“Red,” she answered blandly.
I think I actually felt my brain power down and go dark.
Great. I was hoping to sound like a fucking idiot.
Demitri pushed himself off of the floor, coming up behind Scarlett and wrapping his arms around her.
“It also means passion. Courage. Fire.”
She pretended to smile for him before breaking away and moving back into the bathroom. She came out less than a minute later wearing my shirt that ended mid-thigh. And nothing else.
Again, the room was quiet for her as she hugged the edge of the farthest bed with her eyes downcast. She touched her fingertips to the comforter, softly tapping the linen in tempered distraction.
“I’m going to bed,” she murmured to neither of us in particular.
But it was Demitri who peeled his shirt off in a flash and pulled back the sheets on the bed Scarlett was standing by. He slipped in like they’d slept together hundreds of times, propped up on his side, leaving space in the crook of his body for hers to occupy.
The glass bottle in my hand creaked as my grip around it compressed. Lowered lashes lifted at that sound, and the woman across the room finally gave me what I’d been craving all night.
Her attention. All of it. Every goddamn drop.
Warmth licked across every patch of my skin as we held gazes and spoke. Yeah, spoke. I was pretty fucking sure this was the closest humans had ever come to telepathy, because I knew exactly what she was telling me.
Asking me without any shame.
Come to bed.
Hold me.
You. I want you.
Jesus fuck. Was the room getting smaller? Pretty damn sure the walls were shrinking and someone had blasted the heat in the building to a hundred degrees. It was a dry heat too, sucking any moisture out of my flesh until I felt like it was going to harden and crack, and I was going to burst.
I couldn’t get in that bed, and she knew it.
It couldn’t be me wrapped around her tonight like last. I couldn’t do that again.
Not ever fucking again.
Scarlett pressed her lips together when I stayed where I was. Her sad eyes flicked around with as much energy as she had left to give her disappointment and landed on the bed she was supposed to get into.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Please don’t fucking do it.
I’d certifiably lose my mind if I had to sleep in a bed next to her and him all night.
There was a perfectly good, empty bed still up for grabs, and she needed to get in it. I’d risk the world’s worst crick in my neck sleeping in this terrible goddamn motel chair if it meant she slept by herself tonight.
My sanity wouldn’t survive knowing she was curled up in his arms like she was in mine last night. I’d never sleep knowing her wild-fire hair was tickling the bottom of his chin instead of mine while she slept on his chest. Thinking about her broken heartbeat talking to his all night long instead of mine made me want to rip the damn thing out of my chest and chuck it out the window.
And I almost did.
Kneeling on the mattress, Scarlett ignored every silent warning coming from my side of the room and crawled into bed with him. She rolled her back towards me, giving her bed partner the perfect opening to slide up behind her and wrap his naked arm around her waist.
Hot-steam fired up every bracket of my spine, and I rocketed out of my chair.
It smacked the door and made a shit ton of noise as I wrestled to throw it out of the goddamn way. Fuck this.
Fucking fuck this and fuck her and fuck Demitri Vitalis.
A crimson haze warped my vision as I yanked the door open, my poison of choice clutched in one hand and the doorknob crushed in the other.
I stormed out and slammed the door shut so hard the wood vibrated in protest, leaving behind the hourglass figure of poison I didn’t agree to let ravage my system, and went to go drink in my car.