My CEO Wants Me In His Bed

Mara's POV "You're going!" Jasmine yanked the book out of my hands before I could stop her. "Jas, give it back." "Not until you agree to come to this party." "We all have exams coming up. Going to a f*****g frat party is a waste of time." "You'll get an A whether you study or not, and you know it. I'm the one who needs to be worried about mine, not you." She tossed the book onto my bed. "This isn't about grades, Mara. It's about getting connections that will help you land jobs when you're done with school." "Connections," I repeated, almost scoffing in response. "Sorry, Jaz. But I'm a first-class student, and I don't need connections to land me anything." But the expression on her face didn't change, nor did she look offended. "You're a scholarship student, Mara. Your certificate alone gets you a sales rep job somewhere around. But the people at that party? They can get you into the companies you actually dream about." I thought about it, and it somehow made sense. And I hated that she was right. "So I'm going to a frat party to network with people who could help me in the future, yeah?" "Exactly." She smiled like she had already won the argument. "Just networking." I should have known "just networking" meant a dress two sizes too short and a cat-face mask, since it was a masked frat party. "Jas, I feel ridiculous." How was one supposed to network when they were hiding their faces behind a mask? "You will feel invisible and in control. That's the point of the mask. You can take it off whenever you feel comfortable." She grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the noise. "Come on. Let's go find our people." Our people turned out to be Damien Voss, surrounded by the usual circle of students who worshipped him because his father owned the school. I turned to find something else to distract myself when his eyes found me first, and before I knew it, he was heading my way. "Are you lost, baby girl?" He reached for my hand to place a soft kiss on the back of it, and I instantly grew disgusted as I yanked my hand away from him. What the hell? "If this is how you pick up girls, you need serious help. This is pathetic," I snapped at once. His face shifted from smug to furious the second he recognized my voice. The same one that taunted him every single day. "Mara?" "Surprised?" I pulled off the mask and made sure to keep the smug expression on my face. "What the hell is Miss Goody Two-shoes doing here? You ran out of pages to read?" He attempted an insult, but as usual, I found his comebacks really pathetic. "Trust me, I would rather be anywhere else." I shook my head with a smile and flipped my long hair behind my back to act sassier. "But I'm not shocked that you are here. What else explains your grades? Oh wait, I forgot. Daddy's money fixes everything." "You b***h—" "Okay, okay!" Jasmine wedged herself between us as if she had been waiting for this exact moment. "Let's play something, guys. Truth or dare? It'll ease the tension between you both and bring us together as a class. We all need to be on each other's side since we're graduating soon, okay?" "I'm leaving," I said, already turning because I didn't want to spend another second around this pompous "Daddy's boy." "Scared, little miss?" Damien sneered behind me, stopping me cold in my tracks. "Scared we'll find out you slept your way up from the trash to get here?" My palm found his face the moment I turned around, and the slap resounded even over the loud music. "Don't you dare, Damien," I hissed, suddenly compelled to challenge him in whatever this game was all about. "Let's uncover how much of a lowlife you actually are, minus your father's money hiding it. Maybe your mother should have used a condom instead of letting your father finish inside her." I turned to Jasmine with a crooked smile on my face. "Let's play, Jaz." But I should have walked away instead... Every single round, the bottle landed on either Damien or me, and every single time, whoever spun the bottle always circled between Damien and me. In fact, they had turned it into dare or dare... "Kiss him." "Kiss her." It felt rigged. It was rigged! But by the time I realized it, I was too drunk to care, and Jasmine was guiding me down a hallway, whispering something into my ear that I couldn't fully hear over the ringing in my head. "Loosen up, Mara. Both of you need to." * A sharp voice startled me awake the next morning. "What the f**k are you doing in my bed, Mara?" My eyes snapped open, and Damien stood over me with blazing gray eyes that roamed up my body before I even realized that I was naked. I sat up too fast, felt the stickiness between my thighs, and looked up to find him wearing only a towel. Oh God. Was it what I was thinking? Did I just sleep with the enemy? "I didn't..." I swallowed, at a loss for words. What could I say in this situation? "Didn't what?" His voice was cold. "Didn't plan this? Didn't see an opportunity and take it?" "I was drunk, Damien!" I shot at him. "And you? You saw an opportunity to f**k me so you could add to your list of conquests?" "I'd rather swallow a spanner than let anyone know I touched your skin," he spat acidly. "But you? The scholarship girl gets drunk and ends up in my bed. How convenient." I stood, too angry to care that I was naked, too angry to care that his eyes dropped to my body before he caught himself. "You think I wanted this? I would rather rub my p***y on a cheese grater than let you touch me! Who says this wasn't your plan?" His jaw tightened. "And you think I would want to catch whatever you carry from wherever you crawled out of?" His eyes went cold. "Get out of my room, Mara. And if I ever see you again, I'll make sure you don't graduate. I'll have you thrown out of this school." "You wouldn't dare." "Watch me," he dared, his eyes turning colder as the seconds passed. I grabbed my clothes off his floor, hands shaking, and didn't stop moving until I was three hallways down, my mouth aching really badly and tasting slightly tangy. I realized, with disgust, shock, and hatred for myself, that my mouth had been on his d**k too. * Five years later, Ethan, my son's forehead was burning under my palm, and he was breathing in quick, shallow breaths... and I was helpless. I had no decent job to pay the bills or his hospital debt, and no certificate to prove I deserved a place in any company after I had been expelled for no good reason back in school. "Mom?" His voice cracked, and his eyes turned glossy with tears. "I don't feel good." Not today. Please, not today. I scooped him into my arms, not caring how I looked or the fact that I would be late for work yet again, and ran into the street to flag down a cab, praying the whole ride that I wasn't about to lose the only person who had ever made my entire life make sense. "Tell me where it hurts, baby," I whispered, rocking him and pressing kisses to his forehead. "My chest," he breathed, his voice fading. "It hurts, Mom." And his eyes rolled back before I could answer him.