trying to comfort me, and all I can focus on is how his pinky rests against the seam of my sex. My breathing is heavy. I try desperately to calm it. His thumb rubs over the back of my hand in a comforting manner. I wish it were his other finger, though, doing all the moving.

“I need help picking out a chair,” he tells me as we pull into the mall parking lot. “They have one of those ergonomic office stores here. Ever been?”

I shake my head because I can’t manage words with his finger on my pussy. He gives my hands a squeeze which makes a thrill shoot straight to my core from where his finger innocently rubs against me again.

“There’s a spot,” I choke out, pointing to an empty parking space. I jerk my other hand out from under his and run my fingers through my hair. Instead of pulling his hand away, he settles it back on my thigh. That naughty pinky of his seems to fit right up against me as if it belongs there.

He pulls into the spot and tugs his hand away to put the car into park. I let out a long breath I’d been holding. His full lips curl into a lopsided grin when he regards me. My entire body buzzes with electricity that seems to be linked to him.

“Ready?”

I bolt from the car and stalk toward the mall. Soon, he catches up to me and places his palm on my lower back. The rain has stopped, but it looks like the bad weather will continue throughout the day.

“Your ass looks nice in those pants, little quitter,” he says with a grin.

I huff and glare at him. “Boss. Boundaries.”

He snorts and gives my ass a swat. “Friends get to say these things.”

I’m pretty sure friends aren’t this touchy-feely, but what do I know. What I do know is that it is fucking with my head. Gray is too hot for him to be playfully touching me all the time. One of these days he’s going to get me so worked up that I pounce on him.

We spend the next hour trying out office chairs. He says he needs a new one and insists I try them all out to tell him which is the most comfortable. When I sit a little longer than necessary in one of them and close my eyes, he snaps his fingers.

“I want this one,” he tells a salesclerk.

I turn my attention to see him watching me with his muscular arms folded over his solid chest. He looks good today. No surprise there. He looks good every day. But now that his focus is on me, he seems especially handsome. His eyes seem to never leave mine. The way his gaze follows me everywhere reminds me of Vaughn. But with Vaughn, I’d always felt like a mouse caught in a trap—and he was the cat about to eat me.

Gray stares at me as if he’s trying to memorize every freckle and expression.

He watches me with a hunger that promises so much more than friendship.

“Stay there,” he tells me. “I’m going to go pay for this.”

When he disappears, I let my mind wander. I remember shopping with Vaughn early on in our relationship. Back when he’d only started becoming possessive. At the time, I thought it was sexy.

* * *

“Try this one on,” he says with a wolfish grin. He holds up a skimpy dress fit for going to a club.

I frown because he’d promised he’d take me to buy more jeans. After growing up in a household where my mom scrimped and saved so we’d scrape by okay, it is nice having a boyfriend with money and who wanted to splurge on you. Problem is, I don’t ever feel right to ask him for what I need. I just let him buy what he wants.

And today, he wants a red dress two sizes too small.

He flashes me a smoldering grin that has me tugging the fabric from his fingers. I walk to the dressing room with a frown playing at my lips. Sometimes Vaughn is everything I ever wanted in a boyfriend.

Other times, he’s intense.

Too intense.

With each passing day, his like for me turns into something borderline obsessive. And while I think it’s hot when he glares at other guys for looking at me, I don’t always think it’s hot when he lashes out at me for it.

“I’m coming with you,” he growls from behind me as he grabs my ass through my dress.

I shiver and look over my shoulder. His grey eyes are hard like steel, and that perfect jaw of his is like stone. I push through the dressing room and hang the dress on the hook. He locks the door behind him and sits on the only chair.

Vaughn is hotter than any guy I’ve dated. Not that I’ve dated tons. He’s definitely way out of my league. I’m simple and plain and fairly on the innocent side. Vaughn is far from simple. He’s complex and layered and tricky. And he eats innocent for dinner.

My gaze falls to his sculpted chest that’s barely hidden behind the stretched white fabric of his T-shirt. I know that hiding behind the shirt just over his heart is an anatomically correct tattoo of a black heart with my name in the middle.

I’d been horrified when he showed me the tattoo just three weeks after we started dating. My mother was always against tattoos. I grew up getting lectured that you should never permanently mark up your skin. Especially not with someone’s name. If she knew Vaughn had ‘Letty’ scrawled across his flesh forever, she’d have a coronary.

I jerk my eyes to the red dress and turn my back to him. He watches me with narrowed eyes in the mirror. I try not to focus on him but become distracted by the dark bruise on my throat I’d tried desperately to cover with makeup. It’s times like these that I begin to regret my two-month relationship with him. As much as I love him buying things for me and showing my body pleasure it’s never known, I can’t help but feel slightly trapped.

I mean, he has my name inked up on him for crying out loud.

