It was fine.
It was all fucking fine.
***
I put my key in the door, turned it, and pushed it open. It was deathly quiet, and the living area was completely dark.
Was Saylor not home? Or was she asleep?
It wasn’t that early, and I’d expected her to still be up reading or binging one of her beloved TV shows at this point.
I quietly closed the door and paused.
Nope.
Nothing.
As far as it went, my date with Stacy had been a good one. She was a sweet girl—really bloody lovely, actually, but I just hadn’t felt that…
Spark.
The spark.
It hadn’t been there. By all accounts, it should have been. It just wasn’t.
And I think I knew why.
Fucking Saylor. My fucking roommate. We’d been spending more time than usual together lately, and I’d let myself get too carried away with teasing her and pushing her limits. I’d been attracted to her the moment I saw her, and the more comfortable I became with her in my life, the more that attraction morphed into something more tangible and real.
I rubbed my hand down my face, dragging it over my lips, and quietly made my way to the fridge. I needed some water to take to bed, and I was becoming too used to bottled water.
Back at home, we just took it from the tap. My grandfather had never seen the point in bottled water unless you were the Queen, who he insisted probably didn’t drink it either, but the water here was just… weird.
Tasted funny.
I smiled to myself as I unscrewed the cap. I fucking missed England. I missed the UK in its entirety—England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland. I missed staycations and winding country lanes and all the weird and wonderful accents.
I missed home, but I was thankful I’d made White Peak my new one.
I made a mental note to take a trip home. It’d been too long since I’d seen my family. Video calls just weren’t the same, but now it appeared that I had more stable employment with Seb’s new venture, it was something I could probably work into my schedule.
I hoped.
Maybe I could bring my family here. They could do all the things they wanted to do like Disney and Harry Potter World, Universal, New York… but see me here. See White Peak.
Meet Saylor.
Jesus, I needed to get that thought out of my head.
She’d made it clear no less than one thousand times that she wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship. These errant thoughts weren’t going to manifest anything realer than a fleeting whim, so it was better I got the hell over it before I put myself in a terrible situation.
I took a deep drink from the bottle, grabbed two paracetamol tablets for my headache, and headed for my bedroom. The apartment was so weird when it was quiet like this—it was eerie, and the streetlights flickered in between the gaps in the curtains as I walked through the apartment.
A low moan sounded from the direction of Saylor’s bedroom, and I froze.
Was she not alone?
I’d be out for a while. She’d had some minor success on her online dating, and with me being out tonight, it would stand to reason that she’d potentially bring someone home.
Another moan came from her room, this one a little higher.
What the fuck did I do now?
Did I go to bed? We shared a wall. I didn’t want to hear her fuck another guy. I couldn’t leave for the fear I’d run into said guy on my way back.
And I sure as shit couldn’t bloody well stand here and listen to her come.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She moaned again.
I tiptoed back into the living area. There were no signs whatsoever of anyone else being here—no shoes, no coats, no phones, no dishes…
The truth slammed into me.
Shit.
She was getting herself off.
That was fucking worse.
What was she thinking of? Was it me? Was it someone else? Was she watching porn? What was she doing to make herself moan like that?
I knew she had a—
Fuck me, I did not need to think about Saylor using a vibrator.
“Oh, my God.”
Oh, my fucking God.
She was going to town in there.
My dick didn’t get the memo, either. It was throbbing like fuck and pressing against the zipper of my jeans, reacting entirely to her moaning from her bedroom.
There was nowhere I could go. I was stuck. Locked into the apartment with no escape.
Headphones.
I had my Bose headphones in my bedroom.
I moved as quickly as I could, ignoring two drawn out moans from her bedroom as best I could. I quietly clicked my door closed, stripped off, and sat on my bed. My headphones were on the bedside cabinet, and I snatched them up. The robotic voice told me there was only fifteen percent, and I hoped that would be long enough for her to…
Fucking come.
I shoved the headphones on. I navigated quickly to Netflix on my phone and clicked on the first show there. I didn’t care what I listened to, it just needed to be something that meant I couldn’t hear Saylor.