THREAT (The Billionaire's Rules, Book 5) (3 page)

Ivy rolled her eyes.
 
“You don’t get it.”

“I’m lost,” he said, exasperated.
 
“What are we even discussing?”

“She made comments about how you get
enthusiastic and passionate about people one day, and then turn around and
forget about them the next.
 
It was
clear that she knows about you and me.”

Cullen gripped the steering wheel and his
eyes searched away from her momentarily.
 
“Perhaps she figured something out about your relationship with me,” he
said.
 
“But I don’t care what Emma
Marks thinks about it.”

“And what about you and Emma?” Ivy
retorted.
 

“What about us?”

“Were you together ever?
 
Is that why she hates me so much?”

Cullen’s gaze shifted again.
 
“I can’t say why she hates you,” he
replied, but his tone wasn’t very convincing.

“Just admit you screwed her, Cullen.”

He finally met Ivy’s gaze.
 
“A long time ago,” he said.
 
“We had—“

“Fuck you,” Ivy said as she undid her
seatbelt and went for the door, trying to open it so she could flee the car.

“Ivy,” he yelled, grabbing her arm from
behind.
 
“Do not leave this car.”

“Or what?
 
What are you going to do about it?” she
yelled, still struggling to open the door.

Cullen’s hand wrapped tightly around her
arm, and then he was pulling her back towards him.
 
Ivy felt her body reacting, getting
turned on despite the anger she felt.

Only one man knew how to unlock her body
with a single touch of his hand, and that was Cullen Sharpe.

The very same man who’d caused all of
this madness in the first place.

It was a vicious cycle, but Ivy didn’t
know what else to do.
 
She let him
manhandle her, turn her around so she was staring directly into his pitiless,
beautiful blue eyes.

“You’re baiting me,” he said through grit
teeth.
 
“It’s like you want to make
me so furious I can’t see straight.”

“You don’t know shit about what I want
from you,” she replied, as his hands grabbed both her wrists while she struggled
against him.

His muscular body pressed down upon her
from the other seat, forcing her backwards.
 
Her legs splayed up and her hip was
wedged against the gearshift.
 
Cullen forced her arms over her head as he stared down at her.
 
“I can see your nipples are hard,” he
said, “and your cheeks are flushed.
 
Your pupils dilated.”

“So what?” she gasped.
 
“I’m upset.”

“I bet if I touched your pussy right now,
it would be drenched,” he told her.

Ivy began thrashing beneath him, as if
trying to push him off.
 
Of course,
she knew it was pointless.
 
But
somehow she needed to do it, needed to fight.
 
Needed to scream and yell and have him
take control, because she was losing.

Losing control.

Losing everything.

Cullen managed to grab both her wrists
with one hand, pinning them overhead, while his other hand grasped her breast
over her blouse.

She cried out, moaning.
 
“You’re a monster,” she whispered up at
him.

His nostrils flared and his hand roamed
down her side, finally landing on her zipper.
 
He slowly, slowly unzipped her pants as
her hips arched into him, and he revealed her tiny panties.

“I knew it,” he murmured, as he felt her
panties, exploring with his fingertips.
 
“You’re soaking wet.”
 
His
nostrils flared.
 
“I can smell you.”

She could smell it, too.
 
The scent of her own desperate sex, her
need of him revealed, and there was no hiding it.
 
 

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Don’t beg,” he told her, as his fingers
rubbed her mound over her panties.

She cried out and her hips lurched toward
his hand.
 
“Fuck me,” she said,
finally.

“You don’t deserve to be fucked,” he told
her.

“Then let me suck you off again,” she
replied.
 
“I’ll take it all, I
promise.
 
You can come in my
mouth.
 
Please.
 
Please.”
 
Her hips rotated again and again, as if
to encourage him.

She could feel and see the bulge in his
pants and knew he was excited too.

“I don’t know why I allow you to
continually defy me,” he rasped.
 
“It will not do.”

“Punish me, then,” she said.
 

“What?”

“I said, punish me.
 
Spank me.
 
Fuck me.
 
Anything.
 
Anything.”
 
Her chest rose and fell.

He stared down at her for a long time,
but then his hands released her and he moved away and back into his own seat.
 
Cullen didn’t speak a word as he began
driving out of the lot.

Ivy sat up, still breathing heavily and
now more confused than ever, which was saying something, considering the day
she’d had.

As she zipped her pants and straightened
her clothing, Cullen got on the main road and seemed to be heading towards her
apartment.

“Why did you stop?” she said.

He didn’t reply for a long time.
 
Finally, he said, “You don’t ask the
questions around here.”
 
His voice
was flat, emotionless.

She gave him a sidelong glance.
 
“So that’s it?”

“That’s it,” he replied, shifting gears
and staring straight ahead.

She nodded, accepting yet another hurtful
blow.
 
Her body ached for him.
 
Everything inside her had needed this,
but he’d taken it away.

“Fine,” she whispered.

The rest of the car ride was silent, and
each was lost in
their own
thoughts.
 
He pulled up in front of her
apartment.
 
