Page 20 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

I think about his hands.

I think about the breath he took before he lied to me, and what his voice sounded like when he said quit it, rough, as if the fear coming off me had hurt him.

I lie on my side with my knees up and I don’t touch myself. I have never touched myself.

There has never been a room without a camera in it, and even now, in the first unwatched room of my life, I can’t make my hand move. I lie there wanting him with my fists closed and my face pressed into the wool that smells of him.

I hate him, and I hate what he has told me, and I want him in here.

I don’t hear boots. Time passes. Hours of nothing.

He has gone. I have been alone my whole life. I have never once been left.

When I finally hear the sound of the padlocks, I make a sound I would not have believed came out of me.

He doesn’t come in. He stays in the doorway with the lantern, and the light finds me on the floor half-dressed and he goes still.

I watch his chest go in and out under the jacket. I watch his free hand close and open.

“Fuck,” he says, very low.

Then he crouches and puts something down on the floor inside the door with a fresh bottle of water beside it. He pushes it toward me with two fingers as if I might bite.

“Two now. Two in the morning. Don’t take more than that, I don’t know what’s in them.” He straightens. “Best I could do.”

I crawl for them. I don’t care what it looks like. It is a blister strip with the printing scratched off, eight small white tablets.

I put two in my mouth and get the bottle open and swallow them so fast I choke. Then I sit there on my knees with water running down my chin, gasping.

He doesn’t say anything else. He shuts the door.

Now there is one more thing that I know. Maybe it is self-preservation. Maybe not, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy.

A genuine psychopath would take advantage of my heat knowing that I’d not be in a place to genuinely consent. It’s not like I’m in a position to complain to the manager if the help behaves badly.

Instead he took a real risk and went out to try to find something that would protect me from my own biology.

There’s something weirdly gallant about it. And it makes him more attractive which is annoying.

I sit in the dark with the taste of chalk in my mouth. I don’t know whether I want the tablets to work. I’d be lying if I denied that part of me is desperate for him. I want to see his face so badly.

6. Roan

That was the first time I’ve ever abandoned a job, even temporarily.

It took me longer than I expected to find the stuff too. Ordinary blockers are easy to find. Something that can block a heat? And relatively safely? Not so easy. It was expensive too. It better work.

I’m not convinced that it will. I know what prime matches are and how they work. Everything I know tells me that this kind of chemistry overrides everything. Nothing is going to work.

It doesn’t help that Prince Aurelio’s face is everywhere. Every newspaper stand. Every TV in every store window. This is the fucking story of the century and, if I don’t play this right, I’m going to be the villain.

It doesn’t help that his scent has somehow become even more enticing. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. It takes everything I have within me not to knock the entire door down and take him right now.

I can’t think of anything I want more. Right now, I’d give up everything. My dream cabin. My quiet life. My life’s savings. Everything, just for a few hours between his thighs.

But I’m not going to do that.

I’m not sure that he’d tell me no. I can smell his arousal. He wants me as much as I want him. That’s the prime match deal.