Page 82 of Infamous

There’s something about him. Something magnetic and familiar in a way that makes my heart do a strange, traitorous skip. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me, like he already knows things I haven’t said out loud. Maybe it’s the way his body feels pressed against mine. Or maybe it’s simpler than that.

Maybe it’s that he ticks every damn box a girl shouldn’t admit she has.

The kind of body you want to touch just to see if he flexes under your hand. Lean muscle layered over solid strength. Tattoos like poetry and violence. The kind of thick, heavy dick that’s still half-hard under the sheets and already making my breath catch.

And then there’s the way he touched me last night - tender one second, rough the next, as if he couldn’t decide whether to worship me or ruin me. As if being inside me lit some fuse in him he couldn’t put out.

He watches me now with that same quiet intensity.

And for a heartbeat, I swear I feel it again - the sense that he’s drowning in me, and I’m not entirely sure I want him to come up for air.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I whisper, barely more than a breath.

He makes a low sound of protest but eventually loosens his grip enough for me to slip free. My legs feel unsteady as I stand and throw my nightshirt over my head. It hangs loose and wrinkled around my thighs as I leave the room.

The bathroom feels too bright. I lean against the sink and stare at my reflection. I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror. My hair is tangled, my lips swollen, a faint mark blooms just beneath my collarbone where his mouth had lingered. There’s a flush to my skin that no amount of scrubbing could hide.

And beneath that - the faint trace of something else. Something raw.

Ten years. Ten years of living in limbo, a life held hostage by a ghost.

Lucian Cross.

The name alone still stirs something in me that I can’t control. He’s been gone for years, but I still feel him everywhere -in the spaces between my ribs, in the corners of my mind where light can’t reach. Every man I’ve been with since has been a placeholder. Every job, every day, a performance.

Because part of me died with him.

And maybe that’s why I let Jude in last night. Maybe that’s why I didn’t stop him. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t.

Because for the first time in more than a decade, someone made me feel alive again.

There’s a knock on the door. I jump, startled.

“Nadia?”

His voice is low, muffled through the wood, but it slides right down my spine. It’s rough, careful. Almost tender.

I don’t answer right away. I just stare at the door, at the faint shadow of him waiting on the other side.

He knocks again, softer this time. “You okay?”

That voice - it shouldn’t sound like safety. But it does. It wraps around me like a blanket I didn’t know I needed.

I open the door.

He’s standing there barefoot, shirtless, wearing nothing but his jeans slung low on his hips. His hair is a tousled mess, his jaw rough with stubble.

We just look at each other. Neither of us speaks, but the silence between us hums with something alive.

“You’re still here,” I say finally.

He tilts his head slightly, studying me like I’m something delicate he’s afraid to touch. “Do you want me to leave?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know what I want.”

He nods once, like he understands that more than I wish he did.

“I’m just… surprised,” I admit. “Most guys would have left after…” I trail off, heat crawling up my neck.