The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 15

My room was at the end of the east corridor.

Eliza's was the one beside it.

I'd known that for two weeks, and it had never once seemed important.

The first thing I heard was the click of Eliza’s door, then the softer thud of it closing. Two sets of footsteps, one lighter and quicker, the other heavier.

Julian’s boots.

I pulled my blanket higher and closed my eyes. They were probably just talking. Eliza liked to talk. I turned onto my side, facing away from the wall, and tried to find sleep.

Then I heard her laugh. Not her polite laugh, but something lower, rougher. It cut off abruptly, swallowed by a sound I couldn’t place at first. A soft, wet noise. Kissing. They were kissing, and not the chaste pecks of greeting. I could hear the slide of lips, the faint catch of breath between them. My face went hot in the darkness.

The bed in Eliza’s room groaned. A shift of weight, the rustle of fabric. Julian’s voice, too muffled to make out words, but the tone was unmistakable. Hungry. Eliza answered with a hum that vibrated straight through the wall and into my chest. I pressed my pillow over my ear, but it was useless. The sounds had found their way into my bones.

A shoe hit the floor. Then another. The whisper of a dress being pulled upward, the soft whoosh of it sliding off skin.

My mind supplied an image I hadn't asked for, and I immediately pushed it away.

My own hands were clenched in the sheets.

I pulled the blanket over my head.

It made no difference.

I pressed my face into the pillow.

That helped even less.

“Come here,” Julian said, and this time I caught the words clearly.

The command in his voice made my stomach tighten.

The bed frame creaked, a long, drawn-out complaint as Eliza obeyed. More rustling. His clothes this time, the clink of a belt buckle, the heavier drop of his trousers. I could track every movement through the wall.

When the mattress dipped again, I didn't need to see them to know what that probably meant. I knew it before she made that sound, a gasp that was half surprise and half welcome.

I squeezed my eyes shut so hard I saw stars. My body knew what it was before my mind had finished deciding what to think. Heat pooled low in my belly, an ache I recognized but had never felt so sharply. Between my legs, a throb of want that had nothing to do with reason.

I pressed my thighs together, and the friction made it worse. I was twenty-two years old and had never been touched like that, never heard a man’s voice go ragged with desire, never imagined what it would feel like to have someone’s weight pressing me into a mattress. Until now.

“Harder,” Eliza said. “I want to feel you tomorrow.”

Julian laughed, breathless. “Greedy thing.”

"Wonderful," I whispered to nobody.

I got out of bed and opened the window and let the cold night air slap some sense into me.

Cold air rushed in. I stood there in my nightdress with my arms folded over myself, looking out across the dark roofs, and it did not help either, because the silence I’d hoped for didn’t come. The sounds followed me. Eliza’s cries were louder now, shameless, rising in pitch.

“Don’t stop,” Eliza begged. “Please, please, don’t stop.”

I gripped the windowsill. The stone was icy under my palms, but it did nothing to cool the fire inside me. My body was a traitor.

But I didn’t close the window. I didn’t go back to bed. I just stood there, shivering in the cold

“I’m close,” she gasped. “Oh god, Julian, I’m so close.”

“Let go,” he growled. “Let me feel you come on my cock.”

She shattered. I heard it happen, the way her voice broke into a sob, the way the bed slammed against the wall in a frantic, uneven rhythm as Julian chased his own release. His groan was deep and guttural, a sound of pure, helpless pleasure that seemed to go on forever. Then silence, broken only by their ragged breathing.

I stayed at the window until I heard the wet sound of them separating, the soft murmur of voices I couldn’t decipher.

A while later, I heard the door open. Footsteps. One person this time, unhurried, went away down the corridor.

A man walking back to his own room through his own house.

He was gone, and I was still here, my heart pounding, my body aching with a need I didn’t fully understand.

I looked at the wall.

Then at the ceiling.

Then back at the wall.

"I hate this palace."