I couldn’t sleep.
When I had first rolled into his arms, Zach had been stiff and as uncertain as I was. I knew he wasn’t in the habit of asking the women he entertained to sleep in his bed with him. The tension soon melted from the arms that held me, though, and it was mere minutes before he sighed into the strands of my hair and fell into sleep.
It was hours later now, and sleep still eluded me. It made me unaccountably happy to be nestled in his arms as he breathed evenly beside me, but I just wasn’t used to being skin to skin with someone as I tried to sleep. Tom had rarely been happy with the prospect of my staying over, and I hadn’t been brave enough to press the issue. Now I found that even though it was Zach’s bed that I was in, I was jealous of my own personal space.
Besides, I was too hot, pressed right up against him as I was, and I had to pee.
Rolling onto my back, I looked at the iridescent blue numbers of the clock mounted on the wall across the room. At first I thought that the clock was mocking me, but I blinked several times to clear the sleep from my eyes and found that the number didn’t change.
It was four thirteen in the morning. I groaned as I realized that I had to work that day. A frisson of uncertainty snaked through me when I realized that I still had to shower and get ready for work . . . and I had to go home first to do it. I could call a cab, I supposed . . . except that I wasn’t entirely sure of where I was.
It was a really good thing that so far Zach didn’t seem to be an axe murderer, because I kept making ill-advised decisions around him.
Sighing, I shifted slowly, trying to extricate myself from Zach’s embrace. He rolled over and moaned when I slipped out of his arms. I was tempted to smooth the furrows from his forehead with my hand. They were at war with the otherwise peaceful expression on his face.
The enigmatic billionaire seemed much more vulnerable in sleep . . . much more human. It was strange to be a witness to it.
My bladder again called, and I shuffled off to the bathroom. I took care of my personal business before standing and taking a good look around the room with tired eyes.
My stomach did a slow roll as I surveyed a bathroom more opulent than anything I could ever have dreamt up. I had known Zach was rich, had heard the term ‘billionaire’ applied to him, but . . . wow.
It was slightly amusing that it had taken a bathroom for me to fully understand how wealthy the man who had been inside of me only hours earlier was.
Uneasy and in awe, I circled the room. The floor was made of tiled river rock trapped in a clear, thick varnish. Warmth seeped from the surface into my chilled toes as I wiggled them. The floor seemed to heat beneath me as I walked, cooling where I had already been, and I assumed that it was controlled by some kind of motion sensor or weight detector.
I had never even heard of such a thing, and I had grown up in a family that was well-off. The realization had me staring down at the beautiful floor, at the pale white of my skin against it.
My life was so incredibly different from Zach’s. I didn’t know what, exactly, there was between us, but whatever the term, I knew in that moment that it couldn’t last. Our lives were so different.
I was way out of my league.
Feeling slightly sick, I shook my head to rid myself of the depressing thought. Since I was up, I decided to take a shower—I would bathe, then dress in the clothes that I’d worn the day before. Well, minus my now-shredded bikini panties. By then perhaps I could find Charles, and be driven back to my hotel room to change.
Even if Zach had been taken out of the equation entirely, I really liked my new job. I liked the city of San Francisco. I was fairly certain that I wanted to stay, wanted to find a home here, and to do that I had to be ready to work, even if the big boss himself would know I hadn’t exactly spent a restful evening alone.
The innermost part of me didn’t want to leave. I wanted to bathe my sore muscles in hot water, and then return to Zach’s bed and the protection of his arms.
But I knew I was already feeling more gushy emotions than was wise. A man who could afford a house like this, who owned a corporation like Phyrefly, wasn’t going to have any feelings for me anywhere outside of the bedroom.
I began to shiver, despite the heat from the tiles at my feet. Padding across the floor to the shower, I slid open the clear glass door and stepped inside the walls that could have comfortably enclosed a horse, or maybe even two.
Wow. I turned in a slow circle, surveying the shower that was bigger than my hotel room. The very air itself seemed to echo off the cavernous space.
I tilted my head up, and saw not one, but four, showerheads that were bigger than dinner plates. I thought of the measly spray from the rusted head back in my hotel room, and my sore body clenched in anticipation of the rainfall of warm water. It might have been shallow, but I thoroughly appreciated Zach’s wealth, or at least his taste in bathrooms, as I bent to turn the shower on.
The only thing that would make it better would be if he were to join me.
Though the idea made my pussy clench, I thought better about waking him up and inviting him to a shower for two. His mood swings were varied enough that, tender as he had been the night before, I wasn’t certain which side of Zach revealed his true nature.
