My mind spun, circling around and around. It was the middle of the night, and I was wide awake. The street lights filtered in through the break in the curtains of my hotel room, street sounds muffled by the thick windows. I was comfortable in the dark, cozy in the room with the slanted ceiling and exposed beams.
Yet I’d never felt more alone. I picked up my cell from the bedside table, checked the clock. Two-thirty. I’d come directly back from the last meeting, taken a shower and slept a solid eight hours. There was no chance I was going
back to sleep. I found a text I’d missed earlier from Giles. Giles Armstrong-Smythe, the lecturer who specialized in Norman architecture. It was a few centuries before my area of expertise, but we were in the same department.
I saw his face in my mind, the dark hair, the aristocratic nose. Heard his clipped English accent. He was handsome and a few years older than me. He’d been married once, now divorced. I was the foreigner, the woman he could fuck and forget every time I flew home. I should have been bothered by the casualness of it all, but I liked it that way. He probably didn’t realize just how much. It had only happened twice and both times in the musty storage closet next to his office in the Arts building. Only the required clothing had been removed to get the job done. Nothing more. I hadn’t come either time, but I’d made the connection, soothed the loneliness I’d felt if only for a little bit. Eased the burden of remembering what had happened to me and the lack of support from my family.
Of course, he knew I was back for the meetings and presentations and wanted more no-strings-attached action. Why wouldn’t he? I offered him no-strings fucking. I wasn’t clingy, I wasn’t anything really to him. He wasn’t anything to me.
The vision of him transformed to Reed. His dark hair. His ice blue eyes. The way his lip kicked up at the corner when amused. The heated anger at seeing me with Larry. His voice when he’d coaxed me to come from just the motion of his thumb. He’d texted me while I was in a morning meeting. I got hot all over just thinking about the words.
Reed: I want you on my lap again.
God, that sounded really, really appealing, yet it scared the shit out of me. While I’d allowed men like Giles to touch me, to fuck me, they hadn’t seen me. I didn’t bare my body or my soul to any of them. They knew nothing about me, saw nothing past their own arousal and desires. To get off. And I wanted it that way. I didn’t want anyone to see my flaws, everything dirty in my past. In my life.
With Reed, when I’d been on his lap, I’d been completely covered, he’d touched me over my panties, and I’d never been so exposed. Vulnerable. He hadn’t gotten off. He hadn’t even gotten a kiss.
Still, he saw me. Saw into me, into the deep places I kept hidden, that I traveled five thousand miles to escape. In his texts, he’d asked me if I was running from him, and I’d answered him honestly. Distance helped with telling the truth. I was running from everything, and it had been the first time I’d admitted it, even to myself.
I was running from my life, and just like on the treadmill at the gym, I wasn’t going anywhere. I was stuck. Trapped. Not just by Cam but by my own doing.
I did the math. Bit my lip. Two-thirty here, seven-thirty in Colorado. Reed had left the conversation open, asking me out, which meant he wanted to know more about me. I wanted that, I did, but then he might see the cracks in my facade. He might see the truth, and then he’d be gone. Who would want to stay with someone like me?
I got up, got a drink of water from the sink in the bathroom. Stared at myself in the old mirror over the narrow sink. Was I going to live like this? Meet Giles after the morning presentation for a quick fuck just so I felt better? Would I feel better? It used to work, but I didn’t think it would now. Thinking of dropping to my knees before Giles made me nauseated. Ashamed.
What was wrong with me? I closed my eyes, sighed. God, I had been letting a stranger stick his dick in me for some twisted validation.
No. Reed was right. No more. I looked down at my cell, resting on the lip of the sink. I just had to push his name on my screen.
Engage. Connect. Then I wouldn’t be alone.
I picked up the phone, pressed the little phone icon next to his name.
“Harper.”
Just his voice had my heart beating frantically.
“Reed,” I said. My voice was breathless. “I, um… sorry, did I catch you at the gym?”
“It’s the middle of the night there. Are you okay?”
I exhaled, relaxed, at least a little bit. “Jet lag.”
“I didn’t know you were going away.” No, I hadn’t told him although we hadn’t done much talking. “Work?”
I turned off the light in the bathroom and climbed onto the bed, stacking the pillows against the mahogany headboard with my free hand, so I could sit up.
“I’m a guest lecturer at the university here, which has me doing joint research, leading seminars. This trip, there’s a group presentation on the latest dig at the cathedral ruins at—” I sighed, realizing I sounded like an idiot. “Never mind. It’s about a pile of really old rocks.”
I heard him huff out a little laugh. “I don’t need to know the complicated details. I just like hearing the excitement in your voice.”
For a second, I had no idea how to respond.
“You like what you do,” he continued.
“Yes,” I replied, tucking my bare legs under the thick blankets. I was only in an old t-shirt and panties, and it was chilly, the space heated by an old radiator beneath the window. The cozy bedding and flannel sheets made up the difference.
“I can hear it when you talk about it. I thought you had finals here.”