He rubs his wrinkled chin, deep in thought. “I think what has happened, Hayden, is a part of you doesn’t want to accept what you were subjected to with Addison. Abusive relationships, albeit, physical, psychological, emotional or sexual, all causes a form of trauma for the victim. Because you haven’t accepted it, for whatever reason you may have, that trauma has been locked in the emotional section of the brain. So when you add an activating agent––which in this case, is the incident you witnessed Samantha partaking in––the brain instantly recalls the last time you witnessed it through pattern-matching. Your brain instantly associates it with Addison’s behavior, that then prompts emotions to rise and may inspire certain thoughts. When you’re emotionally aroused, Hayden, the thoughts and feelings manifest and seep into our subconscious, because we have to try and work through them; hence your nightmares. They call it pattern-matching. The same thing goes with anxiety attacks. Everything comes down to past experiences and patterns.”
“No,” I briskly interject. Pushing myself forward, I slam my right hand on the desk; an outlet for my anger and desperation. “This is nothing to do with, Addison. This is about Samantha. She is the one to blame for this. She caused this!” I seethe.
“Okay, stop. Breathe.” Victor challenges to calm my uprising animosity. “Think, what are you feeling right now?”
“How do you think I’m feeling, Victor? I feel pissed off. I’m feeling angry, furious; my blood is bubbling with hatred, anguish and resentment,” exhausted I shake my head, my mouth curling as I feel every muscle in my profile become limp. “I’m tired, I’m unable to focus. I don’t know whether this is reality or not. I’m feeling disconnected from everything, like I am constrained to relive this nightmare over and over.” I throw my head back against the backrest in frustration.
“How do you feel about Samantha at this moment?”
Okay, now he is deliberately pushing my buttons.
“I can’t stand to have her anywhere near me. When I look her, or when she touches me…all I think about is her touching the other men and them touching her––explicitly.”
“Touching the men in your dream, or the men that she has had a history with?”
“…The one schmuck that was all over her outside the club on Dad’s birthday, and the ones in my dreams.” I feel myself blush just by saying that that I’m pissed at what she has done in my nightmare. It’s idiotic, but it’s true.
“How do you feel about, Addison?”
“What has she got anything to do with this?” I scowl.
“Just tell me, how you feel about Addison?” he pushes again.
I shrug my shoulders. “I despise her. She totally fucked up my self-esteem. She used me, she ridiculed me. She made me feel worthless and tormented me with everything that she could. She lessened me.” I feel my anger being directed on the person that I truly do hate, my adrenaline surging and spiking, my breathing accelerating furthermore.
“Keep going, what else, what did she do to you, Hayden? How did she make you feel when she looked at you a certain way? How did she tease you?” he sits on the edge of the seat blatantly antagonizing me.
“The look in her eyes when she would mock me for being unable to satisfy her, the disgust. The lies she told to everyone about me, the divide she put in place to keep me from having a social circle and the barrier she created between Dad and I. Walking in on her fucking my friend just after Dad died. The way she told me that he would be disappointed in me because I would fail at the firm.”
I wrap my hands around the leather-sheathed arms of my chair and squeeze with white knuckle force as Victor sits back into his chair with a grin of satisfaction on his wrinkled face and a gleam in his eyes.
“Now, what has Samantha brought to your life, Hayden? After all those feelings that Addison stirred up in you…how do you feel with, Samantha?”
I smile wistfully, tears reappearing in my bloodshot eyes. “She brought me hope. I can concentrate more. Seeing her eyes light up when I call her beautiful, or complimenting her. Her genuine smiles, the way she twists that amethyst ring around her finger when she is anxious. The way she bites her lip, holding her hand. The comfort I feel when I’m with her. Being able to show my true emotions around her…knowing that even after all I have told her, her perception of me isn’t marred. Knowing she loves me for me.”
I shudder at the mere thought of her hungry eyes gazing down at me.
Victor pushes himself up from the seat, and places his hands on the edge of the desk. “And even after all the emotions and thoughts you had about her these last few weeks, the way you have treated her, she has still stuck by you. She loves you, Hayden. A blind man can see that.”
I give way to a sincere smile. “Thank you, Victor.”
