I took a slow and careful step back down the stairs.
“But you are keeping things from me,” he told her.
And I stopped.
“I like it when you have your secrets,” he went on, his voice hot and threatening. “It drives me insane in all the best ways. And maybe I have secrets, too.”
“You want me to be suspicious of you?” she challenged.
But then she let out a breathy groan, and I took another step down, the wooden stair whining under my weight.
Fuck! I stopped, my face etched in pain. They hadn’t heard that, had they? Please, please, please… Did they even have wooden stairs in the original cathedral? Wouldn’t they have been stone? Stone doesn’t make noise.
“You’re not suspicious?” he asked. “I spend a lot of time out of town, Rika. I can get whatever I want from anyone I want.”
She whimpered. “Yeah, you can, but you don’t.”
“How do you know?”
The bed creaked, moans and breathing followed, and I shook my head, wishing I was deaf instead.
They were fighting.
While they were having sex.
It was weird.
“Because you’re not stupid,” she threw back at him. “No one will feel like me on your body.”
The headboard banged into the wall faster and faster, and my head filled with their grunts and moaning, their panting picking up pace.
“Rika,” he breathed out.
“You would never risk losing this,” she taunted.
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t want anything but this. Fuck, baby.”
“I love you, Michael,” she whispered loudly as they got caught up in what they were doing. “I’ve always loved you.”
And I stood there, no longer wincing or dreading my invasion of their privacy but feeling everything they were feeling and wanting more.
The skin touching skin. My body on fire and alive with him. His breath. His tongue. His mouth and hands. His teeth nipping at my stomach and thighs.
That feeling of wanting nothing else, and I would rather never eat again than not have him.
I don’t want to…make you dirty.
“I will find out what you’re keeping from me,” Michael growled as the bed rocked.
“You can try.”
“I should pull out right now and fucking leave you like this.”
“No, please,” she whimpered.
“Or maybe I’ll just have lots of fun getting the answer out of you. Flip over.”
Weight shifted, her body turning over maybe, and I knew the position they were in. I hadn’t done that yet, but I wanted to. Someday.
You won’t make me dirty. There is no you. There is no me. This is us. Us.
My eyes burned, and my chin trembled. I didn’t want to do those things with just anyone, though.
A body pressed into my back and I blinked, swallowing the tears in my throat.
“I was supposed to come to you for our next appointment,” Will teased, resting his head on my shoulder.
Upstairs, Rika and Michael went at it, growing louder and harder.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. “I won’t tell them you were eavesdropping.”
I turned around, but he wouldn’t let me leave. I smelled liquor on his breath. Had he not been to bed yet, either?
“You have this look on your face,” he told me, keeping his voice low and intimate. “Are you wishing someone would do that to you or are you remembering when someone did that to you?”
That. Meaning Michael and Rika’s fucking.
I pushed past him and descended the stairs, finding my way through the great room and to the front door again.
“Need a ride home?” he asked.
“You’re drunk.” I pulled the door open. “I’ll call someone.”
I slammed the door, not caring if Michael and Rika heard me at that point, and walked down the stairs, rain pummeling my hat and shoulders.
The door behind me opened again, and before I knew it, I was swung around, engulfed in strong arms, with a mouth on mine and tongue inside me.
I grunted, trying to push him away as I tasted the faint remnants of whiskey, his tongue brushing mine and playing with me. Forced up on my toes, Will devoured me, gripping the back of my neck, his breath and heat filtering through my body like syrup, down to my toes. Every inch of me suddenly starving.
He pulled away from my mouth, but kept me in his arms. “You need to get fucked and bad,” he told me. “If you don’t want him to do it, I will.” Then he leaned in, whispering over my mouth. “And I would make that offer sober.”
He let me go, and I inhaled shallow breaths, the cool rain welcome on my hot skin.
“See you soon, Winter,” he taunted and went back into the house.
I stood there for a moment, waiting to get my shaking under control before I ordered another ride.
He might be right. I was twenty-one, plenty old enough to have a healthy, active sex life, but when it did happen again, I wanted it to be like it was for Erika and Michael. They seemed to like to play games, but it was passionate, and it was love.
The love was what felt good. Unfortunately, it had been one-sided in my past experience. I could be tempted to take Will up on his offer to let off some steam, but he wouldn’t be more than that. I wanted him as a friend.
The real question was, was he on Damon’s side or mine?
I pulled the leash out of my pocket, letting the heavy, metal clip at the end dangle at my side.
Where the hell was my dog?
“I’m not sure what you heard, Miss Ashby,” Crane told me, as he walked back into the foyer from the rear of the house. “But no one was home except you this morning. Damon left for the city before you were even awake, I was taking care of some errands, and there was no one else here.”
I stood just inside the open door to my house, the rain pouring in fat drops on the driveway behind me.
“And my family?”
“They left last night after the party.” I heard him open a drawer on one of the tables and pull out keys. “I took them to the airport myself.”
“Left?” I blurted out. “What do you mean?”
My mother and Ari were gone? Without me?
“Yes, the Maldives for the honeymoon,” he informed me as if he were reminding me. “Damon sent Mrs. Ashby and Mrs. Torrance on ahead without him. He’s supposed to join them in a few days.”
“Wait, so they were already gone when I came home last night?”
I felt dizzy, my head like a balloon floating away from my body. The confrontation with Damon played in slow motion in my mind, reprocessing everything we said and the threats he made, and all the while, they weren’t even in the house. His taunts about what he and Ari were going to do had been empty, and I’d gone to bed under this roof, alone in the house with him, with absolutely no security that my family was close.
“Yes, ma’am,” Crane finally answered.
I pulled off my baseball cap and fisted the top of my hair, closing my eyes. Fuck.
I didn’t just imagine it this morning. There was someone in the house with me. Several someones, to be exact. All those noises and movements happening simultaneously in different parts of the house? I wasn’t just scared and overly alert of every little creak. I knew what I heard, dammit.
And then someone messing with me in the theater bathroom that night? Damon claimed it wasn’t him. This all had to be him.
“I’ve searched the house, top to bottom,” he said. “There’s nothing here.”
“Like I would trust you,” I snapped.
He worked for that monster. He was paid to fall in line and protect Damon’s interests, not mine.
And Damon had a very long history of loving to scare me.
Crane didn’t argue, though. He just bowed out. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
He walked past me, his keys jingling, so I assumed he was leaving, and I called out, keeping my voice stern. “My dog is missing,” I told him. “Would you please take a look around the property before you leave?”
“Yes, Miss Ashby.”
“And my friend?” I inquired. “He got home safely last night?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I couldn’t talk to Ethan after what I’d learned, but I didn’t want him lying in a ditch somewhere, either.