Prologue (2011)

 Albert

My back aches from the metal bed frame. It’s the type of ache that can’t be kneaded out, cracked, or slept off – it’s the type of ache that shoots hot courses of pain through the rest of my body. I shift onto my left shoulder, turning towards the cement wall. I’m not really thinking about that, though. I’m not even thinking of the bruise that has been steadily forming since this morning when I’d been shoved against the pavement of the courtyard and kicked in the ribs. Because right now, staring into the darkness of the cold wall, I can only think only of Emma. The ache of Emma masks everything else.

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, forcing myself to push her from my mind. I try to think of lawyers to write to, journalists that might be interested in my story, or some non-profit that takes on cases like this. Someone outside of this goddamn place has to be able to help me, someone has to be thinking of me, maybe she is.

Fuck, I open my eyes. Stop thinking about her. Stop thinking about her.

When I was little, my mom used to tell me to count sheep jumping over a fence to distract me enough to fall asleep, and if I couldn’t, I could picture numbers jumping over the fence. I try that now with this new mantra.

One sheep.

Stop thinking of her brown eyes.

Two sheep.

Stop thinking of her perfect lips.

Three…Stop thinking of her skin pressed against–

A crash of noise outside the door breaks me out of my mind, and I shoot up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, ready for anything.

Outside there is more noise — a clamoring of bodies and shouts and banging against walls. I move toward the door. Looking out my cell window, I see prisoners beating up guards, guards pinning prisoners to the ground, prisoners fighting prisoners, a madness spreading deep through the hallway of my cell block.

I can feel my heart pounding hard, leaping toward the door as if it knows that’s the way out. Some inmates spring other cells open. There is a part of me that wants them to come in here, but a part that also remembers what it feels like to be in a prison fight. Fuck it, I think, realizing what I really want is to be out of this place and bang my fist against the glass.

“Hey!” I start shouting between pumps. “In here!”

A face appears at the window, pallid and large, a toothy grin of gold teeth.

Oh fuck. I take a quick step back.

The door springs open, and Gold Teeth enters, followed quickly by two more prison gang members. I learned to avoid these guys, not invite them into my cell with nothing to defend myself. I take another step back toward the wall.

“Well, well, well,” Gold Teeth breathes onto me, his face inches from mine, and starts to back me into the sink. “It’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

The other two laugh and close the door, muffling the sounds of the prison riot happening outside.

“You wanted us,” Gold Teeth taps a finger against my chest, speaking in mock magnanimity, “to help you.”

I brace my hands against the sink. I know what happens when you fight back here, my ribs beg me not to this time. I swallow, downing the part of me that needs to resist.

“I didn’t know what was happening out there. I don’t need –”

“I don’t give a fuck what you need,” Gold Teeth shoves me hard into the sink while the other two close in. “We’re getting out of here tonight, and what I need from you, my little Million Dollar Baby, is to know where you hid all the money.”

He presses against my sternum, almost certainly close to breaking it. I try to take another deep breath and feel my lungs restrict with the pressure.

“He asked you a question!” The bigger of the two grabs me by the collar and forces me against the wall, digging his elbow into my throat.

“Tell me where the money is,” Gold Teeth said louder this time.

One of them punches my stomach, sending whatever air I had left in me out. I start to choke and sputter, “I never had it.”

Someone hits me again.

“I said, tell me. Where. The. Fucking. Money. Is.”

The arm against my throat presses in harder, and my vision begins to go black.

“I don’t,” I spit out, “know.”

“Wrong fucking answer.”

Something sharp connects with my forehead, and I cry out in agony.

“Where. Is. The. Money?”

The sharp point is pressing deeper into my forehead. I breathe out harsh exhales, knowing they aren’t going to stop, even as hot blood trickles down over my eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” I pleaded, my voice cracking. I feel a bit of blood makes its way into my mouth, like iron.

“Wrong again.”

The blade digs in deeper still, slicing down past my forehead and into my eyebrow. The tip grazes my brow bone as I start seeing stars.

Everything is blacker now, hotter, colder, louder, quieter, everything all at once.

