Page 108 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
His gaze searches my face and I know he can see the circles beneath my lash line, the redness in the whites of my eyes, the pinched look about me; all the things I saw in the mirror at the drugstore. All the things I tried to hide with my new makeup. He can probably smell the alcohol on me, too, and I agree with him, about showering.
Even so, I lift my chin and don’t look away.Iamfine, Sullen. I can take you. I can take this.
“Okay,” he says softly. “That’s nice. But we can’t just hang out in the lobby. If someone has been coming to clean, we never know when they might come back. I don’t think we should make it easy for them to find us. This building has a dozen or so floors. Let’s not stay on the first one.”
“I feel like I’m being lectured,” I shoot back, my brows furrowed. “Excuse me for wanting to have five minutes of joy. I know the concept is foreign to you, but it’s been a long weekend.”
He glances at my mouth, and I swear he’s imagining biting it. But then his gaze stalls on my eye and after a blink, my face heating, I know he’s studying the cut there. The concealer wasn’t thick enough to hide it completely.
“I know danger is not something you’re often in,” he counters softly, “but this is me, trying to protect us both.” He gestures between us with his gloved fingers.
I try to fight back a smile and his eyes seem to brighten, like he enjoys that. Me, finding him funny.
“Do I need to tie you down whileIshower, so I can ensure you don’t do something stupid?”
“I’m not stupid, Sullen Rule.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply. I swear I see regret furrow his brow and I wish I hadn’t said that. He’s going to think I can’t let anything go. But that’s true, isn’t it? It’s why I’m still obsessed with him after all these years, including two where he was absent completely. He never got out of my head.
“But if you let me watch you shower,” I say quickly, “I promise I will be on my best behavior.”
He snaps open his eyes at that and my heart races once more inside my chest. Before I can take the words back, knowing he’s self-conscious and always hiding, he moves in front of me, pinning me to the countertop with his body, his hands on either side of me, caging me in.
I press my palms to his chest, curling my fingers into the fabric of his hoodie, willing myself not to look away. To apologize or backtrack or flinch or show fear.
And I realize his face is flushed as I stare back carefully, the pink color on his cheeks drenching him in humiliation. He is so ashamed of his own body, even a joke hurts him.
I would want you anyway. I will want you always.
“I told you before,” he says, leaning down into my space, the lemon on his breath from the protein bars gliding over my lips. “You don’t want to see me.”
“And I told you I do,” I counter, gripping his hoodie tighter in my fists. “I told you I want all of you.”
He drops his head then, his lips coming to my shoulder, the injured one. He presses his mouth to me gently, then scraps his canines against the fabric of my shirt, as if in warning.
Chills crawl down my spine, my nipples hardening into sharp points. I arch my back, pressing into him, sliding my arms around him in some semblance of a hug.
“You don’t scare me,” I whisper. I won’t ever stop saying it until he believes it. I glide my hands up his back, feeling the firm muscle there. Then I reach higher, my fingertips grasping at the hood of his sweatshirt.
But when he notices, he reacts almost violently, jerking back from me and snatching my wrist between us, off of him. I drop my other hand, pressing it firmly behind me to steady my balance. Something rattles under my palm, causing me to flinch as I touch more marble, but I don’t look away from him.
“That’s the problem,” he says quietly. “In this place? Until we’re caught? You should be fucking afraid.”
I narrow my gaze even as my nerves coil tight in my low belly. “We’re doing this again? The boy who can’t remove his hoodie is telling the girl whose been strapped down that she should be scared?” I roll my eyes, forcing myself to appear far braver than I feel.
The intensity leaves his gaze then, his lips curving upward into a smile. But with his hand still gripping tightly to my wrist and his body so close to mine, I know he doesn’t think I’m funny. “Open the drawer, Karia.” He glances at my hand, pressed to cool marble beneath the lip of the counter.
Frowning, I slowly turn and realize it is exactly what he said. A drawer. There’s a curved silver handle on it, and I circle my fingers around the cool metal and pull.
The rattling sound from before grows louder, and Sullen releases my other wrist. I put my back to him and stare down at hundreds of skeleton keys in the shallow drawer, randomly tossed inside in no order whatsoever. They’re mostly silver but a few are rusted, too.
I glance over my shoulder to find him looking back at me, silent, so close I can feel his body heat.
Did he know these were here? Did he guess?
“Which one?” I ask quietly, lifting my bandaged hand to graze along the keys, hearing them rustle in the drawer. This place hasn’t been used as a hotel in a while; it’s too disorganized, everything thrown in here haphazardly. And nowadays, don’t hotels all use cards, or even wireless entry?
I see numbers etched onto the space between the bow and the stem of the keys and wonder how many rooms are in this building.
