Inescapable

Chapter 7

“Come on,” Trystan said a while later. “We’re turning into prunes. Some time in the sauna, stretches, and you’ll feel much better.”

“I already feel better, thank you,” she said, the words stilted and overly polite. “The sauna might not be necessary.”

His brow pleated and he shook his head.

“No, you’ll likely stiffen up again once your muscles cool down. Trust me on this, I’ve had to deal with this type of pain enough times while bulking up for roles.”

Iris hesitated for a few seconds before nodding and pushing to her feet. He helped her out of the pool and led her to the sauna, handing her a thick white towel at the entrance.

“You should strip out of the wet bikini,” he said, his eyes flicking down over her body as he spoke. “Wrap yourself in this.”

“But I’ll be naked.” She sounded like an outraged old maid, but she couldn’t help herself.

His lips twitched with what looked suspiciously like humor and he lifted his closed fist to his mouth and coughed—laughed?—before speaking. “Not naked. You’ll be wearing the towel.”

“Are you coming in as well?”

“I am.”

“But…” Her protest petered out beneath the weight of his penetrative stare.

“I assure you, you’ll be perfectly safe with me, Miss Hughes.”

God, she’d been here for two days and this man had already seen her fully—and near—naked three times. He might be quite at home with casual nudity, but that wasn’t her. She’d never nonchalantly slip out of her clothing in front of someone who was essentially a stranger to her, and she didn’t care if he found that gauche or naive. They inhabited very different universes and had very different ideas of what constituted normal.

And did he really have to keep reminding her that he had no interest in her? Okay, she was fair enough to acknowledge that maybe it was his way of reassuring her, since she tended to get all hysterical every time this naked shit happened. But couldn’t he reassure her by saying stuff like, “While I find you irresistible, Miss Hughes, I will manfully abstain from touching you! Even though it pains me to do so!”?

She smothered a giggle at the preposterous thought but it was a welcome distraction from her current awkward reality.

“Fine,” she blurted out, fighting back a blush as she snatched the towel from him. “But you’re going to have to turn around.”

He folded his arms over his chest and turned, presenting her with a fine view of his gorgeous, muscular back and that famous perfect arse.

She allowed herself a hypocritical moment of gawking before hastily wrapping the towel around her body and attempting to slide out of her wet bikini. She made it harder on herself by trying to shimmy out of the wet costume from beneath the towel, but after a few minutes of struggling, and soft cursing, she was free of the bathing suit.

“Can I turn around?”

“Uh, yes. Okay.” Her face was bright red from exertion and embarrassment and she was panting from the rigorous activity. He turned and gave her a leisurely inspection, forcing her to clutch the towel even tighter over her chest.

His stare dropped to the pink and white bits of wet fabric and string she held clutched in one hand.

“You can toss those in the laundry basket,” he said, tilting his chin toward a bamboo hamper she hadn’t noticed beside the sauna door.

“Thanks.”

Her eyes didn’t know where to focus—he had so much gleaming golden skin on display—and she didn’t want to be caught staring. Not after making such a fuss about her own nudity. It had been easier in the spa when he’d been submerged up to his clavicles. Now that body, which had had millions of women swooning after a full-frontal nude scene in his last movie, was fully on display in all its ridiculous magnificence.

He grabbed another—smaller—towel from the shelves next to the hamper and—without warning—turned away from her, hooked his thumbs into the sides of his wet board shorts, and unceremoniously tugged them down over that perfectly sculpted butt. He bent at the waist as he dragged them down past his thighs to his knees before he stepped out of them and picked them up.

Iris, who’d made a choking sound as soon as she’d understood what was happening, had one hand clamped over her mouth, eyes glued to the man, willing herself to look away but quite unable to physically do so.

He turned toward her and a muffled squeak sounded from behind her hand. She squeezed her eyes shut, not sure if he was going to make use of that towel or not.

“You can look,” he invited, laughter threaded through his voice.

Iris opened one eye cautiously and sighed in quiet relief, before opening the other. He’d fastened the towel around his hips, but the inadequate scrap of cloth only provided the barest nod to modesty. It was little bigger than a hand towel and gaped over one thickly muscled thigh. It was also very short, and only just covered his bits . . . although she couldn’t be too sure of that because she didn’t want to stare too long at the spot where he bulged against the front of the towel.

Iris wasn’t a novice when it came to men, but the few guys she’d been with had been mere boys compared to this man. Trystan was bigger—all over—and more self-assured in his masculinity than any of her boyfriends had been. His magnetism and self-confidence were overwhelming and Iris found herself a little out of her depth around him. Especially when he was wearing nothing but a towel that seemed to be staying put through sheer force of will.