I start to black out and imagine I’m somewhere else, somewhere in my mind that isn’t this moment in the cell, far away from the cold blade digging into my skin. I’m in a bed somewhere else. It’s warm. It smells sweet, like honey. Suddenly, there is a leg wrapped around mine.

Mmm, Emma. She feels so perfect with her legs wrapped around mine. Hasn’t it always been this way? Me and her, tangled.

I inhale her sugary scent and start to wonder where I am, why things feel so different so suddenly.

Have I been freed? Have I been found innocent?

Emma’s eyes blink up at me so slowly, almost as if they are saying something. Blink. It will. Blink. All be. Blink. Alright.

Someone screams. Someone very far away from this bed with Emma. I’m listening to him when I realize my eye is on fire, burning in pain.

Pain. I remember the pain so quickly then, the pain of my life being taken from me, the pain of losing everything I’d ever known, and the pain of betrayal. Emma’s betrayal.

Emma’s eyes blink again at me, faster now. And this time I understand them. I understand her. I understand all she’s done to me.

The faraway man screams once again, and Emma’s face vanishes. She’s drifting off into nothingness, into the black darkness that falls around me now.

The darkness.

Chapter 1 (2021)

Emma 

 The dark midnight blue color of my dress almost reminds me of New York City at midnight. You can’t see the stars, so the sky is a murky sort of black, but with a disastrous quality to it, like you never know who will come down out of the heavens.

When I was younger, I’d go up on the rooftop at night — this was before we lived in a place with a fancy rooftop patio — and lay a towel over the graveled roof covering. I’d looked up at my city’s midnight sky so many times and still always found it frighteningly expansive.

I smooth the gown over my hips and smile a little at the thought of bringing midnight around with me tonight. I’ll need it.

“Wow.”

I turn around to see my little sister, Deborah, standing in the doorway. She doesn’t look so little anymore at twenty-five, but her sickness has kept her frame slight, and she still has the appearance of a young girl. To me, of course, she will always be a little girl.

“You look so hot,” Deb crosses the room and lays down on my bed, propping her head up with a bent elbow. She always makes a room hers.

“Are you sure?” I check myself out in the mirror. “I feel like I can see lines around my eyes.”

“Oh my God!” Deb shoots off the bed and takes my face in her hands, inspecting it dramatically. “You do not have lines!”

“Okay, okay, I know!” I yank my sister’s hands from my face, inspecting it for myself. I still think I see lines.

Deb sighs dramatically, flopping back on the bed.

“What?” I turn to her suspiciously. I’ll never get used to seeing her like this, so healthy and energetic. It makes me so happy but still sends a spike of fear through me, always anticipating something will ruin it.

“Nothing,” she says, clearly having something in mind. “It’s just that I wish I were getting ready for something—”

“You’re not coming,” I turn away from my sister and head back to my vanity; I don’t want her even to think I’m entertaining this idea.

“Why not? I’m feeling one thousand times better than last year. You agree that I’m hot. And who knows,” Deb learns toward me with a dramatic whisper. “This could be my last year…”

“Stop it. Don’t even talk like that,” I scowl at her. How can she laugh about this when it’s all I ever think about, dread about?

“Fine! But it would be fun.”

“It’s not gonna be fun,” I put my hands on my hips and stare my sister down. This position feels too familiar, so I drop them at my sides. “It’s a bunch of old, boring donors and benefactors and whatever else you want to call people who we have to pander to get their money. It’s going to be about work. Exhausting and boring work.”

Deb sighs. She might be feeling one thousand times better, but she’d never be feeling better enough to fight me when my hands are on my hips. That’s just something you know after twenty-five years together.

“I know it’s work,” she grumbles and looks down at her phone.

I watch her for a second longer and then turn back to the mirror, checking my lipstick closely. I sigh, too. It is work. And it’s going to be hard. Deb doesn’t understand because she’s never been out there with our dad on nights like these. Nights where everything was gorgeous and glittery and expensive and hard. Today had been hard. Every day for the past ten years had been hard.

