“Then you can’t really shoot them instead, can you?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose between index finger and thumb, slumping down to sit on the closed toilet lid. “Zeth, can you please just get back here as soon as possible. Please.”

“Anyone would think you needed me,” he says in a low, silky tone. I have shivers again. All over my body.

“I don’t!”

“Well I need you.” The tenor of his voice slips into a vocal range I’ve never really heard before, so low and rough that my whole body starts to burn. “Next time I see you, I’m introducing you to a few friends from the bag. I’m getting fucking hard just thinking about it. Fuck. There’s one toy in that bag that I think you like almost as much as I do.”

He’s talking about the knife; I know he is. I swallow thickly, shaking my head, trying to push all memories of the last time he used it on me out of my mind. He makes that really hard when he continues talking.

“I wanna slide my hands up those thighs, Sloane. I wanna tear your clothes from your body and make you tremble. I want to dig my fingers and my teeth into your skin and make you scream my name. You want that, too, huh?” he says.

Cold sweat pushes out of my pores, making my skin prickle. I’m a visual person. Say something to me and I instantly imagine it inside my head—and at this exact moment in time I find myself visualizing Zeth’s impressively big cock straining against his jeans, just begging to be let out to play. I clear my throat, closing my eyes. “That’s not exactly a practical thing to want right now.”

“What about me screams practical to you?” His voice dips in volume again, so that it’s almost a whisper. It has a flustering effect on me. “Where are you right now?” he asks.

“In the bathroom.”

“Anyone else in there with you?”

The question seems like a sensible one. A question you would ask if you were discussing mob bosses, being followed and stabbing people to death. I duck my head, looking underneath the stall dividers. No feet. No one standing at the washbasins, either. “No. No one else,” I confirm.

But with his next words, it’s painfully obvious Zeth isn’t concerned about people overhearing information about his boss or his boss’s henchmen. “Good. Put your hand down your pants for me, angry girl.”

“What?”

“Do it. Put your right hand down your pants for me. I want to hear you come.”

“I am not masturbating in a public bathroom, buddy! You’re crazy if you think I’m doing that.” There I go with the whole buddy thing again. So stupid. Zeth makes a pleasant growling sound on the other end of the phone. “I’m not asking, Sloane. I’m telling. Touch. Yourself. Now.”

“No!”

Zeth seems unprepared for my refusal. “Would you be saying no to me if I was standing in front of you?”

I think on that for a second, imagining it playing out in my head. If he were standing in front of me in this toilet cubicle, I’d do pretty much anything he told me to. I hate admitting that to myself. I don’t say anything, which makes him chuckle. “I’ll make you a deal,” he breathes heavily down the phone. “If you slip your hand down those prissy blue scrubs of yours and you’re not already wet for me then you can hang up the phone.”

He just loves doing this, I can tell—turning my own body against me. But not this time. I huff into the handset, smug that I’m about to prove him wrong. I could just tell him I’ve done it and laugh haughtily as I hang up, but I know on some level that won’t work. He’d know. So I do it. “Fine!” My hand slides down beneath my scrubs, but over the top of my panties—no need to go too far. The smile falls off my face when I realize I’m not only wet for him as he knew I would be, but I’ve soaked all the way through the thin cotton of my underwear.

“Middle finger first, Sloane,” Zeth rasps into the phone. He doesn’t even ask if he won our deal. He just knows he has. The bastard. I screw my eyes tightly shut, kicking myself.

“I don’t have time. I have patients to see.”

“You’re catering to my patience right now,” he informs me darkly. “I wanna hear it in your voice, Sloane. I wanna hear every single agonizing second that you’re toying with yourself, wishing that your fingers were my cock.”

“You’re very full of yourself, you know that?” I say. My breathlessness doesn’t do much to make me sound confident, though. And he just tuts down the phone.

“Use your middle finger. Slide it inside yourself and tell me that’s not exactly what you’re thinking. Wishing for. My dick slamming into you. Do it now, Sloane.”

I want to laugh. I want to hang up the phone and slip it into my pocket, and I want to go on my rounds and forget about this stupid demand he’s making of me. But I also want to do it. Zeth doesn’t say anything further, but I can hear his laden, heavy breathing still on the line. I spend thirty seconds battling with myself, and then I just snap. Like I did back in his richly decorated apartment, he’s trying to make me come to this decision by myself. To make me see it’s actually what I want. I already know it’s what I want, so why am I fighting against it?

That Pippa-sounding voice whispers in my ear. Because you don’t know him. And what you do know is terrifying. But it’s the last two years of my life that have been terrifying. At least I know for a certainty what…who he is. I make my mind up. I slip my panties to one side and press my finger into the very center of myself, gasping quietly. I’m so wet, so turned on. I can’t ever remember feeling this way when I’ve done this in the past. But technically I’m not alone now—Zeth might as well be guiding my hand with his own.