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Her release comes fast, her breath stuttering in the quiet like a spark lighting dry tinder.

“Mmmm—ohhh—ohhhhhhhhh.” She exhales long and low.

I stand open-mouthed, stunned, watching the impossible beauty of Grace’s sleeping orgasm and hating myself for it. Her body goes still, breath slowing to soft, uneven pants. The sheets fall in lazy folds around her hips. The air feels thicker somehow, pressing in on my skin like I’ve been caught somewhere I should never have stepped. I swallow hard and drag my gaze upward.

Her face is flushed, cheeks pink in the moonlight, lips parted like she’s tasting the air. Strands of dark hair cling to her temple as her chest rises and falls in an unsteady rhythm.

I clench my fists so tightly my nails bite into my palms,shifting my weight to finally leave, and that tiny movement on the wrong floorboard cuts through the silence with a creak. Grace’s eyelashes flutter. A frown flickers across her brow.

Her eyes open, and the hazel-gold color cuts through the shadows and finds me like a spotlight.

For one second, we stare. Neither of us breathes.

Her pupils seem to dilate as her eyelids grow heavy. I see the exact moment her mind catches up with what her body did, and that I’m standing in the middle of her room like some silent, fucked-up witness.

“Jaxon?” she whispers, voice hoarse with sleep and arousal.

The sound of my name from her lips nearly undoes me. I flinch back like I’ve been punched. Her gaze sweeps down to the sheet tangled around her thighs, to the pillow still locked between her legs, and then back up to me.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I step back fast, hitting the doorframe like I can outrun the heat, the shame, the sheer wrongness of what happened. My dick is an iron bar jutting out in front of me, evidence of the effect that watching her had on me. Evidence of my depravity.

She moves under the sheet, pulling it tighter to her chest, breathing fast and unevenly, staring at me like she can’t decide whether to scream or pull me back.

My voice finally cracks free. “I thought you were crying.”

The words sound hollow and pathetic even to me. She says nothing but keeps staring, cheeks flushed, pulse hammering in her neck. I’m already halfway out the door, heart threatening to tear out of my chest. I can’t make my legs move fast enough. My fingers tighten around the doorframe like it can anchor me in the hurricane of shame and heat tearing through my chest. I’ve never run from anything in my life. But this? This feels like I’ve crossed a line.

Her voice stops me. “Wait.” Soft. Breathless.

I squeeze my eyes shut. That word. That tone.

“Don’t go.”

The words hang in the dark. A tether. A damn lifeline pulling me back when every inch of me screams to bolt.

I turn my head slightly.

Grace is still sitting upright in bed, the sheet held close against her chest, her breathing still uneven, but her eyes are steady now. Soft. Full of something that isn’t fear or anger.

It’swant.

I run a hand roughly through my hair, every nerve screaming at me to be smarter than this, to not be the asshole who lets this happen. But she says it again.

“Please. Just stay.”

My chest tightens painfully. I take half a step back into the room before I even realize I’ve moved. My dick throbs painfully against the seam of my shorts, a brutal reminder of how bad an idea this is. I clench my jaw so tight it aches, willing my body to obey what my brain is screaming.Leave. Now.

“Grace… You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Her gaze holds mine, flickering with vulnerability, maybe, or defiance. I don’t want to hurt her.

“I know exactly what I’m asking.”

And there it is. The pull I’ve been fighting since the second I met her. The gravitational force that won’t let me go. I’m locked in place, barely breathing, and for the first time in my life, I lack the strength to walk away.

17

GRACE