Chapter 105/Trapped in the Steam

Chapter 105: 105/Trapped in the Steam

Chapter 105

Stephanie’s Point of View

Cedric opened his dark eyes very slowly, knitting his brows in pure annoyance, thoroughly irritated by the noise ruining his comfort. Not a single trace of panic or confusion showed on his face; on the contrary, he stretched with a cold, tyrannical confidence, a mocking and dominant gleam flashing in his eyes as he took in the sheer terror written across my features.

He locked his heavy arm around my bare waist with sheer stubbornness, dragging my trembling body to press against his all over again as if he were using my presence to challenge her outside. He let out a provoking, calm sigh, completely ignoring the rapid knocking.

"Cedric! Please, listen to me... she is already here!" I whispered in a choked tone, tears nearly spilling from my eyes from the absolute stress, while my heart hammered against my ribs like crazy. I tried to push his solid chest with both of my palms to break free from his restraint, but he was like a rooted mountain, utterly immovable.

He lowered his head toward my ear, his warm morning breath brushing against the skin of my neck with a lethal slowness. Instead of moving to open the door or hiding me, he clamped his lips onto my earlobe, biting it with a sudden, subtle sharpness. Then, he whispered in a husky, deep, and cold voice saturated with defiance: "Then let her knock until the bones of her hands shatter, Stephanie. This is my room, this is my bed, and you are currently mine by your own choice. I will not move from my spot for her sake, and you are not leaving from beneath my palm."

"Cedric... please, Isabella is outside!" I cried out again in a trembling plea, looking around in utter panic for the remnants of my torn dress or anything to cover my bare body, which was now coated in our sweat and dried fluids. Meanwhile, the hissing female voice continued from behind the thick wood, her tone beginning to lose its gentle patience, twisting into overt suspicion: "Cedric? I know you’re inside... I heard you move! Open the door, why are you locking it with the key from the inside like this?"

My stomach clenched violently, and I felt as though a noose were officially tightening around my neck. If Isabella caught a glimpse of me here, or if Alexander returned at this exact moment and saw us together, the family would burn and every single plan would be permanently destroyed. I looked at Cedric with pleading eyes, hoping to spark a single shred of rationality within him, but his harsh facial features only grew colder. His eyes narrowed in a terrifying manner as he stared toward the door with hidden malice, turning our small battle into an open defiance against all the restraints surrounding him.

Cedric finally moved, but not in a way that guaranteed our survival; rather, he did so with a provoking slowness, as if deliberately trying to drive me insane. He deliberately rolled his heavy arm off my waist, crawling his tall frame upward to sit at the edge of the disheveled bed, exposing his broad back mapped with the red scratches my nails had carved into him throughout the night.

He turned his head back toward me, his dark eyes scanning my trembling, bare body with a gaze dripping with a suppressed lust that had clearly not reached its end.

"Go to the bathroom, right now, Stephanie," he said in a rough, husky voice lowered to an absolute, menacing hiss, his eyes flashing a stern warning: "Go inside and lock the door from the inside... and do not make a single sound regardless of what happens out here, is that understood?"

I didn’t wait for another word from him. I wrapped the remaining silk sheet around my body with frantic, nervous speed and bolted from the bed, grabbing my shoes from the floor and my torn dress.

I ran with stumbling steps, my heart practical tearing through my chest. With every step, I could feel the heat of his thick, slick semen leaking down the back of my bare thighs. I ducked into the bathroom and locked the thick wooden door securely behind me, leaning my shaking back against it, listening with bated breath and eyes widened in absolute horror to what was unfolding outside.

From behind the door, I heard the sound of Cedric’s confident footsteps advancing toward the main bedroom door. The metallic rattle of the key echoing coldly as it turned was followed by the door being thrown open. Instantly, Isabella’s voice pierced the room, heavily strained with suspicion and reproach: "Cedric! For heaven’s sake, what took you so long? And why on earth are you locking your bedroom door with the key in your own family palace in this highly suspicious way?"

"I was fast asleep, Isabella, and the barbaric pounding you just practiced on my door is enough to ruin my mood for the rest of the day," Cedric answered her in a cold, dry, and mocking tone, completely unbothered.

"Asleep?" Isabella gasped. From the sound of her movement, she took two sharp steps inside the room, then suddenly halted. My stomach twisted violently; I was terrified that she was discovering what we had done. Isabella continued, her tone changing completely, becoming as sharp as a knife and dripping with lethal doubt: "What is this disaster on the bed? What were you doing?"

I shuddered in my tracks, slamming my palm over my mouth to stop the sound of my terrified breathing from escaping, while Isabella’s words seeped through the cracks of the bathroom door like a lethal poison. Every single muscle in my body tensed up, and I felt the coldness of the bathroom wall piercing through my bare back, while drops of cold sweat from the tension mingled with the remnants of our dried fluids still clinging to my skin.

Outside the door, a brief, heavy, and suffocating silence filled the space a silence that nearly ripped my heart straight out of its place. Then, the sound of his slow movement followed. I imagined him standing there in his imposing height and taut chest, looking down at her with those dark eyes that knew no fear.

Cedric answered her in a husky, cold voice devoid of any agitation, dripping with provoking indifference: "I was sleeping. Is sleeping deeply and tossing the sheets around a crime that demands an interrogation, Isabella?"

