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“You can’t be serious.”

“What, are you afraid of him?” I rasp, my thumb stroking her through the soft denim.

Those sloe eyes narrow on mine and I know she hears what I’m really asking:Are you afraid of me?

She lifts her chin in that defiant tilt that makes my blood heat. “You wish.”

“Good girl.”

“Fuck off,” she snaps, but color floods her cheeks, betraying the effect those two words have on her.

She reaches for the door handle, then stops. “Other people might be scared of Saint, though.”

I let my fingers trail off her thigh, savoring the lingering burn of her heat on my skin. “Saint will behave don’t worry. He might not like strangers, but he knows how to act around them.”

I open the door and call for Saint, watching in the side mirror as he leaps out. He comes around to my side, waiting for instructions. “You’re going in there with Luciana.”

Saint’s cropped ears twitch in response, his gaze already scanning the crowd.

Luna looks uncertain. “Cade, he doesn’t have a leash.”

“You couldn’t control him even if he had one. But he’ll do what you tell him as long as he has you within sight or earshot. Won’t you, Saint?”

Saint lifts his head a fraction and his ears twitch again as he locks eyes with me.

“Lock it down, mate,” I command, a code for him to protect Luna, with his life if necessary, and Saint gives a short huff of assent.

Luna chews on her bottom lip, still debating with herself, but eventually opens the door.

I watch her move toward the store, struck by the sultry grace with which she moves. Those jeans should be classified as a lethal weapon, and the sway of her hips could start a gang war.

Saint flows beside her like a living shadow, all contained violence.

The effect is immediate and exactly what I want. Gazes are averted, catcalls die, a beefy jogger swings wide, and a cluster of teenagers suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere. She moves through the space they create, completely oblivious to the power she commands with my dog at her side.

Beautiful and lethal. Christ, she’s perfect.

She shouldn’t belong in my world—this bright, fierce creature with steel in her spine and salvation in her tears. And yet I’m dragging her deeper into it with every passing mile, every bared secret, every touch that brands us both.

She and Saint disappear into the store and I count down ten minutes.

When she doesn’t return in twenty, I know something isn’t right.

26

Luna

The cool breeze barely registers against my fevered skin. Cade Quinn is a killer. A compulsive one. But that brutal truth only deepens his magnetic pull and makes me want to crawl into his mind—and his lap.

And that’s just idiotic, Luna. How do you keep picking the worst companions? And this time the stakes aren’t betrayal. It’s death.

My heart and body don’t seem to care about staying alive. Which is why my brain is now running the show. I need space to think beyond this primal urge to submit to his darkness.

If I want to survive Cade, I’ll need an escape plan.

The credit card hidden in my boot is one lifeline. So also is a phone—as soon as I buy one. I have to let someone know where I am and who I’m with, just in case Cade decides to try his necklace on me.

I also need to make sure that my period stays away.