Especially since I didn’t receive that from my own parents. What had started out as a weird, fun thing to do for a lonely fifteen-year-old became a habit and self-encouragement.
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds,” he recites softly.
“That’s beautiful.” The power in the simple quote rocks me. It describes him, and even myself. We’ve both faced some damn difficult things, but we didn’t stay buried. We grew in spite of them. “Who said that?”
“I don’t know.” He pauses. “I heard it on an episode ofCriminal Minds.”
“Really?” I snicker, and his low chuckle rumbles against me. After the room quiets again, another thought sneaks under my post-sex radar, and I can’t evict it. Sighing, I surrender to the curiosity. “Can I ask you something?” I murmur against his skin.
“Yeah,” he says, voice thick with the beginnings of sleep. I hesitate, but his arm around my shoulders lightly squeezes me. “Ask it.”
I close my eyes. Hell, I opened this door. Might as well walk through it now. “Is Ana part of the reason you’re leaving for London?”
He doesn’t immediately reply, and his fingers cease the lazy, aimless stroking over my skin. “Would it make me sound like a coward if I said, yes?” he finally says.
“No.” I stack my hands on his chest and prop my chin on top so I can look into his eyes. “It would make you honest. And smart. Like I said before, I feel a little sorry for her because she’s hurting, but that woman has bunny boiler written all over her.”
He snickers, and the low sound slides under my ribs, striking me in the heart. That hint of laughter shouldn’t have me feeling like I just won a gold medal.
“She’s part of the reason,” he admits.
“And the other?” I press, something in me needing him to be able to trust me, confide in me.
He sighs, his gaze darkening. A tiny muscle tics along his jaw, and a fine tension enters his big frame. I don’t have access to what’s going on in his mind, but clairvoyance isn’t required to guess there’s a struggle waging there.
Dragging in a breath, I sit up, drawing the sheet around me as I cross my legs, my knee touching his hip. He frowns, but I shake my head. If I expect him to share with me, I need to be brave enough, vulnerable enough, to do the same.
“I worked at Universal Health Group for three years, four if you count my internship there my senior year of college. It was a good place to work; I was using my degree, and it paid well. The security I didn’t have growing up, I was able to provide for myself and still help take care of Mom.” I pause. That was the easy part, but the next wouldn’t be so easy to share. “A year ago, I’d stayed late to finish a report. I thought I was the only one in the department, so I was surprised when my supervisor called me, asking me to come to his office. I didn’t think anything of it—I mean, I’d had meetings with him plenty of times before. But this time—” I swallow, moistening my suddenly dry mouth. “This time was different. He was waiting for me at the door, and as soon as I entered the office, he closed it behind me. Locked it. I knew something was off, dammit. Iknew. But I convinced myself it was nothing, that he just probably wanted to discuss sensitive information and didn’t want to be interrupted. Looking back, I was so stupid. So willfully naive and ignorant.”
“Cypress,” Jude whispers, pushing himself up in the bed, his gaze fixed on me. Knowledge dawns in his eyes, shadowing them, and more than anything, I want to crawl in his lap, curl up against him, lay my head on that wide chest. But I can’t. As if I’ve been transported back to that office, I remain frozen and helpless, unable to do anything but continue.
“Instead of sitting behind his desk as he usually did, he instructed me to sit on the couch. Again, it was weird, but I complied. He sat next to me and started talking about my performance and how I was an asset to the company. That with my degrees, education, and work ethic, I could go far. I was so pleased, so flattered that when he laid a hand on my thigh, I didn’t really panic. He’d been nothing but professional with me until then, I didn’t comprehend… I didn’t see…” I wrap my arms around myself, bowing my head. “He told me my name was being bandied about for an upcoming promotion for senior financial manager, which shocked me, because while I’d busted my ass at the job, I was still only four years in, and there were other employees who had been there longer. But still, I was thrilled. Senior financial manager. At my age? I wanted it, knew I could handle it. And he assured me with his recommendation, I would get the position. All I had to do was put in a little harder work, more hours, show some more initiative. At first, I was confused, because even then, it was eight o’clock at night, and I was the only one in the office. I’d already been displaying initiative, giving them the hours. That’s when…that’s when he…”
You need to show me how much you really want this promotion, Cypress.
