Chapter 18 Prop Closet of the Damned
PROP CLOSET OF THE DAMNED
Holly
“Every time I think it’s just good dick, he breathes near my clavicle and my vagina writes a fucking sonnet.”
The hallway was deserted, save for the hum of distant fluorescents and the soft, guilty slap of her bare heels on the linoleum. Nate was already ahead of her, pushing open the heavy black door with the reckless confidence of a man who’d never once been caught sneaking anywhere.
The second it creaked open, she was hit with the smell of dust, fabric, faint deodorant from forgotten costumes. The costume and props closet was barely more than a glorified storage shed, all wire racks and haphazard piles of hats, wigs, discarded feather boas, and theatrical regrets.
She ducked in behind him and pulled the door with a click as the darkness enveloped them.
Nate fumbled, then flicked on a light. A single bulb burst into life above their heads.
It made everything look illicit, as though they'd stumbled into someone else’s sin and decided to borrow it for a while and see how it fit.
There’d been something about the way he’d looked at her after hearing the voicemail that made her want to claw her own skin off. Not pity, thank God. But it was soft in that way that told her he wanted to help and fuck, that was the kicker, wasn’t it?
Because no one could. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how much money she made, good people got screwed over every damn day.
She couldn’t fight off death with her bare hands, even if it was on the cards.
There was so much about this situation she’d had to just accept, and it was the hardest lesson she had ever had to learn.
Your mom is going to die. Maybe not today or tomorrow. Maybe not a month from now. But she’s going to. And when she does, you’re going to lose the only person who actually gets you.
He’d seen the crack, she warned herself.
The place where the light shouldn’t get in, and instead of backing off like a decent man, he’d just..
. been there. Still. Like he could hold space for her without asking for anything in return.
The audacity. He could have deliberately tanked himself.
Gone home, back to familiar people and run-of-the-mill habits.
But he fucking hadn’t. And it terrified and thrilled her in equal measure.
“Right,” she murmured in a low voice, more to get out of her own head than anything else. “Probably have about ten minutes tops before security does their next walk-through.” She looked at him. “What’s the plan?”
Nate shrugged. “Find that hideous shirt. Fuck it up royally.”
“Athletic simplicity at its finest,” Holly said, with a breath of laughter and a shake of her head that was part amused, part frustrated they even had to sneak about like this in the first place.
They started flipping through costume bags, tension humming just under the surface, the rack groaning as hangers scraped and spun in search of a miracle.
She caught a flash of glitter, feathers, and what looked suspiciously like bondage straps.
Nate yanked open another bag with a frown, then immediately recoiled.
“Oh, hell no.”
He held up a costume bearing a name tag. Lars. White satin, gold embroidery, and a strategically deep V that threatened to plummet straight into lawsuit territory. There were chains involved. Literal chains.
Holly snorted. “Please tell me that’s for a magic trick where he disappears forever.”
“Why does this look like Liberace got into a fistfight with a Bond villain?” Nate asked, holding it at arm’s length like it might bite him.
“Because God has a sense of humor,” she said, already elbow-deep in another bag.
And then, “Ugh.”
Holly turned just as Nate winced at the garment bag he’d just unzipped. And there it was, in all its deranged glory.
Baby blue. Velvet. Fucking. Ruffles.
The stuff of high school musical nightmares. It unfurled from the bag like a Regency ghost reaching for salvation. Holly clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud as he held it up by the hanger, the sleeves dangling like it had perished from shame.
“There it is,” she teased, her words holding a wheezy edge from restrained laughter. “The shirt they’ll bury you in.”
“It’s giving deceased children’s choir director,” Nate muttered.
Holly snorted. “It’s giving Bridgerton, but make it male anguish.”
He looked at her then, as though he were tracing the outline of an idea in his head and wasn’t sure if it would ruin them or remake them. And then he glanced pointedly at the pair of scissors someone had left on the tiny sewing table in the corner, before smirking back at Holly over his shoulder.
There was obviously just something about the over-the-shoulder-smirk and backwards baseball cap combo that did it for her, because in that instant Holly felt a familiar heat licking up the innermost part of her thighs.
