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Gwen’s profile picture smiles up at me, warm and safe and uncomplicated.

I wish I could tell her what happened. But that would be crazy.

And even if I did, what would I say?

Hey, I got cornered in a haunted house by an old schoolmate, and I wanted him to fuck me against the wall.

No.

I can’t tell her that.

So, I keep it light.

good morning

good morning. you’re up? can’t sleep?

just woke up. thinking about you

It’s not entirely a lie. I am thinking about her. About how easy it would be to meet her and make this real. I need to prove to myself that what I felt in that surveillance room was just confusion, just a moment of weakness, just my brain misfiring.

i want to see you. send me a pic of your face

I snap a picture of me smiling, with one cheek against the pillow. It looks okay. My swollen eyes look only a little puffy. She’ll think it’s from not having enough sleep, so I send it.

If I meet Gwen in person and let her teach me the way she said she would, if I can want her the way I’m supposed to, then maybe everything else will make sense. Maybe the invisible wound will close.

I’ll ask her soon. Not today. But soon.

I set my phone down and lie on my back in the dark. My mind wanders.

Lucien is probably asleep, though it’s impossible to picture a body that powerful completely at rest. Lucien in a bed…? Sleep isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Or the second.

Why am I still thinking about him? I can still smell him. I still want him.

My phone dings with Gwen’s response to my picture.

Cam your sleepy face is sexy

Cam?

I roll over and close my eyes.

NOVEMBER

12

LUCIEN

I wake up under my new bedspread of Egyptian cotton. Eighteen hundred thread count. I paid an obscene amount of money to have it delivered overnight, but good bedding is a luxury I can’t go without.

I reach for my phone before my eyes are fully open. Muscle memory. The Lure app loads, it’s stupid pink heart icon mocking me, and I navigate to my messages.

No new messages from Cameron. There’s a stuttering in my chest that I refuse to acknowledge as anything other than irritation.

I scroll up instead and read our conversation from early this morning. I study the picture of his face, his head on his pillow, and feel that same electric charge run through me again. I could ruin another bedspread right now, just by the lazy, fucked-out look on his face. His lips lift halfway, revealing gleaming white teeth. If I were in that room, I’d bring out a laugh that would get him smiling all the way. Half of his face is buried in the pillow, and it’s easy to imagine my body resting against his after wrecking him. He’d be sore but satisfied, and I’d soothe him by telling him he’s mine.

I imagine burying my face in the space between his ear and shoulder and breathing him in. I hadn’t been close to him since St. Silas, and now I have the memory of the haunted house. He carries a more masculine scent now. But I want to know what he smells like in this picture, what he smells like after he’s been sleeping all night. Oh, I have to find out. How can I not know what he smells like when he sleeps?