Page 43 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

He approaches the table and takes a seat opposite me, rubbing a hand over his forehead and up into his hair. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

My heart hammers an uneven beat. “Are you fake breaking up with me?”

“No.” He puts his hands on the table, fingers splayed, and stares at them.

I stare too, because damn, he has perfect man hands.

But— ugh —I hate this anxious feeling that’s bubbling up while I wait for him to tell me whatever is on his mind.

“I’m really sorry, but…” He closes his eyes and time drips, slow and thick.

“Oh, God. What is it? How bad?”

He winces, opening his eyes to stare at me while his face is still angled towards his hands. “That depends.”

“On what?” He sits, quiet. I can’t take it. “What? You’re making me nervous. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He frowns, reassessing. “Not really.”

“Why are you being so weird then?”

He looks up at the ceiling. “Fuck,” he mutters, as if he’s praying to some god stuck between the downlights. Then he looks back at me and it all sprays out like a round of bullets. “My bedroom. There are cameras in there.”

I don’t move.

“I asked you not to go in there,” he adds, and my stomach plunges right to the marble floor. “I saw… everything .”

My body flushes hot, panic roaring through me. “Oh, God. Oh, my God. You saw?”

“Yeah. I saw.”

I cover my face with my hands. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. So sorry.” I can’t look at him. I completely abused his rules. His space. I’m a terrible human being. I invaded his privacy and masturbated on his bed, and he knows . He watched . But…

Hold on.

A single thought jerks at the chaos rampaging through my head. He watched.

More thoughts tumble like a house of cards now that I’ve picked up the first one.

He was on the phone . He was talking to me. My head snaps up, hands falling from my eyes. “Wait, you watched? You watched ?”

He lowers his chin.

I cup one hand over my mouth and point at him with the other. “You were on the phone and you said nothing ? You let me… fuck , you just watched? You sat there in your office and watched me and said nothing ? How could you do that? You… you—”

“You asked me to keep talking. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

“Not keep talking,” I shriek. “Not… let me… to the sound of your voice. Oh, God. Your voice . Jesus.” I cover my face with my hands again, but they’re trembling. “You… you could have said something. A friend would have said something. A friend would—”

“You went into my bedroom after I specifically told you—”

“This is a total betrayal of trust.” My voice sounds gritty; hard and somehow broken all at once. “How could you… how could you? You should have hung up. You should have—”

“Should have what? Politely asked you to stop masturbating on my bed? Don’t make out I’m the bad guy.

You’re guilty here too. Yes, I could’ve stopped you.

I probably should have. But I’ve sat on the sofa beside you for years and done nothing.

Not touched you. Not held you. Not really.

Not the way I’ve wanted to.” He clenches one fist on the table.

“And I’ve fucking wanted to. So much. So if you’re asking me to stay on the phone when you’re lying naked on my fucking bed, then I’m staying on the fucking phone.

I’m not going anywhere . Because I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you coming undone on my sheets. ”

Heat burns through me at his words, and despite the humiliation raging through me, a throbbing begins between my thighs. I leap out of my chair. I can’t sit still and keep staring at him across the table like we’re having a casual supper together.

“No. No. Don’t say that. Don’t say any of that. I don’t want to hear it.” I bite my knuckles, hoping the pain might wake me from this nightmare. It doesn’t, and I let my hand drop. “All this time? All this time ? I thought we were friends. I thought… That’s not friendship… that’s… that’s—”

“You know what isn’t friendship?” His harsh tone cuts across me. “Letting yourself into someone’s bedroom”—he points violently in the direction of his bedroom—“while they’re at work and giving yourself an earth-shattering orgasm on their bed. That’s not fucking friendship.”

He’s right. This isn’t friendship. This is a mess. A fuck-up. A giant, enormous fuck-up, all because of that article and the film and the PR… and the stupid fake dating that feels like maybe it wasn’t entirely fake after all.

“You’re right,” I admit. “This hasn’t been a friendship since the night at the gallery. When we argued. I should probably never have spoken to you again. It was over.”

“Over? What the fuck are you talking about?” he growls, frustration thrumming in his voice. “Friendships don’t end because you have one argument.”

I tear at my hair, barely able to think straight. “It wasn’t the argument. It was you… you… your tongue… inside me. It broke us. It was… it was—”

“It was what?”

“Wrong. It was wrong.”

Fury flashes over his face, and he gets out of his chair and rounds the table towards me.

I back away, but he follows, and the full force of him crossing the room, so much power in every step, steals my breath.

My arms flail, trying to wave him off, keep him at a distance, but he grips my wrists, one in each hand, in a movement so precise it’s like he’s been trained to do exactly that.

To pin me down. Restrain me. My back arches, my breasts press towards him, our mouths dangerously close.

He’s never touched me like this, not once.

He’s been gentle, sweet, considerate, always .

But the man before me now looks none of those things.

He’s every inch the predator, and in the back of my mind, I know I’ve pushed him somewhere new.

Somewhere dangerous. As his grip tightens on my wrists, the anger in my blood turns hotter, and beneath it, there’s something fierce I don’t want to name.

The same thing that drove me to his bedroom in the first place…

His chest heaves, the warmth of his breath gusting against my cheeks. “Admit it,” he whispers, almost panting.

Arousal coils through me, my pussy swelling between my thighs. Pulsing . “Admit what?” I say, barely a whisper.

