Page 157 of Ruins
I turn off the surveillance, tossing my phone onto the nightstand before yanking the soiled blanket off the bed. A heavy sigh rips from my chest as I head to the bathroom, frustration and satisfaction tangled inside me.
She’s right down the hall. Soft, spent, still flushed from the pleasure she gave herself.
And I should be the one in that bed, wrecking her until she has no choice but tocrawlinto my arms.
The freezing shower does nothing to extinguish the heat still simmering beneath my skin.
I wrap a towel low around my hips, scrubbing a hand through my damp hair as I step out of the bathroom my heart stutters.
She’s here.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, wrapped in a white silk robe that clings to her body like a second skin. She looks both impossibly innocent and utterly forbidden, her presence unraveling something tight in my chest.
She shouldn’t be here.
Her gaze traces over my chest, slow and deliberate, before lifting to mine—an unspoken question lingering in the air between us.
“You’re home early,” she murmurs, her voice softer than I expected. Tentative. Almost unsure of herself.
“I thought you’d be asleep.” The smirk that tugs at my lips is instinctive, especially when her cheeks flush that lovely shade of pink.
Her eyes flick to the guest bed—the rumpled sheets, the discarded blanket—before snapping back to me, brow furrowing.
“Were you asleep?” she asks, curiosity in her tone, not accusation.
I don’t answer.
Instead, I force my eyes to stay on her face. Not on the way her robe has parted, offering the barest glimpse of skin. Not on the way her fingers fidget in her lap, betraying whatever excuse she’s telling herself for being here.
But then her eyes drop—to the towel slung low on my hips.
She doesn’t look away fast enough.
She knows.
The way she watches me, the way she lingers on the sharp ridges of my body, on the tension in my stance—it’s a dare. A challenge.
For a moment, I let myself feel it. The ache. The need.
Forher.
For the taste of what I’ve craved since the moment she stepped into my world and made it hers.
But I won’t take it.Not like this.
“Why don’t you go back to bed?” My voice is even, despite the way my muscles coil with restraint. I turn toward the closet, grabbing a pair of sweats.
Behind me, she exhales softly—too soft. A sound too similar to what I heard through the speakers mere moments ago, when she thought she was alone, writhing in her own pleasure.
My grip tightens around the waistband of my pants.
“Did that hurt?” she asks suddenly, her voice threading through the tension like a blade.
“What?” I ask from the closet.
“Your tattoo,” she clarifies.
I inhale slowly, discarding the towel, dragging the sweats on.