Her jokes simmered as she watched him act without hesitation, taking the scissors and hacking up the Shirt of Doom.
The ill-fated garment bag didn’t survive the attack either, as Nate snipped away like he was exorcising the ghosts of fashion fuck-ups past.
And all she could think about while he went full barbarian mode was how he’d told Sophie to fuck off.
Not in so many words. He was Danish, not clinically unhinged.
But it was the way he stepped out of her reach.
The way his voice went glacier-cold, and he’d made it clear he wouldn‘t play that game.
Holly suddenly understood what it might feel like to be defended. Protected. Chosen.
Which, obviously, was completely fucking unacceptable.
Which, also obviously, was why she was innocently wondering what his stubble would feel like between her thighs.
Almost as if he could read her mind, Nate tilted his head to one side in contemplation, presumably trying not to hack into one of his giant fingers, when his tongue darted out to press to the corner of his mouth in concentration.
Sir. No.
Holly’s lips parted and a soft breath escaped her before she could even think about swallowing the need back down again. And once a teensy little bit of her desire for him had breached the surface, it was a slippery fucking slope all the way down to Whoreville, USA.
He turned to crow triumphantly at her, smug grin in place…
until he saw her face. His expression shifted faster than he did on a penalty kill, jaw clenching, and nostrils flaring ever so slightly.
His gaze coasted down her neck, clocking the way her pulse fluttered faster than it had been before.
And she fucking knew he knew why, because she sure as shit on crackers wasn’t turned on by the thought of Lars pulling off some kind of tragic Torvill and Dean rip-off.
He dragged his gaze back up her body, lingering as if he needed to watch every second of her undoing.
Holly felt it like a war cry in her pulse, and in the way her knees wobbled when he finally crossed the floor. She stepped forward with her chin up, daring him. Just close enough to make her wonder if this was foreplay, or fear it was a fucking warning.
Either way, she wasn’t listening.
“Are we really going to do this?” she murmured into the space between them, right before he leaned in with purpose and made her breath hitch when the broad planes of his chest brushed against her painfully hard nipples.
His mouth found the shell of her ear, and she could hear the goddamn smirk in his voice as it curled around her restraint like a python and squeezed.
“We’re already doing it,” he teased, voice soft and sexy as he plucked ever so gently at her right nipple through the Lycra tank top she was wearing.
Like it could have been those lips she’d developed a very specific, medically concerning interest in.
Like he could have been suckling.
“Fuck,” she breathed, head tipping back of its own free will as she grabbed a fistful of his shirt by his hip and yanked him toward her. He took the opening up of her neck as an invitation, leaning in to lay hot, open-mouthed kisses on her skin, starting just beneath her jaw.
“You like that?” he asked, a hint of a smile on his lips before he kissed lower and let his teeth graze against her as he reached to pluck the same nipple again, a breath harder.
JesusfuckingChrist, he was going to kill her. She was going to die here in this miserable little death-closet, in the most glorious way possible.
A moan escaped her, sneaking out of her like a thief wanting to rob him of his own control as her grip tightened on his shirt, pulling the fabric taut around him.
“Fuck yeah,” he rasped, sounding thirsty as fuck. “Your nipples are so hard, sweetheart… are they sensitive?”
“Mmm,” she hummed, not trusting herself with words just in case he applied a little more strategic pressure. She kept her grip on his shirt to anchor herself but her free hand dragged up his chest, all nails and retribution that made him hiss from the back of his throat.
“Oh, you sure you wanna play it like that, Martinez,” he chuckled darkly, but it wasn’t amusement. “Because if you tempt me into being that guy for you, you might not like what you see.”
No, that was the unmistakable sound of a man getting close to losing any control he’d been pretending to have when it came to her. And all of a sudden, Holly wanted to test him. Wanted to see what it would take to make him break.
“You the Big Bad Wolf now?” she threw back under her breath, fighting to keep it even.
She saw it. The instant something changed in his eyes, like pale blue ice devolving into the black depths of the vast abyss beneath.
He was Nate, but he wasn’t Nate—or at least, not the way she knew him.
The man in front of her now looked like he was starving, and she was going to be his damn sacrifice.