As Carter’s lips pressed to mine, I realized he was right. His lips were soft, his tongue insistent, swirling and dancing with mine. His hands were everywhere, on my sides, slipping under my shirt, caressing my thighs.

Moans were slipping out of my lips, even as I knew I would have to stop this. I was going to tell him to stop when he stopped kissing me. But when he stopped kissing me, he was pulling my shirt over my head. And—I was about to tell him—but then he was kissing my side where his hands had been, and his hands were caressing my thighs, kneading the gray fabric into my skin beneath. I was going to tell him to stop as soon as he paused, but next thing I knew, he was unbuttoning my suit skirt, unzipping it, running his finger along my lace panties.

Almost like you knew, his smirk said.

As Carter slipped a finger under the lace and into me, I could only moan in response. He was just teasing me, however, and I moaned again as he withdrew. Right after, he was running both hands up my body, stopping at my bra so he could fondle my breasts underneath.

God, I wanted him so badly. I couldn’t do this, and yet I couldn’t not.

As his hands slid around to the back of my strapless bra and unlatched it, I gasped out, “Carter.”

He tossed my bra aside. Peering into my face with an arrogant look, as if he already knew what I was going to say, he asked, “Yes?”

As both his hands clasped my breasts, I murmured, “I don’t know…”

He cocked his head at me.

“Oh yeah?”

One of his hands snaked down to my pussy and slid a finger in, and then out. Carter wagged his glistening wet finger in my face and smirked.

“I think you do know.”

I was about to respond when both his hands grasped my ass, and instead of words, moans spilled out of me. Amid the blurry tendrils of want twining up my body, I felt him slip my panties down over my thighs.

Now completely naked in his office chair, I watched as Carter paused, took a step back, and surveyed me.

“Well, aren’t you something.”

I grabbed his belt, and he batted my hands away, like a cat at a mouse. As his one hand unlatched his belt, the other pressed over my mouth.

“You’re helping me, remember? This—all of this—is at my pace, how I want it.” He pressed his hand over my mouth harder. “Got it?”

Another soft nod before I would tell him to fuck off. Because, as Carter unbuttoned his jeans, I realized I needed this, whatever this was. I’d never felt such a rush of passion, of want, of need. No, as Carter pulled down his slacks and stepped out of them, and my pussy swelled with a hot pulse of desire, I knew that whatever this man wanted, whatever this man did to me, there would be no resisting it. I needed this.

His eyes really were black in color. Staring at me with a predatory sort of hunger, he picked me up and shoved the chair away. Then, my hand still cuffed to the drawer, he turned me so my back was to the desk, sat me on it, and pressed himself against me, teasing me.

My whole body trembled with pleasure. God, I wanted him.

Carter, however, had paused. Looking down at me with a cocky smile, he said, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know.”

Glaring at him, I slid myself up and down along his length. Stepping away, leaving me on the desk there, wet and horny, Carter continued casually.

“Really, I mean it. I’ll let you go; no harm done.”

His gaze was ironic, mocking and yet serious. This was my last chance, my final opportunity to do the right thing, to save my dignity and go, leave.

I stared back at him, at this cruel, irresistible man, and willed my body to move, my lips to open and say “okay.” To leave. But nothing moved. Instead, all I could think about was when he’d fill me. How was I supposed to do the right thing when my pussy was dripping wet, practically tremoring for the wrong thing?

We stood there for a minute, staring each other down while the tremoring inside me grew like a drum roll. I felt like slapping him and clawing at him and kissing him, but instead, I threw myself as far forward as I could and, pressing myself to him, groaned, “Fuck you, Carter. Fuck me.”

With a victorious smile sliding onto his face, he did.

Picking me up, shoving me back onto the desk, he slipped inside me with one smooth, hard motion. As I cried out, he railed into me, sliding in and out, both of us gasping out breaths in sync, my hips rising to meet his thrusts.

And—oh God—it was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and—fuck—it was just what I needed. My mouth was opening and closing with a chant, the urge being uttered as a “yes.”

I was practically at the edge with “yes,” and he was fucking me just how he liked it, and my “yes” was a howl, a begging, a moan-scream. His cock was spasming, and he was coming, and I was coming, and “yes” was a sort of yowled thank you to the universe as we were finally freed.

Afterward, we slumped into the chair, me on top of him. My gaze kept flicking to his turned-away face. It was strange, but I could’ve sworn that, as we sat there, he had been looking at me, that there had been something in his gaze on me that had been kind. Our breaths were still in rhythm, but the longer I sat there, the more I realized that I was sitting on a statue, on my unbelievable mistake, and I had to go.

In one swift motion, I uncuffed myself and grabbed my panties off the floor. As I slipped on my tossed-aside clothes, Carter got up too.

Once I’d put on my clothes, I lifted my head to see something in front of my nose.

“Told you I’d help you if you helped me.”

Carter’s voice was light, casual. In front of me, he was holding a check for $100,000.

As I stared at it, he tucked it into my skirt pocket. I searched his face, looking for disdain, superiority, a sneer, anything. All I could find was my own shy confusion. Turning away, I made for the door.

My hand was just grasping the door handle when—“Hey.”

Turning, I saw that Carter had something orange and red in his hand. My sock. My red, smiling-faced apple-print sock.

“Almost forgot this.”

I took a step toward him, but Carter was already sweeping toward me. As he placed it in my hand, there was something on his face that was tender, almost kind.

Before I knew what I was doing, I’d kissed him on the cheek, and he said, “I never got your name.”