“Go away for a few days; rekindle that passion you’ve both missed. We can cover here.”
“We can’t do that,” I object.
He straightens his posture. “Of course you can. Leonard would have said the same thing.”
“Are you sure?”
He strolls leisurely to the door. “New York is a nice place––very promising.” he projects his voice so as I can hear him as he walks away from me. He grasps the doorknob.
“Thank you, Victor.”
He turns to face me, his eyes obscured by the thick lenses of his glasses. “You’re more than welcome, son.” He smiles and exits the office, while I sit filled with a new hope.
FOURTEEN
-------------------------
SAMANTHA
“You’re where?” Jessie shrieks down the speaker with such ferocity that even when I pull away from the handset, my eardrum buzzes and tingles with the ringing left in its wake.
“We’re at SFO.”
“Yes, Sammy. I heard you the first time. What the hell are you doing there?”
“Hayden and I have been having some problems recently, Jess. It was his idea to get away for a few days. I think it will help.” I twist the cable of the public payphone around my finger.
“But you have no luggage, sweetie. You can’t just––”
“Jessie,” I interject, “how many times have we fantasized about getting up and leaving everything behind. I told him about needing to pack, but he was insistent.”
The connection goes quiet for a brief moment. Then I hear Jessie’s weighted sigh echo on the opposite end of the line. “Where is he taking you?” she omits the squeaky, schoolgirl shrieking and regains her usual, placid tone.
“New York.”
“New York?!” she screeches yet again. “Well, no wonder he said there’s no need to pack.”
“Samantha, they are calling our flight,” Hayden whispers from over my left shoulder.
“Okay,” I nod at him, before focusing back on Jessie. “Listen, Jess. They’re calling us. I will ring you in the morning.”
“Have fun, love you.”
“Love you, too.” I place the receiver back on its stand. Hanging my head, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This feels so surreal. Is this wrong? I shake my head in vain as I recognize the impulsiveness of our actions, which sends solid doubts through my mind.
I can’t believe we are doing this…New York?
The querying thoughts of our hasty decision are quelled by erotic, steamy, muscle clenching, body quivering conceptions, of the given opportunity to recover the passion and intimacy that we have lacked as a couple. Back in the office, Hayden’s eyes had glinted with such intense, well-defined desire that I could sense the pooling between my thighs as a result of that single, penetrating gaze, the way he slithered his hand and grasped the peak of my inner thigh as we drove back to his apartment to change, and book our flight. The combination of both my reflections has my muscles tighten and the familiar throbbing, engorging sensation below my navel begins to manifest.
My reverie is broken by strong, familiar arms snaking around my middle. I sink into his embrace, tilting my head back to rest on his chest. My chest heaves as my breathing hitches. The abstinence we have undergone lately is prolific, my body and my hormones unable to withstand it any longer. I need him: his touch, his taste, the closeness, I need it desperately. I hunger for him like the sexually staved woman that I am.
My body screams for his touch to descend lower, to place a form of pressure between my legs. To hitch up my mid-thigh, denim skirt and sink into my panties and relieve me of my frustrations. Altering my weight from one leg to the other, I press myself into his front and allow the small of my back to brush against his crotch.
I feel him begin to swell beneath me.
“Miss Kennedy,” he growls in my ear, his husky voice journeying along the incessant vibrations through my body. “We need to get on that plane…come.”
Come? That single word makes my legs buckle beneath me as it is purred against my ear. My traitorous body reveals with every harsh breath, every diminutive writhe that is warranted against his towering form, the affect he has upon me.
Reluctantly pulling myself out of his powerful encirclement, I twist to face him. His stance, his profile…the way the V of his chest is exposed as the top two buttons of his navy shirt remains undone, his dark jeans hangs from his hips in that delicious way that screams sex, and commandeers any rational thought in my head. The glint of the silver chain around his neck draws my attention.
I push up onto the balls of my feet and place a sultry, wet kiss on his neck while I bask in both the prickliness of his stubble against my cheek and the virile sound emitted from his throat. I watch his eyes darken dangerously with ravenous intent as I draw myself away from his body. Heated instantly under his sexual scrutiny, so heated that my lips crack and wither, I run my tongue across them while reveling in the knowledge of his passionate desires…I feel powerful, and a form of female triumph as I entice him through each and every look and deed.
