Page 54 of The Shadow Sanctum

“Oh,” she says with a wrinkle in her nose. “Well, I’m … happy for you. I’m glad you had company out there.”

“You look it.”

Her face smooths in an instant. “Do you believe I’d wish otherwise? How could I… What are you doing?”

Luna shifts backward as I approach, but she steadies herself; cranes her neck to peer up at me. When her arms go to cross, I clutch her hands and bring them to my chest.

She gasps like an innocent virgin—so young, so fragile, so full of shit. And it robs my temper anyway. There’s a moment where I think about letting her go, asking her to leave, and going to bed. But her big blue eyes twinkle with wanting, and her body molds to mine. Her tipped chin no longer holds caution but anticipation, eyelids dipping low, lips parting with an invitation I could burn.

She deserves all the mercy of a spider beneath a boot.

“You would know all about loneliness, wouldn’t you, Your Grace?” I swipe the tip of her nose with my own and follow the cushioned flesh until it turns to bone. It’s nothing. Hardly even a tease. Yet she teeters, hips pressing against mine—because she wants me to feel in control. That’s how she controls me.

“What did you really come here for?” I ask, mouth to her ear. I trace the lipped curve with my tongue while giving her hands a squeeze.

“I miss you,” she whispers.

“You do?”

She nods. Because she can’t see my jaw tense. She misinterprets my tightening grip.

“You love to miss me at night, don’t you?” As my tongue dips inside her ear, she sighs. “I might not be as pathetic as Thorne, but I’m really fun to have sex with, aren’t I?”

The air stills as she tenses. Tries to pull away.

“You get to call me slave. Hit me. Fuck my mouth. Sob on my shirt like I’m your goddamn therapist. Sounds like a pretty good deal for you.”

When she tries to pull away a second time, I yank her hands against my chest and hold her close.

“Sawyer—”

“Don’t. If you’re going to call me Dreg in the morning, you don’t get to say my name now.”

“You’re no longer a Dreg. You’re a valued brother of⁠—”

I rear back with a laugh so swift, it shifts a lock of her hair, and in an instant I wish I’d stayed where I was. Because I wouldn’t have to look into her eyes.

Two icicles woven around black dots growing smaller by the moment. As if she knows what the blue of her eyes does to me; as if she conjures the gloss to spread, the softness to settle in the tender flesh surrounding each orb. Angel has always said I have a gift for reading the competition, and it’s true: there’s something about a person’s eyes that tells all, even if their hands do not. I’ve made millions off this gift.

Today, it’s a curse.

I yank my eyes to a space just past her right shoulder as I let go of her hands and give a slight shove that makes her stumble backward.

But I’m weak. Already, I feel my anger cooling.

Leave.

Please.

“Take your fucking daddy issues out of my room. And don’t come back.”

I don’t dare look into her eyes, but I hear her gasp… and then nothing. There’s never an exhale. No retort.

But from the corner of my eye, I watch her hand draw to her mouth. The other presses over her stomach, as though she’s nauseous after all.

Her coat and scarf lie abandoned on my bed as she hurries out the door.

Slam.