“You okay?” Deb catches my eye in the mirror.

“Yeah,” I smile at her through my reflection. “Just thinking.”

“I know,” Deb nods. And she does, Deb always knows, I never have to say more. So many years leaning on one another in quiet ways does that to sisters. “Today sucks for you. But,” her voice raises a little, “it is still a gala. Try to enjoy yourself. Have fun when you’re schmoozing. Maybe talk to some handsome benedonor or whatever you want to call him.”

“I’m not gonna do that.” I shake my head and pick up my mask, trying it out over my eyes.

“Fine, don’t do anything fun,” Deb’s voice grows louder as I get closer to leaving. “But don’t do anything stupid, either.”

I turn around to give her one last look of annoyance, eyes narrowed like we’re kids again. Then I blow her a kiss. Deb swats it away with a hand.

****

The room is full when I enter. Masked patrons milling about, holding flutes of champagne, and swapping gossip. I hear some women mention the extravagance of this year’s event with some impressed reverence in their voice and roll my eyes inwardly. I scan the room, looking for someone to avoid.

“There you are,” and just the voice I was looking to avoid. My father’s arm grips my shoulder tightly and pulls me into him. “You’re a little late.”

I turn into my father and give him the sugariest smile I can muster, turning my cheek for him to kiss.

“I’m making an entrance.”

My dad, Cyril, is still handsome at sixty-five, and I hate him for it. He’d been handsome all his life, with his tan skin and jet-black hair. But it was his smile that drew people to him. The Larson Smile, they used to call it. He would tell us a smile that could melt hearts and panties but, most importantly, open wallets. He made us practice it in the mirror growing up. Now, his skin no longer tan and his hair no longer black, dad kept sporting the same Larson Smile as ever.

“Smile, Sweetheart,” he says between bared teeth. “At least make it look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

I close my eyes and count to three, then I open and flash him the most stunning Larson Smile I can, my lips turned up in just the way he taught us, eyes twinkling with mystery and intrigue.

“Beautiful,” Dad says. I raise my mask over my eyes, never changing the position of my lips. “Make sure you talk to the Cohens tonight, please. We need some fresh investors.”

I turn, anxious to get some distance between myself and my father. It is my job to talk to investors, after all, not him. He’s become increasingly pushier when it comes to finding investors, pawning me off to talk to anyone he thinks might be an easy target. I’ll appease him by heading in the direction of the Cohens, but I make no plans to talk to them right now.

Instead, I head for the center of the room, the best place to be alone. A passing waiter offers me a glass of champagne, and I take it.

Through my mask, I take it all in. Everyone here has come to impress us. Ten years ago, we’d never have been in a place like this with people like these. I’d never be wearing a gown that cost more than three months’ rent at the place we grew up. I’d never be asking people for money that I couldn’t have even fathomed, and they would never have given it to me! I take a sip of my champagne, tipping the flute into my mouth, feeling a rush of cool bubbles against my tongue.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice from behind me jolts me into action. I pull my lips into their place and turn.

I falter, my smile tipping just slightly at the corners at the sheer surprise of what is in front of me. I’m used to crumpled and stout old men or elderly women with repulsive fur coats. I’m used to boring and ugly. This man, this man is young, maybe a few years older than me, with olive skin and a head full of dark brown hair. He’s at least six feet tall (but who can tell when you’re wearing heels?), and he has broad shoulders that seem to tense as I take them in. He’s wearing a mask, and his eyes, are a captivating deep brown color that I could get lost in.  Something about the way his jaw flexes and brows knit together, I can tell he’s handsome. There is something else, too. Something I can’t quite put a finger on.

“I was wondering if you knew where I might find some of that,” the stranger motions to my glass.

“The champagne?” Obviously, he’s asking about the champagne.

He nods and smiles just slightly.

“Oh, yeah, well, there are waiters all around,” I say as I glance around, hoping one might materialize in front of us. I don’t want him to walk away just yet.

“Hmm,” I feel him following my gaze around the room and turn as he’s stepping toward me. I take another sip, just to have something to do. “Why don’t we find one of them together, then? Looks like you’re almost out.”