Over his shoulder was the portrait of the cruel-faced man, the man who was as cutthroat and heartless as the real Carter Ray, no matter what game he was playing now.

I turned back to the door and opened it.

“Donna,” I said as I left. “My name is Donna.”

The elevator was already waiting for me, so I didn’t have to look at the snide secretary. I hit the button for the lobby and stared into the chrome doors at my own distorted reflection.

Really, it should have been me who was snide. I had gotten what I’d wanted, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I?

As the elevator made its way down, picking up and dropping off faceless people with incomprehensible chatter, as I strode out of the building to my car, the question repeated itself: I had gotten what I’d wanted, hadn’t I?

I pulled out of the parking lot and made my way along the highway, staring out the window dully. The sun was a bright yellow ball amid twirling whooshes of clouds.

I’d done it. I’d gone to the CEO of RayGen, Carter Ray himself, and made my case.

I took out the check. As I squinted at the amount, and the basically illegible scrawl of Carter Ray, a lump formed in my throat. What if it was all a trick, this being the final punchline of the joke of that cruel man?

Seeing a rabbit on the edge of the highway, I slowed the car and then stopped so it could make its slow, hopping way across.

Why not? For Carter Ray, it was probably all a game, playing and negotiating with people the same way he did with business.

I tucked the check back into my pocket. I’d have to go to the bank to find out for sure. In any case, as much as I hated to admit it, that encounter—whatever it had been—had undeniably been just what I had needed. The rabbit having finally made it across the road, I continued on, though I soon found myself stopping once more.

A few feet from the road was a group of people with signs. I rolled down my windows to hear the familiar chant—“RayGen not again! Not again RayGen!”—and felt a wave of nausea overtake me. The check in my pocket suddenly felt like it weighed 100 pounds.

I had gone to Carter’s office wanting justice and gone away with a check. What kind of sellout was I?

Pulling over my car, I bleakly stared into the encroaching storm cloud ahead. I wanted to go back there, back to Carter Ray’s fancy, overdone office and throw his stupid check in his stupid, condescending face. And yet, I couldn’t.

The storm cloud was the same gray as the walls of the house where my parents and I now lived. It was a gray-walled, white-doored house that we shared with another dead-faced family who left garbage in the corners of common spaces and yelled at each other all night long. No, my parents and I couldn’t stay there. We had to use this check; we needed it. Regardless of my moral qualms, I had a family to look after.

Taking one last look at the group of protestors, I pulled back onto the road and drove on.

It seemed like the next minute I was pulling up to the tall beige and white building I could hardly wait to get into. My bank, where someone would tell me whether I had just made a terrible mistake or finally gotten a lucky break.

As soon as the frazzled-looking teller ogled me, I knew I was golden.

“So, you’d like that deposited in your savings account?”

“Y-yes,” was all I could manage.

One hundred thousand dollars. One hundred triple 0 dollars! Carter had been as good as his word—better. All he had promised me was help, and he’d given me $100,000.

“Will that be all today, ma’am?” the bank teller’s nasal voice asked. Nodding dumbly, grinning like an idiot, I left.

I couldn’t get home fast enough. As I drove, I swapped around potential stories.

I’d gotten a great new job—nah, I’d have to wait too long to use the money then.

I’d been contacted by a long-lost relative—no, my parents knew all my relatives; they were my parents, after all.

No, wait, I had it—I’d won the lottery.

There, simple as pie and immediate and perfect. And, in a way, true. Almost.

As I pulled up to the slumping, two-story hovel I had come to call home, my latest check in my bank account, everything looked twice as filthy and crappy. The broken screen, the screeching door, the tattered rug with missing patches on the floor, all of it only made me happier with what I was about to tell my parents.

As good old neighbor Gina slumped by, giving me her usual stony glare, I actually grinned at her.

Bye-bye, Gina, I chirped in my head. Nice living with you and your shrieking, demon children, but my parents and I are off to greener pastures.

Then, it was time to burst into the laundry room—my parents’ favorite hangout, with the ever-clattering machines—and yell over the ruckus, “I won the lottery!”

Staring at me like I’d smacked him, my dad ran a hand through his long beard.

“You…won the lottery.”

My mom nodded a little, let out a little sneeze, and said the words even more unbelievingly. “You won the lottery.”

Grasping both their hands, I nodded, smiling so wide my face hurt.

“One hundred thousand dollars, and it’s all yours. I want you to have it. We can buy a new house. We can get out of here.”

My dad’s gaze was on a massive spider web in the corner.

“I don’t know, honey. That’s your money,” my mom said.

She hardly looked happy. After two months in this place, both of them had gotten out of the habit, I guessed.

Taking her soft, creased hand, I shook my head.

“No, Mom. It’s ours. You and Dad have always been there for me. This money is for us, to buy a new house, a nice house.”

“A nice house,” my dad murmured, the traces of a smile beginning to form on his face.

“A new house,” my mom whispered, her gray eyes flicking to the window, where the sunny, blue sky was still visible.

Taking both their hands, I led them out of there, out of that noisy, smoky dump of a house. Out into the fresh air, sweet with forget-me-nots.

“Wait here,” I told them.

I raced back inside to my room and grabbed the pamphlet I’d had stashed in my bedside table since we moved in. Then, racing back to them, I held it out in the palm of my hand, like it was medication I was offering them, some sort of cure. And, in a way, it was.

“Better start looking, Pops,” I said as he handled the real estate pamphlet gingerly, as if it were a bomb that could go off at any moment. “You two have a new house to find.”