Chapter 18 Leo
The door had barely clicked shut behind her when I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the floor. My belt hit tile next. I didn’t even wait for the shower to heat. I didn’t want heat. I needed cold. Ice cold. A brutal reminder that this was real life and not whatever drugged state she’d left me in.
I stepped under the spray. The first blast hit me like a punch. I welcomed it.
Freezing water hammered my back as I planted both hands on the tile, head bowed, heart still running like I was chasing something through a warzone. But I wasn’t chasing. I was stuck. Trapped in the echo she left behind.
My cock was already hard. Painfully. Not from the temperature. From her.
I gritted my teeth and dropped my head lower. Water ran down my spine, my shoulders, soaking the heat out of my skin, but it couldn’t touch what burned underneath. My body didn’t give a fuck that she was gone. It just remembered her. Remembered the way her wrists had looked in the cuffs, red and raw. Her shirt riding up to reveal the curve of her waist. The way she’d watched me like she knew exactly what she was doing to me.
Fuck.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe.
She didn’t fight it. Not once. Not when I pressed close, not when I turned the vibrator on, not even when I walked away. She wanted it. She wanted me.
I hated how much I loved that.
My hands curled tighter against the tile. The tension bled through every muscle, spine to neck, but none of it settled the pulse between my legs. She’d looked at me like she was starving. And I hadn’t fed her. I’d stepped back. I’d locked the damn thing away. But it didn’t matter. The hunger stayed. It spread. Now it was mine too.
I tried to shake it off. Let the cold wash it away.
Didn’t work.
I reached down and wrapped my hand around my cock. My breath came out in a ragged hiss. I didn’t even try to slow it. Didn’t think. I stroked once, twice, hard and steady, dragging my grip over the tip just the way I knew would make it hurt. She would’ve licked me there. Teased it. I could see her now—on her knees, that messy hair falling into her eyes, her lips open, her throat swallowing me down while she moaned.
“Shit,” I muttered.
My other hand slammed against the tile.
She would’ve touched my chest. Traced the tattoo just to feel me twitch under her fingers. Her hands would’ve been soft but curious, bolder than she had any right to be. I imagined her straddling my thigh, riding it while I watched, while I made her beg. Her pussy slick and needy, her voice a whisper in my ear: Please, Leo. Please.
I jerked harder, teeth clenched, everything coiled too tight. I didn’t want to want her. Not like this. Not where it got inside me, wrapped around my fucking lungs and wouldn’t let go. But my body didn’t care what I wanted.
I came hard, sudden and violent, every muscle in my gut seizing. It hit the wall in hot streaks, disappearing under the stream before I could even register the aftermath.
But I wasn’t done.
I leaned forward, breathing like I’d run a mile uphill. My cock was still hard. Still aching. And now I was pissed. At myself. At her. At whatever the hell had possessed me to let her get that close.
I shut the water off and stepped out, not even bothering with a towel. Let the cold follow me. Let it freeze the parts she’d lit on fire.
I needed this out of me.
By the time I grabbed my keys, I wasn’t thinking. I was operating on instinct, on impulse, the same way I moved when bullets were flying and someone screamed go. I didn’t pack anything. Didn’t check the time. Just got in the car and hit dial.
“Be ready,” I said when she picked up.
Marion didn’t ask a single question. She never did. That was the point.
I sped through the streets like I could outrun the thought of Kristen’s mouth. Like burning through red lights would unhook her from the inside of my skull. She wasn’t just under my skin anymore. She was in it.
By the time I pulled into the hotel parking lot, I was barely human. Just nerve and heat and jaw-grinding frustration. The elevator ride was too long. Every second a pulse at the base of my spine. I didn’t knock when I reached her room. Didn’t speak when she opened the door wearing black lace and a red silk robe that slipped right off her shoulder.
She smiled like she thought she knew what this was.
I kissed her before she could say a word.
It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t careful. My hand was already in her hair, yanking her head back. My tongue shoved into her mouth like I needed to erase the taste of someone else. Her fingers dug into my shoulders as she gasped, but she didn’t pull away. She knew what I needed her for.
We didn’t even make it to the bed.
I bent her over the sink in the bathroom. She held the mirror for balance, breath fogging the glass, whimpering when I drove into her from behind. Her body welcomed me. Her moans echoed. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to see her face. I didn’t want to see anything but what I saw when I closed them.
Kristen.
Her back arching. Her mouth spilling those soft, needy sounds. Her hips moving like she’d been waiting for me all night.
I fucked harder.
The mirror shook. Marion cried out, legs trembling. I grabbed her hips and pounded into her like I was trying to drive the ghost of that goddamn girl out of my body.
I came again, jaw locked tight, teeth gritted.
And nothing changed.
I pulled out and walked to the bed, collapsing onto it without looking at her. The room was too hot. The air too thick. I wanted to rip my skin off and start over.
Marion followed, breathing shallow, the robe gone now. She lay beside me, head on my chest, fingers tracing circles I barely felt.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
I didn’t answer. I stared at the ceiling.
“You’ve never been like this.”
Still nothing from me.
Her voice dropped, tentative now. “Is it something on your mind?”
My jaw tensed.
Then: “Or someone?”
My chest rose and fell beneath her head.
She was right. Of course she was. She always saw through it.
But I wasn’t giving her the name. I wasn’t giving anyone that power.
“Just get me a towel,” I said.
She shifted off me slowly, sighing. I stayed where I was. Eyes locked on the cracks in the ceiling paint. Skin tight. Organs churning.
The ache hadn’t faded. The itch was still there. No matter how deep I fucked or how hard I came, Kristen was still in my bloodstream. Moving. Twisting. Infecting.
And I had no cure.