“Shall we?” he asked, holding the sauna door open for her. She ran her damp palms over the front of her fluffy towel and nodded, stepping past him into the hot and humid room that smelled faintly of cedar wood and eucalyptus—the latter of which she assumed was from essential oils.

She sat herself down on the lowest bench, tucking her knees and feet primly together and resting her palms on her thighs. She knew she probably resembled a schoolgirl posing for a class picture, but she couldn’t help it. She was so tense. If he believed this would relax her, he was sorely mistaken. This was probably one of the tensest, most stressful situations in which she’d ever found herself.

He looked at her for a long moment, a smirk on his arrogant, handsome face, before he shook his head and sat diagonally across—and a level up—from her.

No, he didn’t sit. He sprawled. Spreading himself out, arms stretched across the top of the bench, thighs apart, with the towel tucked between them. Every muscle bulging and gleaming and displayed to perfection.

It was annoying how he could look so goddamned flawless without even trying.

Iris folded her arms across her chest and purposely looked away from him, even though he’d quite intentionally placed himself right in her line of sight, perhaps out of some pathological need to be stared at.

“I did enjoy your zombie apocalypse short story,” he said a moment later, succeeding in dragging her eyes back up to him in horror.

“You read that? How? Where?”

“Found it on a random little website unimaginatively called The Write Stuff.”

She barely concealed a grimace at that information. The now-defunct site had been operated by her ex-boyfriend Claude. He’d been her first serious boyfriend and they’d met during their first year of uni. He’d loved that dumb story and had tried to convince her to turn it into a weekly serial for his website.

“It was a unique take. Decently written, if a tad overwrought in places. It would actually make a good movie if it were properly fleshed out and you spent more time on character development and less on the gory specifics. You’re a bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you? Have you checked if it’s even medically possible to suck someone’s brains out through their eye sockets?”

“Surely you could? Your optic nerve connects to the brain, doesn’t it?”

“So, the optic nerve would act as some kind of siphon?” he looked thoughtful as he considered that graphic and absurd thought.

What even was this conversation?

“I really thought that website no longer existed.”

“Why are you so consistently appalled at the thought of having any of your work available online? It’s a pretty bizarre reaction for someone hoping to make her mark in entertainment journalism. You can’t be shy about having your work out there for the world to see. And praise. And rip to shreds.”

He made a fair point.

Only…

“Only none of what you found actually showcases my capabilities,” she said.

“I beg to differ. The poetry was shit, I’ll give you that. But that zombie thing… confining the action to a space colony? The claustrophobic intensity? Brilliant. I wanted more. You should have serialized it.”

“My boyfriend said the same thing,” she admitted, not sure if he was mocking her or not.

“Boyfriend?”

Wow, Iris stared in bemusement as he leaned forward, every single muscle in his body tensing. She really wanted to touch him, stroke her hands and fingers over those hard slabs of flesh, gleaming with moisture from the pool and now from the steam. Would his skin feel as velvety smooth as it looked? Everything about him was so damned tempting, and Iris was shocked by how very much she wanted to stroke, and pet, and caress…

“What boyfriend?” His words barely penetrated the lustful haze which held Iris enthralled.

“What?” she asked, feeling sluggish, her body and brain unfamiliar to her.

“Tell me about the boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“The one who said you should serialize your story.”

“Claude? He’s not my boyfriend. Not anymore, at least. Not for a long time.”

“Do you have one?”

“One what?” This conversation was bizarre and Iris was having a really hard time following it.

“A boyfriend,” he repeated with strained patience.

“No.” Her brain cleared enough for her to add, “Why do you ask?”

His shoulders shifted, and the play of muscles across that broad expanse instantly distracted her.

“Just curious. Wondering what kind of boyfriend would let you roam around in the wilderness by yourself while you tracked down an international sex symbol with the intention of spending weeks alone with him.”

“Did you just refer to yourself as an international sex symbol?”

“Merely repeating what others have said.”

“Are you flattered by the label?”

His face closed up and his lips tightened.

“This isn’t an interview.”

Iris clamped her mouth shut and diverted her eyes once again.

“Right.”

“How’s your back?” he asked after a moment. Then, when she continued to mutinously stare at the condensation beaded on the glass door, “Don’t be childish now, Hughes, look at me and answer the question.”

“It’s fine,” she said, still not looking at him. He made a quiet sound of frustration.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“Why do you so desperately need to be looked at?” she countered, angling her jaw upwards. “Do you miss having an audience?”