She could see the large cardboard
box from the French boutique—containing the clothes he’d bought for
her—waiting on the stoop.

Cullen cleared his throat.
 
“I never intended to do any of this to
you,” he said, just before she got out.

Ivy turned and looked at him.
 
His eyes were terribly pained, and for
the first time, Ivy truly saw that Cullen Sharpe was far more wounded and
damaged than she was.

Whatever she was being put through was
nothing compared to what life must be like inside his
head.
 
She felt a wave of compassion for this
mysterious man who seemed to have it all, but actually had less than
nothing.
 

Her hand went out and touched his cheek
softly.
 
“I forgive you,” she said,
smiling.

Cullen seemed to flinch at this
unexpected maneuver.
 

Before he could react to the unrequested
touch, Ivy had turned away from him again and opened the car door.

“Ivy,” she heard him call out, but then
she was getting out of the car and running…running away as fast as she could.

Because in that moment, she hated Cullen
Sharpe, hated him with every piece of her soul.

But she also loved him.

She loved him and there wasn’t a thing
she could do about it.

***

Alone in her apartment, Ivy took a long
shower and tried to decompress.
 
When she got out, she put on a simple nightgown that was comforting in
its softness.
 
And then she ate a
very light meal of toast and jelly, while watching mindless TV.

After that, she got in bed and called the
one person she could think of who might make her feel slightly better.

“Hello?” her mother answered, and Ivy
nearly burst into tears at the sound of the woman’s voice.

“Hi, Mommy,” she said, smiling as she
cradled the phone to her ear.

“I haven’t heard from you in ages,” her
mother said.
 
“Is everything all
right?”

Ivy sighed.
 
“Not really.
 
I started a new job and it’s horrible.”

“Oh no.
 
Why?”

“It’s complicated,” she said, thinking
there was no way in hell she could tell her overprotective mother even 1/100
^th
of what had happened.
 
“But there’s
a guy, my boss, and he’s very difficult to work with.”

“Difficult in what way?”

Ivy picked at her lower lip.
 
“He’s very demanding.”

“Is he mean to you?”

“Sometimes.”
 
She thought about it.
 
“And then other times he can be so kind,
and protective, and…well…sort of amazing.”

“This is your
boss
,” her mother said slowly, as if it wasn’t quite adding
up.
 
“Well,” the older woman sighed,
“the real world is a harsh place, honey.
 
I never wanted you to have to be exposed to all of the craziness, but I
knew someday you’d have to deal with it.”

“But maybe I can’t deal with it,” Ivy
said.
 
“What if I’m just not cut out
for any of it?”

Her mother chuckled.
 
“Oh, sweetie.
 
I doubt that very much.”

“But Mom, I’m not doing good.
 
I’m doing, like, terrible.”

“I still remember the time you took your
first piano lesson,” her mother said.
 
“You were this soft, tiny little thing sitting at that bench and your
teacher was this crabby woman.
 
Misses Cleary, remember?”

“Oh, do I,” Ivy laughed.
 
Miss Cleary had been notoriously evil
and frightening—tales of her fearsome temper had spread across the
county.
 
But many of her pupils had
become professional musicians and gotten into all the top schools.

Ivy’s mother went on.
 
“After your second and third lessons
with Miss Cleary, you came home crying, telling me how mean she was and how you
could never learn piano.
 
You were
inconsolable.”

Ivy smiled wider, remembering how upset
she’d been.
 
“That was because Miss
Cleary called me ‘little lazybones’ when I messed up one of my first
pieces.
 
I was beside myself.”

“You almost had me convinced to let you
quit taking lessons,” her mother said.
 
“But then when I was about to make the phone call to inform her you were
quitting, you stopped me.
 
And you
said, ‘Mom, I want to keep trying.’
 
Remember?”

Ivy felt the tears leaking from her eyes
and she nodded.
 
“Yeah.”

Her mother was emotional now as
well.
 
“So, even though it
physically hurt me to know you were going to face that old demon of a teacher,
I let you keep going for piano lessons with her.
 
And little by little, you got
better.
 
And you worked
tirelessly.
 
And you improved
more.
 
Finally, one day about a year
later, Miss Cleary met with me in person, and told me you were one of the most
talented, hardest working and fearless pianists she’d ever had the pleasure to
instruct.”

Ivy laughed.
 
“She’s still probably mad that I never
attended Julliard.”

“I’m certain she is,” Ivy’s mother
chuckled.
 
“But the point is, you
have that strength, honey.
 
You
always had it.”

“Thanks, Mom.”
 
Ivy sniffled.
 
“I needed to hear that.”

A few moments later they got off the
phone, but Ivy wasn’t able to fall asleep right away.
 
She lay in bed, her thoughts going round
and round, until she finally drifted off.

***

Ivy startled
awake
sometime later, feeling disoriented.

Had she been having a bad dream?
 
She didn’t really know.
 
Her bedroom was dark and shadowy and her
heart was beating hard in her ribcage as she sat up.

There was a loud buzz from her nightstand
and she glanced over, seeing a text come through on her cell phone.
 
Ivy picked the phone up and saw a text
message shining brightly on her screen.