Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
F our in the morning. My ceiling fan cast shifting shadows that matched my restless thoughts. Nine years of sleepless nights had taught me every crack in these walls, every whisper of the house settling. Sexual release used to grant me a few hours of peace, but lately, even that escape had abandoned me, leaving me alone with an emptiness that grew deeper with each passing hour.
Around four-thirty, I'd gotten tired of lying sleepless in my bed. I needed to move, so I headed down to the kitchen. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I leaned against the wall.
The bottle was still cold against my palm when movement caught my eye—a shadow detaching itself from the darkness of the doorway. My pulse quickened with recognition even before my mind caught up. A small amount of light streamed through the small window above the sink, not enough to make out the figure, but I had a pretty good idea who it was.
I didn't want the intruder to know I was there if it wasn't her, so I stood completely still in the shadows until she passed the window, and I was positive it was Olivia. I reached over and flipped on the light. She screamed, startling me enough that I dropped my water bottle.
"Shit." I fumbled for the rolling bottle, water pooling around my feet. "What are you doing?"
Olivia pressed a hand to her chest, her pulse visible in the hollow of her throat. "I couldn't sleep."
At that moment, I realized what she had been wearing under that robe. She was in another nightshirt, but this one was more like lingerie. The pink and black silk piece barely covered anything, and my cock was jumping for joy.
"I came down to get a drink."
"Wearing that?" I growled, pointing to her nightwear.
Her cheeks turned red as she looked down to see what she was wearing. "Uh, yes." She was embarrassed, and I was turned on. "Hannah didn't give me a lot of sleep clothes options."
Remind me to kill Hannah tomorrow.
I turned my gaze away from her to gather a clear thought. "Why can't you sleep?"
"I'm usually an early riser." Her fingers traced absent patterns on the marble countertop. "I like to work out first thing in the morning, and I can't convince my mind or body that I'm not working out today."
"You want to work out?" My fingers drummed against the counter, a plan forming.
Olivia straightened, energy suddenly radiating from her stance. "Yes."
I pushed away from the counter, realizing this may be good for both of us because I had a lot of built-up tension I needed to release. "Go change and meet me down here."
Fifteen minutes later, I was waiting in the kitchen when she appeared through the doors.
She emerged in running gear that left me questioning my sanity. The spandex shorts clung like a second skin, and her sports bra turned every breath into a study in torture. My gaze traced the elegant line of her spine, the gentle curve where waist met hip. I forced myself to look away, but the image was already branded into my mind—the way she moved like liquid grace, unconscious of her effect on me.
"What do you normally do first?" I tried distracting myself by stretching.
"I usually run," she replied. "Sometimes I run to the gym and then work out, but most times I run."
"Great, let's go." I hoped this run would help me because right now, I had a hard-on the size of Texas, and I needed to burn endorphins. I led her to my backyard and out past the pool, where there was a large running track. I'd always enjoyed running, but once the paparazzi started showing interest in me, I didn't have the option to run anywhere anymore. I'd bought a large piece of the property behind me and built a private track.
I let her lead—a mistake. Three strides in, watching her move ahead of me became its own form of torture. I caught up, matching her punishing pace. We blew past my usual five-mile limit, lungs burning, sweat-blind. Only when muscles screamed louder than desire did my mind finally clear.
By the time she stopped, neither of us could breathe. I'd never run so hard in my life. I preferred a slower, steadier pace of about five miles, but we had passed that five-mile mark long ago and at a much faster pace, but it did seem to help get my mind off sex.
I collapsed onto the damp grass, muscles screaming in protest. "Do you always run like that?"
Olivia braced her hands on her knees, each word punctuated by ragged breaths. "Yeah... I like to run."
"I think you were trying to kill me." My heart hammered against my ribs as she flashed a smile, sweat glistening on her throat.
The playfulness drained from her expression. "Have you heard from Emmett?" I shook my head as my jaw tightened and I stared at the track ahead. “Will you let me know when you do?”
"Of course." Words about yesterday's discoveries pressed against my teeth, but I swallowed them back. Part of me wanted to say something about everything I'd found out yesterday, but if she didn't know what was going on, it would only make her worry more, and I didn't want that. For now, or at least until I figured this out, I'd keep it to myself. "Let's go get breakfast."
The walk back to the house stretched between us, filled with the sounds of our breathing gradually returning to normal. Morning light spilled across the property, transforming everything it touched into gold. Neither of us spoke—as if the spell of exertion still held us, as if words might shatter the strange peace we'd found in exhaustion.
Arlena had anticipated our return. The patio table was set with steaming coffee, fresh fruit, and eggs that caught the light like small suns on white plates. Olivia sank into her chair with a grateful sigh as I took the seat opposite, the sunrise painting her profile in amber and rose.
The silence between us crackled with unspoken words. I stabbed at my eggs, desperately cataloging stock numbers, client meetings—anything to block out the way morning light played across her collarbone, the way her lips curved around the rim of her coffee cup.
"Do you masturbate?"
Coffee burned through my sinuses as I choked, the question landing like a match in gasoline. Some distant part of my brain registered the irony: after all my efforts at self-control, it was her innocence that finally shattered it.
"Oh my god, are you okay?" She leaned forward, the movement pushing her tits up in the tight bra.
I set down my cup with deliberate care, buying seconds. "I'm not used to having these kinds of conversations over breakfast." My voice emerged steadier than it had any right to be.
Her head tilted to one side, brow furrowed in that impossibly innocent way. "Should we wait for lunch?"
