Page 48

“Fuck,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair. “Fucking—fuck.”

“Wow,” Luna says, wide-eyed, like she’s studying a rare predator in the wild. “She’s bold.”

“She’s desperate,” I say. “She thinks I’m weakening. She knows I don’t want the bond, but she thinks if she keeps pushing, I’ll snap. That I’ll give in just to shut her up.”

Luna hums, handing the phone back like it’s a cursed object. “She’s not entirely wrong.”

That earns her a look.

“What?”

“Youarehere,” she says, arms folding over her chest, hip cocked against the dresser. “You could’ve gone to Silas. Or Elias. Hell, even Riven. But you came tome.”

I hate how right she is.

I hate that being near her makes my skin burn—but being far from her makes me feel like I’m not even wearing skin at all.

“I didn’t come here to talk about your ego,” I mutter, pacing once like it’ll help. “I need this stopped. I need heroutof my head. Out of my fucking phone. I can’t… Ican’t—”

“Breathe?” she offers gently.

I nod once. Just once. That’s all I can afford.

She steps closer, not cautiously, not like I’m dangerous—but like she is.

And she is.

She’s the only one I can’t touch without wanting tokeep. The only one I can’t manipulate because she’s alreadyinsideme, curled around my pulse, woven into the dark.

“I’ll end this. You’ll owe me.” she says, brushing past me, toward her desk.

“I always owe you,” I say, and her eyes cut back to mine.

She smiles—but it’s not sweet. It’s not innocent. It’slethal.

“Good,” she whispers.

Because she knows what I owe her isn’t debt.

It’s surrender.

She doesn’t speak. Not right away. Just sets my phone down on the edge of the dresser with the kind of calm that should feel dangerous, and starts unbuttoning her shirt like we’re in the middle of some mundane chore—laundry, maybe, or organizing a bookshelf. The first few buttons slip undone with a flick of her fingers, revealing soft skin, the faintest shadow of a black bra. I watch her hands move, precise and unhurried, like she’s done this before. Like this moment doesn’t belong to either of us—it’s something borrowed, transactional. Except everything about her is a contradiction. And right now, she’s a beautiful one, and I can’t look away.

“Luna,” I say, low and clipped, because I haven’t figured out what the hell she’s doing, and it’s easier to sound annoyed than affected. My voice doesn’t come out the way I want it to—it cracks halfway through, like a fault line opening beneath my ribs.

She doesn’t pause. Doesn’t answer. Just slips the shirt off her shoulders and lets it fall to the floor like it was never necessary. Her boots follow, kicked off with that same effortless grace,and she’s standing there in nothing but denim and that barely-there bra I’ve seen maybe three times now but could redraw in my sleep. She turns her head slightly, catching my stare in the mirror, and that look she gives me—it’s not flirtation. It’s strategy. Precision. Wicked amusement disguised as casual intent.

“I’m fixing the Keira problem,” she says simply, as if that clarifies anything at all.

My hand tightens around the phone she tossed me, like maybe I can squeeze some sense into the moment. “By stripping?”

“By winning,” she counters, and unbuttons her jeans. “You want her to stop, right? She keeps messaging you, sending… things. You said it yourself—you can’t get her to quit.”

The jeans pool around her ankles and she steps out of them, bare legs cutting through the golden spill of light from the window. I want to say something else. I should say something else. But watching Luna in just that thin black bra and panties—watching her arch her back as she stretches—has effectively short-circuited my ability to reason.

“I’ll send her something better,” Luna says, like she’s telling me tomorrow’s weather forecast. “Remind her what she lost.”

She picks up my phone again and tosses it to me. “You’re on camera duty.”