Chapter 9 #3
My breath catches, the intimacy of his restraint warming something deep in my chest. I reach for his injured hand, holding it gently as I dab the rag over his knuckles. He inhales sharply, not a groan, not a grunt, just a tight breath he swallows down to keep from reacting further.
His eyes fall half-lidded, not from desire, but from pain and effort. The proximity between us stretches thin, taut like thread.
“So why were you near the pub?” I ask again softly, refusing to let the question slip away a second time.
This time, he doesn’t dodge it.
But he also doesn’t give me everything.
His eyes lift to mine, darker than before.
“I told you,” he says quietly. “I needed to clear my head.”
A pause.
Small.
Loaded.
“And then I saw you.”
He looks away quickly, as if he’s said more than he intended, and is already regretting it.
“Sebastian-” I try to breathe out his name, but the air catches somewhere between my ribs and throat.
His hands react before his expression does.
The faintest tightening around my waist, nothing overt, nothing demanding, just a reflexive pull as though the sound of my voice has reached some instinct in him he’s trying, and failing, to suppress.
The heat of his palms anchors me, a steadiness I shouldn’t want, shouldn’t cling to, but my breath stutters under the weight of his nearness.
Then a sharp crash ruptures the thin spell between us.
A tray table collapses onto the floor, the echo startling and metallic.
Instinct breaks whatever fragile line we’d been toeing.
We separate too quickly, stumbling backward as though distance might erase what the room nearly caught between us.
My breath drags harshly through my lungs.
Sebastian is flushed, not dramatically, but enough that a deep crimson creeps along his cheekbones, the kind of color a man tries to hide rather than flaunt.
My own face feels hot enough to burn straight through my skin.
My blouse hangs crooked from where his hands had steadied me, one side slipping low enough to expose the white bra I’d thrown on in a half-conscious rush earlier. I yank the fabric up, heat prickling across my neck. I don’t know why it matters, but the vulnerability of it does.
Trevor stands in the doorway.
Not approaching. Not apologizing. Watching.
His head tilts just slightly to one side, as if examining something under glass.
His expression is unreadable at first, but the longer his eyes flick between Sebastian and me, the more something ugly twists over his features.
He rights the fallen side table with a flick of his wrist, wand still extended from the spell he must’ve used to open the door.
There is no mistaking it. He walked in on purpose.
And he saw everything.
Before I can find words, before I can even decide whether I owe him any, Sebastian is already shrugging into his robe, the fabric whispering across the floor as he fastens the front with practiced precision.
My own robe materializes over my shoulders with a swift, deft movement of his hands, the gesture surprisingly gentle despite the tension vibrating off him.
I turn toward Trevor, ready to offer… something. An explanation. An apology. A lie. I’m not sure which.
“Trevor, I didn’t mean...”
He cuts me off with a raised hand, though the gesture is anything but polite.
“I didn’t expect you,” he says, voice dripping with bitterness, “to be like every whore in this school and go for him.”
The words land too sharply. My stomach flips, hurt, humiliation, anger, all tangled into a single tight knot. Sebastian goes still beside me. Utterly, dangerously still.
Trevor doesn’t stop.
“I mean, really,” he continues, sneering, “I’m sure you’d love to know what it’s like to be bedded by a Vespera-”
“Silence your tongue,” Sebastian says.
His voice is cold. Not shouting. Not growling.
Just carved from something sharp enough to cut bone.
I grab his arm instinctively, fingers tightening hard enough that I feel the tense coil of muscle beneath his sleeve.
His wand is already in his other hand, knuckles white around the polished hilt.
He looks less like a boy and more like something cornered, dangerous not because he’s losing control, but because he’s working too hard to keep it.
Trevor laughs.
“Wow,” he taunts, “Sebastian Harwood being stopped by a woman? For that to happen, she must have the prettiest little-”
“Don’t finish that,” Sebastian warns, his voice dropping into a register that feels like a tremor under my feet.
Trevor’s smile turns wolfish.
He has no idea what he’s provoking.
Or worse, he does.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Sebastian says, and this time the threat is not subtle. Not masked. It hangs between them like a drawn blade.
Trevor lifts his chin, eyes narrowing. “I’m counting on it. Because if you lay one finger on me, I get to show everyone exactly what you’ve been hiding.”
Sebastian freezes.
Not out of fear.
Out of recognition.
Trevor grins. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. Your secret is safe… for now. But the moment I decide-”
“What secret?” I ask, but Trevor doesn’t look at me.
“They’re up here!” he shouts gleefully, pointing toward the stairwell as footsteps thunder closer.
Both Sebastian and I go rigid.
Trevor doesn’t wait to see what happens next. With a sharp flick of his wand, he casts a dissipation charm and vanishes in a swirl of golden smoke, cowardly, leaving the aftermath in our hands.
The door bursts open moments later. Liam enters first, his expression shifting instantly from panic to bafflement. Theo follows, his posture rigid, his pale eyes flitting between us with practiced sensitivity.
“Since when do you two get along?” Liam asks, his voice far too observant.
Sebastian and I exchange a look, brief and sharp.
Theo’s mouth curves into a slow, knowing smile when he finally reaches the doorway.
“I guess you weren’t too busy for us after all, Sebastian,” Theo says, crossing his arms.
The entire room feels poised on the edge of something fragile, a truth, a secret, a shift neither of us is ready to name.