Page 13 of The Villain's Beast

“Your alarm?”

“To come over.” The door to his room swung closed, bumping him on the ass, but not latching closed.

“Were you not…” I trailed off, remembering about the first night I called him to study. When I’d woken him up.

“I’m awake now,” he said. “Did you want to go to your room?”

“We’re both here.”

“Right.”

His throat flushed that pretty pink again, and he pushed the door open with his ass, moving out of the way so I could join him inside. I hadn’t been in his room since the night we’d jerked off together, and I had to close my eyes to center myself after the door closed behind me.

Gideon’s sheets were still crimson red, still rumpled, but now I knew they’d be warm from his skin. He’d just been asleep there, and while he fumbled around his desk for his copy ofHamlet, I walked over to his bed and pressed my palm against the sheets. It would have been too much for me to bend over and smell them, to see if I could detect a trace of our spend dried into the expensive cotton.

“I think we’re all set for tomorrow,” he said nervously.

I looked over my shoulder at him, eyes narrowing at the way he wrung the book in his hands like he was trying to twist the spine in half.

“I think you’re right.”

He worried his tongue across the front of his teeth. “We probably don’t even need to go over it,” he said, words dying off. “We know the content.”

“We do,” I agreed, sliding my hand down toward the middle of his bed. “Do you sleep on your back?”

“What?” Gideon squinted at me, brow knit with confusion. “Why?”

“Just answer me.”

His gaze fell from my face to my hands where I had his sheets fisted into a ball.

“Stomach,” he rasped.

I counted to ten and forced my fingers to unfurl, letting go and exhaling through my nose.

“I thought you were mad about it,” Gideon said.

He didn’t mean about sleeping on his stomach.

“Why?”

“You didn’t say anything about it,” he said, lips twisted into a sad smile. “You didn’t ask to do it again.”

“Neither did you.” I wasn’t a beggar, but maybe I would have begged him.

Fact of the matter was, I’d spent the whole week not just thinking about the sounds Gideon made when he came, but also about what that whole encounter could mean for me. What it should have meant. If my father ever found out, he would have beat me to within an inch of my life. I didn’t think he’d forgive me forwantingto get into bed with a North, let alone actually doing it.

My handprint was in Gideon’s sheets.

“Are you still a virgin?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said quickly. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

But I wouldn’t be for long. Father’s orders.

“Have you ever kissed someone?”