Isabella took another step, her heel clicking sharply against the wooden floor. From the direction of her voice, she was drawing dangerously close to the disheveled bed.

She shrieked, pure fury tearing through her throat: "Tossing the sheets doesn’t leave a bed in this suspicious disaster! The scent in this room... your clothes thrown around haphazardly... there is something deeply wrong here!"

My stomach clenched in a terrifying panic, and I felt the noose tightening directly around my throat; if she took one more step toward the bathroom, it would be the end of me.

I heard the sound of Cedric’s confident footsteps moving to cut off her path firmly, his voice ringing out in a sharp, mocking tone that brooked no discussion: "Enough with the nonsense and delusions, Isabella. My mood is bad enough this morning. If your presence here is merely to search my room and interrogate me like a criminal, you can leave immediately through the exact same door you walked in."

--------++++---------------

Cedric’s Point of View

I crossed my arms tightly over my bare, solid chest with a flawless, lethal coldness, looking down at Isabella from head to toe with eyes that had grown utterly sick of her presence. Absolute disgust and boredom filled me at her sharp, whining voice, which was tearing through the morning stillness of my suite. Not a single vein in my body flinched, and not an eyelid batted at her panic and hysteria.

She scanned the room, her eyes burning with suspicion, doubt, and interrogation, before fixing her trembling gaze on me, attempting in a miserable effort to regain her courage: "I am not interrogating you, Cedric... I just see that everything happening here in your room this morning is too strange to be overlooked."

I tilted my head slightly with utter contempt, a mocking, provocative, and cold smile etching onto my lips. I spoke in a husky, dry voice that left my throat with the solid stability of stone: "And what is even stranger than all of this... is you coming to my room and pounding on my door so violently at this incredibly early hour of the morning, isn’t it?"

She stamped her foot against the floor with a childish, volatile frustration, taking a single step closer to me as she desperately tried to read my rigid, unreadable features. She spoke in a voice choked with tears: "I came because I missed you terribly... and I could no longer bear your harshness... isn’t that a sufficient and logical reason for me to be here?"

I exhaled a searing breath filled with pure annoyance and disgust, pointing my broad palm toward the door with sharp, biting coldness. My body was taut, entirely prepared to throw her out by force the moment she failed to grasp my hint. I said in a cutting tone: "Fine, I have heard your reason... now leave. I want to shower."

Her face flushed with burning rage and humiliation, her shoulders shaking with blind, volatile stubbornness as she shrieked in my face, her tone broken and defeated: "No! I won’t leave, and I won’t move from here! I will not tolerate your absence and continuous ignorance of me any longer. I am completely sick of this wretched situation, Cedric!"

My jaw clenched so violently that my teeth nearly shattered, my entire body locking like solid stone as I fixed my dark, malice-ignited eyes directly into hers. Deep within me surged a predatory, wild desire to permanently erase her existence just so she would shut up, stop her weeping, and cease ruining my mood any further. I spoke in a sharp, low voice that cut like a blade: "Fine... what exactly do you want?"

Her eyes widened with a sudden, desperate eagerness, and she advanced toward me with trembling, unsteady steps until her fingertips almost brushed my bare chest, her heart hammering with hope. She said: "I want you... I want to spend time with you alone, and to feel, for once, that you are actually my fiancée, not just a stranger sharing a family name with me!"

I scoffed in a low, contemptuous tone that utterly degraded her dignity. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a swift, fleeting glance toward the locked bathroom door where Stephanie was hiding naked, trembling in pure terror. I drew myself up to my full, towering height with dominant pride and arrogance, saying to Isabella with absolute detachment: "You know the nature of my life and my world very well, Isabella... so do not expect from me what I do not possess to offer anyone."

She knit her brows with bitter, blatant accusation and condemnation, screaming in agony and heartbreak as she clenched her fists helplessly: "Alexander’s life and world are exactly like yours! He is also a mafia man whose hands are stained with blood, but despite all of that, he loves his wife, adores her, and protects her with his very life!"

The moment she uttered the name of my wretched brother Alexander and tied the conversation to his wife, Stephanie who was lurking right behind that door the blood boiled with blind fury in my veins. My fists clamped together with such excessive force that my knuckles turned completely white, and the veins in my arms bulged terrifyingly. I took a single threatening, violent, and thunderous step toward her, black sparks practically flying from my eyes.

I spoke in a roaring, suppressed voice that rumbled like thunder, shattering whatever remained of her self-confidence: "I am not my brother Alexander! And I will never be him... if you admire his way and want a man like him... then go and marry him!"

She took a massive step backward in total shock and bewilderment that paralyzed her limbs.

Her pupils dilated with absolute panic and horror as she placed her trembling hand over her racing heart, her voice shaking violently in broken despair: "What is this harsh, insane talk you are saying, Cedric? Have you lost your mind, for heaven’s sake?"

I averted my face from her with absolute, limitless disgust and revulsion, taking a cold, sharp, and tyrannical breath as I returned to my lethal indifference and usual harshness. I said curtly, my dark eyes carrying no mercy whatsoever: "If my brother pleases you to this extent... then go and take him for yourself. The door is right in front of you!"