He Wouldn't Claim Me — Another Man Did-Chapter 39 - 35: Kiss Me

Isla Prescott ended up driving Shane Sterling home in his car.

The car was expensive, but its passenger was priceless. She drove with extreme caution the entire way.

Shane Sterling was slumped in the back seat, cracking his eyes open to watch her from time to time. But she was focused on the road conditions ahead and had no idea the man in the back was only tipsy.

He wanted to talk to her, but he had to maintain his act of being blackout drunk. The restraint was agonizing.

The car crawled back to Shane Sterling’s villa in Pellian Bay at a snail’s pace. Mrs. Zane was already asleep, but she threw on some clothes and came downstairs to check when she heard the car pull up.

Isla Prescott was just wondering how she was going to get Shane Sterling out of the car when she saw Mrs. Zane. It was like seeing her savior.

"Mrs. Zane, Sean’s drunk. Could you give me a hand with him?"

"Oh, dear," Mrs. Zane said, rushing over with a look of distress. "How did he get so drunk? Is something troubling him?"

"I’m not really sure," Isla Prescott said. "He was already drunk when I found him."

With one on each side of him, the two women managed to get him upstairs.

As soon as they laid him down, Mrs. Zane rushed to the kitchen to brew some sobering soup. Isla Prescott figured she had delivered him safely and her job was done. She was about to leave when she heard Shane Sterling murmur from the bed, "Water... water..."

Isla Prescott poured him a glass of water and helped him sit up.

"Here, have some water."

Shane Sterling seemed to regain some awareness, steadying the glass himself and downing the water in one gulp.

"Do you want more?" Isla Prescott asked.

He shook his head.

Isla Prescott placed the empty glass on the nightstand. Before she could turn away, Shane Sterling suddenly collapsed back onto the bed, dragging her down with him.

’This wasn’t the first time she’d been in this bed.’ The difference was, this time, Shane Sterling was in it with her.

His arm was draped across her waist, his face buried in the crook of her neck. They were pressed together in an extremely intimate position.

Isla Prescott’s every breath was filled with Shane Sterling’s scent. Her body went rigid. She was so tense that she overlooked an obvious flaw in his act: the man who was supposedly too drunk to even sit up properly barely smelled of alcohol.

She tried to push him away, but he didn’t budge. Instead, Shane Sterling opened his eyes.

Shane Sterling’s eyes were quite large, but now they were half-lidded, giving him a hazy, drunken look.

"Who are you?" Shane Sterling asked, sizing up Isla Prescott.

Isla Prescott had no patience for introducing herself to a drunk. "Let go of me first," she said. "You’re crushing me."

As if he hadn’t heard her protest, Shane Sterling’s finger slowly traced the line of her jaw. Suddenly, he seemed to recognize her. "You’re Isla Prescott?"

Before Isla Prescott could speak, he added another question, "The Isla Prescott who likes eating leftovers?"

"..."

"Haven’t you heard that leftovers are tasteless? Why can’t you go find something better to eat?"

"..."

’He’s incredibly forward, even for a drunk person.’

Isla Prescott pushed him away and had just sat up when Shane Sterling wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back down.

"Isla Prescott."

He looked down at her, a confession on the tip of his tongue, but reason held him back.

’If it were just a matter of expressing his feelings, regardless of the outcome, then even without any chance of success, the confession itself would be a form of closure. But he couldn’t bear the thought of a future without her in it. So until things were clearer, this wasn’t the right time to speak.’

He could only fall back on his "drunken fit" as an excuse, leaning in to whisper by her ear, "Isla Prescott... give me a kiss, won’t you?"