Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ALANA
I walk into his bedroom and close the door like I’m sealing a tomb.
His scent is everywhere. The pillow. The quilt.
The air itself. Stronger here than it was at the car — concentrated, like the room has been soaking in him for years.
I sit on the edge of the bed and my legs shake because I’m in Zac Walsh’s bed, in Zac Walsh’s bedroom, surrounded by Zac Walsh, and there’s a whole cabin between me and him where he’s probably settling onto a couch that’s too short for him, his feet hanging off the end, his body arranged in some uncomfortable configuration because he gave me the bedroom and he meant it.
I lie back. The quilt is soft, worn in a way that tells me it’s been here a long time, and when I turn my head toward the pillow, the scent is so concentrated it’s almost dizzying.
This is what he smells like when he’s not keeping distance.
This is what his bed smells like without barriers.
I could fall asleep like this and just stay.
Breathe him in. Pretend he’s beside me instead of imprisoned on a couch that’s actively punishing him for being honorable.
Sleep doesn’t come.
I lie there in the dark, replaying dinner.
The way he said don’t touch unless you ask, like the words cost him something.
Like saying them out loud was pain. The way his hands shook when he served the asparagus.
The way he watched me eat like making sure I had enough was the most important thing he’d done all day.
Nobody’s ever cooked for me like that. My brothers try, but it’s performance — Nate grilling burgers so he can stand at the barbecue and watch who talks to me, Jake making pasta so he can lecture me about my career while I eat it.
Their care comes with conditions. Zac’s didn’t.
He just cooked. Set the plate down. Sat across from me and didn’t ask for anything back.
But he wouldn’t touch me unless I asked.
My thighs press together.
I stare at the ceiling. I should be thinking about the contract. The thirty days. Whether I’m brave enough to build something here.
Instead I’m thinking about the vibrator I left in my college apartment.
Sophomore year. Plain brown box. Hidden under my winter sweaters because four brothers were watching me pack and I was too chickenshit to risk it.
I’d used it the way a twenty-two-year-old virgin uses one — frequently, guiltily, eyes shut, imagining someone specific.
Someone with a beard. Hands that could span my waist. Eyes that looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth having.
Now that someone is on the other side of a thin wall, and his rules are cracking.
I should sleep. I should try to be functional tomorrow. My hand drifts down instead. My fingers find the seam of my underwear, and I’m touching myself in his bed while he’s sleeping on his couch, breathing through the knowledge of how close he is.
The first touch is tentative. I listen for any sound from the living room — any shift in his weight, any indication that he might be awake and aware that I’m in here, doing this.
The cabin is quiet except for the settling of logs and my ragged breathing, and my hand is between my thighs where nobody’s supposed to touch me, and I don’t stop.
I think about the rope-burn scar on his forearm.
The way his knuckles went white gripping the table edge when I leaned in.
His mouth when he said don’t touch unless you ask — like the words cost him something physical.
My fingers find the right rhythm, and pleasure builds — slow at first, then consuming everything.
I’ve done this in a hundred dorm rooms and in my childhood bedroom and even once in a college library bathroom, but never surrounded by someone the way I’m surrounded by him.
The scent. The sheets. The pillow under my head that smells like his hair and bar soap.
When the pleasure starts cresting, I’m imagining his hands instead of my own.
His mouth. His voice saying good girl, that’s it, let me hear you.
I bite the pillow. That’s all I’ve got — teeth in cotton, muffling the sound that wants out of me. My hips lift off the mattress. My thighs clamp around my own hand. I come hard, shaking, his name caught behind my teeth where I won’t let it escape.
The cabin is silent when I come down. Just my breathing and the creak of the cabin settling into its bones for the night, and somewhere beyond the wall, the man I just came thinking about, lying on a couch that’s too short for him because he gave me his bed and his scent and his rules and didn’t ask for a single thing in return.
The wall between us is thin. If I heard him shift on that couch earlier, he heard me.
He heard the sheets move. He heard my breathing change.
He might be lying six feet away right now, knowing exactly what I just did in his bed, and I don’t know if that thought terrifies me or makes me want to do it again, louder this time, so there’s no question.
I pull the quilt up to my chin. His scent wraps around me like arms that aren’t there.
My body is still buzzing, still sensitive, still wanting more than my own hand can give, and the man who could give it is close enough that I could open this door and cross the cabin in eight steps and stand over him and say I’m asking.
He said don’t touch unless you ask.
Tomorrow, I’m going to ask.