Chapter 49 Sloane
Sloane
It’s dark when I wake up. Really dark. Like, middle of the night dark.
I’m late for something. I’m late for work?
I’m really fucking late. Night shifts turn you around something fierce.
I often wake up once the sun’s gone down, not knowing if I’m coming or going.
But then I realize I’m not alone. Someone’s in the bed with me.
That part is definitely out of the ordinary.
Zeth Mayfair lies on his back with one arm thrown up over his face.
The other arm is folded across his body, fingers splayed against his stomach, and the bedsheets are twisted around the lower half of his body in a tight knot.
With all of our energetic exercise earlier, the fitted sheet has disappeared somewhere, and I’ve been sleeping naked and coverless on a bare mattress.
“Oh.”
It’s all I’ve got right now. The digital clock on the nightstand blinks 6:42 p.m. at me in stark red numbers.
What time did Zeth come in here looking for me?
I can’t remember, but we must have been sleeping for hours.
I sit up, careful not to make any noise, and tiptoe my way to the en suite.
It’s only when I stand that I feel the slick stickiness between my legs, and a rush of alarm floods me.
No condom. We didn’t use a condom. Again.
Since our slip back at my place and the subsequent humiliation of a morning-after pill, I’ve been taking the pill, so there’s no risk of my getting pregnant.
But still… I’m a doctor, for crying out loud, and Zeth Mayfair is a man whore extraordinaire.
I should know better than this. Nasty shit will happen to your lady parts if you’re reckless with them.
I like my lady parts. I don’t want them all funked up with chlamydia, or worse.
Zeth and I need to have a chat about that.
In the meantime, I take a hot shower and get dressed.
I don’t really have time to do much but towel-dry my hair and apply a small amount of makeup—I’m supposed to meet with Jacob’s girls at seven thirty for a pampering session, and I can’t afford to be late.
Despite how distracting being here with Zeth is, I haven’t forgotten who else is here.
Alexis is in this same compound, and I’ll be damned if I don’t finally get to see her.
We won’t be able to get her out until tomorrow night.
Zeth explained earlier that with everyone distracted by the party, it will be the perfect opportunity to slip out without being seen.
Plans aside, I’m so nervous I feel sick.
I haven’t seen Lexi in over two years. I’ve changed a lot since then. I’m guessing she has, too.
Zeth’s still asleep when I leave the bathroom. He’s in exactly the same position I left him in. The man sleeps like the dead. I sneak to his side of the bed, and then I lay my hand flat on his chest, snickering to myself, knowing how cold my hands are.
The reaction is instant. And violent.
“Motherfucker!” He’s lying still as the dead one minute. The next, I’m pinned against the wall by my throat and Zeth’s fist is sailing toward me. I turn my head just in time, narrowly avoiding the blow, but he’s already pulling back for another try.
“Zeth! Zeth, STOP!” My windpipe being crushed for real this time. Makes it difficult to scream.
“Sloane?” Shock registers on Zeth’s face. He drops me immediately, and I slide down the wall into a boneless heap at his feet. “Oh, fuck. Fuck. I’m…” He rushes to the door and switches the light on. “Are you okay?”
I eye him uncertainly, rubbing my hand over my bruised esophagus. “Oh, yeah. I’m great. You did just try and stave my face in, though. And after swearing up and down you’d never hurt me, too. That was pretty rude.”
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Sleeping makes you homicidal?”
He tries to speak but chokes instead. He tries twice more before the words come. “Waking up somewhere strange… with someone lurking in the dark… makes me homicidal.”
I raise an eyebrow. Pippa would be having a field day at this admission, but I’m not stupid enough to ask what his deal is.
I suspect this is the one thing Zeth Mayfair will not explain to me.
I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know when someone has completely shut down.
He tenses, naked, eyes empty, clearly waiting for me to ask him what the fuck that was.
When I don’t, he holds out his hand, offering to help me up.
“I’ll find somewhere else to sleep tonight.
That way you won’t have to worry about me attacking you at three a.m.”
I accept his hand, grateful that my heart has dislodged itself from my throat and returned to its rightful place behind my breastbone.
I don’t like the thought of having to sleep in the room all night on my own.
He’s right, though. I don’t like the sound of being strangled to death in the early hours of the morning, either.
“I could just coldcock you with that gun.”
Zeth sits back down on the bed, staring at the floor. He’s forgotten how to blink? “You’re not gonna say anything about that, then?” he asks.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
I shrug. “Well, then.”
He grinds his teeth, nostrils flaring, not looking at me. “You’ve got to say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
He rubs his eyes—such a normal thing to do for such an abnormal human being. “Anything. The gun. Why did you take that from the bag earlier and not something else?”
A distraction, then.
That’s what he needs.
I sit beside him, then let myself fall back into the rumpled sheets. They smell deliciously of him. “Well, you were right before. I’ve been holding myself back my whole life. You constantly push me to free myself. But you aren’t as free as you think you are—”
He laughs abruptly, a cold, hard sound.
I carry on, regardless. “You’re sexually liberated, yes. But I’ve never met anyone so emotionally shackled before. You’ll run a full-length marathon before you let yourself experience an emotion. So I took that from you. I picked up that gun, and I made you feel something.”
He stares at me, eyes narrowed into slits, the adrenaline of what he nearly just did all gone now. “What, you think that just because you successfully scared the shit out of me, I’m suddenly fixed and I’m gonna fall in love with you now or something?”
That earns him a cold laugh in return. “Oh, no, Zeth. You don’t have to worry on that front.”
“And how’s that?”
“I’m a game to you. An experiment. A broken toy to play with until you achieve whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, at which point I’m assuming I’ll no longer be of use to you and you’ll go find someone else to warm your bed.”
He twists to look over his shoulder at me. The muscles in his back contort beautifully as he shifts his weight. “There are plenty of girls out there more broken than you, Sloane Romera. And I have no interest in experimenting on you.”
“Oh, really? Then what the hell are you doing with me?”
“Is this a ‘where do you see our relationship heading’ conversation?”
“God, no! Relationship?” Even I can hear the bitter edge to my laughter.
“We know nothing about each other. You’re the guy who shows up on my doorstep and screws me senseless whenever he feels like it.
And I’m the girl stupid enough to let you do it.
” I choke on the words, hating them but knowing they’re true.
Zeth’s expression is blank as solid stone.
He stand quickly, pulling on his clothes, and when he looks up at me, the conflict warring in his eyes takes me by surprise.
“I know plenty about you, Sloane. All I need to know. If you know nothing about me, then that’s on you and no one else. All you’ve ever gotta do is ask. And you’re not the girl stupid enough to let me do anything. You’re the girl stupid enough to not see what’s standing right in front of her.”
He snatches up his shoes and he doesn’t even sit down to put them on. He takes them and storms out, closing the door softly behind him. It would have been better if he’d slammed the door. At least then, I’d know he wasn’t working so hard to stay calm.
What… on earth?
What was that? Was he… was he actually hurt?
Did he actually just admit that he thinks we are in a relationship? That he wants to be in a relationship? No. That can’t be true. The man won’t even let me kiss him, for fuck’s sake. I—
URGH!
I slump back into the bed, body sore from our earlier activities.
But my heart is sore now, too. Because he’s right.
I am the girl too stupid to see what’s standing right in front of her.
I’m too stupid to understand any of it. Zeth is emotionally stunted—there’s no doubting that—but it turns out I am, too.
How is it that a man like him, a man forged over a lifetime into a weapon of mass destruction, has seen more in us than I have?