Scowling now, I reached for the knobs of the shower only to discover that there weren’t any. Confused, I looked up and down and found nothing but a control panel of buttons.
They weren’t labeled. I picked one at random and jabbed at it. I jumped when, a moment later, a glass-covered fireplace roared to life at the back of the stall.
My mouth fell fully open as I stared. The man had a fireplace in his shower. Well and truly unnerved, I hit the fireplace button again, quieting the flames, before scurrying out of the stall altogether.
My sore body protested.
“Dammit.” I furrowed my brow at the shower, then turned toward the bathtub. It was the size of a small lap swimming pool, and appeared to be carved out of some kind of silvery gray rock. There were steps leading down into it.
Apart from the size and extravagance of it, though, it seemed to be nothing more than a bathtub. I was fairly confident that I wasn’t going to be unnerved by a fireplace in its depths.
Perching on the edge of the tub, I turned the hot faucet all the way, and the cold a half turn. The cool stone nipped at my buttocks as I waited for the tub to fill, my knees clenched to my chest.
When I looked up from the swirling, crystal water I was confronted with the same visual that had blown me away the night before. The bathroom jutted out over the ocean, giving me the impression that I would be bathing in the blue-gray water of the sea.
I stared out the wall of glass as I sank into the tub, my eyes wide with wonder.
The heat felt wonderful, though I hissed when the tender flesh between my legs was submerged. Zach hadn’t been gentle, and though I’d loved it, I was incredibly sore this morning.
Memories of how he had handled my body made me flush all over. Despite the warmth of the water, I shivered.
No matter what the rational part of my brain told me, no matter that we’d been together only hours ago, I wanted him with a ferocity that I hadn’t known I was capable of.
I couldn’t do this again. Shouldn’t do it again. Wincing as the thought pained me, I reached for the bottle of body wash that sat on the edge of the tub, and began to hastily wash myself.
The soap smelled like Zach.
Scrubbing it through the long strands of my hair, I leaned back to rinse it away. Even stretched out lengthwise in the bath, it was so big that I couldn’t touch the sides. I floated for a moment, enjoying the way the warm water buoyed me up when my thoughts wanted to weigh me down.
Sitting up, I slicked my dripping hair from my face. At first I thought the sound was just my sense of hearing readjusting after my ears had been submerged in the bath.
“No! No!” The words sounded almost strangled, like they were wrenched from someone’s chest.
I straightened, my body suddenly tense. My senses weren’t playing tricks on me . . . what I heard was Zach, in the throes of what sounded like a terrible nightmare.
“Slower . . . go slower . . .”
My heart ached as I clambered out of the tub, water sluicing off my naked flesh in streams. I had had nightmares myself for a long time after my parents’ death. I still did once in a while. I knew how very real they could seem, even after waking.
The sounds from the other room quieted, and I was relieved. Still, I groped for a towel. I’d decided to just go check on him before I got dressed.
Though I didn’t know him well, I knew that Zach wouldn’t thank me for catching him at such a vulnerable moment, no matter what it was that he was dreaming about. But I also knew that being alone when horrific images were playing in your mind like a movie could make a person sick.
I heard a rustle, the sound of a body shifting over bedsprings, and then the padding of feet over carpet. He was awake.
My concern swung from wanting to make sure that he was okay to trepidation.
I’d never had a morning after quite like this one.
The heavy wooden door opened, and Zach burst into the room. He was still fully naked, and I could see that every muscle in his big body was tensed as if anticipating a blow.
One look at him told me that he wasn’t fully awake yet—his eyes were open, but they searched the room as if he had never seen it before. I stood, mouth agape, uncertainty playing over my features as his stare roamed the room, finally settling on me. I felt as though that stare sliced right through me, a hot knife through soft butter, as he glowered at my naked, shivering self.
“Are you okay?” He blinked, clearly trying to focus on me through the haze of sleep that still fogged his consciousness. Though he had seen every part of me the night before, I felt so exposed, wishing that I had had the time to pull a soft bath sheet to me, to hide my nakedness.
Zach’s eyes narrowed as I watched him, wide-eyed, and he looked furious. I didn’t know what I had done to provoke him, if anything—I couldn’t tell if the nightmare was still clinging to him, like a sticky spider’s web—couldn’t tell if this was his reality, or if he was still caught in the dream.
Crossing the room in three long strides, he caught me by the shoulders and shook me. As his fingers dug into my shoulder blades, the fury was still apparent on his face, but it was mixed with the slightest hint of confusion. My heart melted, even as nerves skittered through my veins.
A clammy chill settled over me when he finally spoke, his voice still husky from sleep.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”