Oh God, I hadn’t realized I’d been downing my drink. I pull it back quickly from my lips, almost spilling it. He smiles and looks away, pretending not to see.

“Sure,” I agree. The stranger places a large hand on the small of my back, and he starts to guide me from the center of the room.

Quickly, we find a waiter, and each pluck a flute from the tray, depositing my (now empty) glass onto it.

“Cheers,” he says, clicking my glass.

“Cheers.” Our eyes meet, and my heart rate raises. The eyes, just behind a silver mask, are deep brown. A brown that melts my insides. A brown that reminds me of the man I destroyed, the same man I mourned today.

“It’s a beautiful dress,” his voice reminds me where I am. “You shouldn’t be hiding it in that crowd.”

The stranger smiles at me. For a girl with a famous smile, I’m surprised by how his takes me off guard.

“Who says I was hiding?” I return a sultry grin. Two can play at this smile game.

“It took me a while to find you,” the stranger takes a sip of his champagne.

My eyebrows raise involuntarily. “You were looking for me?”

“Yes,” he says plainly.

“Do we… know each other?” My heart picks up, telling me something, I just don’t know what.

“Not yet,” he smiles that smile again, and I feel nervous and mad and jealous all at once now.

“But you were looking for me?”

The stranger takes a step closer toward me, and I wonder if he can feel the heat on my arms the way I can feel it from him.

“I was looking for the most gorgeous woman in the room,” he whispers closer now.

I can’t help but smile — a sincere one, with a slight roll of my eyes. “That’s a good line. You should remember it.”

The stranger chuckles softly. “Are you going to remember it?”

“I might,” I tip my drink into my mouth, the bubbles feeling so different now.

When he smiles, the stranger’s eyes turn up in the corners, and I find myself drawn into them once more. They look like Albert’s. I miss how he smiled when we talked and when we did nothing but stare at each other. I miss him. I know I shouldn’t — couldn’t, really — but I did.

Soon, I was finishing my second glass of champagne and the stranger was handing me a third, then a fourth, his quick wit making me laugh or activating my defenses, always pulling me in and pushing me away, like a delicious game.

“So tell me, how is it you get people to invest in your family’s hotel?” the stranger asked as I sipped my fourth glass.

“Well, first I research who I’m speaking with, then I talk to them like they are the most important people in the world.” I look around the room, wondering if anyone is watching us, then realizing I don’t care. “Like this. Say you’re a Wall Street big shot.”

“Who says I’m not?” the stranger raises his eyebrows.

“Great,” I say, smiling. “Then you’ll be able to get into character easily.”

He gives me a grin and says, “Okay, please, continue.”

“I will,” I clear my throat in mock severity. “So you work on Wall Street. You live in Tribeca in some beautiful loft and I read online that you enjoy running marathons on the weekend.” I take a step toward him, feeling my heart rate rising with the slightest narrowing of our space.

“You must work out,” I continue in character, grasping his forearm, inhaling sharply when I realize just how strong he feels. I pretend my reaction is a part of the show. “How do you make time outside of work?”

“I work hard and play hard,” he says, his chest expanding and closing our gap a bit more.

“I don’t know if exercise is playng,” I say.

“Depends on the type of exercise.” He says, and my hands grip tighter around his arm without meaning to, so I loosen it quickly.

“I just talk to them,” I say, breaking out of this charade, slightly breathless. “People like to invest with those they feel comfortable with, like friends.”

“It seems like you treat them like more than friends,” he says, cocking his head slightly, and I remember I’m still holding onto him.

“It’s my job,” I laugh, removing my hand from his arm. It was just as warm as I imagined. “And what’s yours? I’m sorry I’ve been talking so much.”

“My job is not nearly as entertaining as yours. You get to talk to rich people all day and go to galas in hotels with private aquariums.”

“Mmm,” I sip my champagne. “There is a nice aquarium here.”

“Will you show me?” The stranger had a new smile, one that was sending tingles through me everywhere.

I pause, and for a second, the whole room is quiet.