The silence seethed and—curious though she was to see his reaction—Iris maintained her stubborn focus on the door.

“I don’t need an audience.”

“Of course, you do. It’s why you do what you do. You enjoy having the adulation of the masses, don’t you?”

“Is that your best guess, Hughes? Some cheap, predictable psychobabble about what you think makes me tick? You know fuck all about me. You’ve seen me in a few movies, read or watched some interviews, and believe you know everything about me? You’re a fucking child if you think everything you’ve seen and heard about me is true.”

Iris finally gave him her eyes, which he then held trapped in his own furious, burning gaze.

“Why won’t you enlighten me then?” she invited, her voice curt.

“Because you’re nothing to me. Nobody. Why should I reveal any part of who I am to you? What the fuck makes you think you’re so goddamned special? You’re nothing but a little wannabe journalist with zero credentials and even less experience. Added to that, you’re the spawn of one of the worst human beings to have ever befouled this planet with his existence. You’re literally the last person on earth I’d ever confide in.”

“You’re getting repetitive,” she told him. Refusing to let him provoke her again. “My father’s the devil, I’m Satan’s spawn, blah, blah… I heard the same boring rant not more than half an hour ago.”

There was a gleam of—was that appreciation?—in his eyes and for the first time since she’d arrived, his lips stretched into that famous Abbott grin.

“Very well done, Hughes. You won’t get very far with paper-thin skin in this industry.”

His praise confused her and she glared at him warily, not sure what to make of it.

“I’m tired. I think I’d like to go back to my room now.” Right now, even the oppressive hell that was her room seemed preferable to his disagreeable presence.

“Do you really prefer what you refer to as your prison cell over a sauna and my company?” His stare was contemplative, but his question without inflection, and Iris wasn’t sure if she’d offended him.

Nor did she care.

“Yes.”

God, that was such a lie. It was literally the second last place she’d rather be right now. But since this right here was the last place she wanted to be, she had no other choice than to return to her stifling, terrifying solitary confinement.

His eyebrows shot to his hairline.

“Very well. But you have to do some stretching when you get back to your room to prevent your back from seizing up again.”

Iris nodded and pushed to her feet. The movement was easy and relatively painless.

Honesty compelled her to admit, “I really do feel a lot better. Thank you.”

“You’ve already thanked me. Several times already, in fact. But I should be the one to thank you . . .” His voice was gruff, as if the words tasted foreign on his tongue. “For your help yesterday.”

“Like I had a choice,” she muttered, still salty about the damned forced labor. His beard twitched as his jaw clenched and his lips thinned. Gosh, for an actor, he was terrible at hiding his emotions. Then again, he clearly didn’t care if she knew he was pissed off with her or not. Probably preferred it if she did.

“You had a choice,” he reminded her. “I was happy for you to stay in your room, but you wanted to negotiate for better conditions.”

“All I got was a Wi-Fi password you were going to give me anyway.”

“Not my fault you’re a terrible negotiator.” He got up and lithely descended the single step down. “Anyway, the sandbags did the trick, the flooding slowed down to a trickle.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said, a little distracted when he came to stand right beside her. Her nose was level with one flat brown nipple, and her eyes were riveted to those impressive pecs mere inches away. He was standing so close she could smell the faint hint of chlorine from the hot tub on his skin.

Her eyes tracked over the dark hair lightly sprinkled across his chest and abs… from where her rapt gaze helplessly followed the happy little trail wending its way down from his belly button—an innie, her favorite—to where it disappeared under the low-riding towel which looked in serious danger of slipping.

“For someone who accused me of needing an audience, you sure do seem to enjoy enabling my alleged thirst for attention by staring at me.” His low voice rumbled almost directly into her ear, and startled her into jerking her head up.

“Fuuuck!” he yelled.

“Ow!” she yelped at the same time.

Her abrupt move had sent the top of her head straight into his jaw and they both felt the impact keenly. They stepped away from each other, Iris rubbing her throbbing crown, while Trystan had his palm cupped over his jaw.

“Jesus, you have a hard head.”

“You have a harder jaw. You’d think that the beard would have provided some cushioning, but nope,” she complained. “Is my head bleeding? I feel like it’s bleeding.”

His hand dropped from his jaw and he reached out to cup her face. Alarmed, Iris jerked away from his touch.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me look,” he commanded with a scowl. Iris remained tense while he gingerly palmed her cheeks and angled her head downward. One of his hands continued to cradle her cheek, while the other parted the hair on her scalp. His touch was gentle, soothing, and seemed completely at odds with the abrupt man she knew him to be.