I grin up at him salaciously.
“You are a tease, Mr. Wentworth.”
Three hours into our estimated five and a half hour flight and my frustrations are mounting. My body can’t tolerate any more sexual depravity. The tension that began at my sex now backtracks to claim my hips, stomach and my lower back. My muscles constrict and ache beyond any strength they have ever endured. I am aching––aching to be used as a toy for his pleasure, aching to alleviate some of the discomfort that Hayden is purposely provoking, inflaming me with one hundred degrees of unadulterated carnality.
My nerve endings sizzle and ignite when he sets a powerful hand upon the bare flesh of my crossed knee. I turn to face him and gasp instantaneously as my eyes fall onto the smouldering expression in his already intense eyes. He sweeps his glorious tongue over his lips in a prolonged yet irresistible fashion. I gasp again, and an indistinct sound that only we can hear escapes from my throat.
“Are you okay, beautiful? You look a little…uncomfortable,” he hums perceptively.
My eyes well up in dissatisfaction as my needs as a woman are thwarted. My respiring is unhinged and the irrepressible trembling of my body as I contest with my urges is tiring. I tense my thighs and draw my legs closer into my body, endeavoring to place a minuscule of pressure in the desired area.
I close my eyes and hang my head.
“I can’t…I can’t…” I breathe whilst frantically flailing my head.
“Can’t what, Samantha?”
I open my eyes and will myself to peek up. His hand travels from my right knee up the length of my thigh, adjusting so his fingertips catch the inner flesh. I’m an amassed of sensual tingles and desirous sparks when I see him scrape his teeth across his lower lip, and my rational mind absconds, leaving me with only one thought.
“Can’t…what?” he mouths again. And my attention centers on the formation of his mouth as he enunciates each word clearly. The alluring gleam in his eye becoming more and more distinctive with every torturous issuing he executes on my body.
Swiftly uncrossing my legs, I push myself up out of the comfort of the first-class seat. I situate my hands on each side of Hayden’s chair and lean in closely.
“Give it three minutes…then come and find me.”
He furrows his brow with amused perplexity. I glimpse over to the cubicle of the restroom and gaze back at the handsome man who screams sexual energy beneath me. I arch my eyebrow suggestively. Hayden’s grin deepens and his eyes blacken.
“Seriously…three minutes, exactly.” I inch closer and whisper in his ear, “If you’re not there…I’m going solo.” His jaw drops open, shocked at my verbalized intentions. “I mean it, with or without you, Hayden.”
Shimmying my way out of my white cotton panties, I stash them into the front pocket of my denim skirt before inspecting myself in the vanity mirror above the washbasin. Fisting my hands into my hair, I puff up my roots to add a little extra volume, when I detect the cubicle door opening in the reflection. I pivot around with the grace of a prima ballerina.
Hayden steps inside the stall, closing and locking the door behind him and not once does he avert his eyes away from me. I take a step closer. Clutching at his shirt, I wrench him into my body and seal my mouth over his, kissing him fervently––my mouth has been starved of him for, too long. He opens his mouth and grants my tongue entrance to caress and play with his. Stretching onto the balls of my feet, my breasts press against his firm chest and I envision the carved, defined lines and muscles that are concealed beneath his shirt.
He pulls away from my mouth. Panting he murmurs, “Samantha,” but I press my index finger against his lips, instantly silencing him.
I search his eyes, his smouldering and conflicted eyes and shake my head. “Don’t say a word. I need you, Hayden,” I release his shirt from my grip, fisting my hands into his thick, silky, floppy hair. “I need you now.”
I’m panting and wanton. The conflict that was in his eyes only a second ago now completely dissipated, only hunger and greed stares back at me. And what a heady combination it is when it’s Hayden Wentworth displaying it.
He frees a feral sound which exceeds in making my sex swell and dampen as he lunges toward me. His mouth fixes with mine, his tongue delves into my mouth, and pushing so deep I feel the tip of it reaching the back of my throat. His right hand holds me at the nape of my neck, as the other smoothes, gropes and explores the length of my body.