It’s just me and the stranger, and my heart beating loudly, sending heat through my limbs and everywhere else. My belly feels full of bubbles and anticipation, an anticipation that needs action. I see him take a breath in, watching his chest fill and release. I want to reach out and touch him, let his chest fall under my hand. I notice him looking at me intently, those eyes both haunting and inviting. It’s like I’m with him. It’s like the past ten years never happened. I want to stay in this moment of unreality, travel back, and be with the man I loved. I want to be with this stranger.

“Sure.”

The word surprises me, but suddenly I’m leading the handsome stranger from the ballroom and toward the aquarium downstairs. We’re pushing through the crowd and I remember Deborah’s words to me before I left tonight. I wonder if what I’m about to do will count as fun or stupid. Maybe it’s both.

Chapter 2

 Vince

The hallway to the aquarium is dark with blueish lighting, turning Emma’s dress into a vision of the deep sea. Her hips move beneath the satin in front of me and I watch, knowing I should look away. I knew it would be hardest to see her.

It has been ten years since I’ve been Albert and even I wouldn’t have noticed myself in the mirror, but, still, I’d felt the familiar anxiety of entering a new world I’d experienced many times before.

When Eric shared the plan for tonight, I readied myself. I prepared to enter this gala to meet with Justin and Hunter. Once upon a time, in another life, they were the only two people I trusted more than anyone in the world. Then they betrayed me. I planned how it would be to see their faces hear their voices and watch them live the lives they stole from me.

I had not been able to plan this far in my head with Emma.

Every night for the past ten years, I’ve thought of Emma. It has become a tradition. The only way to fall asleep and face another day of a life that I’d never wanted was to think of the woman who had betrayed me, to picture her face in revenge fantasies, to think of a million ways to hurt her as she’d done to me without a glance back.

Then there she was, standing in a sea of people, her lips pressed against a flute of champagne, and I felt everything leave me. I took a deep breath and spoke to her like she was a stranger.

And now, here we are, two strangers in a dark hallway headed toward an isolated room. Soon, I’d have her alone. Soon I could do anything to her. The hatred that had boiled so steadily for the past ten years seemed to transform when I saw her. I knew the second I saw her I had to have her. She’d taken so much from me ten years ago. Now, it’s my turn to take from her. Now, I can have anything I want from her.

“Have you ever stayed here before?” Emma turns to me as she speaks.

The room is dark, an eerie blue glow casting all around. In front of us is a glass tank extending from the floor to the twenty-foot ceilings. Light dances between us and all around us, as fish move back and forth inside the aquarium. There are smaller fish flitting in and out of coral, eels wrapping around the seaweed plants, and stingrays floating just above the sand. It feels like we’ve been transported beneath the sea ourselves, blinking into salt and grasping our way to the top.

“No,” I shake my head, looking into the tank. “I’ve been away from New York for a while.”

“Hmm, that would be nice,” Emma’s eyes watch an eel wind its way around a pillar of coral, a striking green against orange.

“You don’t like it here?” I travel next to her, watching the same eel.

“I grew up here, and I’ve spent too much time here,” Emma trails off and walks back to a bench, her hips swaying again, every inch of her revealed to me in that dark satin. I watch as she takes a seat and crosses her legs. God, I want to uncross them. I turn back to the tank, not wanting to give her any power over me.

“And what could a woman like you be missing?” I stare deep into the blueness of the underwater world. A reef shark shifts out of the dark and passes in front of me, slowly moving over the sand, sending some of the fish under rocks. The eel stays wrapped around the coral, unflinching.

“I don’t know,” Emma’s voice behind me sounds so small. I turn around and walk toward her. The light flickers across her face as she looks up at me, her brown eyes big and inviting as nothing has changed. Those same big, brown, eyes that I have pictured every single night for the last ten years.

But everything has changed. My whole world had changed. After I met Emma, I became a criminal. Then, a wrongfully convicted criminal. Then the victim of prison gang violence. Then the protege of one of the most feared men in the penitentiary. Then — after extensive plastic surgery — someone else entirely, Vince King.