“It’s not bleeding, but you’re going to have a lump about the size of a goose egg.”

“This entire trip has been nothing but hazardous to my health so far,” she grumbled.

“Look at it this way,” he said, his fingers still entangled in her hair, while his other hand continued to cradle her cheek, his long thumb now idly tracing the line of her cheekbone and sending shivers of sensation skittering over her skin. “You avoided being crushed to death by a falling tree on day one. That’s a win.”

Iris fought back a smile but couldn’t disguise the betraying twitch of her lips. His eyes were drawn to the movement of her lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and his pupils dilated to the point where only a sliver of silver remained. His head lowered, until the merest breath separated his mouth from hers, and Iris choked back a moan.

“T-Trystan?” His name emerged on a whisper of uncertainty, and he shuddered—a full-body ripple that caused gooseflesh to visibly pebble his skin—then blinked, before shaking his head as if to clear it.

He dropped his hands and took a deliberate step away from her, leaving her feeling bereft, as if she’d lost something precious.

“I didn’t realize we were on a first-name basis, Hughes,” he said, that awful, detached coldness back in his voice, and Iris sucked in a pained breath. That one frigid statement hurting more than anything he’d said about her biological father earlier.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Abbott,” she apologized, hating that the stiffness in her voice betrayed her hurt. So much for cultivating a thicker skin. “You’re right, of course. I won’t forget myself like that again.”

He chose not to acknowledge her apology and instead opened the sauna door. He grabbed their robes from the hook outside the door and handed the smaller one to her.

“Put this on,” he said while shrugging into his and thankfully—tragically—covering himself up and removing all that tempting flesh from her lascivious gaze. “Stay warm until you get back to your room, then get into some sweats, do those stretches, and spend the rest of the morning taking it easy. Okay?”

She was too busy shrugging into her robe, while keeping her towel from slipping, to do more than grunt in response to his bossiness.

“Hughes!”

His sharp tone immediately drew her attention.

“What?”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“About the sweats and stretches and stuff? Yes.”

He looked somewhat mollified as he nodded. “Good. Some acknowledgment next time.”

She saluted him smartly, “Yes, oh lord and master!”

“Christ, you’re annoying,” he grumbled. “Let’s go.”

She meekly trailed behind him, her eyes happily exploring the house as they made their way from the natatorium back to her room. He must be distracted because he hadn’t taken hold of her elbow to hastily steer her along as he’d done the previous few times she’d been allowed out of her cell.

Her eyes snagged on a framed picture of a happily smiling couple in their wedding finery and Iris finally understood what people meant when they referred to a lightbulb moment, because it felt like someone had just flicked a switch in her brain.

“This isn’t your house.” The words were out before she could curtail them, and he stopped walking abruptly. Iris careened into his hard back, but it felt like bouncing off an immovable tree trunk for all the impact her momentum had made on his sturdy frame.

“Fuck.” The soft word resonated with heartfelt regret. “You’re just incapable of minding your own business, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t realize you knew Miles Hollingsworth,” she said.

He turned toward her, clamping both hands onto her upper arms, and looming over her to glare down into her face.

She stared back at him unblinkingly, too accustomed to his bluster by now to be daunted.

“And you’re going to forget that little factoid as soon as you’re back in your room.”

“But why? It’s not like he’s some kind of mafia kingpin. The man is a genius. How do you know him?”

“You think I can’t hang out with geniuses?”

“Genii,” she corrected, just to irritate him.

“You know damned well geniuses is right too,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.

“Well, how do you know Miles Hollingsworth? Is he your financial advisor or something?”

“You know so much about him, you’d know he’s not a fucking financial advisor.”

No, he wasn’t. Miles Hollingsworth was the former CEO of Hollingsworth Holdings Inc. A powerful, wealthy, self-made man who’d founded one of the largest holding companies in Europe. He’d caused a sensation a couple of years ago when he’d effectively retired at thirty-five, married his former housekeeper, and moved to… well to here apparently.

That explained the cars in the garage. MilesH for Miles Hollingsworth. Which meant the Mini Cooper had to belong to his wife, Charity.

“Have you known him long?” Iris asked chattily, as he released one of her arms, but kept the other imprisoned to march her back to her room at twice the speed they’d been going earlier.

He didn’t reply.

“You don’t seem like you’d have much in common,” she continued, starting to huff slightly as she practically ran to keep up with his long-legged stride. “Are you renting this house or something?”

That question broke his stride and he threw her an incredulous look before shaking his head and carrying on walking.

“Why’d you look at me like that?” she asked when they finally reached her door, which he opened impatiently.

