Just as my body starts to heat up in all the right ways and places, I’m jolted out of the fantasy by the sound of a key entering the lock on my front door. It goes in, unlocks the knob, and the door flies open before I even have a chance to take my hand out of my shorts completely. I’m startled as I try to sit up and turn off the rose, just as Vance steps into the house with a look of angry astonishment on his face.

“Vance!” I nearly shout, giving away the fact that I’ve just been caught off guard.

“Alina?” Vance says, dressed in a dark gray blazer. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Chapter Three

“Jesus, Vance. You couldn’t have knocked first?” I ask as my desire recedes, clearing my cloudy vision so I can see the anger bristling in Vance’s face.

“Well, that would defeat the purpose of us exchanging keys to each other’s place,” Vance says as he steps into the house and sets his phone down on the end table, right next to my empty wine glass. I see the moment he looks at the glass, and I can sense the tension in his posture when he does. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” I say as I sit up and straighten out my clothes, feeling a ton of embarrassment weighing me down. “You guys got off early?”

Vance eyes me with disgust as he steps over to the couch and stands in front of me. He looks down on me as I finish hiding the evidence of what I was doing before he walked in, and while I know he’s physically standing over me, there’s something annoying about the way he’s looking down on me in the metaphorical sense. It’s like I can feel his judgment piercing my soul through his ocean blue eyes. He’s wearing a gray blazer with a blue and gray T-shirt underneath, and blue jeans. He looks ridiculous, yet he has no problem looking at me with disdain for pleasuring myself in my own apartment.

“I got off early so I could come make sure you were okay,” he says, sticking his hands into his pockets. “Drake told me you weren’t feeling well, so I wanted to make sure you were still good for tonight. I thought it’d be nice for us to spend some extra time together, considering how things have been lately. I didn’t expect to find you … like this, but you seem to be feeling better, so I guess that’s all that matters.”

I clear my throat and shove the rose into the pocket of my shorts. “Yeah, I’m feeling fine.”