Chapter 12 – Bellamy
BELLAMY
Imust have finally dozed off because suddenly, a piercing sound jolts me awake.
My room is dark, my mind cloudy and disoriented.
The sound comes again, and it takes me another half-second to realize it’s Zayer screaming.
Staggering out of bed, I stub my toe on my nightstand, cursing up a storm as pain shoots up my foot.
Shit, that hurts.
I hop to my door, Zayer’s cries becoming more urgent, and make it down the hall into his bedroom. He’s standing on his bed, tiny hands clutching the safety fence on the edge, eyes big and pouring tears.
“Little man, what is it? Did you have a bad dream?”
He doesn’t say anything, just continues to cry at whatever scared him, so I cross the room, ignoring my smarting toe, and pick him up.
“Shhh. It’s okay. It was just a bad dream.
Bad dreams never come true.” I sit us in the rocking chair and start to rock us both while he snuggles into me.
My hand makes circles on his back as he cries for a few minutes but quickly calms down.
I kiss the crown of his head. “Are you ready to go back to sleep?” I whisper when I think he’s mostly there.
He doesn’t reply, and after a few more rocks in the chair, I get up and carry him back to bed. Pulling the covers up and over his shoulders, I make sure he’s fully asleep.
“Sweet dreams, little prince.”
I turn to leave only to startle at the man in the doorway. The shirtless man.
Holy hell.
I knew Sebastian had a good body. I mean, you get hints of his musculature under his clothes, and then there’s the fact that he works out for at least an hour practically every day and occasionally goes on runs at night to burn off more energy so he can sleep.
But in nothing but low-slung pajama pants and sleep-tussled hair, he’s more than a king.
He’s a god.
Golden skin. Broad shoulders and muscular but not bulky arms. A smooth chest sweeping down into stacked bricks of abs. A trickle of dark hair beneath his belly button leading to the promised land, bracketed between two deep indents on either side that get lost in his pants.
I can’t stop staring.
And not only because I’ve never seen a better-looking man in my life.
It’s because it’s this man. The king. Powerful and commanding and bitter and cold.
Instinctively I knew he was mortal. I knew that beneath his beautiful cut-from-glass features and glacial eyes were flesh and blood and bone. But seeing him like this…
Heat rises through my body, and I wonder if he can see it on my face.
I don’t know how to make words come out.
My tongue is tied, and I can’t speak or move.
I frantically search my brain, trying to remember if I’m wearing something see-through and that’s why he’s staring so hard.
I’d look down to check, but I can’t tear myself away from him.
“Sebastian?” I finally question when he doesn’t move or speak.
“You’re bleeding.”
“What?” I practically squeak the word but somehow remember to whisper at the same time.
“Your toe. It’s bleeding.”
“Oh.” I glance down, and, yep, it certainly is. I had forgotten about it, but now that he brings it up, it starts to ache and throb. “I heard Zayer scream and got out of bed a bit too quickly.” I look back up at him. “Were you standing there the whole time?”
A nod. That’s it, but his expression is one I can’t read.
Broody and intense, yes, but there is something else there.
Something that makes it feel like the breath is being stolen from my lungs.
Our text chat from earlier swims to the forefront of my mind, and I blush instantly, still that girl with a silly, ill-placed crush on her sexy older boss.
A palpable pressure swirls the air. One that’s a bit too heavy for me to handle right now when I already feel vulnerable and exposed to him.
I move to brush past him, but he doesn’t shift from the doorway, not even as I advance.
I can feel the heat of his body, the smell of his skin.
I want to touch him. I want to look up into his eyes when I do, just so I can see what my touch does to him.
Would he be repulsed and push me away? Or would he be turned on and ask for more?
I clear my throat, anxious to leave this room and this man before I act on my thoughts. “I’ll go take care of it and I’ll clean up the mess I made on the floor in the morning.”
He shakes his head and takes my forearm to guide me down the hall, away from Zayer’s room.
He pulls me through an empty guest room until we’re in the bathroom.
The lights flip on, momentarily blinding me, and before I know what the hell is happening, he grasps my hips and lifts me.
A gasp flees my lungs as he sets me down on the gray stone counter.
