Page 88 of Their Arrangement
I stepped into the steam. Let the water scorch my thighs. Scrubbed the lipstick from my mouth. The glitter from my eyelids. The scent of another man’s hand from my skin.
I stood there too long.
Long enough for the water to run cold.
When I stepped out, I toweled off in silence. Found the clothes folded on the bathroom counter. One of his shirts. Soft. Heavy. Black. No pants.
I slipped it on.
The hem hit mid-thigh.
I didn’t wear anything else.
Didn’t need to.
When I emerged, the apartment was darker. Just the warm light from a lamp in the living room, casting long shadows across the couch where Wolfe sat.
He looked at me.
Didn’t say a word.
His eyes dragged from my damp hair to my bare thighs.
To the edge of his shirt brushing the curve of my ass.
“Sit,” he said.
I stood still.
“Couch or bed?” he asked.
The breath caught in my throat. “What?”
He leaned back. Spread his knees. “You want to be owned, Cloe? Or just punished?”
My knees almost buckled.
I said, “Bed.”
He nodded once.
And I walked.
His eyes didn’t leave me.
Not when I walked. Not when I passed him. Not when I hesitated at the doorway to his room and looked back like I might ask for permission to enter a place I’d already been invited to bleed in.
But he didn’t move.
Didn’t follow.
Didn’t rescue.
This wasn’t that kind of story.
The bedroom was cold. The kind of cold that lived in places where grief lingered too long. No photographs. No clutter. Just the sharp scent of clean linen and something darker under it—like cologne and memory.
I stood in the center of the room, shaking.
