Chapter 36: Silent Treatment
The bruises faded. First from violent plum to sickly yellow, then to faint smudges of greenish-brown, and finally, one morning, there was just skin. Pale and smooth under Ashley’s fingertips as she traced the place on her throat where Carter’s hands had been. The physical map of the night had been erased by time and arnica cream.
The other map, the one inside, remained uncharted.
A week passed. Then two. The loft settled into a bizarre, polite rhythm. Carter was… attentive. He made coffee every morning, the rich smell drifting into the bedroom before dawn. He cooked dinners—seared salmon, herb-roasted chicken—plating them with a focus that felt surgical. He asked, “How was your day?” and listened to her answer, his brown eyes intent. At night, he pulled her against his chest, his arm a solid bar across her ribs, his breath evening out against her hair. He held her like she was made of glass.
He didn’t fuck her.
He didn’t command her. He didn’t pin her to the wall with a hungry look. He didn’t even trace a possessive finger along the waistband of her panties. The electric current that had always buzzed between them, the one that could ignite with a glance, had been severed. In its place was a hollow, echoing courtesy.
Ashley felt herself becoming unmoored. Her body, finally healed, was a live wire of neglected need. The validation she craved, the one that came from being used, being wanted with such focused intensity, had been replaced by a devastating kindness. It felt like a punishment. She replayed the bathroom confession, the drain gurgling around them, searching for the moment she’d broken him.
One morning, the sun slicing through the blinds in sharp lines, she decided to bridge the gap. He was standing at the closet, buttoning a crisp white shirt. The muscles of his back shifted under the fabric. She rose from the bed, naked, and padded over to him. She pressed herself against his back, her nipples hardening against the fine cotton, her hands sliding around his waist to his stomach.
She nuzzled the space between his shoulder blades, inhaling his scent—soap and clean cotton and him. “You don’t have to go in yet,” she murmured, her voice sleep-rough and inviting. One hand drifted lower, fingertips brushing the fly of his suit pants.
His hands, which had been moving to tuck his shirt in, stilled. He didn’t push her away. He didn’t turn. He just stood there, a statue in her arms. “I have a nine-thirty,” he said, his voice flat.
“Reschedule it.” She rubbed her palm against the growing hardness she could feel beneath the wool blend. A thrill shot through her—there he was. The proof. Her Carter.
He caught her wrist, not roughly, but firmly. He moved her hand away from his cock. He turned within the circle of her arms, but instead of kissing her, he looked down at her with that same, polite detachment. “Not today, Ashley.” He leaned past her to grab his tie from the door hook. “Go back to bed. Sleep in.”
He brushed a kiss on her forehead, a chaste, dismissive peck, and walked out of the bedroom.
Shame, hot and nauseating, flooded her. She stood naked in the middle of the room, feeling absurd and rejected. The arousal he’d stirred curdled into a sharp, frantic anxiety. What did I do?
She heard the front door close softly a few minutes later. The lock clicked. Silence.
The apartment felt like a museum. She wandered, touching things. Dominic’s door was closed; he and Sloane had left for a weekend upstate, a “reset” trip. She was utterly alone.
The frustration built all morning, a pressure cooker with no release valve. She tried to masturbate in their bed, but the image of his indifferent face as he moved her hand away killed the mood. She felt like a ghost in her own life.
Around noon, she heard the key in the lock. Her heart leapt. He’d come back. He’d changed his mind.
She hurried to the living area, trying to look casually alluring in just a t-shirt. But it wasn’t Carter. It was Dominic, alone, dumping a duffel bag by the door. He looked surprised to see her.
“Hey. Thought you’d be out. Carter’s not here?”
“Work,” she said, trying to mask her disappointment.
“On a Saturday? Bullshit.” Dominic shrugged, heading to the kitchen. “Sloane’s mom had a meltdown. Trip’s off. She went to deal with it.” He opened the fridge, scowling at the contents. “Where’s the OJ?”
“Carter finished it.”
“Of course he did.” Dominic slammed the fridge door. He looked at her, really looked, his gaze skipping over her bare legs, the strained expression on her face. “You okay? You look… twitchy.”
