Chapter Nine – Chelsea
My eyes fluttered open, and I glanced around, forgetting for a moment where I was. I could hear a slow, steady breathing beside me, and my brain tried to register what it might have meant.
Had I woken up in the bed of some college boy after a one-night stand? No, it wasn’t that. I had finished college. This was something else entirely...
And when I flipped over and saw the man lying next to me, my heart skipped several beats. Fuck. I remembered now.
I’d had sex with Zane last night.
The memories all came flooding back to me at once, and my cheeks heated at the thought of it all. God, it had been hot. Really, really fucking hot. The kind of hot that I knew I was going to need a repeat performance as soon as possible. His cock moving inside of me, his tongue in my mouth, his breath on my skin, it was the kind of need I wasn’t sure I had ever felt from any man before, like he was totally and utterly lost to me and couldn’t imagine anything other than being this close to me.
And now... now, I supposed, he was. He was lying right there in bed beside me, fast asleep, hand on his stomach where his shirt had ridden up. I gazed at him for a moment, taking him in. He was so hot. There was no denying it when I was this close up to him and his face seemed a little softer while he was asleep, like he wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders any longer.
And then, as I lay there, something struck me. My eyes slid toward the door and widened when I realized—it was unlocked.
Oh, shit. Shit. The door was open. In the rush of everything that had happened last night, he had forgotten to close it behind him. And now, he was out for the count, lying next to me... I could have slipped out of bed and made a break for it, and he wouldn’t have known a thing about it.
Before I could think twice, I swung my legs out of the bed and planted them on the floor below. I was half-dressed from our encounter the night before, but I scrabbled to grab my clothes as quietly as I could, pulling them on, stealing glances over my shoulder to make sure he hadn’t noticed what I was in the middle of. I could feel my heart thrumming in my chest, but I ignored it. If I was going to get out, I had to do it now, while he was asleep...
And, as I moved toward the door, picking my way over the floorboards I knew were the creakiest, I found myself slowing slightly. Of course, I should have been getting out of here. I knew that. I should have been putting as much distance between myself and this man as possible while I had the chance, and yet...
I turned to look at him, sprawled out in bed where I had left him, his head twisted to one side so that it caught the light pouring in through the window. It dappled against his skin, and I felt the tips of my fingers tingle at the thought of touching it, feeling him against me.
No matter what he had done to bring us together in the first place, there was a part of me that was intrigued by Zane, a part of me that wanted to know what he was capable of and why he had gone so far to bring me to this point in the first place. I planted a hand on the door and tried to will myself to walk. I didn’t know when, if ever, I would get a chance like this again, and I would have been stupid to hold back and wait on him to wake up. Even he would probably be surprised if he came to and found me still there when I could have just run.
I glanced at the takeout packages on the floor. He didn’t need to feed me. He could have just left me in here, locked up, with nothing, but he hadn’t. There was goodness in him, I was sure of that. My mind flashed to him handing me the coffee the other day, his silent awareness of what I needed…
I had to admit that I didn’t want to leave him. Not really. Not when what we had shared last night had been so good. That kind of connection, I knew it wasn’t easy to find out there in the real world, and if I walked away from it now, there was no guarantee that I would ever be able to find it again.
Fuck! Was I really going to do this? I stared at him and then made my way back over to the bed, slipping back beneath the covers, hoping he couldn’t tell what had just gone on inside my head while I had been standing in the doorway.
As though woken by the feel of the movement beside him, he lifted his head from the pillow and turned to face me. His eyes were a little bleary, but they snapped open when he realized where he was. He looked over toward the door, making sure, no doubt, that I hadn’t tried to flee.
“Hey,” I greeted him softly. God, please don’t tell me I’ve made a huge mistake in staying...
“Hi,” he shot back gruffly. His voice seemed strained, somehow, like he didn’t want to talk to me. After what we had done last night, didn’t he owe me at least that?
He moved to get out of bed, and I sat up behind him, reaching for his arm. We needed to talk. I had to speak to him about what happened. He couldn’t just expect me to play it off like it was nothing. What we had done, it was crazy and probably reckless and probably stupid, but I needed him to assure me that it hadn’t been the worst mistake I had ever made in my life.
He shook me off without a word. My stomach dropped. Oh, shit. This wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. He clearly didn’t give a damn about me now that he’d gotten what he wanted, maybe even regretted what we had done before. But I could remember how he had looked when he was moving inside of me, how his eyes had burned into mine like he was branding me from the inside out. He couldn’t have just forgotten about that, could he?
“Zane,” I murmured to him, and he half-turned, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
“What is it?” he demanded coldly. I felt like I was going to throw up. Just a few moments ago, I’d had the chance to get out of here. I could have run the moment the chance had laid itself out in front of me, but I hadn’t. I had stayed because I had been stupid enough to convince myself that he could feel at least some of the connection that I had sensed last night.
“Nothing,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to force this out of him. If he wanted to act an asshole about it, I would let him. I had never been the kind of girl who would beg for a man’s attention, and I wasn’t going to start now.
He grunted and rose from the bed. I could hardly even look at him as he went, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. I blinked them away angrily, not wanting him to see how much he had gotten to me. Showing any kind of emotion right now felt like a risk, something he could use against me, if he wanted to. And he would.
That was the kind of man he was.
He pulled on his pants where he had kicked them off to the floor last night, and I stared at that one loose thread on the covers, picking at it over and over again. It gave me something to focus on other than the feeling of hurt stirring in my guts right now. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob and weep and throw myself at him and tell him that I could have run, but I didn’t, and wasn’t that something? Didn’t that mean anything to him?
But I was sure he would just double down on security if he knew I’d come so close to getting out, and if this was the way he was acting, I was going to need every chance I got to flee from here.
He closed the door behind him, leaving me in this silence once more, with nothing but the painful doubt that clung to my mind hanging over my head and the terror that I had made the wrong choice when I could have left.
Even if I knew there was something about this man that would keep me coming back for more, whether I wanted it or not.