The air in the room was damp and burning hot.
The heat coming off the man felt like a wave crashing over her.
"Feels that good, huh? Listen to you acting all soft like that, mm?" He laughed lazily by her ear, the lifted ending of his voice low and rough. "Then—"
"How about this?"
"Ah!"
Mia Thornton’s eyes flew open.
Her heart dropped like she’d fallen from a height, missing one hard, vicious beat.
A few seconds later, when her mind finally clicked back into place, she realized—
It was just a dream...
But that last movement from the man in the dream had been way too real. Even awake, she still felt dry-throated, hot-faced, her pulse going absolutely feral.
It took her a long while to come back to herself. Then she reached out and touched the spot beside her.
Empty.
Cold.
That so-called husband of hers still hadn’t come home.
Mia swept her long hair back and let out a slow breath before getting out of bed to pour herself some water.
After only a few steps, she felt uncomfortable all over. Annoyed, she opened the closet, grabbed a clean set of clothes, and went into the bathroom to change.
Women had needs too.
Same as men.
Especially a woman like her—someone whose married life had once been... active, to say the least.
Back then, they almost never slept before three or four in the morning. But after that day, that incident, her dirt-cheap husband had taken over an overseas posting and hadn’t been back in nearly a year.
No wonder she’d dreamed about him.
About one of those nights between them.
After changing, Mia had meant to rinse everything out and hang it up, but then the phone on the nightstand rang. In the dead of night, the sound was abrupt enough to make her nerves jump.
Still, she was a surgeon. Getting called in for emergency surgery at night was normal for her, so at first she didn’t think much of it.
But when she answered, the voice on the other end was a strange man’s.
"Hello, is this Ms. Mia Thornton?"
“Speaking. Who is this?”
“Hello, ma’am. This is the police from Huaihai Middle Road Station. Sebastian Thornton is your husband, right? He got drunk at a bar tonight and got into a fight. Please come to the station now and help us deal with it.”
Mia Thornton froze for a second.
Sebastian Thornton was back in the country?
Not only back, but he’d managed to land himself straight in a police station.
That really wasn’t something she had seen coming. She paused, then said, “Okay. I’ll be there right away.”
She changed into something suitable for going out, grabbed her car keys, and headed out.
Huaihai Middle Road was the most famous nightlife strip in Beicheng. Neon lights bled into each other in wild colors, music drifted in and out of the night air, and it was a pretty long drive from the villa out in the suburbs. By the time Mia arrived, it was already four in the morning.
There were tons of bars in this area, and where there were bars, trouble was never far behind. In that darkest stretch just before dawn, the police station was still packed.
Mia pushed open the glass door and spotted Sebastian Thornton at first glance, sitting on a white metal chair.
Even in a place this noisy and chaotic, he was still the one people noticed first.
It was like he had some invisible barrier around him too, a whole patch of space carved out just for him, with no one sitting anywhere near him.