Chapter 57 Leo
She let the towel fall.
I watched it hit the carpet. A whisper-soft thud. Almost nothing. But it landed like a dropped blade, cutting straight through the last tether of sense I had left. She was naked. Fully. Entirely. And she didn’t move to cover herself.
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
I didn’t look away.
Kristen stood in front of me like she wasn’t aware of her own body, or maybe like she was entirely aware and didn’t care what it did to me. Her chest lifted slowly as she breathed, and I could see every detail — the swell of her breasts, the soft tension in her stomach, the faint tan lines across her hips, the impossible darkness between her thighs.
My mouth went dry. My throat locked up.
I didn’t trust myself to move. I was afraid that if I shifted even a fraction of an inch, I would snap toward her. I’d never felt this way in my life. Not once. Not like this. It wasn’t attraction. It was obliteration.
My jeans hurt.
Not discomfort. Pain. I was hard in a way that made me feel deranged, violent, furious with myself. My cock strained against the denim, and I could already feel the sweat breaking along my spine. She hadn’t touched me. She hadn’t even said a word. And I was already one breath away from disaster.
She stood still, her weight balanced over both feet, like a soldier waiting for orders. But her eyes said something else entirely. They fixed on me with the calm certainty of a trap already sprung.
I couldn’t speak.
The air in the room was hot. I wanted to tear my shirt off. I wanted to tear her out of my vision, out of the doorway, out of my fucking brain. She knew what she was doing. She had to know. She was too deliberate, too precise, too impossibly still.
My body betrayed me again.
I swore under my breath. My fists were still clenched. My legs were rooted like I’d been tied to the floor. I wanted to lunge. I wanted to take. My muscles were screaming for movement. But I knew — the second I touched her, I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
She stepped forward.
I didn’t move.
She took another step. Slower. A glide, not a walk.
The sound of her foot brushing the carpet made something twist in my stomach. I caught a breath — shallow and rough. I felt it scrape my throat on the way in.
She was so close now I could see the way her pupils had blown wide. Her nipples had hardened. The skin of her chest was flushed. She wasn’t calm. She wasn’t indifferent. She was waiting. Holding herself out like a test I was supposed to fail.
Then she lifted her hand.
Her fingers touched the center of my chest. Just one finger, dragging down over my sternum like she was tracing a line she already knew by heart. My whole body flinched. My eyes fell shut for a second, just a second, and all I could hear was the ragged grind of my own breathing.
She leaned in.
Her mouth was next to my ear now.
“You have me all to yourself, Leo Moretti.”
Her voice didn’t shake.
Her lips brushed the shell of my ear, soft and hot and maddening. Her finger kept moving down. Past my sternum. Down my abdomen. Stopping just above the waistband of my jeans.
She knew.
She knew.
“What are you going to do?”
My name in her mouth made my stomach clench. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could only feel — my cock throbbing in my jeans, her bare skin inches from mine, her scent in the air between us like smoke curling around my mind.
Something broke.
I don’t remember deciding.
I just moved.
My hands caught her waist and shoved her backward. She gasped, and I dragged her across the room. We hit the bed hard. She bounced, legs parting on instinct. I climbed over her before I could stop myself.
Her skin was fire.
I groaned — a sound ripped out of my throat without thought, low and guttural and full of every inch of restraint I had already lost.
My mouth went to her throat. I kissed her like I hated her for it. Her neck. Her collarbone. Her breasts. My teeth grazed her nipple and she arched under me, her hands already in my waistband. She was yanking at the button. She was moaning. My name again — broken this time, wrecked.
I lost track of where my hands were. Everywhere. Her hips. Her thigh. Gripping her wrists, then letting go. Her skin was velvet and sweat and the heat of the goddamn sun.
I could feel her — all of her. The smooth slick heat between her legs. The way her body rocked into mine. My cock was caught in my jeans, straining, throbbing. She reached down, grabbed it through the denim, and I hissed through my teeth. Her nails bit into me. I couldn’t take it.
I growled something — nothing coherent — just a wordless, furious sound.
I shoved her farther back on the bed.
I was going to fuck her. I was going to do it right there. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about consequences. I didn’t care about anything but her body under mine and the ragged way she was panting, half-crying my name, pulling at my clothes like she wanted to rip me open.
Her legs curled around my hips.
I reached for my belt.
And then—
Snap.
It was small. Loud. Wrong.
My body went still.
The room tilted. My balance shifted. I wasn’t on the bed anymore.
I was standing.
My hands were empty.
I stared forward, breath caught in my chest like a grenade with the pin pulled. My vision blurred for a second. I blinked. Once. Twice. The sweat on my back was real. The throbbing ache in my jeans was real.
But I hadn’t moved.
I was still in the doorway.
Kristen was still naked.
Nothing had happened.
She was watching me. Just like before. Same distance. Same stillness. Same unreadable expression on her face. She had never touched me. I hadn’t taken a single step.
My hands were fists again. My cock ached with something that bordered on pain.
It had all been in my head.
A hallucination. A projection. A fantasy so real my body had believed it.
My lungs burned. I sucked in air through my teeth.
She tilted her head.
“What are you going to do?”
Her voice hadn’t changed.
My jaw clenched until I tasted blood. My throat worked. I swallowed hard. Every part of me screamed for permission, for release, for her.
I gave myself none.
“Get dressed, Kristen.”
She blinked. Her lips parted, like she hadn’t expected that. Like it confused her more than it offended her.
I didn’t look away. I didn’t even breathe.
I stared at her naked body like I could burn the memory of it into my skull and use it as a weapon against myself later. Like punishment.
“We have a training session this evening.”
And without waiting for a word, without giving her a second glance, I turned and walked away.