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And gods, I feel it.
Because watching her take command of something like it’s hers, watching all of us fall apart just from the way shedrives?
This is hell.
Not the fire and brimstone kind. Not even the kind they threatened us with in Daemon’s earliest years, where your sins got carved into your bones and lit up under moonlight for the Ancients to mock.
No—this isworse.
Because she’s not doing anything. Not really.
Just driving.
One hand on the wheel, the other on the stick shift, her wrist flexing with every gear change. Casual. Unthinking. Graceful in that deadly,Lunaway—like she’s always been built to command dangerous things and look stunning while doing it.
And now I can’t stop watching her hand.
Her wrist.
The way her fingers wrap around the gearshift, how her thumb skims over the base like she’s coaxing power instead of just managing it. It’s wrong how good she is at it—wrong in the kind of way that makes my blood hot and thick in my veins.
I try to look away.
Itry.
But the moment she shifts again—just a flick of her wrist, just pressure and intention and that smooth, unhurried drag of her palm—I nearly groan.
The sound sticks in my throat, low and bruised.
My tongue drags across my bottom lip before I even think about it, and I hate that Ambrose notices. His gaze cuts toward me like a scalpel, and he doesn’t say anything—but he sees. Of course he fucking sees.
I’m spiraling over herhands.
Gods help me if she —
No.
No.
I force my gaze out the window. Trees blur past in streaks of gray and green. The sky’s bleeding into twilight now, the edges of everything going soft and sharp at the same time.
Elias leans forward suddenly, his voice far too loud and far too smug.
“I’m just saying, if I die tonight, let it be like this. In a car. Watching Luna handle that stick like—”
“You finish that sentence,” I growl, “and I’ll rip your jaw off.”
He grins, leaning back like the threat is foreplay. “Damn, Riven. Didn’t know you werethatinto hand stuff.”
Silas snorts. “He’s been eye-fucking her grip for twenty minutes.”
Luna doesn’t even blink. “You’re all degenerates.”
She shifts again.
I clench my jaw.
And when her eyes flick to the rearview mirror, locking on mine for half a second, she knows.