“I’m fine.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. He was too perceptive. “He still giving you the papal audience treatment?”
The accuracy of it stung. She didn’t answer.
“Christ,” Dominic sighed, running a hand through his hair. “He’s in his head about the hotel. Thinks he broke his favorite toy. Give him time. He’ll snap out of it.” He said it like it was a foregone conclusion, but it offered no comfort.
Dominic retreated to his room. The loft was silent again, but now his presence was a faint irritant, a reminder of the before-times.
An hour later, she heard the shower start in the main bathroom. Carter was back. He must have come in quietly. Her body clenched with a fresh wave of that desperate want. He was just in there, naked, water on his skin. The image was torment.
She moved down the hall on silent feet. The bathroom door was ajar, steam seeping out into the cooler hallway. The sound of the water was a steady, pounding rush. And then, underneath it, another sound.
A low, strained grunt.
She froze, peering through the crack between the door and the frame.
The glass shower door was fogged, but the silhouette was unmistakable. Carter, braced with one forearm high against the black marble tiles, his head bowed. His other hand was working between his legs, a fierce, pumping motion. The muscles in his back and shoulders were corded, rigid with tension.
And he was talking. A rough, gritted-out mantra lost in the spray.
“…fuck… Ashley… goddamn you…”
Her name. It wasn’t a whisper. It was a curse, ripped from his throat.
She watched, mesmerized, her own breath caught. His hips jerked forward, driving his fist over his cock. There was no pleasure on his profile, visible through the steam; it was all grim, furious need. This was hate-fucking an absence. This was him battling the very urge to touch her.
“Need to feel that tight… fucking cunt…” he growled, the words ugly and raw. “Choke on it… make you fucking cry for it…”
He was picturing her. He was picturing the things he’d denied them both. And he was furious about it.
The release, when it came, was a violent shudder that racked his entire frame. A harsh, guttural cry was torn from him, lost in the drumming water. His forehead dropped to his arm on the tile, his body slumping in spent exhaustion.
Ashley stumbled back from the door, her heart hammering against her ribs. She fled to the bedroom, shutting the door softly. She leaned against it, the cold wood a shock to her overheated skin.
He wanted her. Viciously. Primally. And he was refusing her. Denying himself. This was his penance. His control had turned inward, becoming a self-flagellation that excluded her completely. She was the object of his desire and the source of his prohibition. It was the ultimate rejection.
A cold resolution settled in her stomach, hardening the shame into something sharper.
She waited. She heard the shower stop. Heard his footsteps pad to his study. The door clicked shut.
She gave him twenty minutes. Then she walked to the study door. She didn’t knock. She turned the handle and walked in.
He was at his desk, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair damp. He was staring at a spreadsheet on his monitor, but his eyes were unfocused. He turned, surprise flashing across his face at her intrusion, quickly schooled into neutrality. “Ashley. What is it?”
She closed the door behind her. Locked it with a soft, definitive snick.
His eyebrows went up.
She walked toward him, her steps deliberate. She stopped beside his chair. He swiveled to face her, his expression guarded.
“I saw you,” she said, her voice quiet. “In the shower.”
A flicker in his eyes. Shock, then a swift, dark shame. He opened his mouth, no doubt to say something dismissive, to rebuild the wall.
She didn’t let him. She dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Ashley—” His voice held a warning, but it was frayed.
She placed her hands on his thighs, feeling the dense muscle tense under her palms. She looked up at him, holding his gaze. “You don’t get to do that,” she said, the cold steel in her voice new, even to her. “You don’t get to want me like that and then lock me out. I’m not a ghost. I’m right here.”
Her fingers went to the waistband of his sweatpants. He caught her wrists again, but his grip was different this time. It was resistance, but it was weak. The fight had been drained out of him in the steam.
“Don’t,” he said, but it was a plea.
“Tell me no,” she challenged, her green eyes blazing. “Say the word. Tell me to stop, and I’ll walk out. But you have to say it.”
