Keeping my dick out of Lila was quickly becoming a complete joke. Between the teasing, I took any excuse and opportunity to get inside her. After shoving my cock down her throat at the office, I was hating us both for my lack of control.

I kept a cool disregard toward Lila as we entered our building. It was necessary after what I’d done. Sure, it was after hours, but I’d still lost control at the office again.

Though there was no way I regretted having my cock down her throat or the way I came with her nose pressed against my abs. She deserved it for teasing me.

As we entered the elevator, I made sure to punch the button for my floor along with Lila’s. When the doors closed, I was left with no moving air and her so close. I could almost feel her looking at me, and when I glanced at her, that wide-eyed, blank expression stared back, only this time with a bit of expectation.

I needed to tell her it wasn’t going to happen, that we needed to stop, that I wasn’t going to break and she shouldn’t either. All of that was decimated by my fucking stomach. How a stomach could make a high-pitched sound and turn into a gurgling rumble, I’d never know. The wonders of the human body. It was especially loud echoing off the metal walls of the elevator.

Lila giggled. “Hungry, are we?”

The tension fell from me, and my lips twitched up. “Maybe just a little.”

The elevator slowed and pinged, then the doors slid open. She stepped off and turned, her hand extended.

“Come.”

Come where? On her? With her? “Lila, I…”

“Have dinner with me. Come.”

I shook my head. “You don’t have to cook for me.”

“Well, I have to do it for me, and it’s usually enough to feed four. So, come.”

I stared at her hand as I contemplated her offer. If I went with her, I knew there was no stopping me from fucking her. Acceptance equaled sex, pure and simple. It may have been an offer of food, but it was also an invitation for so much more. What lay in the more was what worried me. Sex wasn’t all Lila wanted from me.

The doors started to close, and I made the decision that could be the beginning of my destruction, all because I couldn’t stay away from her.

I followed her down the hall, and resisted the urge to touch her while she unlocked her door. Thankfully, with seconds before I just grabbed her and pinned her against the door, she got it open and stepped inside, ushering me to follow.

“So, how long have you lived in Indianapolis?” she asked as she disappeared into the master bedroom.

I wasn’t sure getting to know the details of each other’s lives was a good thing, but what could a few generic answers hurt?

“My whole life, with the exception of college. What about you?” I asked as I pulled my jacket off, followed by my tie.

“Indiana native, born and bred,” she admitted. “I moved to Indy just before college and stayed. No reason to return anyway. Not much demand for lawyers in the middle of nowhere.”

Her entire life in a few miles’ circle? With what little I knew about her I began to wonder if she’d ever left the state.

“You didn’t go out of state for law school?”

We moved into the kitchen, and I watched her chest expand before a sigh escaped. “No. Too much to pay out of state tuition. I’ll be paying off my school debts for another few years as it is. Even with my grants.”

“Yeah, I don’t have those. My parents paid for my undergrad and Harvard Law.”

“Wow. How was Harvard?”

“Hard,” I chuckled. “And the east coast… That is an experience. Very different from here.”

“You know, that mask of yours is slipping a lot lately.”

I stared at her before shrugging my shoulders, my smile fading. “There’s no point in the pretense around you.”

Not with all we’d been through the prior weeks.

“But I still don’t know your secrets,” she said as she rifled through the fridge.

“No, but you know there are secrets. That’s much more than anyone else. It’s nice not to have to always pretend everything’s perfect.”

Less fucking exhausting, even with as dangerous as it was to get close enough to someone for them to see.

“So, why pretend, then?”

“It makes things easier.” I reached up and rubbed at my neck. Her questions were getting a little too in depth, too close to me. “It didn’t take long to learn that after… People don’t really want to know that your knee and wrist ache every day, your body hurts in ways you can’t describe, that you’re plagued by migraines and nightmares, or your depression and anxiety continue years later.”

Fuck.

It just spilled from me, part in agitation and part because I had a feeling out of everyone I knew, she might be the only one to understand. Nobody understood, but from what I’d learned about Lila, I knew there was so much she kept hidden. Whether for emotional stability and protection or just trying to fit in, Lila’s charade was just as orchestrated as my own.

“What about you?”

Her spine straightened almost imperceptibly. “What about me?”

There was no way I was going to let her play that fucking game after what I just told her. “You really want to play that game? Do you want me to say it?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Why, then?”

