Chapter 282: 282 | My Room Isn’t Big Enough for Three Egos
"I’m implying that you came here to do exactly what I came here to do, and now you’re embarrassed because someone caught you at it. Must be hard, being perfect all the time. Must be exhausting, pretending you don’t have the same basic urges as everyone else."
"My urges are none of your concern."
"They became my concern when you knocked on his door while I was standing in his room."
The temperature in my room had risen by approximately ten degrees since this conversation started. Whether that was from the body heat of three people in a small space or from the sheer friction of Camille and Petra’s mutual animosity, I couldn’t tell. The air felt thick. Charged. Like standing too close to a live wire.
"Okay." I held up my hands. "New plan. Both of you leave. We pretend this never happened. Tomorrow we go back to being classmates who have absolutely no reason to be in each other’s rooms at midnight. Sound good?"
Neither of them moved.
"Belmont." Petra turned those emerald eyes on me with an intensity that made my stomach do something inconvenient. "We need to discuss the discrepancies in your Aspect file."
"Right now?"
"The documentation from today’s exercise will be reviewed by institutional oversight within forty-eight hours. Your constructs exceeded registered specifications by a significant margin. If I noticed, others will notice. I’m offering you the opportunity to coordinate our accounts before that becomes a problem."
She said it like she was doing me a favor. Like this was professional courtesy instead of whatever the hell it actually was.
Camille laughed. The sound was sharp and humorless.
"That’s your angle? Aspect files? You expect anyone to believe you put on your sexy underwear to talk about paperwork?"
"I expect you to believe whatever you want. I have no control over your interpretations."
"My interpretation is that you’re a fraud." Camille took another step forward. Petra didn’t retreat. "You talk a big game about institutional this and professional that, but underneath all of it you’re just as messed up as the rest of us. You saw what happened in that training room. You felt him pin you down." She paused. Let the words hang in the air between them.
"And you liked it."
Petra went very still.
The silence that followed stretched out between them like a tripwire. Camille’s statement hung in the air, settling over Petra like a physical thing. The space between them had compressed to maybe two feet. Neither of them backed down.
"How dare you."
Petra’s voice had dropped to something quiet and dangerous. Her shoulders had squared. Her posture had shifted into something that read like a warning even without the words attached to it.
The silk robe moved with the tension in her frame, the fabric catching light where it draped over her body in ways that would have been distracting if the entire situation weren’t already catastrophically distracting.
"How dare I what?" Camille’s voice carried the kind of edge that meant she was done pretending this was a civil conversation. "Tell you something you already know? Say out loud what you’ve been thinking about since that training room?"
She took another step forward. Petra held her ground.
"I saw the footage. I watched it three times. I know exactly what your face looked like when his constructs pinned you to that floor. When he leaned over you. When he had complete control of the situation and you realized there wasn’t a single thing you could do about it except accept it. That wasn’t fear, Lang. That wasn’t tactical assessment. That was something else, and we both know exactly what it was because I felt the same thing when he kissed me."
"My reaction during the training exercise was a natural physiological response to unexpected physical contact." Petra’s voice had gone cold enough to lower the room temperature. "It has no bearing on my personal feelings regarding Belmont or anyone else."
"Physiological response." Camille took a step toward Petra, closing the distance between them. "Is that what we’re calling it now? I had a physiological response too. When he kissed me. When he pinned my arms and held me against that wall. When he looked at me like he wanted to do more than just win a training exercise."
"He kissed you as a tactical deception. The documentation is clear."
"The documentation doesn’t know what it felt like. Three seconds. That’s how long it lasted. And in those three seconds I felt more alive than I have in months. That’s not tactics. That’s not strategy. That’s something else, and you know it because you felt the same thing when he had you on that floor."
Petra’s hands curled into fists at her sides. The silk of her robe shifted with the motion, revealing more of the camisole underneath and the way it clung to curves that her professional presentation usually kept hidden.
"You have no idea what I felt."
"I have every idea. I watched your face on the monitors. I watched you try to maintain that perfect Lang composure while his hands were all over you. You failed, by the way. For about two seconds, you looked almost human."
"Get out."
"I was here first."
"This isn’t your room."
"It isn’t yours either."
They stood approximately three feet apart now, both of them breathing harder than the conversation warranted. Camille’s chest rose and fell with each breath, the motion straining her tank top in ways that drew my attention whether I wanted it to or not. Petra’s robe had slipped open further, revealing the full length of the emerald camisole and the generous curves it showcased.
I was tired. I was annoyed. And I was standing in my own room watching two women who had both come here with obvious intentions argue about which one of them had better reasons for showing up.
"Enough."
My voice came out harder than I intended. Both of them turned to look at me with expressions that suggested they had temporarily forgotten I was in the room.
"I don’t know what either of you expected to happen tonight. I don’t know what script you were both following before you ran into each other at my door. But whatever it was, it’s not happening now. Not like this."
Camille’s expression shifted from aggressive to something almost wounded.
"Belmont..."
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