His Virgin Stripper

12- Cedarwood

Sienna

For several seconds, I stood frozen beneath the shower.

Maybe I imagined it.

That had to be it.

I knew I'd heard something. I was almost certain I'd heard something. But there was no way somebody had opened my bedroom door.

I'd locked it.

I remembered locking it. I remembered checking the lock. Twice.

The water streamed down my shoulders as I stared at the tiled wall. Maybe the sound had come from somewhere else. Maybe it had come from the hallway. Maybe my brain was finally collapsing under the combined weight of heartbreak, humiliation, and sleep deprivation.

Honestly, that felt possible. That felt very possible.

Still...

The sound had been so clear. A soft click. A door opening.

I had heard footsteps.

I frowned.

"Roxy?"

My voice echoed lightly through the bathroom. Nothing. No answer.

I waited.

Still nothing.

My frown deepened. That was unusual. Roxy always answered. Even when nobody asked her to. Especially when nobody asked her to. The woman had never voluntarily kept quiet a day in her life.

Even in her sleep she managed to be loud. So the silence stretching back at me from the other side of that door was doing absolutely nothing to settle the unease crawling slowly up my spine.

"Roxy."

Silence.

I rolled my eyes. Of course. She was probably still laughing about what had happened earlier. The woman had nearly passed out from amusement after watching me embarrass myself in front of the most intimidating man I'd ever met.

A fresh wave of humiliation swept through me.

I immediately pushed the thought away. No. I wasn't thinking about him. Not now. Not ever. Preferably.

"Very mature," I called out.

Nothing.

I sighed. The shower suddenly wasn't helping anymore. I reached over and turned the water off.

I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around myself.

The bathroom fell quiet. So quiet, I could hear the water dripping from my hair. A few droplets slid down my neck and disappeared beneath the towel wrapped around my body.

I listened.

Nothing. Not a single sound. Not even the muffled noise of the television from the living room. Not even the distant shuffle of footsteps. The kind of silence that had no business existing in a space that contained Roxy.

"Okay, seriously."

I grabbed another towel and started drying my hair. "If this is some kind of joke, it's not funny."

Silence.

My irritation grew fast. Because now I knew she was doing it on purpose. There was no way Roxy could stay this quiet unless she was actively, deliberately, and with great personal enjoyment trying to annoy me. The woman treated silence like a foreign language she had never bothered learning. This was intentional.

And unfortunately for her, it was working.

"Roxy."

Nothing.

I narrowed my eyes at the bathroom door. "Answer me."

Still nothing.

The nerve of this woman. I continued rubbing the towel through my hair, working out the excess water with more force than necessary. The silence stretched. Longer. And longer. I waited for a laugh, a shuffle, the sound of her breathing. Anything at all.

Nothing came.

Until I finally lost patience entirely.

"Fine." I tossed the damp towel onto the counter. "If you've been standing out there keeping quiet this whole time, you're going to be in serious trouble."

No response. Not even a laugh.

I folded my arms. "Do you hear me?"

Nothing.

"Good. Glad we're on the same page."

Silence.

My eye twitched. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. At this point I was wasting my own time standing inside a bathroom arguing with a closed door. I wasn't about to spend the rest of the afternoon held hostage in here because Roxy had suddenly developed a personality trait that didn't involve being the loudest person in any given room.

That was not happening.

I adjusted the towel wrapped around my body. It was short. Very short. The kind of short that required a significant amount of faith and very careful movement to maintain any dignity whatsoever. Not that it mattered. It was only Roxy.

I reached for the handle.

"You know what? Whatever." I pulled the door open and stepped into the bedroom. "If I find out you've been standing there all this ti…"

The words died instantly.

A scent drifted toward me the moment I stepped out. My steps slowed without me telling them to. Something inside me stilled. It was warm. Clean. Rich. It wrapped itself around me quietly, curling into my senses before I could make sense of it.

I blinked.

My fingers tightened slightly against the edge of the towel. I knew that smell. I had smelled it before. Recently. Very recently.

My brows pulled together as I stood there, damp and barefoot, reaching for the memory attached to it. It sat right at the edge of recognition. Close enough to feel. Just far enough to frustrate.

Then it clicked.

Cedarwood.

My heartbeat stumbled. Because I knew exactly where I'd smelled cedarwood before.