Page 56 of Arrogant Puck

“Welcome to your new beautiful home,” he says behind me.

I laugh, thinking he’s joking. But when I turn around, his expression is completely serious.

“I’m serious. You’re staying with me.”

The laughter dies in my throat. “There’s no way I’m living with you.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you go back to your place.”

“I have to,” I say, panic starting to creep in again. “I have no choice.”

“You do have a choice. And you’re going to stay here.”

I think about that guest room down the hall, the one with nothing but a bed, a nightstand, and white walls. “In the guestroom you were jacking off in?”

He shrugs, and there’s something in his expression that makes my pulse quicken. “Or...”

He starts walking down the hall toward what I assume is his bedroom. My stomach flips.

“You coming?” he calls over his shoulder.

I stand there in his foyer, barefoot and homeless and completely out of my depth, trying to decide if following Slater Castellano to his bedroom is the best decision I’ve ever made or the worst.

Chapter 20

She stands completely still, swaying slightly on her feet. The alcohol has clearly hit her harder than she realizes, and there’s a shell-shocked expression on her face that makes something protective unfurl in my chest.

“You can trust me,” I say quietly.

Those four words seem to break whatever spell she’s under. Her feet finally move toward me, and the relief that floods through me is almost overwhelming. I don’t know when her trust became so important to me but watching her choose to follow me feels like a victory.

As she walks past me, I make a promise to myself—and to her, even though she won’t know it. I will never make her afraid of me again. Whatever happened in that office, whatever trauma is living under her skin, I won’t be another source of fear in her life.

She stops in the hallway and points at each door like she’s playing some childhood game. “Eenie meanie minie mo...”

I flick my head toward the last door—my bedroom, the master suite that I’ve never let anyone else see. My sanctuary, the one place in this house that’s purely mine.

But she stops at the bedroom right before it, the one I use for... other purposes.

“This is your room?” she asks, looking around at the deliberately sparse space. “So simple.”

I watch in amusement as she explores, waiting to see how long it takes her to figure out what this room actually is. She opens the nightstand drawer, and her eyebrows shoot up at the variety of condoms inside.

“Wow.”

I press my lips together, fighting back a smile. “This isn’t my room.”

Just a place to fuck when the bitches come over.

But I don’t say that.

“No?” She shuts that drawer and opens the bottom one, pulling out a vibrator. “Wow, you have quite the collection, don’t you?”

She laughs, holding a vibrator at me.

My jaw clenches. This is not how I imagined this would go.

“Is this a sex room?” she scoffs, looking around with newfound understanding. “Oh my god. It is.”

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