She let out a huff, her face scrunched as she set a can of pasta sauce down a little hard on the counter. “The same. It’s easier to say I’m fine then go into detail about how I put out a confident front, but inside I’m holding the darkness at bay and one word can send it crashing down.”

One word?

Those two little words confirmed some of my suspicions. Verbal abuse was rampant in her life at one time, probably her childhood.

I tilted my head to the side as I looked at her. “You confound me.”

She stared back, her brow still scrunched.

“You have such a poor view of yourself.” It was a constant with her that I didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. There was a strong sense that I would be very violent against another human if I knew the details. “How did you get this way?”

She kept her eyes away from me. “Doesn’t matter. Damage done, and I’m working to get past it.”

Bullshit answer for the win.

We were a fucking pair.

I leaned against the counter and watched her move. It was fluid, smooth, but there were nuances in her posture. The way her head was always bowed down, elbows kept close to her ribs. Even her footsteps were small and light to avoid making any sound. She may have been out of it, but she was far from over it.

“Hiding it doesn’t help you get past it.”

She set a pot in the sink and turned on the faucet, filling it with water. Her avoidance tactics were well honed, but not with someone like me.

“No, it doesn’t. You know that all too well. The thing is, I’ve at least gotten a little better over the years. Have you?” she asked as she set the filled pot on the stove.

“Your eyes say differently,” I said as I ignored her question.

“I said I’ve gotten better, not that I was healed. Downers don’t help. That’s why I don’t go out drinking with people…you’ve seen what happens.”

I had. Years of repression, of sadness and despair, came pouring out of her. Darkness that she drowned in. She risked the memories for a few hours of shutting it all down.

“Yes, but that also shows you aren’t better.”

“You make me better,” she whispered.

I froze.

No. No, no, no.

Those words were the exact reason I didn’t want to get so involved with her. Not that I didn’t want her to get better, but her saying that it was me and the way she said it—they were tells that she had feelings for me. Feelings that could get her killed.

“You make me feel like I’m all of the things they said I wasn’t. Beautiful, smart, sexy…worth something.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked after a moment of silence as I tried to ignore what she was saying. “What did ‘they’ do to you?”

She slammed the box of pasta down on the counter. “You want to know? You’re certain you want me to tell you how every day I was told how insignificant I was?”

The way her voice shuddered cut at me.

“You’re not forthcoming with information, and I get that, I do. I hope one day you’ll be able to tell me. As for me… Well, when you’re young, and the people in your life tell you these things every day, you begin to believe them. They become ingrained into who you are, and I’ve worked damn hard to push them away. Years of therapy. I’ve seen a psychiatrist from the time I was seventeen. Twelve years later, I have more confidence, but everything still haunts me.”

Her hands shook as she stared down at the counter. Broken and beaten down. What happened to me was instantaneous, but Lila was stripped away little by little until she was barely human by the time they were done with her.

“I’ve done that to you, haven’t I? I’ve said something to trigger you?”

When I first met her, I was certain I said something. She turned to me and shrugged before returning her attention to the counter.

“You didn’t know. Alcohol is a double-edged sword for me. It helps me sleep, but my depression spikes.”

“Yet you drink every Friday, letting everything come back.” I’d seen it, the transformation in her. I didn’t know anything about her insomnia, because I seemed to fuck her to sleep.

“Stalking me now?” she said with a teasing tone in an obvious attempt to change the heavy mood that surrounded us.

“No, just observant.”

“Well, Mr. Observant, can you hand me the bread sitting next to you?”

Diversion was obviously one of her coping mechanisms. I’d seen it before, but with just the two of us in the most honest conversation we’d ever had, I was a bit surprised.

I handed her the uncut loaf, then moved my hand to caress her cheek. She was so beautifully broken, and I wondered how different she would be if she’d grown up in a loving home.

“You are so much more than pretty. That was what I wanted to say to you that night. Instead, I was inadvertently mean to push you away.” I pushed her back with my body until she was settled against the counter, my forehead against hers. Those intriguing eyes of hers stared at me. “How do you do this to me?”

She tilted her head in a tentative move, and I waited, unmoving, as she moved to press her lips to mine. It was a rarity for her to make the first move, but when she did, it just made me want her more.

I didn’t move at first, didn’t breathe, just to test myself, but there was no resisting her. I’d long given up on that. She parted her lips, and I slipped my tongue in, then bit down on her lower lip. It was so much softer and intimate and had my cock hardening as lust took over.