I gripped my coffee cup like a shield, forcing my voice to stay steady, deciding honesty was the best way to go here. "Yes, occasionally I masturbate." Her face crinkled in serious thought. "Why?"
She traced the rim of her coffee cup with one finger. "Hannah says everyone masturbates. That it's a natural concept and that it helps with sexual tension." Her eyes met mine with clinical curiosity.
The question burst from my lips before I could cage it. "Do you?" I was interested, but I wasn't sure I could handle the answer. It would haunt me if she said yes, which she certainly would. The thought of her lying one room away from me every night, possibly touching herself, would probably be too much for me to handle.
"No." She wrapped both hands around her coffee mug, steam curling between her fingers. "But I'm thinking about trying it." She said it so casually, as if she was referring to taking up a new sport or hobby and something inside, perhaps intuition, told me she was dead serious.
I was already attracted to her, and it made it worse that she would be living with me for a while, which made her off-limits, and now the thoughts of her pleasuring herself were going to terrorize every inch of me! My dick was already excited; it was so hard it painfully pulsated against my shorts. And speaking of masturbating, it looked like I'd be heading to the shower now.
My chair scraped against the patio tiles as I stood abruptly, angling my body away from the table. "I should go get ready for work." The words came out strained, barely recognizable as my own voice.
Just when I thought my manhood was at maximum capacity, she smiled—a gesture somehow both innocent and devastating. "I'm going to hang out here for a while." Her fingers played with the condensation on her water glass, drawing small, absent circles that my eyes couldn't help but follow.
I nodded once, not trusting myself to speak again, and retreated. Each step toward the house was deliberate, a conscious battle for control. I retreated into the living room, each step an awkward negotiation with my dick begging for a release. The cool air of the living room hit my flushed skin as I crossed the threshold, the temperature change doing nothing to clear my head.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched in front of me like sheets of liquid silver—a fortress of mirror-tinted glass that had kept the paparazzi's hungry lenses at bay. Now they served a different purpose, transforming into a private theater where I stood in the cool shadows while she moved through the sun-drenched morning, unaware of her audience. I told myself I was just catching my breath, just gathering my thoughts before heading upstairs. But even as I formed the excuse, I knew I was lying.
I couldn't touch her, because that would break all my rules, but I didn't have rules against watching her and touching myself.
She drifted toward the pool like a dream. Each movement was casual grace, unaware of its power. When she knelt by the water's edge, trailing her fingers through the surface, my grip tightened on the doorframe. The morning light painted gold across her shoulders, down the elegant curve of her spine. My imagination supplied the feel of that sun-warmed skin beneath my palms, the soft gasp she might make if I traced that same path with my lips. The glass between us felt like the last thread of my control.
I freed myself from my shorts, pulse hammering in my palm as I wrapped it around the base. I slowly stroked my length, thumbing the tip before gliding down and back then repeating the action over and over.
Time stretched, fractured. Outside, she bent toward the water, enough of her ass hung out to fill my dirty imagination for weeks, completely unaware of her audience.
Then—a pivot toward the glass. Our eyes met across impossible distance. A collision of gazes with the weight of touch. The bitter knowledge that she saw only her reflection while I witnessed everything made something dangerous uncoil inside me. She stretched, studied herself in what she thought was a mirror, every movement an unconscious performance for an audience of one.
My gaze followed her bending from side to side, making her large tits sway with her. Using the moisture from the tip I increased my pace. I wanted to savor the moment, the feeling but I was working with limited time before she came in or Arlena came back from the store.
Olivia stretched upward, giving a clear view of every inch of her from head to toe; my eyes traced the curve of her delicate throat before moving down from her tits to her tight abs, and her tanned and toned legs.
My hips pumped forward and back driving myself faster and harder working in sync with my hand and I hissed as I imagined what it would look like, feel like with her on her knees and her pretty lips wrapped around my wide head.
I'd never been so turned on, ever . The ache in my cock built as the tension coiled tighter and tighter with every thrust. My balls tightened as my heavy breathing filled the quiet room.
I was so fucking close. So fucking close to reaching the release I’d craved for months.
My hips snapped forward and my grip tightened as every muscle in my body clenched. My eyes were still on her as I pictured my mouth on her, tasting her smooth skin, making her scream my name, and that image was all it took. I growled her name as I released myself into my hand.
I pressed my forehead to the cool glass as I came down from my high.
I'm so screwed.
The realization came with neither guilt nor shame—only the hollow certainty that the lines I'd spent years carefully drawing had just been crossed. I cleaned myself with mechanical precision, using my shorts to hide the evidence of what I’d done.
Though I'd experienced the best orgasm I'd had in a long time, it hadn't been enough. By the time I made it to the shower, I'd pictured Olivia in all kinds of different sexual scenarios that left me hard again. I was waging a battle against my mind and my cock. My mind told me that I was crossing dangerous lines, but my cock was telling me ‘fuck those line.’
I had to get out of this house. Most of my blood flow was in my dick, and I was afraid I was in danger of brain damage from loss of blood to the brain.
I listened for her movements through the wall as I dressed, timing each action to avoid an encounter I simultaneously dreaded and craved. The shower in the guest bathroom shut off. A door opened. Closed. The subtle creak of floorboards tracked her path down the hallway. I paused, one hand on my tie, waiting to see if her footsteps would continue past my door or stop before it. Each second stretched like taught wire. When her door clicked shut down the hall, I released a breath—equal parts relief and disappointment.
I managed to get out of the house without running into her. It felt wrong to leave without saying goodbye, but my body couldn't handle seeing her again. I needed a break, and hopefully, my mind would take one, too.