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“What was that about?” Ford asks.
“We had words in the women’s room.”
“About what?”
“About Sebastian and Vance. She didn’t like what happened back there.”
Ford scoffs. “She has no say in it. She’s just jealous because you have access, if not a right, to what she wants herself.”
“She wants Sebastian.”
As Ford presses the call button for the elevator, he laughs. “He’s not the ones she wants.”
“Then why was she so hateful toward me?”
“Because Vance would rather play with you than her.”
I think back to the night I watched the two of them together in his kinky chambers. They tore at each other like wild, starved animals desperate to feed. He wanted her the way Sebastian and Liam want me.
“I don’t believe it. There’s no way he’d rather have me over her.”
“It’s true. He’s cross with her over her knocked up status. Hasn’t set a finger on her since he found out.”
His admission stuns me into silence for the remainder of the ride up to the sixth floor. As he helps me to my quarters, I’m still trying to process our surprising exchange.
Because I was certain Lilith’s jealousy stemmed from my involvement with Sebastian—not a one-off public display of humiliation with the man who had to negotiate to get her in his bed.
Ford switches on a lamp at my bedside, and that’s when the silver mask—left abandoned in its fancy box on the ottoman—catches my attention. That mask reminds me of how far this night digressed from the outcome I’d hoped for. All I’d wanted was to spend the evening with Sebastian, wrapped safe in his arms.
Oh, how cruel hope can be.
Before I realize my composure is crumbling, emotions escaping down my cheeks in hot, bitter tracks, Ford brushes the tears from my skin.
“Why are you crying?”
“I had such high hopes for tonight. I thought Sebastian and I would talk, and he’d forgive me. At least, I hoped he would. Instead, I betrayed him all over again.”
Ford cradles my face. “Listen to me. You haven’t betrayed anyone. No matter what you’ve done with Liam, or Sebastian, or Vance, or me, we all have the right to touch you. An equal right. You need to put the guilt where it belongs, on us. It doesn’t belong on your shoulders.”
“I didn’t have to enjoy what we did.”
He grabs my dress and yanks it up my body, leaving me standing in the nude before his appreciative eyes. I let him ogle me, too drunk and weak to care about covering myself at this point.
“If I wanted to lay you out on the bed and eat your cunt, you couldn’t stop me. You’re powerless here, so stop blaming yourself.”
“You’d force me?” Instead of shaking off my guilt, the whimper that escapes my lips only heightens it. Cements it in my heart, because I can see everything he just said, the images looping in my mind. The visual is too strong, and it shoots renewed desire between my thighs.
“Not force,” he says, shaking his head as he backs me into the edge of the mattress. “Coax, Novalee. You might feel the need to protest, but I’d make you feel so incredibly good that you wouldn’t be able to fight me for long.” He gives an easy shove to my shoulders until I’m sitting on the bed. With a gentle tilt of my chin, he commands my gaze. “Do you want to sleep, or do you want to feel good?”
“I don’t want to sleep.” Sleeping brings on nightmares and loneliness and horrific memories I can’t escape, not even in slumber. “But I don’t want option two either.”
“Why are you so ashamed for wanting what you want?”
“Have you ever been in love?” I counter.
He shakes his head.
“Not even a little?”
