Page 94 of Problematic

I stood. “Liv!” I yelled at the screen. I wasn’t doing this. Not from a goddamn screen.

She couldn’t hear me. Of course she couldn’t hear me. Liv paused. Her fingers hovered over the lid. Her face was red, eyes too bright, mouth parted like she had talked herself into something insane and then realized she still had to live with it afterward.

Good.

Stop.

Close it.

Read the book. Threaten me. Do literally anything else.

She looked at the camera. Straight at me. Then she lifted the lid. My entire brain went blank. In the same way a man might look down, realize he stepped on a mine, and have just enough time to think, Well, that fucking sucks. BOOM.

Black tissue paper. Red and black silicone.

The gift I had chosen with my own hands, my own fucking attention to detail, my own smug belief that I was being clever, getting an exact replica from the book. This was supposed to be hot, clever. I was not clever. I was an idiot with money and access to custom adult novelty shops.

I put both hands on my desk.

“You misunderstood the project,” I told the screen. “The project was intimidation. Flirtation. Possibly psychological warfare. Not this.”

Carefully, she reached into the box. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “This thing is ridiculous.”

“Yes,” I said immediately. “Exactly. Ridiculous. Now close the box.”

“This is what you wanted, right?” she asked the camera.

My lungs stopped. No. No, that was not what I wanted. Except my body, traitorous and disgusting, answered before my brain could catch up. My cock throbbed hard enough to make me grip the desk.

“Not like that,” I said roughly. “That is not what I—” The sentence died, because I was a liar, and the room knew it. What did I want? I wanted to be there.

I needed to be in that room, not in a fucking tower office staring through a screen. I needed her eyes on me, not a fucking lens. I wanted her moans muffled in my mouth and her hands on my skin. I wanted to ruin her in the best ways possible.

I did not want to watch. I absolutely wanted to watch.

Her fingers brushed the hem of her shirt. She slid her hand under the loose black cotton, and I stopped breathing. I locked on to every small movement she made as she pulled the hem of her shirt up. No panties underneath, her glorious pussy exposed to the camera, the dip of her fingers inside her folds, and her tiny, breathless pants.

Fuck, she knew how to destroy me. Like she had decided the safest way to handle the monster in the dark was to make him the one losing control.

Congratulations, Little Flower.

It was working.

I backed away from the desk.

One step.

Liv’s head tipped back against the pillow. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she whispered, “Are you watching?” She rubbed her thumb over her clit in tight little circles.

My entire body went hot. I dragged both hands down my face, my cock straining against my pants, begging to be freed.

The mask sat on the edge of my desk. Black, expressionless, and so goddamn tempting.

She sighed and reached for the toy. My soul left my body. “Absolutely fucking not.”

She was testing me. She’d figured out the game and then moved the board to her bed. I pointed at the screen as if I could discipline her through it.

“You are not using that without me.”