“Wait here and do not move.”
Then he’s gone, and all I can do is blink after him, confused and turned on. I glance down and realize I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Not as short or as transparent as what I wore the first time he saw me like this, but it’s very obvious by the tightness of my nipples that I’m not wearing a bra.
I don’t bother covering up. I just force myself to take several slow, even breaths, and by the time I think I have my raging hormones and thoughts under control, he returns with a first aid kit in his hands. He didn’t put on a shirt, I notice.
He ignores me, something he’s professionally good at, as he sets the kit down and flips it open to remove the cleaning solution and a Band-Aid.
“I can do this myself.”
Nothing. No response, but it’s clear he’s not having that as his hand gently grasps my foot and holds it up so he can examine it. “Does it hurt?”
“A little,” I admit, though all I can feel at this moment is his hand on my foot. With more tenderness than I would have imagined him capable of, he presses around the wound, checking my expression each time. I’m staring at him, and I know he’s aware of it.
“This might sting. The cut doesn’t appear too deep. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”
“Okay.” I don’t care in the slightest.
He fills a gauze pad with freaking rubbing alcohol and presses it to my wound, and, yeah, that does fucking sting. I hiss out a breath and close my eyes, turning my face away from him.
“Oh come on,” he teases. “I thought you were tougher than that.”
Jerk. I smile. “You want me to slice open your toe and pour rubbing alcohol on it and see how much you like it?”
“I could find some lemon juice instead.”
I laugh because that was actually funny and because I know he’s trying to distract me from the pain.
I open my eyes and look at him. He’s smirking at me.
And fuck, with him this close to me, shirtless, smiling at me as he takes care of me…
I don’t stand a chance of not falling for him.
My heart is already beating so wildly in my chest, anxious to tear through my body and leap into his.
All I know is that I’m in so much trouble.
“How about we forego the torture and bandage me up instead?”
“Whatever you desire.”
And no, he did not just say that to me. Gah! “I like this look on you.”
His eyes snap up from my toe to mine, eyebrow raised. “And what look is that?”
I raise my eyebrow in return. “Are you fishing for me to tell you I like you without your shirt on?”
“Are you flirting with me again? You agreed not to flirt if I gave you the library.”
“Or sext.”
His gaze drops back to my foot, and shit. Why did I have to bring that up? I mentally roll my eyes at myself.
“Consider it a distraction technique then,” I say, redirecting us. “But I notice you didn’t put one on.”
“You were in here bleeding. I can go and grab one if that would make you more comfortable.”
“I already told you I like it. Why would I want you to go and do that?”
He makes a low noise deep in his throat and gets back to work on my toe. I study his face, each one of his handsome features, and instead of flirting, I ask the questions I’ve wanted answered for a month.
“Do you still wish I wasn’t working here?”
His hand on my foot freezes for a moment before he continues cleaning it. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“Because you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Because you think I’m not doing a good job with your children?”
“As much as it pains me to admit this, I think you’re doing an excellent job with my children.”
A giddy flutter takes flight within me. Like drunk butterflies tickling me with their wings. It’s like we’re picking up where we left off earlier, only this is face-to-face. Far more intimate here in the small bathroom, just the two of us.
“You’ve just made me so happy by saying that.”
He frowns and I laugh.
“Don’t frown, Your Majesty. I’m serious. You have no idea what you telling me that means to me. But please, you don’t have to ignore me. It makes caring for the children difficult sometimes. I can behave myself.”
“Can you?” he challenges, and it’s yet another legit question.
“I have this past month, have I not?”
“Until tonight, you mean, yes.”
“I didn’t set out to text you that way.”
He sighs—a heavy, deep, resigned sigh. He knows I won’t drop it, and right now, he’s my captive audience as he unwraps the Band-Aid.
“You know why I have to ignore you,” he says plainly.
“Not fully.” I follow the veining of the stone counter with my finger. “If I’m behaving myself as I already mentioned, then I can only hypothesize why without knowing for sure.”
He wraps the brown bandage around my big toe and sets my foot down, pinning me with a stare meant to scare and intimidate while appearing bored, but his eyes aren’t selling it.
He feels this, too.
“And what is your hypothesis?”