“You’re deluded if you think Miles Hollingsworth needs to rent out his home.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes no sense,” she acknowledged, chagrined.

A not-so-subtle shove between her shoulder blades caught her by surprise and sent her stumbling into the room.

“Hey, come on, man! Enough with the manhandling,” she spluttered, furiously turning to face him with clenched fists. He looked shocked and contrite at the same time.

“Fuck, that was… shit. Hughes, I didn’t realize…” A dull flush crept up his cheeks and he looked absolutely stricken. “There’s no excuse, that was unforgivable. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

What?

“Uhm, no, I lost my footing. But no more shoving, okay?”

“Honest to God, I meant to give you just the gentlest of nudges.”

“No more nudging either.” He lifted his hands in surrender.

“I promise.”

“So… about Miles Hollingsworth.”

Iris was curious by nature, one of the other reasons she’d believed journalism was the right career choice for her. But she now knew her curiosity wasn’t fueled by the driving need to know all the facts—no, she was just nosy and loved a good gossip.

That nosiness, combined with boredom, along with a deep reluctance to be trapped in this room once again were only a few of the reasons she kept prodding Trystan about Miles Hollingsworth, despite his obvious reluctance to divulge any information to her. Iris purely hoped to keep him talking and to delay her inevitable imprisonment in this awful room.

“No.”

The harshly spoken word foiled her sad—and obvious—delay tactic. He stepped back, slammed the door in her face, and a few seconds later the lock clicked in place.

“Thanks for lunch,you make a great tuna mayo toastie,” Iris said, when Trystan collected the lunchtime tray four hours later. She was so eager for some conversation and companionship that even his company would be preferable to the increasingly horrific claustrophobic confines of this room.

Instead of nodding curtly and leaving, as was his habit, he stared down at the tray for a moment and then lifted his eyes to meet hers.

“My mom’s recipe,” he said, and Iris’s eyebrows shot up at the reluctantly conceded personal information. “You didn’t have to clean the dishes.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said. “Besides, I was bored. It gave me something to do.”

“Did you do those stretches this morning?”

Iris winced at the memory of those painful stretches. She was not as diligent with her daily stretching as she ought to be. She went to yoga only occasionally when Evan dragged her out to a class, but Iris would never be that girl. She was reasonably fit, she walked a lot, and worked out once or twice a week. She did the bare minimum to stay healthy and keep herself in acceptable shape, but she wasn’t religious about it. And leading up to this trip, she’d been so distracted she’d skipped a few gym sessions.

And she’d felt it while stretching this morning. But she’d forced herself to do it, despite the pain, because Trystan had been right, it would help. It had helped, but God it had sucked.

“Yes.”

“And how’s your head?”

It took Iris a moment to figure out why he was asking her that, but when she remembered she rubbed the top of her head ruefully.

“There’s barely even a lump, actually. It throbbed for a while after I returned to the room, but the pain faded not too long after that.”

“Good,” he hovered awkwardly for a few moments, before saying, almost impulsively, “I’m taking Luna out for a walk soon. Would you like to join us? It may help with any residual stiffness you have.”

Would she? What a dumb question.

Iris had spent the morning writing, then reading, then neatening up the already neat suite. Anything to keep it together. But nothing had been able to alleviate her frustration, restlessness, and the fear of losing all control of her emotional and mental stability. Her medication was barely helping her keep it together.

Calls home hadn’t helped. Her parents kept pushing her for answers about where she was. And who could blame them? She’d built it up to be this huge thing, promising them a revelation that would blow their minds, and now she was being secretive about it.

Hunter Quinn had—unsurprisingly—still not responded to any of her messages. Iris had pretty much given up on that front.

Evan had been to yet another party last night and all she’d talked about was how amazing it had been. She’d spent a good deal of time name-dropping, talking about some guy she’d fucked, and then bitching about her boss for another half an hour after that.

She hadn’t once asked Iris how she was doing. Which Iris wouldn’t normally have noticed, only she’d really needed to talk about her increasing doubts about her career choice. That was when she’d recognized that most of their conversations centered around Evan and her life. Iris had picked up on this in the past but had always thought this was because her own life was so dull in comparison, but now that she had so much time with her thoughts, the disparity troubled her.

She set aside her disturbing contemplations about her friend and focused on Trystan’s question.

“Oh, yes please,” she replied, the words stumbling over each other in her panic that he would change his mind.

“It’s not raining, but the wind is icy, so bundle up. And wear those boots from yesterday, the ground is muddy and a little treacherous.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be back for you in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be ready.”