Chapter 8
Later that night, I’m sprawled across the bed with the door to my suite shut, sheets kicked aside. The air runs a few degrees cold, but I don’t mind, because my skin is hot to the touch.
And my hand is moving fast between my legs.
My imagination paints Sebastian crouched over me, his mouth closing over one tight nipple, teeth gently tugging, taunting with the promise of a pinch.
Just like Oliver’s clamps.
My eyes fly open, and my heart beats a familiar, guilty rhythm.
Now is not the time to be thinking about him.
Or that closed door and how it feels wrong.
Impersonal.
Splaying my thighs, I renew my efforts. Middle finger firm on my clit, rubbing in tight circles, pace increasing until my toes want to curl.
I turn my thoughts to Sebastian moving inside me, his lips on mine, our fingers locked, every hard inch of him filling me.
Especially in the shower.
God, he felt good.
I’m hot and tingly just thinking about it. My heart seems to expand in my chest, making enough room to hold on to the night we spent together, to feel every memory.
My back arches, breasts yearning for warm, sweaty skin but finding cool air instead.
Which only takes me back to metal teeth latching on to my nipples.
My attention drifts to the door out of habit.
It needs to be open.
An urge I can’t explain propels me to my feet. I cross to the door, twist the knob, and leave it cracked. The nightlight in the hall casts a thin band of warm illumination across the threshold, reaching the rumpled blankets waiting for me.
When I settle against the pillows, the wrongness is gone, and I arch into position, my hips rising to meet my hand. The climb begins again, Sebastian owning the forefront of my mind, and our first time plays on a loop.
His jacket.
The weight of him blanketing me.
His hot breath against my throat with each desperate thrust.
The way he groaned my name as he came.
A moan spills free, a cross between a whine and a whimper. An innocent woman would stifle it, try to hide it, proudly clutch the shame like a secret.
I’m too needy, and I’m a long way from innocence.
And I’m so close—closer than I’ve ever been on my own.
I push my slick fingers inside my pussy and reach for it…
The point of no return is right there, just begging me to take the leap and fly, completely solo for the first time.
Except…
In my mind’s eye, I’m not alone.
Through the crack in that door, a patient brown gaze watches, willing me to just let go.
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, hold my breath, and prepare to—
Thump.
The noise yanks me back from the edge, and the high-pitched scream that follows turns my blood cold.
That horrible sound is coming from Hugo’s room. I’m out of bed on instinct, snatching my robe off the back of a chair and shoving my arms into the sleeves. Shaky fingers fumble the belt twice, so I clamp it shut in my fist, and then I’m through the door.
Ten seconds ago my body was on the verge of climax. Now I’m running on a different kind of adrenaline as I rush to the door across from mine and throw it open, only to freeze on the threshold.
The crying and screaming grow louder. Raw and wordless…terrifying.
The hairs on my arms stand on end.
Someone’s in here with him.
It’s the only thing that makes sense, because no one sounds like that on their own.
I slap at the wall until I hit the light switch, and brightness floods the room. I almost expect to find an intruder. Instead, I find Hugo, bound in his bedsheets and thrashing on the floor, fighting no one but himself.
“Hugo!”
My voice stops his frantic movements—or maybe the terror chooses that moment to release him—but for several long seconds, he stares back at me with wide jade eyes, his expression a vacant abyss.
As if he’s looking right through me.
“Are you okay?” I risk closing the distance, registering the sweat drenching his T-shirt, plastering his brown hair against his forehead. I can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears bathing his cheeks.
Wordlessly, he climbs back into bed, still half-twisted in the sheets, and it’s unsettling how fast he drops under again.
I stand there, fist still knotted in the belt of my robe, shocked by how he went from the floor to the mattress to asleep in the space of a few labored breaths.
Almost as if I hallucinated his scream, sweat, and midnight scuffle with the air.
But it happened, because his terror still pulses thick in my veins. I’m trembling in a way I’m not used to—with the kind of fear that will grip me as I lie awake half the night, cold and gut-sick from the sound of his screaming still in my ears.
Before my knees give out, I sink onto the edge of his bed.
He’s lying on his side, half-curled and facing away from me, one shoulder rising and falling with each breath. He seems small like this, childlike even—nothing close to the man who stood in my studio hours ago.
While he sleeps through my presence and the overhead light, I let my surroundings distract me, cataloging the furnishings until my heart slows to normal.
Functional lamp sitting atop a nightstand. Two leather armchairs and a table grouped in front of the French doors. A dresser. No television or artwork or trinkets that hint at personality.
Nothing in this hotel-like space warrants a second look, except Hugo.
My fingers itch to brush the damp hair off his forehead, but that feels like trespassing. Still, the need to give him something overpowers me—human connection, a touch of compassion, the comfort of knowing he’s not alone, even if it’s just on a subconscious level.
So I rest my hand on his shoulder. I don’t know if it’s good or bad that he doesn’t stir. Beneath my palm, his breathing stutters before leveling out, and his shoulder relaxes by a degree.
I’m not ready to trust my legs yet. Across the hall, the door to my quarters stands open, the way I left it, and I think back to that strange urge to crack it open in the first place.
If I hadn’t, would I have heard him at all?
I should slip out and leave him be. This space feels sacred, whatever he keeps shut away in the daylight coming loose in here, in the dead of night, where no one is meant to see it.
But I can’t bring myself to abandon him just yet.
The fear that drove me across the hall has cooled into an odd need to protect, as if leaving him now will bring his nightmare back. I ease the sheets loose from his legs and draw the blanket up to his shoulder, satisfied when he doesn’t rouse.
I came into his house expecting the stiff and formal man from my studio tonight.
I was wrong.
There’s more to Hugo Alexander than I first imagined.