I toweled off, put on some fresh sleep pants, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed, trying to list all the reasons I couldn’t touch Gracie again, making myself flip through all the faces of the men who would be pissed at me, who might line up to take swings at me.
And I’d have to take it.
Because I knew the damn rules.
On a sigh, I reached over to plug in my phone before slowly starting to drift off to sleep.
I didn’t fully get there, though.
Because my door creaked open and quietly clicked closed.
Then Gracie was crawling up over my body.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gracie
I tried to go back to sleep.
Really, I did.
But even after Perish had brought me to climax after climax, my body still felt like it was humming, aching, begging for more. For him.
I tossed and turned, tangled in sheets, kicked them off, and grumbled at the bunk above mine.
I was painfully aware that Nave was up in the glass room. And that several men were stationed outside, maybe even some inside.
I needed to keep my butt in the basement.
And yet…
And yet I was unfolding from the bed.
Maybe I would just, you know, go get a snack in the kitchen. Look around. See if anyone was paying any attention to me.
It was a little lie, though.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
Because I turned back to the bed and rolled up my robe and pillows underneath.
I had no idea how believable my little decoy was. I’d never snuck out of the house as a teen, so this was my first attempt at making my bed look full when it was empty.
But the light was off, and Nave had no reason to search the bed.
With that, I crept up the stairs, glad for all the sleepovers at the clubhouse because I knew where the creaky stairs were so I could avoid them.
I played it off at first, moving through the common room to the kitchen.
But as far as I could tell, anyone who was inside the building was already fast asleep.
So there was no one to see me as I crept toward the hallway, looking in both directions.
My heartbeat was fluttering.
My belly kept flipping over and over.
This felt like the bravest, most reckless thing I’d ever done. Yet so, so right.
