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She’s standing with her arms crossed, hips cocked, and an expression that says she’s maybe, just maybe, considering whether I need to be punched or kissed.
I waggle my brows. Twice. For dramatic effect.
“So,” I say, dragging out the word like it’s foreplay. “Is this the part where we get naked?”
She blinks at me, long and slow, and for a beat I think she’s going to walk away. Or throw me through a wall. Both equally valid responses.
Instead, she steps forward, close enough that her breath kisses the skin just below my jaw. Her hand slides up my chest with no real purpose other than to make me forget what language is. Her fingers toy with the edge of my shirt, not tugging, just resting. Temptation in slow motion.
“Do you always prep for nudity with a mint?” she asks, voice like silk wrapped around a blade.
“Only when I want to be respectful,” I reply, deadly serious. “And thorough. I’m a gentleman, Luna. A mint-loving, shirt-removing, consent-enthusiastic gentleman.”
She laughs. And it’sreal.Not the sharp bark she gives when something’s just barely amusing, not the fake one she tosses outwhen someone’s trying too hard. No—this is warm. Genuine. Like I caught her off-guard.
Her fingers hook into my waistband.
And my heart does something traitorous in response.
“You’re lucky I like you,” she murmurs.
“Oh, I know.” I lean in, dropping my voice to a mock-whisper. “I’m adorable. In a feral street rat sort of way. Like Aladdin, but if he’d been raised by morally bankrupt vampires and had zero filter.”
She snorts. “That’s disturbingly accurate.”
“I aim to please.”
And I do. When it comes to her, I always fucking do.
But then her hand slips away, and the warmth of her presence moves with it, and I’m left blinking in the dim light of the corridor as she saunters off like she didn’t just rearrange my insides with a look.
I stare after her, breath mint forgotten, and mutter to myself, “Gods, I’m so screwed.”
But I’m smiling when I say it.
Luna
I don’t knock right away. I stand in front of the door, staring at the warped wood, the small, almost imperceptible cracks where the magic’s held it together all these years. This place breathes in memory. Every hallway stinks of something left unresolved.
And Ambrose Dalmar is nothing if not unresolved.
The six-pack dangles from my hand like a peace offering. Or maybe a bribe. Or maybe just something to do with my hands while I figure out what the hell I’m doing here.
I’m not jealous.
I’m not.
Seeing him kiss Keira didn’t hollow me out the way Elias smiling at that girl in town did, that sharp twist in my stomach that felt like a scream I couldn’t release. Ambrose doesn’t belong to me. He doesn’t evenwantto. I’m not sure he wants anyone, not really.
But I know what heartbreak looks like. And I know what it feels like to have the person who once reached for your throat now pretend they were always aiming for your hand.
Keira is poison. Pretty poison. The kind that tastes sweet when it sinks its teeth in. And Ambrose—he’s the sort of man who would drink every drop just to prove it didn’t burn him.
So I knock.
The sound is steady, almost polite. It’s what he deserves, I think. Space. A choice. The one thing no one ever gives him.
There’s a pause. Then, “If you’re here to slap me for letting her kiss me, get in line. I think Elias and Riven are already sharpening their claws.”