CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
It shattered with a single sound.
A click.
Sharp. Metallic. Wrong.
My eyes flew open. Steam blurred the edges of the room, turning the marble into shifting ghosts. But the sound came again, undeniable. The distinct rasp of a lock being compromised, undone, overridden.
His lock.
My breath lodged in my throat. I sat up in the tub, water lapping at my ribs, bubbles sliding off my shoulders as if they too sensed danger.
The doorknob turned with slow, merciless certainty.
No. No.
The door swung inward.
And Riley stepped through the steam like he had been carved from it.
For a heartbeat, I could not breathe. He filled the doorway in nothing but black boxer briefs, the rest of him bare, unapologetic, and devastatingly real.
Sweat clung to the ends of his hair, darkening it, sending droplets sliding down the columns of muscle that formed his chest. His skin glowed in the heat, golden and damp, every line of him sharpened by the contrast of shadow and light.
I had never seen him fully. Not like this.
Not unarmored.
My gaze betrayed me before I could leash it.
It dragged downward over the cut lines of his abdomen, the sculpted dip at his hips, the hard, impossible breadth of his shoulders.
His body looked like someone had drawn it with a ruler and then softened it with sin, all strength and temptation wrapped in careless male confidence.
He was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at.
Dangerous in a way that made my pulse misfire.
A storm in human shape.
Heat crawled up my throat, blooming beneath my skin. I tried to pull the water higher, to shield myself, but it clung to me, too transparent, too loyal to gravity.
Riley’s eyes found me instantly.
They swept over me not like a boy seeing a girl in a bath, but like a predator marking what already belonged to him. Slow. Deliberate. Unhurried. His gaze touched places he had not touched, igniting them like struck matches.
He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, completely at ease with the fact that he was nearly naked in my sanctuary.
Completely at ease with the fact that I was not.
A faint smile ghosted over his mouth, knowing, sharp, hungry.
“Lost your words, princess?” he asked, voice low but not soft. He was not close enough to touch me, but his presence alone felt like a hand sliding beneath my skin. “You look… mesmerized.”
I wasn’t.
I couldn’t be.
I refused to be.
And yet my heart thundered like my body had already answered him.
He stepped farther into the bathroom, steam wrapping around him as if even the heat wanted a piece of him, wanted him to stay.
For the first time, I understood the true danger of Riley Maddox.
Not his threats.
Not his cruelty.
Not even his games.
But this.
The fact that he could walk into a room like this and my body forgot how to defend itself.
He took another step into the steam-swathed room, and something in the air shifted. A subtle tightening. A warning without a sound.
His eyes flicked past me.
To the marble counter.
To the one thing I had stupidly, recklessly forgotten to hide.
My phone.
Sitting right there beside the sink like a waiting confession.
His expression did not change. Not a flicker. But something sharpened in his gaze, a predator scenting movement in the underbrush. He crossed the room with slow, measured steps that echoed faintly against the marble.
I froze, every muscle suspended between dread and defiance.
He reached the counter.
Then picked up the phone without hesitation.
A simple claiming.
“You’re not even trying to hide your phone from me,” he murmured, thumb brushing over the black screen. “Interesting.”
I said nothing.
My silence felt like a noose tightening.
He tapped the button. The phone lit up. His thumb dragged confidently across the screen, entering the code he had already stolen from me.
It unlocked without a fight.
Just like I did when he pushed hard enough.
He scrolled.
Calm, efficient, methodical.
My pulse hammered against my ribs, but I made no move to stop him. There was no point. I had already erased the messages that mattered. The conversation that could damn me. The evidence I refused to let him weaponize.
All he would find now were the messages he had seen before. The harmless ones. The useless ones. The ones with no teeth.
His jaw flexed.
Barely.
But I saw it.
A tiny fracture in his composure, an irritation he did not bother to hide.
“You cleaned house,” he said softly.
Not a question.
A realization.
A warning threaded in velvet.
His thumb hovered over the screen, scrolling through nothing of value, nothing incendiary, nothing he could use to twist me further.
His eyes lifted to mine, dark and unamused.
“Busy little liar,” he murmured. “Deleting the fun before I get to see it.”