“That this isn’t fake.”

“It is. It is fake.”

“I never took you for a liar, Erica Lefroy.” The way he says my full name chills my blood, and yet it turns me on even more.

“Admit that you want me to lay you down on those sheets and fuck you until you scream my name. That you thought about it earlier today. That when I was talking to you over the phone, you were imagining me being there with you. Touching you. My hands. My tongue. All over you. My mouth on your clit. My cock inside you.” A potent ball of heat burns down there , like I’ve shoved a hot coal inside my pussy.

I’m going to burn from the inside out. He’s hit a bulls-eye, and whatever he glimpses in my reaction confirms it, because he leans a little closer and whispers, “Do you want me to fill your needy little cunt, Erica?”

“No. No,” I murmur, my voice so weak there’s no chance of convincing anyone. I collect myself, and when I say, “No,” a final time, it sounds strong. It sounds like it really means no .

But it doesn’t fool Seb. Not for a second. “Stop lying. There’s no point. You’ve already given yourself away.”

Arrogant arsehole. The heat of arousal that was licking my insides transforms to a rageful blaze.

It’s no longer just my pussy that’s burning, but my entire body, and I’m pinned to a stake in the middle of a bonfire of Seb’s making.

It’s violent, but I’m powerless against him.

He’s so much stronger than I am. He could do anything with me.

To me. And part of me wants him to do it; wants him to push this until I break.

“Don’t you dare assume you know what I want.

Don’t be this guy,” I spit. “Not with me.”

He raises a brow, stiffening ever so slightly. “What guy?”

“The one who says a few dirty words and expects a woman to get naked. This isn’t you.”

His voice is low and soft like velvet when he says, “How do you know?”

I shake my head. I don’t know . This isn’t the version of him that’s mine.

This one belongs to someone else, and God, that voice makes me want it, want him, every version of him , but I won’t allow it.

This isn’t what I do. This isn’t Erica Lefroy .

But why I am clinging to a version of myself I’ve been trying to shed?

I don’t know what’s going on here; all I know is that who we’re being in this moment isn’t who we’ve always been and the abruptness of the change is terrifying. “This isn’t us .”

“Us? What us? I’m confused, because you already got naked, and I didn’t have to say a word. I’m just asking to be there in person next time.”

The sincerity in his expression makes my heart thrum even faster as something close to panic squirms beneath my skin.

I snatch my wrists from him, and he lets go but holds me captive with his gaze.

I want to break eye contact, but I force myself not to.

“You’d happily ruin this friendship just so you could get your dick wet?

That is just so you .” My voice drips with disgust, concealing the panic that I’m going to lose my friend. Already lost him, probably.

A muscle pops in his jaw like he’s clenching his teeth, holding back a tidal wave of frustration that snuffs out the sincerity. His voice is a low, unforgiving rumble. “I know what you’re doing, and I’m going to call you on your bullshit, Lefroy.”

Unable to help myself, I snarl at him. “What? What am I doing?”

“You’re giving me Ice Queen because you’re frightened.”

“I am not frightened . You don’t scare me.”

“I don’t mean me. I mean you. That for whatever reason, you’re scared of what you want. Scared of your own desire. Every time something happens between us, you run away. You’re—”

“Don’t psychoanalyse me. If I want that, I’ll pay for it.”

“Maybe you should.”

I gasp . That fucking bastard . I’m so shocked that I don’t respond, standing mute as we stare at one another, heaving breaths that reveal just how much this means to both of us.

“You have me in your bathroom. On the wall.” The words snap out like an accusation.

He rakes a hand through his hair until he’s cupping the back of his neck and bitterness laces his words. “The bedroom wasn’t enough? You had to go in there too?”

“Why am I on the wall?”

“Because you’re beautiful.”

Beautiful . The word is infused with such vitriol that it doesn’t feel like a compliment.

It feels like he’s stabbed me with an icicle.

Right to the heart. He knows me well enough to hit where it hurts, and he chose to strike the blow.

He’s the one person who I always thought saw me as more than a pretty face, and I wanted him to own it. But he didn’t.

I press a hand against my chest to soothe the pain. I don’t want to be on the wall because I’m beautiful.

I want to be there because he loves me.

The thing is, I have no clue how to communicate that in a way that won’t make everything worse, and I’m angry and hurt enough that I won’t even try.

He’s still waiting for a response, but when it’s clear I have none, he turns away and stalks to the living area, pulling the stopper from a bottle of Macallan.

Don’t turn away from me. Not now.

“Did you masturbate to that picture?” I yell.

His expression is stony as he pours himself a glass. I expect him to throw the whole thing down in one, but he doesn’t. He takes a slow sip, closing his eyes as though he’s trying to regain his self-control. When he opens them, his gaze is hard and unforgiving. “Yes.”

“When we were friends?”

Another cool sip. “Yes.”

“How many times?”

This time, he swallows the remaining liquid in one. “I didn’t keep count.”

He pours another glass, and I watch him.

Wanting him. Hating him . He must feel my glare, but he ignores me as he takes his glass, steps towards the full height windows that look over the park, and pushes a button on the wall.

The glass slides back, allowing him to proceed out onto the balcony.

He turns to me. “Goodnight, Erica. Sweet dreams.” He steps outside and closes the glass behind him.