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Irony is a sadistic bitch.
Further down the hallway lies his bedroom. The door is cracked open, and I seize the opportunity with both hands. No fucks are given as I push inside and find myself in a space finished with wood textures and verdant green soft furnishings. It’s like the forest has reached out with long mossy branches extending inside and made itself at home. While the rest of the spaces in this building might be made up of concrete and glass and shades of charcoal, in here, there is a softness I wasn’t expecting.
The presence of the trees and earthiness reflected in the decor filling his room is a visceral thing.
Dare I say, this space feels calming. Grounding.
I quickly huff out a breath. Jesus. No. There can be no good that comes from starting to romanticize this man based off of how at-ease his bedroom makes me feel.
Rifling through his wardrobe proves that he really does live in expensive suits, with everything meticulously stored and organized. I mess up some of his ties, just because I can.
I’m busy pulling out drawer after drawer. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but maybe it’s his humanity that he might have shoved in here, buried along with his matching pairs of socks. There’s a selection of workout gear, sweat pants, and long-sleeve tees. The navy blue material snags my eye, looking soft as a feather, and before I know what I’m doing, my fingers dig into the fabric, pressing it against my cheek.
It feels like being wrapped in a warm embrace, and the deeply satisfying essence curls through my blood. His scent of citrus and wood lingers, mixed with laundry powder. My eyelids drift closed, and for one fluttering beat of my heart, I allow myself to imagine the soft cotton is his palm cupping my jaw. Images of how it looked from afar when his identical twin held Poe’s face that night at the auction flow into my mind, the moment when I thought it was Thorne touching another woman.
How would it actually look if it were the man in question himself holding someone like that?
Butterflies begin to riot around in my stomach. The tiny traitors.
I’m more of a disaster than I realized if I’m letting myself get tangled up in knots over Thorne Calliano. As that thought springs to mind, it prompts me to wake the fuck up from my weird little wardrobe-reverie. I drop the sleeve like it scalded my flesh.
He is nothing more than a master manipulator and irredeemable asshole. A man whose ribs I would happily acquaint with a knife if given half a chance.
I blink and stare at the room around me. Daylight has drained away and it suddenly feels as though the evening shadows have crept in unannounced. While I’ve been consumed with my efforts to snoop around, it all happened quicker than I noticed. There’s an ominous silence and the darkened forest looms outside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows occupying one whole wall, exactly as they do in my own room. Now, standing amongst a wardrobe full of men’s clothes, I can’t help but feel like someone is watching me from the lengthening shadows.
My skin prickles with goosebumps, and a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye makes me jump. The thundering pulse in my neck doesn’t make any attempt to slow down, even when I see it’s only a bird flitting through the gloom.
All of a sudden, I’m very aware of just how deserted and isolated I am out here on my own.
My vulnerability is laid bare in lurid detail.
Before I can hyperfixate on that fact, I contemplate hurrying to my bedroom, but instead decide I’m a big girl. Now is not the moment I’m going to run scared. What I will do instead is brush off whatever freak-out I’m having and take myself for a pleasant little nighttime swim. The courtyard is aglow with warm lights scattered throughout the foliage, and the pool itself takes on a luminescence with the underwater lighting. Being out there feels warm and cozy and a hell of a lot safer, besides, the water is calling my name.
For a second, I even think about skinny dipping since I’m technically here alone, but I don’t really fancy an awkward encounter with one of those gargoyle-looking guards if one decides to appear out of the blue. So bikini it is, and after quickly changing, I plunge into the heated water with a sigh.
But that damn crawling sensation over my skin follows me, even below the water’s surface.
Stupid. So goddamn stupid. I’m uneasy as all hell because there’s an ever-present impression of being watched. But the glassed-in courtyard only reflects back the twinkling lights and greenery each time my eyes dart from side to side. The rippling surface of the water sluices around me as I swim from one end to another while my eyes ping pong around the courtyard. Logically, I know there’s nothing and no one able to get to me here—this place is an impenetrable fortress. Not only that, but even from where I’m positioned in the pool, I can see straight into the kitchen, where I left more lights than necessary blazing.
This is one of those moments in life when I have to give myself a stiff talking to. The darkness outside is unnerving. It’s quiet. And I let a stupid bird flitting through some trees have me halfway to shitting my pants.
Just thinking about how uneasy I felt while standing in Thorne’s room has my pulse ratcheting up again.
Would convincing these men to let me have a weapon of some kind, you know, for the times when they’re not around make me feel better? I suppose I could always stash one of the knives from the kitchen…God, I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?
As I duck dive under the water, I’m contemplating whether to scurry to the butcher’s block filled with all manner of big, sharp implements that could easily carve a hole in a man’s stomach, when there’s a muffled, plunging noise behind me.
It sends a pressure wave through the water that tosses my body a little, and panic races through every limb like a frozen gale. My blood turns to ice within a second.
There’s a silent scream that bubbles out of me as I thrash to try and turn around, but it’s too late. My arms are pinned by my sides as I’m grabbed from behind and dragged right to the bottom of the deep end of the pool.
It’s impossible to determine which way is up. They say when you get tossed around by heavy surf that the force of the waves overhead can be so disorienting that your panicked brain gets confused. Everything is dark. You try to kick toward what you believe to be the surface, only to hit your head on the rocks below and drown.
Right now I’m surrounded by shadows and water that threatens to fill my burning lungs.
There’s a hand clamped over my mouth, pinching my nose. Another roughly cups my pussy.
Everything morphs into a grim kaleidoscope of distress as I struggle against the nightmares of what it might be like to drown at the hands of a psychopath. One who wants me dead in the act of seeking revenge.