Don’t be naive. This is how the game is played.Quid pro quo. And if you intend to get ahead, you’re going to have to learn how to play like a big girl.
You give me what I want, and you’ll get that promotion. And you can start by getting on your knees right now and showing me some appreciation.
Even now, I can hear that slick, sophisticated voice thick with lust and…and pleasure. Satisfaction. As if he derived joy out of degrading me, out of putting me in my place. Which in his eyes, was on my knees, sucking his dick.
Bile roils in my stomach, razes a path up my chest, and churns at the back of my throat.
The bed shifts under me, and before I can steady myself, big, powerful arms encircle me, thick thighs bracket my own, and a solid wall made of flesh and muscle presses against my spine. And his touch, his hands on me are so different from the ones that caused me such humiliation and degradation. With Jude, I’m surrounded, shielded. Protected.
A shuddering breath escapes me, as does the encroaching panic. The nausea eases, and surrendering to the need I can’t deny, I lean back into him. Letting him support me. Letting him hold me up.
“His hand tightened on my thigh, and he told me if I wanted that promotion, I had to get on my knees and give him a blow job…to start. Then I had to get on my back and prove I wanted that position and raise. At first, I was shocked and couldn’t move. I guess he took that as my agreement, because he put his hand between my legs, t-touched me,” I stutter, a shudder ripping through me. Only Jude’s strength, the power of his embrace, grounds me in the present. “I knocked him off me, told him what he could do with that offer, and got the hell out of there.
“The next morning, I went to Human Resources. I was so scared about losing my job, my credibility, everything I’d worked so hard for. But I went. And I lied,” I whisper, shame crawling through me, and though a year had passed, the oily coat of it continues to dirty me. “I told them it happened to someone else, and I’d overheard it. I was too ashamed to admit that it was me. Too ashamed to confess that I’d been so naive and allowed myself to be in that position.”
“Sweetheart, you had nothing to be ashamed of,” he says, his deep voice a rumble in my ear and against my back. “That sick motherfucker was at fault. And your company for allowing it to happen. Because I’d bet my left nut this wasn’t the first time he’d done this, or the first time he’d been reported. Sexually harassing you, assaulting you, wouldn’t have been so easy for him if he’d been afraid of the consequences. No, he did it knowing there wouldn’t be any.”
“Yes.” I nod. “I found that out the hard way. Human Resources took down my report, but in the following days, it was me who was punished. I was called in to meeting after meeting with the company’s executives, forced to recount what happened while they questioned me, picked apart my story. I had the feeling they knew I’d lied about this happening to another woman, which made me wonder what my supervisor had told them. That I’d come on to him? That I’d propositioned him? But the meetings were just the start of the retaliation tactics. I was scrutinized, every move I made in the office observed, noted. They recorded how I spent my time, even down to how long I spent in the bathroom. I was given poor performance appraisals, when before that night, I’d received nothing but glowing reviews. Then the rumors started. Whispers about how and why I’d been hired in the first place. It was hell, Jude. Hell. And I remained in it for a year out of sheer stubbornness. Even though I vomited nearly every morning before going in, was ostracized and punished for reporting how my supervisor had assaulted me—I kept showing up to work because I couldn’t be a quitter along with being a victim.”
“You’re neither, Cypress.”
The quiet, simplebeliefringing in those three words rock through me like a seismic quake. I twist in his arms,needingto see his face, his eyes. My breath catches in my throat. More than ever, he reminds me of that fierce warrior angel with his solemn expression and the blazing fire in his gaze. It warms me, reaches beneath skin and bone to penetrate that icy, atrophied part of me that shriveled and curled in on itself when I lost nearly everything, including my pride, my security, my faith in people.