“That you like the way I look just as much as I like the way you look, and you don’t like that you do.”
He laughs bitterly. “If only it were that simple. Yes, I like the way you look. Because you are this.” He pans his hand up and down my body. “Because you are a rare and beautiful creature to me.” He scowls, likely at himself for admitting this, and goes about cleaning up the mess he made.
Only it’s too late. His words are more potent than any drug as they flow through my body, filling me with such euphoria I’m positive I’ll never come down.
“I want you to tell me why it’s not so simple.
I want to ask if you think about me. And what those thoughts are.
I want to know every dirty thought about me that enters your mind.
But I’m scared of what will happen if I do.
You’ll either fire me and tell me to go, or you’ll tell me, and I’ll want more. ”
“Christ, Bellamy. The fucking mouth on you. This is why I ignore you. You don’t know the fire you’re playing with.” He swears in Latin, his head falling back as he breathes out through his nose. His chin drops, his expression strong and vulnerable all at once.
“Fire is beautiful because it is dangerous and wild and forbidden and nearly impossible to contain.”
His hands fall to the counter on either side of me, his face dipping closer, his chest nearly touching me. “Is this some sort of game to you? You’re not the first nanny to walk through my palace to try to fuck your way to my heart or my crown when it is neither you will possess.”
That’s a slap to the face.
I look away. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
I don’t even know what I’m trying to do.
I’m poking at him when I shouldn’t be. I know it all too well.
I want him, but I can’t have him. Not really.
Not the way I would want him. He is the king.
My boss. He’s fifteen years older than me, and I’m simply the nanny.
He’d fuck me or he wouldn’t. Either way, I would be ruined.
So, I force myself to get some control. To push us back to where we should be. Where I need us to be.
“It’s not a game, and I am not trying to fuck my way to either,” I say, forcing myself to look at him once more, even if it hurts. “It’s merely an attraction I’m not the best at hiding. Maybe because it’s the first one I’ve ever had, I don’t know.”
That admission seems to shock him, but I don’t let him challenge me on it.
My eyes hold his. “Be that as it may, I don’t want to leave your children.”
“I don’t want you to, either.”
“Other than tonight, I feel like this last month went well. We kept our distance and that’s fine.
Distance is fine. But I can’t have you ignoring me.
I need to feel comfortable going to you if I have an issue with one of the children.
I need to be able to communicate with you and give you updates.
If this is to work between all of us, we have to find a common footing. Pardon the pun.”
He laughs, and some of the tension between us ebbs. Not all of it. Every molecule in the air is charged between us. There is attraction here. He’s trying to fight it harder than I have been, and he’s right to do so.
“The part of me that likes how you look and thinks about you is why I’ve been ignoring you.
I haven’t figured out how to be around you yet, and I admit that’s my problem.
But you’re right. I’m being immature. So I’ll try.
You’ve been trying, but I haven’t been as good at it as you are. Tonight notwithstanding.”
“It’s a shame. I’ll admit, flirting with you was the second-best part of my day, behind being with your children,” I tell him only to raise my hand, stopping his rebuttal so I can finish. “I’ll keep to my word. And I won’t be so…sexual with you again. I apologize if that was unprofessional.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.”
Only he’s closer to me now. Standing between my legs that are somehow parted, right up against the V of my thighs.
His face dips even closer to mine. I can feel his breath against my lips, and for the briefest of seconds, I think he’s going to kiss me, only for his nose to glide up along the line of my jaw, inhaling as he moves up to my ear.
I shudder and suck in a breath, and I feel him smile against my skin when he hears and feels it.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t ask me to tell you all the dirty thoughts I have about you. Because not only would I have told you, I would have shown you.”
He leaves me with that, walking out of the room, a cocky fucking smirk on his lips.
“Jerk,” I call after him, only to hear his chuckle.
I sit here for a few moments, dumbstruck. Holy hell. That seriously just happened. My shirtless boss bandaged my toe and told me he has dirty thoughts about me. And that if I had pressed just a little more, he would have shown me exactly what they are.
I pant out a breath and spin around to face my reflection in the mirror. I’m flushed and smiling and have no idea how I’m going to be able to stick to the truce we just made.