Chapter 23

With a literof water tucked under her arm, Natalia walked into her hotel room and kicked off her tight heels. Peeling off her sweaty clothes, Natalia went straight for the shower.

She didn’t bother getting dressed, slipping instead into the crisp white sheets of the king-sized bed. Hair wet and body still warm from the steamy shower, Natalia curled onto her side and tried to shake the unsettled feeling in her gut.

Sleep, despite her tipsiness, was elusive. After tossing and turning, Natalia reached for her phone. She’d intended to turn on a guided meditation for sleep, but found herself drifting toward her text messages.

Sam: Have a safe flight, Ms. Flores. Try not to terrify the flight attendants.

The text Samantha had sent her the night before was just sitting there. Looking at her. Taunting her like Samantha’s reckless smile and careless fingers through her hair.

It had only been a week since they’d last seen each other. Since Samantha left her wanting. She shouldn’t be… missing her. That was pathetic. Objectively pathetic. And yet her lips tingled when they remembered Samantha’s kiss. The kiss Samantha had broken off when she pressed her for more than sex. Who the hell did she think she was?

Annoyed that Samantha was making her think of her, she shot off a response twenty-eight hours after she’d received the text. She was perfectly capable of tormenting Samantha, too.

Natalia: How dreadful that you have to stay in a dorm.

It was only after she sent it that she realized the time. She closed her eyes and rolled away from her phone. Samantha wasn’t going to reply at three in the morning. Especially not when she’d just started her two-week tour across college campuses. Natalia had given up the upper hand and now she was the one waiting for an answer.

When her phone buzzed on her pillow a moment later, Natalia’s heart jumped into a trot. Snatching the phone before she let herself overthink it, she opened the response.

Samantha could always be counted on to do the thing Natalia didn’t see coming. The thing that unnerved her and turned her own weapons back on her. Rudely, Samantha had replied with a photo.

In black boxer-briefs that hugged her from curved hip to muscular mid-thigh, Samantha was pictured from the waist down. Tangled in white sheets, Samantha was lying in a dark hotel room, a sliver of her exposed abdomen making it seem like she wasn’t wearing anything but the shorts.

Jesus.

The sight of Samantha in bed catapulted her headfirst into the night they’d spent together. It felt like a lifetime ago, but Natalia still remembered the weight of Samantha’s fingers curled around her thighs. The sensation of her body on hers. The sound of her breathy moans while she trembled and squirmed.

Desire roared to life. It thrummed in Natalia’s drunk body, making her ache as if Sam were reaching for her across the sheets. Like she was grabbing her with authority. Like she was wrestling her for control.

Samantha: March in New Haven is freezing. I can’t seem to get out of bed.

It was three hours later in Connecticut, Natalia remembered belatedly. It wasn’t in the middle of the night for her. She was starting her day. God, was that worse? Before Natalia could calculate just how she’d messed up by texting while compromised, her phone buzzed again.

Samantha: Shouldn’t you be sleeping? What’s keeping you up, Ms. Flores?

Against her will, Natalia heard the flirty tone in Samantha’s voice. Saw the crooked grin. Nearly detected the scent of her cologne as if she were pulling her in. Her pulse reacted to the memory of Samantha’s touch. She was too intoxicated for this. Too off kilter. Too far removed from the last time she had sex. Why hadn’t she brought a woman back to her hotel room? She certainly could have if she tried, she was sure, but the night had been a blur and not a single face in the crowd had stirred her curiosity.

Natalia: Even I’m not immune to jet lag.

Samantha: Or maybe you just missed me and couldn’t sleep.

Natalia: Don’t flatter yourself, Professor.

Samantha: Flattery, huh? Is that what I’m doing to myself while I’m lying in bed talking to you? Thinking about you?

Natalia: What you do with yourself is your business.

Samantha: But it would be so much fun if it were yours.

Closing her eyes, Natalia tried not to think about Samantha’s body. Tried so hard not to imagine her slipping her hand into her shorts. Tried not to react to the memory of her fingers coated in Samantha’s arousal.

Samantha: How’s San Fran? I expected you to have some starlet wearing you out.

Flushed with heat, Samantha threw off her covers and tossed another pillow behind herself.

Natalia: Are you angling to find out who’s in my bed, Professor?

Samantha: I don’t mind who’s in your bed, Natalia. Not when it’s me you’re thinking of at 3am.

Unable to control her body’s reaction, a hard flush rushed over her skin. It left her overheated and disoriented. Samantha drove her insane.

Even she would be a little jealous if Samantha were sleeping with someone else, which was stupid and useless and ridiculous, but regrettably true nonetheless. But Samantha didn’t seem to care if there was a hypothetical naked body next to Natalia. Who the hell was this woman?

Samantha: You didn’t tell me how your night went last night. How was the venerable Indigo Vixen?

She wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t going to have a casual text conversation with Samantha in the middle of the night while naked and drunk. Absolutely not. That’s not what they were doing. She didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but it wasn’t that.

Natalia: Didn’t you say you were getting ready to teach today?

Samantha: I can do two things at once. Have you forgotten?

A moment later, her phone was ringing in her hand. The audacity of not just an unannounced phone call, but a video call? Staring down at Prof. Samantha Reyes flashing on her screen, Natalia narrowed her gaze.

Do you think you’re going to shock me, Professor? Force yourself into a position of power?