“Babe,” he growls. “We don’t have all day. I have business shit to take care of later.”

I flash him a quick smile in the mirror that doesn’t reach my eyes as I begin peeling off my jeans and shirt. By business, he means drugs. I know he sells the hard stuff. I’ve tried to stay out of it but on occasion, he’s done deals in front of me.

I pull the red material up my body and situate it. It’s a tube-top dress and molds against every curve on my body. I look like a skank. My lip curls up to tell him this, but then his heat is up against me from behind. His erection pokes into my back as he grabs my breasts. Our eyes meet in the mirror and his smoldering one weakens me.

“You look so fucking hot,” he praises.

“It’s a little tight,” I breathe.

He smirks and I loosen up. But that’s until I start to worry about other men seeing me dressed this way. He hates when they look at me, which is why I don’t fool around too much with my makeup or cute outfits. Vaughn thinks I’m beautiful when I’m plain and boring. I don’t need to doll myself up for other men.

His palms slide up the outer sides of my thighs and he urges the dress up to my hips. When he starts to pull down my panties, I let out a nervous laugh.

“Not here, Vaughn,” I hiss, my throat heating with embarrassment.

His eyes become hard in the mirror. He pinches my tit through the material causing me to yelp in pain. My eyes well with tears. From time to time, he gets rough with me but it usually ends with him kissing away the hurt and being super sweet. He grabs a handful of my hair and yanks my head back. His hot breath tickles my ear as he spits out his word. “Here.”

His other hand yanks my panties down my thighs. When he starts to bend me forward, I fight against him. What if someone hears and they kick us out?

Crack!

My forehead slams against the mirror and I black out. When I come to, he’s fucking me from behind. A massive headache is thundering in my head and my sex hurts from not being wet when he entered me. With shaky hands, I press them against the mirror and push away to regard my face. Blood trickles down from the left side of my forehead down over my eyebrow. A wave of dizziness washes over me. I start to collapse but Vaughn’s powerful arm holds me up. He grunts and then pulls out at the last minute. His cum shoots against the dress as he hisses in pleasure.

I can’t look at him.

What he just did is…

That’s rape, right?

My boyfriend just raped me?

Again.

Bile creeps up my throat and a tear slips out of my eyes. I’m still staring at my haggard face when I hear fabric ripping. He shreds the dress as he pulls it from my body. I would be horrified but I’m too dizzy to think too hard about it. He twists me around so I’m forced to look into his cold eyes. They quickly soften as he uses the red dress to wipe away the blood from my wound. It’s his tongue he uses to wipe away my tears.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his hot breath against my cheek. He trails soft kisses to my parted mouth. His kisses are sweet and apologetic but I’m numb. I don’t understand why he keeps doing this to me.

“I…I…why?” I ask, a sob caught in my throat.

He leans his forehead against mine and strokes my hair. “Sometimes I love you so much I lose my head. My mind turns black.”

His simple confession has me softening. He loves me. I sort of thought he did, but this is the first time he spoke of it.

“Vaughn…”

“Babe,” he whispers as he hugs me tight. “Let me love you. Don’t fight it at every turn.”

I sag against him. My heart hurts because the person who is able to single-handedly destroy me is also the person to fix me. I’m warm and safe in his loving embrace.

“You hurt me,” I accuse, more tears leaking out.

“I’m sorry. You know that.” He pushes his hand into his jeans pocket and retrieves a pill. “Here,” he coos. “Take this to take the edge off.”

I’m not one to do drugs but my head is throbbing and my heart aches so badly. I open my mouth and swallow the acrid pill dry.

He’s gentle as he helps me redress. Him being tender right now is almost as worse as him being rough. He once again wipes away some lingering blood with the dress that got us into this mess and then pulls my hair down in front of my eye to cover the wound.

“So pretty,” he praises. He tosses the soiled dress onto the floor, and I’m thankful I won’t have to ever look at it again.

With a firm grip on my elbow, he guides me out of the dressing room. Several women shopping stare at us as he all but drags me through the store. We start to pass by the racks of red dresses and bile rises up. Thank God I won’t ever have to look at them again. But then he jerks one off the rack before hauling me over to the register. The cashier won’t make eye contact as she rings up the dress.

“I thought you didn’t like it,” I murmur, tears once again threatening.

He releases his death grip on my elbow to pull out his wallet. “But you look downright fuckable when you wear it, baby,” he says with a wide grin that an hour ago would have made me crazy with need. Now all it does is make me shudder.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

The cashier makes a sound of disapproval but I don’t meet her stare. I can’t. I’m ashamed and embarrassed. If my mother knew he treated me this way, she’d probably kill him.

The medicine begins to work its way through my system on my empty stomach and the room spins. When I wobble on my feet, Vaughn chuckles and pulls me against him.

“I’ve got you, Letty. I will always have you.”