Page 22 of Hellbent
My whole body still hums with it.
I sit up, muscles lazy and pliant. I find my clothes on a chairat the foot of the bed and pull on my jeans, leaving Jake’s t-shirt on so I can pretend he’s still wrapped around me, and make my way down the hall toward the kitchen—hair a mess, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
There’s a pot of coffee still on the warmer, but the house is quiet. No sign of anyone.
I pour a mug and sit at the kitchen table, tucking my feet up on the chair as I watch the snow float past the window, winding and delicate. Ryder’s truck is in the driveway. Jake’s car and Damian’s truck are gone.
Beyond that, a line of snow-capped pines mark the edge of the woods.
It’s extraordinarily peaceful…until a sound pulls me out of the silence.
At first I can’t tell what it is. Just a faint, repetitive creak. Then a low grunt. A pause.
And then a moan—soft, feminine, and unmistakable.
I freeze, breath catching in my throat.
The sound comes through the floorboards from upstairs. Ryder’s bedroom.
The realization hits me with a blast force of heat. Ryder. Upstairs.
With a woman.
My body, still buzzing from last night, responds instinctively. A flush crawls up my neck. My skin prickles with heat.
Flashbacks to Jake. The way he felt inside of me, the way he moved. But blending into the memory is something more forbidden—an image of Ryder.
How does he look when he loses control?
The thought grips me. Ryder is always so controlled, so fucking restrained. But up there, right now, he’s stripped of all that. No brooding walls. No quiet disdain. Just raw, physical need.
The woman moans again, louder this time, and a deeper groan answers her, low and guttural. I squeeze my thighs together, trying to breathe through the sudden rush of heat. But my body is burning up.
Where is Jake?
If he were here, maybe I wouldn’t be so wound up. Maybe I’d pull him into bed again, let him fuck the ache out of me.
But was last night a one-time thing? Or are we something now? Are we supposed to talk about it, or just let it happen again?
And Damian—does anything change between us now? Do I pretend he didn’t watch? Do we ignore what happened?
I try to put names to all of this. Jake—maybe something like a boyfriend? Damian—a coworker, but something messier? And Wyatt…
I want to call him a father figure—he’s overprotective, older, and always watching over me like he’s responsible for me—but there’s something about the way he looks at me that doesn’t feel fatherly at all.
My body is so restless that my mind drifts to places it shouldn’t. I picture Wyatt, face raw with lust, shoving me up against a wall and pinning me there with all that strength…and a fresh pulse of heat shoots through me.
Fuck.
I set the mug down too quickly. It thuds against the table.
The house settles into silence again. I exhale slowly, trying to shake it off. After a beat, I stand, wash and dry my mug, and head to the first-floor bathroom, where the toothbrush Jake left out for me is balanced on the sink. I brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face, but the heat still lingers under my skin.
I should take a shower. But there’s no towel on the rack. None folded on the shelf above the toilet.
I hesitate, and listen carefully. There’s no sound in the house. Maybe Ryder and his…guest have drifted into a post-fuck nap. If I tiptoe upstairs to the linen closet, I can grab a towel and be back down in seconds without being seen.
I creep up the stairs like a thief, my heartbeat picking up like I’m committing a real crime, and quietly open the linen closet. It’s empty.