His jaw tightened. A muscle ticked in his cheek. He stared down at her, a war raging behind his eyes. His fingers trembled around her wrists. He said nothing.
A slow, triumphant heat spread through her veins. She tugged his sweatpants and boxer briefs down in one motion. His cock sprang free, already thickening again under her gaze. It was heavy and flushed, a stark testament to his failed abstinence.
She didn’t wait for permission he wouldn’t give. She leaned forward and took him into her mouth.
The groan that ripped from his chest was pure agony. His hands flew to her head, not to guide her, but to fist in her blonde hair, holding on as if he were drowning.
She took him deep, her throat working open to swallow the length of him. The taste of him, clean and musky and uniquely Carter, flooded her senses. She moaned around him, the vibration pulling another shattered sound from him. She worked him with a deliberate, filthy expertise, using her tongue on the sensitive vein underneath, sucking hard on the head before plunging down again. Saliva dripped down her chin.
“Fuck… oh, fuck, Ashley…” he choked out, his hips beginning to piston upwards, fucking her mouth in a broken, ragged rhythm. The controlled man was gone, obliterated. This was raw need, unleashed.
His grip on her hair was brutal, pulling her onto him with each thrust. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” he gasped, his voice ragged. “A perfect, greedy fucking nightmare. Look at you… choking on it…”
She pulled off, gasping for air, a string of spit connecting her lips to his glistening cock. “Then use me,” she panted, her eyes defiant. “Stop pretending you don’t want to.”
With a snarl, he yanked her up by her arms. He spun her around, bending her over the cold, polished surface of his teak desk. Computer monitors wobbled. A pen holder clattered to the floor. He shoved her t-shirt up her back, her cotton shorts and panties down to her knees in one rough pull.
The cool air hit her wet skin. She was exposed, presented. She heard the tear of a foil packet—he kept them in the desk drawer—and the rustle as he sheathed himself.
He didn’t enter her slowly. He didn’t test her. He drove into her with one single, brutal thrust that buried him to the hilt.
The cry she let out was one of pure, shocked relief. She was so empty, so ready, that the sudden, brutal fullness was an answer to a prayer she’d stopped believing in. Her fingers scrambled for purchase on the slick wood.
“Is this what you needed?” he growled, his body covering hers, his mouth at her ear. His voice was a dark, vicious thing. “This what you’ve been sulking for? My cock wrecking this perfect, aching little cunt?”
He pulled almost all the way out and slammed back in. The force drove her hips into the desk edge. It hurt. It was glorious.
“Yes!” she sobbed, the word mangled. “God, yes, Carter, please…”
“Please what?” He set a punishing pace, each thrust a punctuation mark of his pent-up fury. “Please fuck you? Please stop being so nice?” He leaned his weight on her, one hand braced by her head, the other tangling in her hair, pulling her head back. “You told me I went too far. You cried. You made me see it.”
He punctuated each phrase with a deep, grinding drive of his hips.
“So I gave you space. I gave you care. And you… you hate it.” He sounded genuinely astonished, furious at the discovery. “You’d rather be bent over a desk, getting railed like a whore.”
“I’m your whore!” she screamed back, the vulgarity freeing. “Not some… some patient you’re nursing! Fuck me like you mean it! Fuck me like you hate me!”
He lost it. The last vestige of restraint evaporated. His thrusts became animalistic, a hard, piston-like rhythm that shook the desk. The sounds were obscene—the wet slap of their joining, their ragged breaths, his guttural curses. He fucked her with a focused intensity that was about claiming, punishing, and reclaiming all at once.
“Come for me,” he demanded, his voice raw. “Come on my cock, you desperate slut. Show me how much you missed it.”
The command, the familiar, dark dominion in his tone, was the final trigger. The coil in her belly snapped. A climax tore through her, violent and blinding, milking his cock inside her as she screamed into the wood grain.
He followed moments later, his body locking over hers, a deep, shuddering roar erupting from his throat as he emptied himself into the condom, his hips jerking spastically against her ass.
For a long minute, the only sounds were their heaving breaths, the hum of the computer, and the faint drip of condensation from his hair onto her back.
