Chapter 10 #2
He's quiet a moment. Then, into the dark: "Why did you really come in here, Sonny?"
My heart stutters. Maybe he already knows.
No, how the hell could he know what I’m thinking or feeling right now?
He’s curious. He has every right to be since I walked in here in the middle of the night. I open my mouth to respond but nothing comes out.
I stare at the dark between us. The whole terrible weight of what my mother did has me tongue-tied but my silence really isn’t fair to Vincent. Not when I know more than I should.
"I–I heard you," I whisper. "Earlier. You and Calder. In your office."
I feel him go still beside me. He doesn't say anything. The silence grows until I can’t take it anymore.
"I didn't mean to. I came down for a book and the door was open, and I heard—" I make myself stop before I repeat any of it back to him. "I should have walked away. I didn't."
"How much?" Low.
"Enough." My throat's tight. "That you found her. That it's not just about the money." I swallow. "I didn't stay for all of it. But I stayed too long. It wasn't my conversation to hear and I heard it anyway."
For a moment there's only his breathing in the dark. I wait for the temperature to drop, for the cold to come back into his voice as he kicks me out.
"And that's what's kept you up," he says.
"I couldn't stand it. Knowing I did that, and you didn't know I did." The words come out cracked. "I came in here to tell you. I've been trying since I walked in the door and it keeps—it just wouldn’t come out right."
"It came out fine." A pause, and then, quieter: "You could have said nothing. I'd never have known. Most people would have said nothing."
"I'm not most people, I guess. I've never been good at carrying things I'm not supposed to."
Vincent moves closer.
I feel the mattress shift, feel him come nearer in the dark, and then his hand finds my jaw and tips my chin up, gentle, until I have to look at him. His eyes are dark and steady on mine, and whatever's in his face isn't anger.
It isn't even close.
"You came in here in the middle of the night to tell on yourself," he says, low. His lips pull into the hint of a smile. "When you could've kept quiet and been fine." His thumb moves once along my jaw. "She'd never have done that."
My lips part, my brows knitting as I try to figure out what he means.
“Starla. You're nothing like her. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."
Something behind my eyes goes hot and tight, because no one has ever said it, no one has ever once told me I'm not her, and I've spent my whole life certain that I was. I feel the first tear go before I can stop it and I hate it, I turn my face down so he won't see—
But he's already drawing me in. His arm comes around my back and pulls, slow and sure, until I'm against him—my hands coming up flat against his chest, my face tucking into the warm curve of his throat—and he holds me there.
Just holds me.
His heartbeat under my palms, his breath stirring my hair, the whole cold-wood-and-warmth scent of him closing over me like water.
We don't move. He doesn't ask me to stop the tears and I don't try to explain them; he just keeps his arm heavy across my back and lets me be held. I press my face to his throat and breathe him in and let myself, for once, enjoy the intense pull I have to this man.
"Go to sleep, Sonny."
I breathe in his scent. He’s delicious and I can’t help myself. "I can't."
"I know." Softer. "Try anyway."
I don't try. I stay exactly where I am, tucked into him, my hands still spread on his chest, and I feel my body settling deeper against his. The pull that’s been inside me all along morphs into something even more dangerous.
It's an ache. Low in my belly, all through me, a wanting I still can't name and can't fight.
And it's not just in my head anymore—my cock jerks in my thin pants as blood races downward.
My face is at his throat and I could turn it up.
Two inches and I'd find his jaw, his mouth.
I feel him feel it too—his breath's gone uneven under my hands, his heart kicking faster against my palm, his hand flexing once where it rests on my back like he's holding himself very still on purpose.
Neither of us moves. Neither of us closes the last of the distance. I'm throbbing now, aching and hard and hyperaware of every place we're pressed together, and it takes everything I have not to press closer, not to give my body the friction it's begging for.
Then he lets out a slow breath, and his arm tightens around me, and instead of tipping us over that edge he just—holds. Draws me in more firmly, presses his mouth once to the top of my head, and settles, like he's decided for both of us.
"You're still cold," he says, low and rough, giving it a reason. As if it needs one. As if either of us believes it.
I don’t answer. My eyes flutter shut as I stay tucked against him.
His breathing slows. Evens. Deepens.
He's falling asleep.
He goes under slow, his breathing lengthening against my hair, his arm heavy and sure across my back, and I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to sleep now.
I just lie there in the warmth of him and let myself feel it—all of it, the thing I've been fighting since the office, since the kitchen, since the first time he stepped between my knees and took my wrist in his hand.
I… want him.
I can't lie about it.
I want the weight of his arm and the heat coming off his skin and the slow heavy sound of his heart under my palm.
I want to be exactly where I am and never move.
My body's been telling me for days and now it's screaming it, this low sweet pull dragging me into him, and I know what it is—I'm an omega, he's an alpha, of course I want him, it's chemistry and instinct and my biology waking up under my skin.
Knowing that doesn't make it quieter. If anything it makes it worse, because it means I can't trust a single thing my body's doing.
But I’m reacting anyway.
And I can't have him.
That's the part I make myself hold onto while I lie here memorizing the shape of him asleep.
This is the man who took me. Who holds me in this house against a debt I didn't make.
Who would look at me differently—would use me differently—the second he knew what I am.
Whatever this is tonight, it lives and dies in the dark; the sun's going to come up and he’ll be my captor again and I'll be the thing he owns.
Wanting him doesn't change one inch of that.
It just gives him one more way to hurt me, if he ever finds out how much I do.
So this can't happen. Being this close to him, in his bed, can't happen again. I know that.
But for now, I don't move.
Just a little longer, I tell the dark. Just this once. Just this warmth, just this one stolen hour of pretending I get to want something and keep it.
And then, before I can talk myself out of it, I lean up the last inch and press my mouth to the warm skin of his throat—soft, quiet, over the slow pulse there. A kiss he'll never know about.
The only one I'll ever let myself take.
He doesn't wake. He just breathes, deep and even, his arm heavy and sure across my back.
I settle back against his chest. I'll pay for this later—I always pay for it later.
But not yet.
Not tonight