Caleb didn’t think. He couldn’t really process thought. Just knew something had happened that couldn’t be good.

After a few minutes, Kelly rolled the window back up. Gave him a fleeting, embarrassed look and shifted back to lean against the seat. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Felt sick all of a sudden.”

Caleb had known that and thought he knew why, but he was still trying to avoid admitting it. “Do you need something?”

Kelly was trembling now—violently, helplessly. Her teeth were actually chattering. “No. I must have just…eaten something bad.”

It was a flimsy excuse. And Caleb was only occasionally a fool.

He knew it wasn’t true.

He felt stupidly helpless all of a sudden. He had absolutely no idea what to do.

“Do you want something to drink?” he offered, feeling that same nauseating heaviness in his stomach and on top of it a tearing ache in his chest. She looked so small, so fragile, so incredibly miserable. And he had somehow made her so.

“I wouldn’t say no to a ginger ale or something,” she murmured, hugging her arms across her chest, as if she were now cold.

It was the most bizarre shift of mood and experience. Caleb had been primally roused. Then in a frenzy of lust and dominance.

And now all of a sudden he felt ill—almost as ill as she looked—and the air in the car felt cold and thick and heavy.

Caleb leaned over to check the compartment in the car where there were usually some drinks stocked. “No ginger ale,” he said. “Just a couple of Cokes.”

“That would be great. Thanks.” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Sorry about this.”

Caleb felt like someone had kicked him in the gut, but didn’t say anything as he pulled out a can of Coke, opened it, and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, taking a sip and looking oddly young and vulnerable. Almost like a little girl—which made Caleb wonder how he’d just been fucking her so roughly a few minutes ago.

He stared at her for another minute, trying to push all the unsettling experiences of this evening to the back of his mind.

The worst thing he’d ever done—years ago now—coming back to haunt him.

Kelly, ghost white and trembling, because she’d let him fuck her.

When she obviously hadn’t wanted him.

He shrugged off the jacket of his tux because he couldn’t stand how violently she was shivering, and he wrapped it around her shoulders, pulled her against him, and waited to see if she’d pull away in disgust or in fear.

She didn’t. She just huddled against him, shivering.

Caleb could feel his own stomach churning and tried to process something—anything—that was happening here.

After an extended stretch of dead silence, he finally forced out, “Why did you let me do that?”

Kelly gasped and turned to look up at him. “I wanted it,” she insisted, her eyes wide and innocent. “It was good. I just got…carsick or something.”

Another pitiful excuse. Not even worth countering.

“Why did you let me do that?” he demanded again.

She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring straight in front of her, seeing…nothing, as far as he knew. “I wanted it,” she repeated blankly. “I asked for it.”

“Why?”

A long pause. Then, “I’d never had sex in the back of a car before.”

“Kelly,” Caleb rasped, wishing he could just shake the truth out of her lips. “Why?”

She let out a long sigh. “I don’t know,” she admitted in a defeated tone. “I just did.”

Caleb closed his eyes, slammed with a wave of dizziness, which was an absurd reaction to something like this. His response to this entire encounter had been far more extreme than it should have been.

Yes, he’d fucked her roughly, but she had asked him to. If she hadn’t wanted it, then it was her responsibility to tell him rather than egg him on. True—their fucking had obviously been upsetting to her, but it wasn’t really his fault and shouldn’t make him feel so off-kilter. But it did.

Despite his attempt to deny it, the truth was threatening to level him anyway. Kelly had begged him to fuck her—but not because she’d wanted it. She hadn’t wanted it, and yet she’d taken it, encouraged it, demanded more.

Let him use her.

She’d been punishing herself. Through him. The truth Caleb hadn’t wanted to admit.

He knew she’d had a bad relationship with some Albanian gangster in the past and that she was still working through it. Maybe it had something to do with that, but it felt more personal than that.

“It’s not your fault,” Kelly added, evidently reading guilt on his expression. “It was my choice. I asked for it. How could you have known differently?”

He had known. Subconsciously. Instinctively. He had known, but he’d ignored it because his other urges had been so strong.

At this silent admission, Caleb sucked in an urgent breath and then reached down to grab another Coke, this one for himself. He took a long swallow, hoping it would settle his stomach.

Kelly kept huddling next to him, so small and fragile that he incongruously felt like a big, hulking, clumsy Neanderthal. “It’s not that big a deal, anyway,” she mumbled. “You didn’t hurt me or anything. I just wasn’t as into it as I’d expected.”

And suddenly Caleb was angry with her. For making him feel like this. For causing him to question himself. For shaking the sure foundations of his universe over the course of the last weeks. “You might have considered how it would make me feel to fuck you when you didn’t want it. I’m not in the habit of being with women who are unwilling.”

Kelly opened her mouth, as if she were going to immediately respond. Then she snapped it shut and sipped her Coke in silence for a few minutes.

When she finally did respond, it wasn’t at all what Caleb had expected. “Are you so sure about that?”

It took him a few moments to piece together her question with the last thing he’d said. But when he had, he bristled defensively. “Are you suggesting—”

“No,” Kelly interrupted, sounding more tired than anything else now. “I know you would never take someone without consent or anything. That’s not what I was implying. I just meant, are you so sure that you’re always with women who want to be with you?”

Caleb was nearly as offended by this remark as he’d been by her earlier one. “Every woman I’ve been with has come to me willingly.”

“I know,” Kelly acknowledged softly. “But have they really wanted you?”

Caleb had been about to argue some more, but something about her question struck him. It didn’t convince him, but it made an impact on him. He sat for a moment and thought about it.

Then Kelly continued, before he could work out a response, “Have you ever hired a prostitute?”

“Call girls,” Caleb said. “Yes. But that’s a business transaction, and those women received as much as they provided.”

Kelly’s voice was faint as she prompted, “And they…wanted to be with you?”

Caleb jerked away, a jolt of resentment shooting through his chest at what he took to be her implication. “Yes. I’m careful about the services I used. Every woman who was sent to me was there willingly and was justly compensated.”

“I believe you. Although I’m not sure you can be one hundred percent sure about the kinds of choices most women living in those situations have. But anyway, that’s not really my point. They fuck you for the money. Not because they want to be with you.”

This was undeniably true.

“And all those other women you fucked over the years,” Kelly continued, her voice almost gentle but somehow functioning as a weapon Caleb couldn’t avoid.

“What about them?” he asked thickly. “They were all willing. Most of them came on to me. You aren’t really going to suggest that women don’t have the ability to make a conscious, informed choice about whom they have sex with.”

“I’m not talking about choice,” she said, her trembling finally starting to ease. “Every woman chose to be with you. I’m talking about something else. And are you going to suggest that every single one of those women you fucked for the night and then paid off with some offensive, expensive trinket wanted that experience? And did they actually want you for you? And not for your wealth, your power, or something else you could give them?”