“No. I’ll be out by the pool.” I smiled. They scowled. “I’m Riley.” I smiled bigger. Waved tentatively. My cheeks were going to fall off at this rate of friendliness.

“Can you give us a moment, Riley?”

“Sure.” I stepped back, my wave wilting.

“Please shut the door.”

“Okay.” I met Brett’s eyes, and he smiled. A horrible smile, one that was warm and reassuring and fake. I wrapped my hand around the cold metal knob and pulled, breaking our eye contact, the firm snap of the door in place final and offensive. I stood for a moment, outside, my ear to the wood, but it was too thick, their words impossible to understand.

I walked down the long hall, marble flooring underneath my bare feet, the water bottle in my hand cold, the terrycloth robe floating out a little as I moved. I opened the french doors and stepped out, moving across a sun-lit area and toward the dark pool that stretched before me.

No, that wasn’t strange. Five grown men working over a desk, doing secret-secret stuff on a Saturday afternoon. My boyfriend dismissing me as if I were an irritating child interrupting Daddy at work. Not strange at all.

I stretched out on a cushioned chaise, leaving on my cover-up and positioning a pillow under my head. Lying back, I let my mind clearly define the puzzle piece, every bit of that room, that moment. I analyzed and formed the edges and shape of it. Then I worked through my other pieces, tried to make something fit, tried to form a connection with something ... but I failed. The puzzle piece fell, loose and unattached, to the bottom of the pile.

“Do I arouse you?” His fingers traveled freely over my skin, soft caresses over my breasts, his hands cupping one of them before traveling over to the second.

“No,” I choked out, bucking my back, the bed quiet as I struggled. I can smell my sweat, my arms stretched and cuffed above my head, to the frame. My legs spread slightly, attached to the footboard bars.

“Don’t lie, Kitten,” he warned. “Lies will only make this last longer. I am a handsome man, no?”

I don’t respond, closing my eyes against his face, burying my head to the right, the damp skin cool against my nose.

“I have been told that I am handsome, that I know how to please a woman.” I twisted, thrashed as his fingers dragged down my side, my stomach, fingers turning into palms, one of those palms gripping my hip and holding me down.

I begged, my words soft then loud, then screams into the concrete room, a hundred no’s uttered as he rubbed soft circles into the wet mat of hair between my legs.

“I will stay here, I will touch you, until you come for me, Kitten. It is inevitable, let it happen. I need to see it.”

When it finally happened, every thread in my body failing in fighting it, a cry mixed with tears ripping out, a piece of me inside broke.

I rolled over when the bathroom door opened, flooding the room with light for a brief moment before Brett flipped the switch. Even in the dark, there was illumination from the water, a full moon reflecting over a thousand miles of ocean. Brett’s bedroom faced the ocean, a wall of windows giving a million-dollar view of the night waves. He reached out a hand, hit a button on the wall, and a hum sounded, curtains pulling over the view.

“Can you leave them open? I like seeing the waves.”

“Sure.” He hit another button and the hum stopped. “Just don’t blame me when the sunrise wakes you up at five AM.” He sat on the edge of the bed and picked up a remote. Pressed a few buttons. I ran a hand over the lines of his back, his skin bare and warm beneath my palm. He carried so much tension there, the muscles underneath my fingers tight and coiled. It was such a beautiful back, so strong and wide. He lay back, interrupting my view and flung out an arm, inviting me in. I curled into his side. “You like it here?”

“It’s beautiful.” And it was. The city, the neighborhood, his home. Everything the best money could buy. I didn’t voice the issues. That it didn’t feel like home. That, suddenly, in this zip code, we felt out of sync. I couldn’t put my finger on it, just felt, for the first time in our relationship, like I was out of the loop on something. “Who were those guys? In your office? They left before I could meet them.”

“Some guys I work with. Friends. I’m sorry… I should have introduced you. I just felt bad about working while you were here.”

“It’s okay—”

“No. I should have introduced you. I didn’t even think … I’m sorry Riley.”

“It’s not that big of a deal.” But it had felt like a big deal to me. Why? What had felt so… suspicious about the whole thing? And, in that moment, my finger found what it had been trying to land on. I felt suspicious.

Of Brett.

The man I’d already given my heart to.

“Why don’t we have a cookout tomorrow? I’ll invite the guys over, have them bring the girls.” Brett was still talking, his voice unnaturally bright.

“The girls?”

“Their girlfriends. You’d love them.”

I tried to imagine the girlfriends of those hard men, and the combination we’d make on Brett’s pool deck. “It’s okay.” I ran my hand down his flat stomach, dipping my hand under the silk of his boxer briefs. “I’d rather spend the day with you.”

“You sure?” His voice caught when I slid my hand lower, running my fingers over the length of his cock. He tightened his arm around me, pulling me on top of him. “I want to make you happy, Riley.”