All the while, Emma, Hunter, and Justin lived out their fantasies, profiting off my imprisonment and supposed “death.” That boil starts to fill me again, and I let it rise.

I step closer to Emma and pull her up to stand, our bodies so close I can feel her chest move into mine with each breath.

“What do you want?” I ask, my voice gruff.

“I don’t… I don’t think I know,” she breathes out.

I grab her waist and pull her against me in an instant. Her body pressed into me as my hands dug into her hips.

“You brought me down here,” I growl into her ear. “Now tell me what you want.”

“I want,” Emma looks up into my eyes. I see the desire in them and feel only my own. “You.”

I lift her without hesitation, Emma wrapping her legs around my waist. I drop her roughly on a table, the rattle echoing through the room.

I take her neck in one hand and her left knee in the other. I snake my fingers around her throat, tilting her face back to look into my eyes. She looks so fragile with my hand around her neck, so easy to break. Emma’s hand slides up to meet mine on her neck, pushing down on it, inviting me to choke her.

“You do know what you want,” I murmur, bringing my lips achingly close to Emma. I remember what they tasted like a long time ago. I hope they don’t taste the same. “But you’re not in control, Sweetheart.”

I press my lips onto hers, crashing down on them with a passion and need that can’t be filled. I feel their warmth and softness open for me and move my tongue inside, feeling her and tasting every corner of her mouth. She sighs against me as we explore each other. She tastes the same. Fuck. It makes me burn with anger.

I push Emma harder into the table, the hand on her knee digging in the edge. I start pushing my hand up her leg, feeling the curve of her thigh, the way her body gives with my touch, and her involuntary shake when I reach the spot I knew she was ticklish. I push harder there. Emma’s body bucks into mine, and her mouth tears away from me. I grab the back of her neck harder and pull her back. I want her to know I’m in control. I want her to know I’m going to have her. Now.

My hand pushes higher up her thigh underneath her dress, inching toward her underwear. I reach the crease where her leg meets her hip and trail my finger along the line, down the edge of her thong toward her wettest part. God, she is so warm and wet. She needs me just as badly as I need her.

“Touch me,” Emma moans.

I hook a finger through the thong and pull lightly, my knuckle grazing her clit.

I pull my face away from hers. Her eyes look greedy, staring back at me. I tighten my hand around her throat.

“You told me you didn’t know what you wanted,” I smiled sadistically. “So you’re gonna sit there and take it.”

Emma’s eyes widen with surprise and I pull again on the thong, letting my finger touch her harder this time on her clit.

“Right?”

Emma nods, and I rip the underwear from her body, pulling it past her legs and dropping it to the floor.

I trace my finger up and down the crease of her, sliding the wetness all around, never taking my eyes from her, seeing he drop her head back, sighing. The base of her neck folds into my hand, and I wind my fingers through her hair, then push her head up for our eyes to meet.

“I want you to look at me when I fuck you.” I want her to watch me.

Emma starts to nod, and I push one finger into her, feeling how tight she is. My body reacts almost instantly, a shutter flowing through me from head to toe. I contain it, though, I want her to know I’m in control. I don’t want her to know what she is doing to me.

Still, I know I am growing harder, my cock pounding with need.

“Oh,” she sighs.

“You like that?” I like hearing her want more. I push my finger in deeper. “You can take more, can’t you?”

I thrust two more fingers into Emma, and she jerks in surprise with the force and suddenness of it. I bring them in and out hard and fast as she gasps and moves with me. I press my thumb into her clit, and her body shivers with every stroke. Fuck, she feels so good around my fingers, twisting with desire and groaning with need. Her head starts to fall back again, her eyes leaving me.

I wretch her head up again, my hand constricting tightly around her neck.

“I’m not gonna tell you again.” I squeeze a little tighter. Emma looks into my eyes as I push my fingers roughly in her, her dress bunching and constricting around her waist. Her mouth falls open as she gasps for air and sighs for release. I want to see her pretty little mouth around my cock.

