It’s amazing what a good night of sleep can do to a person. And a good fuck for that matter.

Sebastian was right, I was just tired and needed to sleep. It all feels so stupid now, even though the uneasiness still lingers whenever I hear whispers about the recent murders.

I can still feel Sebastian inside of me. Even as Marc, my boss, gave me a ridiculous lecture about how many sick days I have left, all I could think about was how Sebastian touched me last night.

Not just touched me. There isn’t a suitable word for what he did to me. How he dragged the pleasure from me in a way I didn’t know could exist.

And that was just foreplay.

The memory of how his lips felt, how his hard body felt, how his hard cock felt…

My nipples harden as a shudder rolls through my body at the thought of tonight. Sebastian is handsome, classically so with a darkness that hints at danger, but last night, everything about him resembled a sex god. The way the dim light caressed his stubble, the way his lips seemed to pout and then glisten when he licked them. And his eyes swirled with a desire I imagine could never be tamed. It’s more than just lust though. The more I’m around Sebastian, the more I let myself believe there’s something more between us.

The click of the air conditioner in the office brings my gaze up to it and then to Angie, sitting in the desk chair cross-legged and on her phone. While I’m on the floor with six piles of paper as I try to organize these documents alphabetically by last name.

“Oh, my God,” Ang drags out the last word as she throws her head back and stares at the ceiling in exasperation. “Can it just be five already?” She drops her gaze to me and I have to crack a smile.

“Hard day?” I taunt her, knowing she didn’t do shit. We had four clients come in today. So, she checked in four people. And that’s all she’s done. For eight hours.

I sit upright, stretching my back. “We could switch on Monday?” I offer her, and she tilts her head.

“I don’t know why you even agreed to that shit,” she tells me while making a circle with her pointer finger to encompass the papers on the floor, right before going back to her phone.

Agreed? It’s my job. I bite my inner cheek to keep from responding. I need my paycheck. I need to add it to my meager savings.

The thought of why I’m so desperate to save up makes my heart squeeze in my chest.

It’s so I can leave and get out of here. But things have changed. That would mean leaving Sebastian and whatever it is that we have going on now.

It’s odd to feel so much, so quickly. To feel that raw loss at the thought of one day getting out of here. I’m so used to feeling lonely that it didn’t take much for me to feel some sort of attachment to him. Although that feeling has come and gone for years and yet every time, I know there’s something between us I’d never have with anyone else.

It only took that single kiss years ago to know that.

“I say we just get out of here,” Angie suggests, interrupting my thoughts.

I shrug at her suggestion. “Marc won’t notice, that’s for sure.”

I’m not leaving this city any time soon. And whatever I have with Sebastian will more than likely be short-lived. I’m still shocked it’s happening at all.

I’ll be counting the days until it ends.

Even knowing that, so confidently certain it will end, I’m still going to give myself to him tonight. I didn’t question it for a moment.

I was always his to take. And that’s exactly what I want. For him to be my first.

My breathing comes out shaky as I realize the clock is ticking down to that moment and I still haven’t decided if I’m going to tell him or not.

“Okay, let’s just get out of here.” Angie hops down from her seat, letting it roll backward and carelessly slam into her desk as she slips her ridiculously high heels back on.

“Why do you even work here?” I feel the sarcastic question slip out before I can stop myself. I feel like half a bitch, but with the nerves of what I’m going to do tonight, I’m not as careful with my words as I should be.

Angie pauses for a second and then laughs, loud and unrestrained. She shrugs, slipping on the first heel and then the second. “The perv wanted to hire me,” she says and looks up at me as she continues, “and I had to pay my rent.”

One point for honesty, I suppose. “Fair enough.” I can’t argue with that. Pushing on my thighs, I force myself to stand up and stack the piles, so I can get back to filing tomorrow and not lose my place. As I’m setting a generic glass paperweight on the stack, Angie asks me if I want a ride.

My heart does a somersault, the weirdest movement as the jitters set through me. It’s been like this on and off all day.

I’m going to go to Sebastian.

Sebastian Black is going to fuck me tonight. All the anxiety and nerves mix in the pit of my stomach. Maybe if I keep telling myself it’s just sex, my heart will start believing it.

“I’m good; I’m going to walk.” I think I do a good job at keeping the nerves out of my voice, but I have to stare at the stack instead of looking at her.

I can feel her eyes on me though, and when I peek up, looking as innocently as I can at the only woman I’ve ever met who owns her sexuality like she does, she asks, “You sure?”

That little place between her eyebrows is scrunched and I’m sure she can tell something’s off, but I’m not telling her shit. Not. One. Word. I don’t want advice; I don’t want to hear stories. Worse, I don’t want her to tell me the list of women he’s screwed. She has a habit of doing that whenever a man’s name comes up. She’s a walking encyclopedia of all things sexual and provocative.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I tell her nonchalantly, and her expression tells me that she isn’t buying any of it, but she doesn’t ask again. She grips the doorway once, looking between the pile of papers I refuse to take my eyes from and then back up to my face.

“See you tomorrow then?” she asks and then adds, “You’re not going to take another mini vacay, right?”

The smile she gets from me is genuine. “Your concern is adorable,” I tell her and roll my eyes before adding, “but no, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“All right, sweet cheeks,” she says while tapping the doorway, “See you in the morning.”

“Have a good night, Buttercup,” I tell her and then scrunch my nose at Buttercup. I could have come up with something better, but the more I let it sit, the more I like it.

I listen to her heels as she walks out and then immediately grab my bag and head out the back, rather than the front. The stairwell is all concrete steps down the back, which is why no one ever leaves this way, but it heads to the north part of the city, where the butcher shop is.

