Page 29

The sun spills over his shoulders, illuminating the black of his shirt, the way it clings to lean muscle and long lines. He’s tall enough to make me look up. Just slightly. Just enough to remind me he was made for sin.

He picks up the mug and walks over. Stands too close when he hands it to me, fingers brushing mine in that deliberatelyaccidentalway.

“I believe this belongs to you,” he murmurs.

My breath stutters, just once, because the heat in his touch is wrong. Not elemental. Not comforting.

It’sconsuming.

I take the mug and step back. Farther than necessary.

“I don’t care what Blackwell says,” I say, voice sharp. “You’re not part of this.”

He smiles again. All teeth now. No softness left.

“Not yet,” Theo says, and the words hang there, thick with promise and threat.

He steps closer, not a lunge, not aggressive. It's worse than that. It'scasual, like gravity is the one pulling him forward, not intention. But I know better. Theo never moves without a reason.

He stops just shy of violating my space again, hands loose at his sides, head tilted slightly like he’s already decided I’m worth devouring and just hasn’t picked where to start.

His eyes sweep me, slowly. Boldly. Like he’s cataloging not just skin and breath and temper, butwhat’s beneath it. I hate how methodical it feels. Like he’s peeling back layers with nothing more than a look.

I stare him down, mug cradled against my chest like armor. I want to tell him to get the fuck out of my face. I want to shove him off the balcony. I want, gods, I want to feel nothing at all.

Instead, he smiles like he’salreadyinside me.

“Tell me,” he says, voice a low hum, dark and intimate like he’s already pulled the sheet halfway down my soul, “when you can’t sleep, do you walk the halls barefoot? Or do you lie still and let the weight of your lovers press the air from your lungs?”

My jaw tightens. “That’s none of your.”

“Do you like to be watched when you touch yourself?” he interrupts smoothly, tone infuriatingly curious. Not cruel. Not lewd. Just…clinical. “Do you go slow? Or do you chase it like something might vanish if you don’t get there fast enough?”

The mug burns in my grip, ceramic biting into my fingers as my pulse rages.

“Whatthe fuckis wrong with you?” I hiss.

His smile doesn’t falter. “Everything. And you’ve known it since the moment you saw me in that store, Luna.”

He says my name like it’s a sin he’s already swallowed once and is starving to taste again.

“I want to know you,” he adds, voice softer now, more dangerous for the velvet in it. “Not the public you. Not the bonded you. Not the woman they worship.” His eyes lock on mine, and I feel it like a brand. “I want to know the pieces you keep locked in a box so deep, not even Riven’s fury has touched it. The ones you don’t even showyourself.”

I breathe through my rage. Through the wild, magnetic pull that Ihate.

“You don’t get to know me,” I whisper. “You don’t get towantme.”

He leans in. Too close again. His breath is coffee and smoke and something older, something I can’t name that coils like heat behind my ribs.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, smile gone now, just the gleam of something wicked in his eyes. “Wanting isn’t something Igetto do. It’s what Iam.”

He raises his hand slowly, the backs of his fingers poised like they’ve already memorized the curve of my cheek. His movements aren’t rushed, no, he’s far too deliberate for that. Every motion is drawn out, a slow seduction stitched into gesture. Like, touching me isn’t a question, but agiven. Like he's done it before in dreams, he refuses to forget.

The sunlight gleams off the veins in his wrist as he reaches, warm against the stretch of black cotton at his sleeve. His mouth curves, barely there, just a shadow of that maddening confidence, and his eyes… gods, those eyes are drowning-blue, wide open, daring me not to flinch. Daring me to let him feel what’s written beneath my skin.

But the heat that coils between us, that electric, unbearable pull, never gets the chance to snap.

The door behind me doesn’t open. Itexplodes.The old iron hinges scream as the heavy oak slams inward with a crack like thunder, sending the ivy-wrapped frame shivering. The sound punches through the courtyard like a war drum. Wind kicks up around us, sharp and sudden, flinging petals off the climbing roses and scattering them in a frenzy of red and white.