Page 23

Shit.

Carmela left the kitchen light on for me. Hopefully, she’s upstairs in bed sleeping by now. If I’m lucky, she won’t hear any of this.

I unlock the heavy iron door and push it open, ushering Nancy into the warmth of the foyer.

The townhouse spans three floors, boasting ceilings high enough to actually think in. It does not feel like a Thorne property. That is the thing I like the most about it. There are no stiff oil portraits, or marble statues chosen by an interior designer, and paid for by my father’s infinite sum of money.

Instead, my Steinway grand piano dominates the lounge area, my half-finished compositions on every available surface. It is the only place in this city where I do not have to perform being something that I am not.

That, and the practice room late at night when the silent walls of this house get to be too much for me, and the isolation starts to feel less like freedom and more like a cage.

Nancy slips her coat off, letting it drop carelessly onto the armchair by the door, and turns to me with an intense gaze.

“Now,” she murmurs, stepping into my space. Her palms are flat against my chest. “Where were we?”

She fumbles with the heavy metal buckle of my belt, her mouth searching for mine with a familiar, demanding hunger.

I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her into me, forcing my body to respond to the rhythm she’s setting. I kiss her back, hard, fisting her hair, desperate to lose myself in it. She is beautiful, but my mind keeps drifting somewhere else. I wonder if Ellise’s hair is just as soft.

Get a grip, Thorne.

Nancy pulls back a fraction of an inch.

“You’re so tense, Julian,” she whispers.

“Yeah, well. Like I said, it’s been one of those days, Nance.” My fingers tangle in her blonde curls as she leans in.

“Let me fix it.” Her lips find my neck, pressing herself closer, her hands mapping the muscles of my back, trying to draw out a heat that I can’t seem to find. “Come on. Let’s go up.”

As we hit the staircase, Nancy’s heels click sharply against the hardwood, the sound echoing a little too loudly in the high-ceilinged space. She giggles, leaning her full weight into me.

I catch her waist, slowing her down. Carmela’s room is right at the top of the landing—a few rooms before mine. If Nancy keeps making this much noise, it’s going to wake her up. Despite the amount of times Nancy has been back here, she has never once met Carmela. I don’t plan on changing that tonight.

“Quiet,” I mutter.

She hums in approval, as I guide her silently up the remaining steps and into the sanctuary of my bedroom.

But the moment the door clicks shut behind us, it doesn’t bring the relief I expected.

She pulls me toward the custom-made Alaskan King, the familiar, well-rehearsed rhythm of our nights together starting to play out. She’s effortless. Her dancer’s flexibility and poise mean she knows exactly how to move to draw a reaction out of me. And, she knows exactly where to touch. But as she pushes me back onto the mattress and starts working at my belt again, my skin has gone cold.

There is no chance that I am getting hard tonight.

There is nothing there.

The neat whiskey, the cigarettes and the complete absence of sleep, mixed with the image of a girl in a black bow have combined into something that has apparently short-circuited every other signal my brain is capable of receiving.

Julian, you are a complete idiot. Get back in the moment.

Still nothing.

The realisation is humiliating. I can’t get a hard-on for this beautiful girl throwing herself at me because I cannot stop thinking about Ellise fucking Vance.

“Julian?” I snap my eyes back open as Nancy pulls back and hovers over me, her blonde hair falling like a curtain around her face.

For a second, I try. I really, desperately try to lean into her movement. I want to lose myself in the familiar heat of her body, to use her to completely drown out the ghost of vanilla and those haunting blue eyes.

But I can’t. Not tonight.