After tossing her hair, wavy and damp, to one side, Natalia pulled up the plush, white duvet so that it barely covered her nipples. Reaching for her glasses on the nightstand to dampen her lack of makeup, Natalia dipped the point of her arrow in flaming pitch. Samantha might have planned to mess with her, but Natalia set her counterattack to ruthless.

When Samantha appeared on her phone, she was lying in bed wearing a t-shirt, her hair the perfect amount of messy. She was also wearing the stunned expression Natalia expected. Stunned and then all at once lustful, as her gaze traveled over Natalia. Over her lips, her throat, her collarbones, the cleavage that remained perfect thanks to a lift she’d gotten years earlier.

Dominance nourished Natalia. It cleared the booze from her mind and pumped oxygen-rich blood into her brain. She was alert, awake, and in the mood to hunt.

“Did you make yourself an imposition just to gawk?” Natalia asked in her lowest, slowest tone, speaking the way she might with her lips against the shell of Samantha’s ear and two fingers plunged deep inside of her.

“I’m sure I didn’t,” Samantha replied, voice hoarse from sleep, “but now I can’t think of a single thing more important than looking at you.”

Natalia rolled her eyes. “Not one, Professor?” She shifted her body, the sheet slipping down and exposing one of her nipples — hard thanks to the cold room.

Samantha’s rich, brown eyes widened a beat before her eyelids dropped and her expression turned lecherous. “Maybe one,” Samantha admitted before moistening her lips. “But on second thought, I’d rather see you in person to discuss it.”

“Discuss?” Natalia let the fingertips on her free hand glide over her collarbone and down the center of her chest. “Is it business related, Dr. Reyes?” Her fingertip drifted lazily to her exposed nipple, circling it lightly. The sensation was nothing compared to the way Samantha’s eyes tracked her movements. She was absolutely ravenous.

“I want to see you,” Samantha whispered, attention snapping back to Natalia’s face. “I miss you.”

Three little words robbed Natalia of her carnal desire. All the warmth spreading in her body abruptly retreated and reassembled in the pit of her stomach. But it wasn’t just anxiety and revulsion at the unexpected tenderness. Something broke free from the roiling mass and fluttered into Natalia’s chest. Something horrifyingly pleasant.

“Another sentiment that could have been most unobtrusively shared in a text,” she said, trying to sound disaffected and unafraid despite the unease surging up her esophagus like acid reflux.

“Is that what I’m doing, Natalia? Bothering you?” Samantha was a wolf with her jaws clamped around her throat. Her gaze was too intent. Too sincere.

“Don’t keep your new ivory tower waiting, Professor,” she said as unhurriedly as she could, despite the pulse pounding in her neck and the slick sheen of cold sweat racing over her skin.

Before Samantha could utter another destabilizing word, Natalia hung up. Heart thumping, she lay awake in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. A heavy silence suffocating her, broken only by the distant sounds of traffic outside her window.

The unfamiliar weight of loneliness pressed down on her chest, trapping her in place. Taking advantage of her altered state, the sensation slithered into her chest and amplified the hollow ache.

Shutting her eyes, Natalia reminded herself that she barely knew the woman. She couldn’t miss someone she didn’t know. Couldn’t yearn for someone she didn’t care about beyond securing a business deal.

As if her own psyche had turned against her, desperate to prove her wrong, her traitorous thoughts turned to Samantha. To the easy way she laughed. To the near palpable passion she exuded while speaking. To the way she seemed so perfectly at ease around her… like she didn’t mind Natalia’s thorns. Maybe even appreciated them. Respected them.

Turning onto her side and pulling the covers over her body, Natalia refused to feed the flutter in her stomach. Absolutely refused to even acknowledge it.

The ache persisted, forcing Natalia to reason with the terrorist. She just hadn’t had sex in a while, so she was focusing on the last person she’d slept with. That was all. She was sure that all she had to do was sleep with someone else. A palate cleanser.

Natalia reached for her phone, intending to download a dating app. It wasn’t her preferred method of finding a bedmate, but times were verging on desperate.

She opened the app, swiping quickly through photos to find someone suitable. It shouldn’t be so hard. Natalia wasn’t picky. She just needed to find someone taller than her with masculine flair. Someone with intense top energy who would challenge her for power until the very end. Who would make Natalia feel like she’d earned it when they finally yielded to her. Someone delusional enough to think they could handle her. How hard could that be?

An hour later, Natalia had thrown her phone across the room and was staring up at the ceiling despite the darkness. This was dangerous territory she was venturing into, like walking out on thin ice. She’d sworn off intimacy, barricaded her heart against just these kinds of risky longings.

How was Samantha slipping under her defenses? She shut her eyes so tight her vision filled with a million tiny points of light. Worse than Samantha slipping in was the horrifying realization that she wanted her to win the siege.

Natalia shoved away thoughts of Samantha. She would not give in to weakness. Would not be ruled by errant emotions. She was the mistress of her fate. Her heart belonged to her alone. No one could make her surrender that which she was unwilling to surrender.

She breathed deep, steeling her resolve. This was a fleeting fixation. She was just drawn to Samantha because she was hard to hold. It would pass. Her walls were untouchable, her armor without flaw. She need only remind herself of that truth.

Squaring her shoulders, Natalia focused on each breath until they came slow and even. The strange ache gradually released its hold on her. She would sleep now. And in the morning, this disturbing night would be forgotten. Balance restored. Loneliness vanquished.

All was just as it should be.