The tub felt colder suddenly. The air thinner.
But I still didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
Not with his body dripping like that, not with my pulse betraying me, not with the weight of his gaze anchoring me in the water.
Then he turned fully toward me, the lines of his body sharp and merciless under the slowly setting sunlight.
“And here I thought,” he added, his tone dropping into something dark and edged with curiosity, “you’d be smart enough to know that the smoke you hide only makes me want to find the fire.”
My breath stilled.
He took a single step closer and angled the screen toward himself, thumb moving with lazy precision as he returned his attention to it.
A beat of silence stretched, long enough to turn the steam heavy in my lungs while it wrapped around him like worship.
Then his brows lifted.
Just a fraction.
But enough to tell me he had found entertainment.
A slow, amused breath left him.
He almost smiled.
“Well,” he murmured, eyes skimming the screen as though reading a menu, “your friends are… enthusiastic.”
My stomach knotted hard enough to ache. I had completely forgotten to look at their messages.
His voice dropped into something smooth and mocking as he read aloud, savoring every word:
“He sounds really bad… in a good way.”
His gaze flicked to me, lingering. “Charming.”
He kept scrolling.
“Have you two hooked up yet?”
One eyebrow arched. “Bold assumption.”
Another swipe.
“Sex with your hot new stepbrother? Damn, that’s kinky.”
A quiet hum left him. “They certainly root for chaos.”
My face burned. My fingers gripped the edge of the tub as if I could hold myself underwater until he disappeared.
But he continued, unhurried.
“Maybe he has a girlfriend.”
His jaw tightened in a way that didn’t match his tone. “How concerned.”
Another message popped up under his thumb.
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend, right?”
He didn’t look at me, but the air tightened all the same.
Then the next.
“There were no girls on his insta.”
He let out a low exhale, somewhere between a laugh and a warning. “They’ve been investigating. How thorough.”
And finally, the last one.
“Lulu, answer!!!”
He set the phone against his palm, tapping the screen lightly with his thumb, amused, curious, too entertained for my sanity.
Then he lifted his gaze to mine.
“I did not realize,” he said softly, “that your entire social circle considers you the protagonist of a forbidden little saga.”
I couldn’t breathe.
He stepped closer to the tub.
Not touching.
But close enough that the steam curled toward him, drawn like everything else.
“Tell me,” he asked, voice silk-wrapped danger, “were you ever planning to answer them?”
My pulse thrashed.
Because I didn’t know the answer.
My throat tightened. Every possible truth I wanted to tell Sienna and Chiara gathered behind my teeth. Every frantic heartbeat, every terrifying moment with him, every twisted jolt of attraction I refused to name.
But I couldn’t tell them any of it.
Not with Riley standing here.
Not when he could read every word I sent the moment it left my fingers.
So I swallowed the truth, forced my voice steady, and told him quietly, “No. I wasn’t going to answer.”
His head tilted.
A predator making sense of wounded prey.
“No?” he echoed softly. “Shame. They seem desperate for details.”
His thumb hovered over my phone screen, tapping lightly as if testing the weight of temptation.
Then his eyes lifted to mine, dark and sharp with something that was not kindness.
“Well,” he murmured, “if you cannot answer under the circumstances…” His smile, slow, sinful, knowing, deepened. “…it looks like I should answer them for you.”
My pulse stuttered.
A cold slash of dread cut through the warmth of the bath.
“Do whatever you think you have to,” I forced out, trying to sound indifferent, unbothered, perfectly in control.
But the moment the words left my mouth, his grin sharpened.
It was not a smile.
It was a blade.
“That,” he said softly, “was an invitation you should not have given me.”
My stomach dropped, a clean, sickening plunge.
Because I realized it an instant too late.
Realized what I had given him.
Permission.
Not in words, but in the absence of resistance.
Permission for chaos.
Permission for humiliation.
Permission for him to author the story my friends would now believe.
And he knew it.
He stood there in nothing but black boxer briefs, steam ghosting over his skin, one hand holding my phone like a loaded threat.
His grin widened, wicked and certain.
“Let’s make this interesting, princess.”