“Fuck, you taste so good. Could fucking eat you for dinner,” I said as I rocked my hips, making sure she felt what she did to me.

“Please.”

A shudder rolled through me at the simple word. I fucking loved it when she said it, when she begged for me.

“Please what?” I grabbed her ass and pulled her closer.

Her hands fisted in the fabric of my shirt. “Please, Nathan, I need you to fuck me. I need you inside me. I’ve waited all day.”

It took me only seconds to pick her up and put her on the counter, my dick pressing against her hot core.

“You like that? Little wanton slut begging for my cock. Is that what you want? Me to shove my cock in you? Make you scream?”

“Yes, fuck yes!”

She pulled my lips down to hers. The touch, the taste, of her fueled the need to get inside her. Lila managed to get my cock free, her small hands stroking me.

“Fuck.” I groaned. “God, you are so fucking insatiable.”

That was part of the problem. Her need for a connection skyrocketed her sex drive to a level that matched my own.

“Good thing you can keep up,” she said as I pressed forward.

A gasp left her as inch by inch disappeared inside her.

“So wet for me,” I groaned as I pulled out, exposing the glistening sheen on my cock. I slid back in and held it there while I took her nipple between my teeth.

She bucked against me, trying to get me to move, but I wasn’t having it. I fisted her hair and pulled her head back, forcing her body to arch, her neck exposed.

 There was excitement in her eyes, and I glared at her.

“I’ll fuck you when I’m good and ready. Until then you will sit there with my cock shoved up your cunt and be happy it’s there.”

She let out a moan, which became hitches in her breath when I slipped my hand between us and found her clit. I teased it and her nipple, but before long, the desire for friction won over and my hips began to move in short strokes.

I kept teasing her and pulled on one of her nipples with my teeth. She was tight around me, but I didn’t realize how close she was until her body tensed, then released, a small, high-pitched whine leaving her as she shook.

“That’s it, baby, come all over my cock.”

The feel of her squeezing me only heightened my need to come. I let go of her hair and moved to grip her hips, giving me the leverage I needed to pound into her.

Lila was still sensitive, her cries and screams fucking music when each thrust bottomed out. She was left as nothing more than a vessel to receive the pleasure I gave her.

“Fuck!” I hissed as I slammed into her. “God fucking damn tight pussy.”

Each thrust in drove me close as she squeezed me harder, building up to another milking orgasm. She shattered, falling apart around me for a second time, and I lost it.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I cursed as I slammed my hips all the way against her, my cock firing off in the mind-wiping pleasure I craved.

The tension fell away, our harsh breaths in time as we slowly came down from the ultimate high. “Lila…fuck, Lila.”

She shook her head against mine. “No. No fuck Lila. Lila done for tonight. Try back in the morning,”

I chuckled against her neck and kissed the skin there.

“I suppose I could wait a few more hours, maybe fuck you while you’re asleep in the middle of the night. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to wake up? My cock buried inside of you?”

A moan slipped through her lips. “Oh God!”

“I’ll take that as a hell yes, Miss Palmer.”

“I am all for wake up calls like that, Mr. Thorne.”

I let my imagination begin to drift, when reality interjected. The pot we had on the stove was emitting a steam cloud. Stepping back, leaving her warmth, was always hard.

Though not as difficult as I watched my come drip from her pussy onto the floor.

I helped her down before stepping to the sink for a towel. It was a good thing I had only gone a few feet because Lila’s legs gave out, and she stumbled.

My new mission was to make certain she had difficulty walking every time. I chuckled and placed a kiss on her neck.

“Hmm, maybe we should have something delivered instead of putting you near a pot of boiling water right now.”

“You may be on to something,” she agreed as her legs gave out and we sank to the ground, laughing.

After she had some time to recover, I ran up to my place and grabbed my stockpile of delivery menus. An hour later, we were stuffed with fried rice and cashew chicken.

We watched some television, then moved to her bed. I had her in my arms, her head on my chest as I began drifting off to sleep.

“Hey, Nathan?”

“Hmm?” I was almost asleep, no strength to actually form words.

“I’m yours, just so you know,” she mumbled.

My eyes shot open, and I looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her soft breath against my chest.

The beast purred at what she said, but it was panic that overtook me. I had let her get too deep.