I pull my fingers from her suddenly, and she lets out a soft cry. I slide the hand around Emma’s neck up to her chin and tilt her face to meet mine more clearly. My other hand is still slick with her, so I run my fingers over her lips. The heat of her breath tickling my fingertips, I press a finger into her mouth.

Her hand grabs my wrist, and she holds it tight, leaning into the finger, pulling it deep into her mouth, licking her tongue up and down the length of it. She bites it gently, and the corners of her mouth curl up.

She may have tasted the same, but this woman is not the girl I knew ten years ago.

I pull my finger from her mouth and flip her around. Emma cries out in surprise as I bend her body over the table. I push her frame against the wood with one hand against her back, forcing her face down. I shove her dress up over her ass and look at it, round and bare, splayed out in front of me. All of her, just for me.

My cock pushes hard against the front of my pants, and I unbuckle the belt and undo the zipper quickly, letting it spring from my underwear.

Emma looks back at it, eyeing my cock with a greedy sort of a need, filling me with power. She wants me. I want to torture her first.

I start to stroke myself, satisfying the built-up feeling within me, watching her face move with my hand.

“You want this dick?” I stroke slowly.

“Please,” she moves her eyes up to mine, away from my cock.

I smile at her and tease my cock up her leg, touching her crease so lightly. I travel it along the crease toward her ass, leaning into her more with each millimeter. I bring it back to her pussy and rub it against her clit. Emma cries out.

“Don’t make me wait,” she looks back at me with her eyes full of something I had never known in her. I want to drive her crazy. I want her to feel everything I’d felt from her and more. I want to break her.

I grab Emma’s hair in one hand and jerk her head back, pulling her up to hit my body, my cock still edging between her legs, the back of her head pressing into my cheek. “I’m gonna fuck you so hard, you’ll wish you never said that.”

I shove her back down and grab onto her hips, pulling her ass into me and inching my cock into her. Emma cries out as I enter her. The feeling of her around me isn’t enough, I need more, I need to have all of her. I press deeper and harder, Emma screams.

I start to pump, hard and fast, into her as she grasps the side of the table. My fingernails dig into the sides of her hips, bruising her. I want to leave a mark, remind her that I could fuck her into nothingness. The way her ass looks bouncing up against me, listening to the way she cries out underneath me, I never want to stop.

“Please! Yes!” Her begs make me push harder and grab onto her hair, pulling her head off the table. She looks back at me, her mouth agape and gasping.

“That’s a good girl,” I growl into her. I feel Emma starting to shake beneath me, constricting around my cock, her legs starting to give out. “Wait until I tell you to come.”

Emma’s panting grows loud and mixes with mine. The sound of her want and need sends me over the edge, and I feel myself getting close. Her voice shaking, I hear Emma say, “Please. Please let me come. I can’t wait.”

“Not yet,” I pull her hair again, sending her body into mine, and grab her breast in the other hand. My body starts to fill, and I know I need a release. I pinch her nipple and Emma screams; the sound makes me almost come undone.

“Now,” I pant into her, tightening my grip on her nipple. “Come for me.”

Emma lets out a cry, and her body shakes around me, her head lolling back, the feeling of her utter ecstasy courses through me. I’m so close now as her scream fades from my ears, and I feel her limp in my arms, completely mine, completely used. Pleasure shoots through me and I grab her tightly against me as I come inside her, forcing her to stay still as I empty myself into her. The release leaves me breathless, and I pant hotly into her ear.

For a second, I forget myself and want to hold her there. Then, I remember I’m Vince, and this is Emma. This is the woman who betrayed me.

I release her from my grip and shove her back toward the table, turning from her and getting myself together. From the corner of my eye, I see Emma hastily pulling her underwear on and smoothing out her dress and hair.

I watch her in the reflection of the glass tank for a second longer before I turn back, but when I do, she’s already moving toward the door.

“I have to…” she starts. “I have to go.”

I watch Emma hurry for the door, sensing her embarrassment and discomfort. In the dark of the aquarium, the light moving around the room like ghosts, I smile, knowing this is only the start of what I want to put her through.