SEVEN NIGHTS WITH MY STEPFATHER novel Chapter 7

The last flash popped and the studio lights dimmed to a soft amber glow. Sarah stretched like a satisfied cat, ropes loosened and trailing from her wrists, skin marked with beautiful red diamonds that would bruise purple by morning. Cassian lowered the camera, checked the back screen once, and gave her the smallest nod of approval.

“Perfect,” he said. “We’re done.”

Sarah practically purred. She slipped the robe back on, tied it loosely, and sauntered over to him for a lazy, lingering kiss on the cheek. “You’re a genius, Cassian. Same time next week?”

“I’ll text you,” he answered, already turning away.

I stood frozen near the light stand, arms full of coiled rope and crumpled silk, feeling like I’d been run over by something I couldn’t name. My legs trembled. My panties were ruined. I couldn’t look at either of them.

Cassian’s gaze found me across the room. “Ivy. Upstairs. Shower and change for dinner. Twenty minutes.”

His voice was calm, almost gentle, but it scraped over every raw nerve I had left. I nodded once and fled.

I took the stairs two at a time, dropped the ropes in the laundry room without looking, and locked myself in the guest bathroom on the second floor. The mirror showed a stranger: wild eyes, flushed throat, hair sticking to damp temples. I looked like I’d been the one tied up for two hours.

I stripped fast, kicking clothes into the corner, and turned the shower as hot as it would go. Steam billowed up instantly, fogging the glass, swallowing the room. I stepped under the spray and let it punish my skin.

For thirty seconds I just stood there, head bowed, water pounding the back of my neck.

Then the images started.

Cassian’s hands sliding the crimson rope across Sarah’s ribs.

His low, steady voice telling her to hold still.

The way his fingers had checked the knots, clinical and possessive all at once.

The tiny intake of breath when he’d tugged and the rope had bitten into her skin.

I closed my eyes and suddenly it wasn’t Sarah’s body under those hands.

It was mine.

I saw him behind me, chest to my back, one arm banded across my waist while the other guided the rope between my breasts. I felt the heat of his mouth at my ear, felt the exact pressure of his teeth on my shoulder when he decided I’d been good enough to earn a mark. I felt his palm sliding lower, slow and deliberate, until his fingers brushed the place that was aching so badly I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning out loud.

My own hand followed the fantasy without permission.

One second I was gripping the tile wall for balance, the next my fingers were between my thighs, slick and swollen and desperate. I circled once, twice, hips jerking forward into my own touch, and the sound that left my throat was embarrassingly loud in the tiled room.

Cassian.

His name tore out of me on a broken whisper. I pictured him stepping into the shower behind me, water streaming down the hard lines of his chest, his hands replacing mine, rougher, surer, knowing exactly how to wreck me. I imagined him pressing me face-first against the glass, spreading my legs with his knee, telling me I wasn’t allowed to come until he said so.

My knees buckled. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to muffle the cry as the orgasm slammed into me, fast and brutal and humiliating. My entire body clenched, thighs shaking, water pouring over me while I came apart on my own fingers imagining the one man I was supposed to hate.

The aftershocks rolled for what felt like forever.

Then shame crashed in, cold and suffocating.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the shower floor, knees to chest, letting the water beat against my back. Tears mixed with the spray; I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I came here for one reason and one reason only: seven nights. Survive seven nights and Mom’s debt disappeared. I could sell the house, pay off the medical bills, breathe again. Go back to my quiet, safe life where the only thing that touched me was loneliness.

Cassian Voss was not part of that life. He was the man who broke my mother’s heart, the man who turned pleasure into power and power into art. He was poison, just like Mom always said.

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