Slowly, he softened inside her. Pulled out. She heard the condom being dealt with, the soft thud of the trash can lid.
He didn’t help her up. He didn’t gather her into his arms. He stepped back.
Ashley, her legs trembling, pushed herself upright. Her clothes were around her knees. She pulled them up, turned to face him. He was leaning against the bookshelf, watching her, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. The look in his eyes was complex—sated, but also haunted. The beast was back in its cage, but the cage door was swinging open.
He’d broken his own rule. The dam was breached.
The air in the study was thick with the smell of sex and sweat and something sharper, like ozone after a lightning strike. Ashley’s thighs were sticky, her knees weak. She watched him, waiting for the recoil, for him to rebuild the wall with a dismissive comment.
Carter pushed off the bookshelf. He crossed the two steps between them in a single, decisive movement. He didn’t speak. His hands came up, one cradling the back of her head, the other gripping her hip, pulling her into him.
Then he kissed her.
It wasn’t the cool, controlled press of his lips she was used to. It wasn’t a possessive claim or a prelude to an act. His mouth crashed down on hers, open and desperate, a raw, searching heat. He kissed her like he was drowning and her breath was his only air. His tongue swept into her mouth, a deeply intimate invasion that tasted of fury and surrender.
Ashley whimpered into the kiss, her hands flying to his shoulders, gripping the damp cotton of his t-shirt. She kissed him back with equal fervor, pouring every ounce of her confusion, her need, her own furious love into it. For a suspended minute, there was only this—the slick heat, the frantic press of bodies, the silent communication more profound than any command he’d ever given.
He broke the kiss as suddenly as he’d initiated it, but he didn’t let go. He rested his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling in ragged syncopation. His eyes were squeezed shut.
“You’re so fucking confusing,” he whispered, the words gritted out, pained. “You look at me with those eyes and you tell me I hurt you. You flinch.” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Then you come in here and you… you do that. You let me do that. You beg for it.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His gaze was blazing, utterly lost.
“You put up with me,” he said, the statement sounding like an accusation. “At the hotel. After. Now. You just… take it. You take me.” He shook his head slowly, a man confronting an unsolvable equation. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
Ashley’s heart hammered against her ribs. The room felt tilt on its axis. She reached up, her thumb tracing the fierce line of his jaw. “Carter,” she said, her voice quiet but clear in the charged stillness.
His eyes searched hers, waiting.
“I love you,” she said. It wasn’t a sigh. It wasn’t a whimper. It was a simple, devastating fact, laid bare between them on the scarred surface of his desk.
He went completely still. For a terrifying second, she saw nothing in his eyes but blank shock. Then a slow, profound wreckage gathered in his expression—a crumbling of every defense, every assumption.
“I don’t know what to do with that either,” he finally breathed, the words full of awe and terror.
From the front of the loft, the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock echoed down the hall. The deadbolt clacked. The door swung open with a familiar groan.
Dominic’s voice, artificially bright, cut through the spell. “Honey, I’m home! And I brought pizza. The kind with the weird mushrooms you like, Slo— oh.”
His footsteps halted in the living area. He’d seen the empty bedroom, sensed the charged silence radiating from the study. Ashley watched Carter’s eyes shutter closed, the vulnerable man vanishing behind a more familiar, guarded mask. He took a deliberate step back from her, his hands falling to his sides.
The moment was over. The world, with its pizza and its roommates and its unspoken rules, came crashing back in.
“We’re in here,” Carter called out, his voice remarkably steady, betraying nothing of the seismic shift that had just occurred. He ran a hand through his damp hair, a quick, composing gesture.
Ashley smoothed her t-shirt, her mind reeling. The confession hung in the air between them, a new, fragile truth neither of them knew how to hold.
Dominic appeared in the study doorway, a greasy pizza box in one hand. His sharp eyes took in the scene: Ashley’s flushed face, Carter’s too-casual lean against the desk, the overturned pen holder on the floor. A slow, knowing smile spread across his face.
“Working hard, I see,” Dominic said, his tone dripping with implication. He raised the pizza box. “Hungry?”