Page 33 of Beautiful Monster

He doesn’t react. He’s out, which I knew before I said it. I won’t admit the effect he has on me. Not to him.

It doesn’t take me long to finally drift off, coasting off to dreamland with the scent of Alex filling my senses.

CHAPTER 10

ALEXANDER

My eyes pop open, and my chest is heaving like my body has decided to panic before my mind can. I slept with my guilt. I dreamt it and felt it in my subconscious.

Sunny.

I have a hazy memory of her body on mine, the feel of her narrow hips in my hands, grinding against her, the sound of her telling me to stop, the feel of her pushing me away.

Fuck. Fuuuuck.

After I got drunk and pinned her against the kitchen counter, which I remember better but don’t feel any better about, I called a car and went to the first club my driver picked. Nobody I knew was out, but it wasn’t hard to find some assholes to drink with me. People get excited to see me in public, and they like it even more when I buy them drinks.

Speaking of…I hope I paid my tab.

Fuck, I hope I came home with my wallet and phone.

Rolling over toward the wall, I freeze when I see the body in bed next to me. She’s facing the window, curled up on herself in nothing more than a tiny shirt and underwear.

Sunny.

My heart buzzes at the sight of her, something pinching behind my chest. I care about this girl, a whole hell of a lot. She deserves someone she can trust to not treat her like shit.

I am supposed to be the one protecting her.

And I sure as fuck treated her like shit last night. Aside from touching her the way I did, crossing a line I should not have crossed, I know that in my drunken haze, I tried to fuck her. Hopefully not too aggressively. At least my barely lucid mind knows I didn’t actually do it.

Turning toward her, I inch farther toward my side of the bed, keeping my dick a safe distance. I’d jump out of this bed if it didn’t feel like my head was about to explode.

She wakes as she feels my movement. She’s probably afraid I’ll try what I tried last night.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.

No answer.

But then again, I don’t expect her to. Sunny doesn’t talk unless she needs to. She treats her voice like something valuable and to be preserved.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she mumbles, eventually.

“I’m still sorry. It wasn’t right of me. I shouldn’t have even touched you.”

“Did you have fun?” she asks, ignoring my apology.

I groan, holding my pounding head as I turn toward the ceiling. The light from the window feels like knives in my eyeballs. “Not really, but I was going nuts in my house, Sunny. I needed to get out.”

She’s out of my reach, crawling out of my bed, and I want her back. I want to bury her between my arms and keep her there, where she belongs.

No matter how much I want that, I can’t.

When I open my eyes, she’s there in front of my large window in her underwear, and I want to cover her with something.

I fucked up last night. She was right. I went to the club and tried to find someone to distract me from what I really wanted, but couldn’t. Every person in that club paled in comparison to the one standing in front of me. The one person I don’t want to want.

I remember the hunger for it, the desperate need for it…and the feeling it left when I accepted my lonely fate. The decay it created.