The shock is so brutal it feels like my soul left my bodyagainjust to escape this conversation. The heat in my veins is drowned instantly by sheer, blistering irritation.
“Excuse me?” I hiss.
“You heard me.” He flicks the used tissue into a rusted bin in the corner, already reaching for his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed. His movements are unbothered. Casual. Like I didn’t just watch him come apart. Like we both didn’t just experience something deeply, cosmically wrong.
“You— I— Ugh.” I press my fingers to my temples, vibrating with the unholy trifecta of embarrassment, rage, and lust. “You’re an absolute asshole,” I finally manage. “I came here to get you because Nathaniel asked me to. Not to—not to witness that. Just so we're clear.”
His lips twitch, but it’s not a smirk. Not quite.
“Then maybe next time, use the lock pad to call me.”
My hands curl into fists. “I don’t have a corporeal body, you dick! Even if I could call, I wouldn’t be able to!”
“Yeah,” he muses, standing up. “You know why? Because you're a ghost, that's why. You don't belong here.”
My teeth grind together so hard I can practically hear them creaking under the pressure.
“I don’t belong here?” I echo, seething. “You’re the one squatting in a rotting psych ward like an escaped case study, treating the place like your own personal padded cell—jerking off to—”
I choke on the words. I physically cannot finish the sentence without self-combusting from sheer secondhand mortification.
His body tenses again. This time, not from pleasure. This time, it’s pure, slow-burning rage.
“You don't know what I was jerking off to,” he growls.
I scoff, crossing my arms. “Oh, please. I might be dead, but I’m not blind. You were looking right at me.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Be careful,” I snap, “or I’ll reap your stupid soul early just to prove this point.”
That shuts him up. His jaw clenches, his eyes narrowing into a glare sharp enough to skin a man alive. Then, with a huff of pure irritation, he yanks his shirt over his head and stands up, all dangerous.
“Get the hell out of my room, Grim Reaper. I'll be right there.”
I want to strangle him. I want to hurl a haunting at his face. But instead, I just turn on my heel and stalk out.
“Fine. Stay here, jerk off, whatever. You're a piece of shit regardless.”
Pain flutters beside me in a dramatic flurry of black wings as I storm down the crumbling hallway, white-hot rage boiling in my chest. But rage isn’t the only thing simmering in me.
And that’s the real problem.
I’m furious. Humiliated. Inconveniently horny.
I storm down the creaky hospital halls, my thoughts an absolute disaster. I should not be replaying what I just saw. I should not be hyper-fixating on the way he—nope. No. Not going there. This is not just about Cassian jerking off in front of me anymore. It’s aboutallof them messing with my head.
They’re unraveling me.
And the worst part?
I like it.
By the time I make it back to the main room, my heart is still hammering, and my skin is positively sizzling. But I keep my face cold, deadpan, as if I didn’t just have an internal meltdown in the hallway, and, thankfully, this time I manage to hide it.
Talon gives me a once-over, his grin immediately widening. “Took you long enough. Did you find him, or did you get distracted by something else? Ghosts of some patients lingering?”
“I found him,” I bite out. “He's coming down soon.”
