His Virgin Stripper

10- The Devil at My Door

Sienna

The pounding started somewhere inside my dream.

At first, I ignored it.

Then it got louder.

Then whoever was responsible apparently decided being subtle was for losers.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

My eyes flew open.

Big mistake.

The crying headache I'd gone to sleep with yesterday hadn't disappeared. It had simply taken a short vacation before returning with reinforcements.

I groaned and rolled onto my stomach, dragging a pillow over my head.

The room was so dark and comfortable that it made me want to stay in bed for another twelve hours and pretend the world didn't exist.

BANG.

"Sienna!"

Roxy.

Of course it was Roxy.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

If I ignored her long enough, maybe she'd leave.

BANG.

"Sienna!"

Apparently not.

I blindly reached toward the nightstand, grabbed my phone, and squinted at the screen.

2:17 PM.

Wonderful.

It seemed like I had cried myself unconscious for half a day.

That felt healthy.

BANG.

"Sienna, open the door!"

"No."

My voice came out rough.

I cleared my throat.

"No."

Silence and for a moment, I thought I'd won.

Then…

"You have a visitor."

I stared at the ceiling.

A visitor?

Who the hell was visiting me?

I was unemployed, heartbroken, hungover and hiding in an Airbnb.

Nobody should be visiting me.

"Tell them to leave."

"Sienna…"

"I don't care who it is."

I buried my face back into the pillow.

"They can leave."

Another knock sounded.

Then another.

And another.

My eyes twitched. The woman was determined to shorten my lifespan.

"Go away, Roxy."

"No."

"Please."

"No."

I sat up, annoyance dripped from my voice. "What part of 'leave me alone' is confusing to you?"

"The part where you're acting like a Victorian widow."

I gasped. The audacity.

The absolute disrespect.

"I am grieving."

"You've been grieving for thirty-six hours."

"My fiancé cheated on me."

"Exactly."

I blinked.

"What does that even mean?"

"It means eventually you're supposed to leave the room."

I fell backward onto the mattress.

"You sound so dramatic."

"You're one to talk."

"Thank you."

That wasn't the response she'd been expecting. I could tell because silence followed.

But then…

"Sienna, seriously. Open the door."

"No."

"Just come out for one minute."

"No."

"Thirty seconds."

"No."

"Ten seconds."

"No."

A pause, then she knocked again.

Loudly.

I sat upright.

She knocked again.

Something inside me snapped.Not in a dramatic emotional way, No.

In a deeply irritated way.

The kind that only happened when somebody kept poking you after you'd repeatedly asked them not to.

I threw the blanket off and stomped toward the door.

My hair looked insane. My eyes probably looked worse.

But I could care less.

I yanked the door open so hard it bounced against the wall.

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ROXY, LEAVE ME ALONE!"

The words exploded out of me, echoing in the cramped hallway of the rental unit. I stood there, chest heaving, my lungs burning, glaring at my best friend with all the pent-up fury of the last two days.

The entire Airbnb went silent.

My heart hammered against my ribs—a frantic, uneven rhythm that had nothing to do with my earlier rage and everything to do with the sudden, icy realization that the air in the room had shifted.

The atmosphere felt heavy, charged with a static electricity that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I saw Roxy’s expression shift from annoyed to something else. A flicker of mischief? No, amusement danced in her eyes. She wasn't looking at me anymore. Her gaze drifted past her shoulder, directed toward the small, cramped foyer of the living space.

The grin slowly spreading across her face should've terrified me.

Instead, confusion won.

"What?" I snapped, my voice still trembling from the outburst. "Did you bring a crowd, Roxy? Is this a public intervention now?"

Roxy just bit her lip, her smile turning into a suppressed laugh as she stepped aside, clearing the view behind her.

Slowly, I looked past her.

My brain stopped functioning. The world seemed to freeze, every thought vanished.

Every sound disappeared.

Standing several feet behind Roxy, perfectly still, was the man from the basement.

The same cold eyes. The same devastating face.

The same calm, terrifying presence that somehow made every room feel smaller.

He was dressed in a crisp dress shirt and neatly tailored trousers, his dark hair pulled back into a low man bun, looking entirely out of place against the peeling wallpaper and cheap laminate flooring of the Airbnb.

He looked like an apex predator who had somehow found his way into a pet shop. For one horrible second, I wondered if I was still dreaming, if the fever-pitch of my heartbreak had finally fractured my reality into something surreal.

But then, the air moved as he breathed. He wasn't a hallucination. He was standing there, watching me with that same unnerving intensity, his posture relaxed, his hands tucked into his pockets as if he had all the time in the world.

My pulse skipped, then hammered a frantic, desperate rhythm against my ribs. The sight of him brought everything rushing back in a tidal wave of sensory overload– the scent of cedarwood and something sharper, like steel; the weight of his hand against mine; the morally questionable contract he had offered me.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even remember how breathing worked.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. His gaze remained fixed on mine—steady, unwavering, and almost amused. He took a single, slow step forward, the movement liquid and predatory.

Then, the corner of his mouth lifted.

It wasn't a smile. It was a declaration.

A sharp gasp escaped my lips as the realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.

The bastard smirked, and I knew, with sickening clarity, that my life was no longer my own.