My fingers feel sweaty as I pull my purse onto my shoulder, the nerves kicking into high gear.

Every step I get closer to him, I get more nervous about each detail.

I don’t have sexy lingerie, but I can wait for him naked.

I didn’t pack all of my makeup yesterday when he brought me back to his place, only my mascara, so that’s all I have to work with.

I have to clear my throat to get the knot out of it as I get closer. I know he’s working, and he told me to come to him when I was done, so I am.

Part of me recognizes how… docile I’m being. The only thing that keeps me moving forward and only mildly second-guessing all of this, is how easy Bastian is making it for me. He’s not giving me hard glares until I look away. He isn’t pretending I don’t exist. He isn’t ignoring me.

Something changed and I don’t know what, but he still makes me feel safe. He always has. I may be crazy in other ways. But I know what I’ve felt for Sebastian for years has merit. There’s something real between us, and that’s not a white lie. And I wish one of us would have the courage to say it out loud because deep down I know that neither of us can deny it.

I don’t know if they’ll let me stay here now that my uncle’s dead. He died last week and right before my eighteenth birthday. The lawyer said he willed everything to me, but with the debt he left behind, they may have to take the house from me to put into the estate.

And then I’ll have no one and nowhere to go.

Those are the thoughts that keep me up tonight even though I know school will come tomorrow. I can’t keep skipping class, so I need to sleep, but I can’t.

I’m so fucking angry. That’s what I feel most guilty about. I had one person who barely even spoke to me, but he let me stay here, and occasionally it felt like we were family. Uncle Travis was a good man, a trucker his whole life, but he didn’t much like other people. A lot of the time, I wondered if that meant me too. Being alone for so long will do that to you.

He came home two weeks ago, and we talked about what was coming after high school. Tears flood my eyes again at the thought and I angrily brush them away.

Even if he wasn’t physically here for me, or even if he never showed me much of anything other than a place to stay, I knew without a doubt last week that he loved me.

And now he’s gone. It’s not fair.

I take in a staggered breath and try to calm down as I cling to my pillow. I’ve never felt as selfish as I do now, being filled with anger when I should be mourning him.

What’s wrong with me?

Just as I think the question, I hear the floorboards creak behind me, toward the open door to the hall.

A shiver runs down my spine as my eyes open wider and then narrow. Swallowing thickly, I know it wasn’t just the chill in the air that made the old boards bend in the night. I can hear whoever it is walking closer.

It better be him, I think bitterly as I reach slowly into the nightstand. My uncle left everything to me, and that means his gun too.

“You don’t need it,” the deep voice calls out from the doorway just as my fingertips brush the cold metal. Slowly shutting the drawer, I let my eyes close and try to calm the adrenaline racing through my body.

“Why are you here?” I ask him without turning to face him. My chest aches with a pain I can’t describe. Sebastian used to come all the time at night when I first moved in here.

“It’s been a while,” I tell him and hate the nostalgia in my tone.

He’s quiet; he always is.

He kissed me, he followed me, and then he left me alone.

“I’m fine,” I tell him and then turn in bed, slowly bringing myself up to sit cross-legged under the covers. “As fine as I can be.” Years ago, when he’d come, he wouldn’t leave until he believed me when I said those words.

And I loved him for it. Truly and deeply, I loved him for it. If it had been anyone else, I’d have been terrified, angry and a mix of everything hateful, but it’s not just anyone. It’s Sebastian.

Tears cloud my vision of his dark shadowy frame in the doorway.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well gee,” I say sarcastically, bitterly even as I wipe my eyes. “So kind of you to point out the obvious.” It’s been years since he’s visited me and I’m not the same person I was back then. I’ve stopped praying for him to come and wishing he’d slip into bed with me and hold me.

I don’t want to be held by anyone anymore. Even as I think it, I know it’s not true.

“Just go,” I tell him and then lie down, turning my back to him and pulling the covers up closer to my face so I can use the soft bedding to wipe at my eyes. “You’re good at leaving,” I add and hate myself for even bothering to speak with him when he merely chuckles. It’s a deep low rumble that fills the bedroom and sends a shiver of want across my skin, igniting something I thought was long forgotten. It seems the hate I have for him leaving me, ignoring me day in and day out isn’t enough to drown out the desire to be held by him after all.

“Someone told me you might be leaving.”

“Who said that?” I barely speak the question. My heart does a stupid pitter-patter at the thought of leaving him. My heart is stupid. I listen as he walks into the bedroom. He stops somewhere far from the bed, but I don’t know where and I don’t turn to look at him.

“Are you leaving?” he asks me.

“I hope not,” I answer him, and the truth of that answer makes me close my eyes tightly. I couldn’t wait to get out of here, but I need a place to stay. Everyone needs a home, somewhere they can run to.

“Is it money? Or are you moving somewhere else to be with other family?” he asks me.

“There is no other family,” I admit, feeling lonelier by the second.

“So, it’s money?”

Time ticks by slowly until I answer him, “Yeah.”

He’s quiet and doesn’t say anything for a long time. So long, I think maybe he’s left me until he says, “It’ll be okay. Go to sleep, Chloe Rose.”

I remember thinking how much I wish I didn’t want him to be here as I drifted to sleep, feeling his eyes on me. But I did. I had no one. And of everyone in this place, he was the only one I wanted. So, if that was the way I could have him, I’d take it.

I don’t know if he heard me later that night when I woke up and started to cry out of nowhere. I confessed how much I missed him and how lonely I was as I wiped the tears away, still huddled in my spot, gripping the pillow. Or maybe that part was a dream. It’s hard to know anymore.