I watch him, a little shell-shocked by his attitude.
“What?” he barks, still refusing to look up.
“Bad day at the office?”
“Something like that,” he mumbles around a mouthful of what looks like meat feast pizza.
“Biff told me about you training me up.”
“Can we not?”
“Can we not what? Talk?”
“Yeah.”
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering what’s turned him from the sweet guy he’s been over the past few days to the prick sitting before me now.
I don’t have to wonder for long. The answer is right in front of me. Well, it is me. Last night ruined everything, and although my body might have other ideas about a repeat, my head knows that he was right all along. It never should have happened.
“Okay, well. I’ll just…” Standing, I take myself, my pizza, and glass of crappy water to my bedroom and kick the door shut behind me.
I know when I’m not wanted, and I’ve already learned my lesson about forcing myself on him. If he needs space and to pretend that I’m not here, then he can have it.
16
Spike
“Fuck,” I mutter as she shuts her bedroom door.
I don’t want to be a prick, but putting some kind of barrier up between us is the only way I can see us getting through the next few days without doing something else we’re going to regret.
The second I walked into the flat, all I could think about was dragging her from the sofa and showing her exactly what had been in my head all day. But I can’t. I made Zach a promise—a promise that I’ve already broken. I need to stay away from her.
The thought of him finding her somewhere else to live doesn’t sit right with me. I like her being here. She makes this place feel more like a home than any other housemate I’ve had before, but I know it can’t happen.
The second all of this is over, she needs to get out of here so that I can continue with my life.
She makes me think back to a time I’ve fought hard to forget about, and she makes me want things that are just not a part of my future.
Forevers and futures don’t exist with me. Been there, done that, got the shattered heart to prove it. I’m done with that bullshit.
If Zach and Titch think they can commit to one woman and that it’s not going to end in disaster, then that’s fine for them. They can’t say I didn’t warn them about it. But that shit is not for me. Not again.
I only eat half my pizza before I give up. It’s unlike me, but my head’s spinning so much with everything going on right now that I just can’t stomach it.
Throwing it down on the other end of the sofa, a notepad on the one Kas was sitting on catches my eye.
I tell myself to leave it, but eventually my curiosity gets the better of me and I reach over for it.
My breath catches when I flip the page open. Zach was right, she really is quite talented. I flick through page after page of her drawings until I come to the last one.
“Fucking hell,” I whisper, my cock swelling as I stare down at her sketch of the two of us. We’re in her bed like last night. I’m between her thighs, my face in the crook of her neck. It’s erotic as fuck.
The longer I stare, the more my temperature increases as I vividly remember just how hot her skin was when I touched her, the little sounds she made as she was heading for release and just how tight she was when I finally pushed inside of her.
Fuck. Fuck.
Slamming the book shut, I place it back where I was. I dump my half-eaten pizza in the kitchen and march straight for the bathroom for a shower. A very cold shower.
My footsteps falter as I pass her door. I want to know what she’s doing, to say something, to apologise, but I know that doing any one of them is a bad idea. If I open that door, her scent is going to surround me and I know I’m not going to be able to remain standing in the doorway to have a conversation with her.
Lifting my hand to my hair, I run it through my messy locks, tugging until it bites and I’m safely locked in the bathroom.
Just a few days and she’ll be gone, and I can get on with my life without the constant reminder of how easily I played her body.
Just a few more days.
Things continue the same way for the next two days. Kas clearly got the message on Tuesday night when I came home, because she’s done her best to avoid me ever since. If I’m in the flat, she keeps herself locked in her room out of the way, and when I go to work, I can only assume that she stays put and keeps herself safe.
Biff goes both afternoons while we’re all working and talks to her about starting at the studio. She might have only just started being trained up herself by Zach, but she knows the basics and can talk Kas through the process. I’m happy if it means I don’t have to do it.
I’ve yet to come up with how I’m going to get out of being her mentor, but with each day that passes, I know my time is coming to an end. Zach was out this afternoon—I can only assume he’s got the money Kas needs and this is all about to come to an end.
I’m glad; she doesn’t need this hanging over her head any longer than necessary. But equally, it’s going to mean she’s leaving soon. And although she might have spent the past forty-eight hours avoiding me, I
