POV Floris
When Eric announced we were leaving before dinner was even served, I just followed him like a lost puppy. What the hell else was I supposed to do?
His mother had been dissecting me like a biology experiment since the moment I walked through her door, and apparently Eric had reached his breaking point.
Helena Brighton was everything I’d expected from a woman who’d raised a corporate psychopath, and somehow worse.
The way she looked at me—like I was some exotic pet Eric had dragged home that might bite the furniture—made my skin crawl. Every word out of her mouth dripped with condescension wrapped in fake politeness.
“This girl seems rather untamed,” she’d said, like I wasn’t sitting right fucking there.
The car ride away from Haarlem was dead silent. Eric’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched so tight I thought he might crack a tooth.
I’d never seen him lose his composure like that. Usually he was all cold control and calculated cruelty, but his mother had managed to crack that facade in under an hour.
“There’s a Javanese place up ahead,” he said finally, breaking the silence. “You hungry?”
I was starving, actually. Turns out psychological warfare burns a lot of calories. “Yeah, I could eat.”
We ended up eating in the car like a couple of teenagers sneaking fast food, which felt surreal given that a few hours ago I’d been sitting in a mansion that probably cost more than most people make in a lifetime.
“Your mother seems…” I started, then realized there was no polite way to finish that sentence.
“Awful? Manipulative? A walking advertisement for therapy?” Eric stabbed his satay with more force than necessary. “Yeah, she’s all of those things.”
“She really got under your skin back there.”
He was quiet for a long moment, chewing thoughtfully. “She’s been perfecting the art of psychological warfare since before I was born. My father never stood a chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“She treated him like a trained animal. Made him beg for scraps of affection, humiliated him for sport.” His voice went flat, distant. “She used to record it sometimes. The sessions where she’d break him down until he was crying, pleading with her to tell him what he’d done wrong.”
I stopped eating. “Jesus, Eric.”
“When I got older, I found the tapes. Watched them.” He looked out the windshield at nothing. “It was sick. Twisted. But I couldn’t stop watching.”
“That’s…” I struggled for words. “That’s not normal. That’s abuse.”
“It was educational.” He turned to look at me, and something cold flickered in his eyes. “I learned everything I know about control from those tapes. How to break someone down, build them back up, make them grateful for the privilege of being destroyed.”
The food turned to ash in my mouth. “You don't seem like her.”
He laughed—sharp, bitter and hollow. “You’re right. I’m worse.”
“No, you’re not—”
“I am, Floris. She only destroyed one person. I’ve made it into a fucking art form.”
“That doesn’t make you worse. That makes you damaged.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing at all.” I twisted in my seat to face him fully. “She chose to hurt people because she enjoyed it. You hurt people because it’s all you know how to do. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. And the fact that you can even ask that question proves it.”
He stared at me for a long moment, something unreadable flickering across his face. The air in the car felt electric, charged with something I couldn’t name but definitely couldn’t ignore.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he said quietly, shaking his head slowly. “I should fire you. Send you back to Boston, let your brother’s treatment lapse, wash my hands of this entire mess.”
“But you won’t.”
“No. I won’t.”
The space between us felt like a live wire. I could smell his cologne, could see the way his pupils had dilated, could feel my own pulse hammering against my throat.
“Why not?” I whispered.
“Because you’re the first person who’s ever looked at me and seen something worthy."
And then he was kissing me.
His mouth crashed into mine like he was trying to undo everything we’d just seen, just said, just became. Not gentle. Not slow. Desperate and hungry, all teeth and heat, like he could erase the silence between us with the scrape of his tongue.
My back hit the leather seat as his hand gripped my neck, thumb brushing the underside of my jaw, forcing me to feel how wrecked I already was.
“This is a mistake,” I gasped against his lips, even as I arched toward him.
“I don’t make mistakes,” he growled, kissing me again, harder this time. “You’re the one who keeps asking for this.”
My legs trembled as his hand slid up my thigh, slow at first, testing. I didn’t stop him. Couldn’t. The fabric of my dress bunched around his wrist as his fingers pushed higher, parting me like he already knew exactly how I liked to be touched.
I sucked in a breath when he found me wet.
“Thought so,” he murmured, dragging his mouth down to the curve of my throat. “You watched that tape of Sia and still came crawling back.”
“I didn’t crawl,” I whispered, but my voice broke when two of his fingers pressed in, slow and slick and cruelly perfect. “I walked.”
“No, Floris.” He laughed—low, dark, not kind. “You obeyed.”
My hips bucked into his hand as he put his fingers inside me and curled them, hitting a spot that made my toes curl.
The sound I made wasn’t human. It was broken glass wrapped in silk.
He swallowed it with his mouth, kissing me again, his fingers pumping harder now, faster, with purpose and I moaned into his lips.
“Shh,” he whispered. “You’re supposed to be quiet, remember?”
“You didn’t say that this time,” I panted.
“I don’t have to.”
And maybe he didn’t. Maybe I was already too far gone, letting him ruin me in the back of this car like the version of myself I swore I’d never become.
But then his fingers slipped out, leaving me cold and empty, and before I could protest, he grabbed my hips and pulled me forward, guiding me across the console onto his lap.
“Eric—”
His hands were under my dress again, lifting it up over my thighs as I straddled him. His belt was already unbuckled, pants open, the heat of him throbbing against me through too many layers.
“You don’t want this?” he asked, voice low, rough, dangerous.
I swallowed hard, staring down at him, breathing like I was about to cry or scream or beg.
“I didn’t say that,” I whispered.
His fingers hooked the thin strip of lace between my legs and pushed it aside. The second I sank down onto him, we both gasped.
It wasn’t slow and careful. It was pure chaos.
My hands flew to his shoulders, gripping hard as he filled me, stretching me, breaking me open from the inside. His head dropped to my chest, mouth trailing hot kisses over my collarbone, and then he started to move.
Upward thrusts from beneath me, hard and unrelenting, driving me down onto him over and over until the only sound in the car was breath and slick and desperate bodies colliding.
I rode him like I needed to prove something. Like maybe if I came hard enough, the truth would go away.
“You’re mine when you’re like this,” he hissed into my ear. “You always were.”
“Shut up,” I whispered, clawing at his back as my orgasm built like a scream behind my ribs. “Just— Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. His grip on my hips tightened, keeping me in rhythm, using my body like it belonged to him—and maybe, in this moment, it did. My walls clenched, tightened, fluttered around him.
“Eric,” I moaned.
He knew. His lips brushed my temple, almost reverent. “Come for me,” he said.
And I did. Hard. Shaking. Biting down on his shoulder to keep from screaming his name.
He held me through it, thrusting slower now, deeper, until I collapsed against him, ruined and full and shaking with something I didn’t want to name.
When he finally stilled, his hand brushed through my hair, almost tenderly. I didn’t look up.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he muttered, voice ragged. “We’re both fucked now.”