Remorse

The silence after was the worst part. It wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy.

Lukas stood beside the bedroom window with one hand braced against the sill, fingers digging into the wood hard enough to hurt. Like he needed something solid beneath him to keep from falling apart completely.

Outside, the neighborhood looked exactly the same as it had that morning. Same lawns. Same hedges. Same sidewalks. Same people drifting through their perfect suburban lives. Nothing had changed.

Except inside this house.

The smell still lingered in the room behind him. Sharp. Intimate. Impossible to ignore.

Soft breathing came from the bed. Hannah was asleep. He didn’t need to turn around to picture her. Her image had burned itself permanently into his mind already.

Naked.

Defenseless.

Real.

Lukas lowered his forehead against the cold glass. It did nothing to cool the anger boiling underneath his skin.

“Fuck.”

The word **** its way out through clenched teeth.

He closed his eyes. This hadn’t simply happened. He had allowed it to happen.

No.

Worse.

He had wanted it. Nothing accidental about any of this. No loss of control in the heat of the moment. No **** mistake spiraling too far. He’d known exactly what he was doing from the beginning.

And he had done it anyway.

Disgust rose bitter in his throat. Nobody else carried responsibility for what happened in that bedroom.

Only him.

“Idiot.”

Months of planning. Careful preparation. Every detail controlled down to the smallest risk. And he had nearly destroyed all of it for a few intoxicating moments of power and desire.

Lukas dragged a hand roughly through his hair. Power was dangerous. Especially for the people who believed they controlled it.

Abruptly he turned toward the bed. The movement was too fast, almost violent, like part of him still expected the room to look different somehow.

One glance destroyed that hope immediately.

Hannah lay tangled in his sheets, deeply asleep, as if ****. Her auburn hair spilled across the pillow in messy waves.

The sight hit him harder than it should have.

Not because she looked ruined.

Because she looked trusting.

Safe. Like someone who had fallen asleep beside a man she believed would never hurt her.

A sharp sickness twisted in his chest. For one ugly second he saw himself clearly—a predator who had reached into her mind and made her want him.

Not seduced.

Not persuaded.

Possessed.

And the worst part—the part that made self-loathing crawl beneath his skin like insects—was that some piece of him still wanted more.

“Fuck,” he muttered again. The word sounded aggrieved now instead of angry.

He backed away from the bedroom without another look, putting distance between himself and the sight of her before the hunger inside him found a way to make excuses again.

He paced around the house. Movement helped him think. Step by step through the kitchen. Through the hallway.

There was a problem now.

Problems could be solved.

Organize—Evaluate—Control—Execute.

At its core, the situation was still manageable. Nothing had happened that couldn’t be corrected. Nobody had seen anything. There was no evidence. Nobody knew.

Nobody.

Except Hannah.

Which made her the only variable that mattered. A problem isolated was a problem that could be handled. Maybe even erased.

Slowly his pulse steadied again. The tension eased from his shoulders.

He had made a mistake. That mistake could never happen again.

He needed stricter rules. Better control. No more surrendering to impulse because a beautiful woman smiled at him for ten consecutive minutes like she was trying to speedrun every bad decision in his life.

Outside, cars rolled quietly through the neighborhood. People talked. Somebody’s cat wandered lazily along a fence line.

Normal houses. Normal lives.

Exactly what Lukas had wanted.

And maybe—if he stopped making catastrophic choices every time he stumbled upon someone like Hannah—he could still salvage things.