With a little liquid courage, I pulled Killian back into the alley behind the exhibition space. I’d been there earlier with Dahlia to check on her art, and I’d thought to myself, if I was ever going to have sex outside, it would be here. It was clean, secluded, and dimly lit. When Killian said what he wanted to do to me, I kept thinking about this spot. I hummed in anticipation throughout the whole evening.

I don’t know who was more shocked that I actually suggested it, him or me.

“Are you sure you want to play this game, Rachel? It’s pretty dangerous,” he said, stalking closer to me. My breath hitched as I took a step back. I knew how much he loved the hunt. The control. My back hit against the rough brick and it caught against my dress. He put his hands on either side of my head.

“I am.”

His nostrils flared and his pupils dilated, the bright blue overtaken by pitch black. “Take me out of my pants,” he commanded. I tilted my head back and looked into his dark eyes. He wanted me to do it?

“If you want to play this game, sweetheart, you’re going to play by my rules. I thought I already taught you that.” He nipped my ear and I yelped. “Take my cock out of my pants.”

I reached down between us, lowered his zipper, and took him out. He was hard as steel, and molten hot in my hand. He sucked in his breath and uncertainty left in me slid away. I loved how hot I got him. How hard it was for him to think when I touched him. It wasn’t just me that was lost in the haze of lust when we were together.

“Put your leg up on my hip,” he said, kissing his way down my neck. I hitched my leg up on him, exposing myself to him. He grabbed onto my leg, wrapping it around his hip. And I knew when he found out. I knew when he realized I wasn’t wearing any panties. He bit out a curse and looked at me, his eyes wide.

“This whole time?” he groaned as he slid himself up and down my slit.

“Surprise,” I moaned as he tapped my clit with his cock. I held onto his back, the fabric of his shirt bunching under my hands. He gripped my face in his hand and stared into my eyes as he reared back, sliding into me in one smooth motion. He swallowed my scream as he embedded himself in me so deeply I felt it in my toes. His lips and tongue were on me, devouring me. I moaned and cried out as he pumped into me.

He lifted my other leg around his hip, completely suspending me against the wall, his weight holding me in place. I didn’t last long before I started begging. His name and please repeated until I could hear my voice bouncing off the walls of the alley.

“Come.” His command. My release. I screamed and tightened my ankles around him, squeezing him into me even further. He grunted and jerked as rope after rope of cum spilled into me. My pussy clenched around him and he expanded in me. I screamed again as another aftershock hit me. He breathed heavily against my neck, his head resting on the brick wall.

“Fuck,” he groaned, letting my legs down. When I could finally stand on my two wobbly feet, I realized what had been missing between us. I felt the wet aftermath between my thighs and I knew it wasn’t all me.

I glanced up at him, my eyes wide in shock.

“Shit,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you home.” Get me home. What did that mean? Wasn’t he supposed to be staying over? What about what just happened?

The taxi ride back to my apartment was in complete silence. I stared out the window, trying to figure out just what it all meant. He’d come in me without a condom. We hadn’t had that conversation. I’d been tested. Was he sleeping with anyone else?

I felt like such a moron that I hadn’t even thought to ask. Hadn’t even thought to question if the man who was on my mind more than anything else I’d ever known was fucking other people. I sagged against the door of the taxi, suddenly more tired than I realized.

He startled me when he wove his fingers through mine on the seat. I glanced over at him, but he was stoic, staring straight ahead. I didn’t know what it meant. Was this the end of our little game? Had this snap to reality been enough to break the spell it seemed like we’d both woven over one another?

The minute I came inside her I knew. I knew I wanted to do it again and again and never wanted anything between us, but the way she looked at me. The shock in her eyes made me wonder if I was the only one who felt that way. Then I remembered why we were here in the first place. Why she’d come to me that day in the locker room. I’d let myself think of this as something more than it was. Once things went down with Thayer, she’d be gone. She’d be gone right now, if she knew what I had planned.

She wasn’t a nice girl I met at the gym or at a coffee shop. She was the woman trying to derail the plans I had to finally set things right. She wasn’t in this for me. She wasn’t in this for the long haul, and she surely wasn’t in this for whatever might happen when you fucked without a condom.

The walk up to her apartment felt like it doubled. She carried her shoes in her hand, not wanting to break her neck. I held her other hand, like I had in the taxi, our fingers woven together, but she was distant. She wasn’t talking and I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know where we stood now.

“I’ve never not used protection,” I said the minute the door clicked shut. She nodded solemnly.

“That’s good. Me either,” she said, a blush creeping into her cheeks. After everything we’d done, hell everything we’d do tonight, it was cute that she could still get embarrassed.

“And I’m on the pill.” She was on the pill, which was one less thing to worry about. But she was expertly unravelling me. She’d turned me inside out and I’d never been happier. My chest tightened and the walls began to close in as I realized how much I wanted to curl up in bed with her, run my hands through her hair, and go to sleep. That was all I wanted. The burning fire that pushed me through so much of my life was dying down. It was slowly being extinguished by her.

“I need to go.” I grabbed my suit jacket that laid on the chair by the door and opened the door. That couldn’t happen. This wasn’t real to her. She lived in this fake world she’d constructed for herself with nice stand ins like me and Dahlia. Play characters and she’d go back to her life with people like her.

“Killian, wait,” she called after me, rushing across the room. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to go.”

“Why? Stay. We were having a good time. Don’t go. It’s late, just come to bed,” she said, tempting me. Her phone buzzed on the counter and the ringtone blared in the otherwise silent room. His ringtone.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the phone, its glowing screen lighting up the room like a beacon.

“You should get that, never know who your boss will need you to do next,” I bit out. The venom and anger at Rhys, at myself, spilling over to her. She dropped my arm and stepped back like I’d smacked her.

“Rachel…,” I said, taking a step forward, but she held her hand out in front of her, stopping me in my tracks.

“No, I think you’re right. You should go.”

That wasn’t how I thought things would go. Things had been going so well. He opened up more and more, surprising me in so many ways. Made me surprise myself, and then it all fell apart. For some reason, I kept tricking myself into believing what we had was real.

Tears pooled in my eyes as I laid in my bed with my clothes still on. My breath caught in my chest as I tried to calm myself. I needed to remember what this was. I needed to not get caught up in him. He obviously wasn’t thinking about me as anything other than a passing fancy. How many women had he slept with in that sex club room?

I mean, he had his own room in a sex club. That said something. I banged my head against the bed. So stupid.

Dahlia snuck in well into the early hours of the morning. I was too tired to even get up and see what was going on. She’d had a successful show, I’d had a great evening until Killian lost it.

The games we played blurred the lines even more than before. I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to process it. Every time I showed up at the office or went to Rhys’s office in his apartment and I had to look Rhys or his security guard, Derek, in the eyes, I wanted to curl up and run away. But how did I get out now? How did I tell Killian ‘no’? Did I even want to?

His first text came more than a day later. A whole thirty-six hours after he ran out on me like I had the plague.