Page 52 of Twilight Sins

“What does that mean?”

“It means I had everything in hand. You don’t need to worry.”

She’s staring down at my hands, but her brow furrows. “So… Does that mean I’m not in danger anymore?”

“What?”

Her blue eyes are wide and vulnerable when she looks up at me. “Does this all mean you took care of the person who was threatening me? Will I go back to my apartment now?”

The moment snaps. She isn’t worried about me—she just wants to know when she can leave. I pull my hands back and shake off the water. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“But if you took care of it, then?—”

“If I could have this issue dealt with in one night, I never would have kept you here in the first place,” I snarl.

Luna is frozen for a second. Then she turns and throws the rag into the bowl. Water sloshes over the side and drips off the edge of the table.

She snatches up the ice pack and turns back to me. But as she starts to raise her arm, it falls. “I want to know why you—Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

She moves to press the ice pack to my eye, but I snatch it out of her hand and toss it to the side. “Say it.”

Her lower lip is pinched nervously between her teeth. When she releases it, her chin wobbles. “I don’t understand why you’re going to so much trouble to keep me safe when you don’t even like me.”

My brain empties. Everything I was thinking is gone in a breath.

She shrugs like she’s unaffected, but her eyes are filling with tears now. “You’re trying to save me from this threat—whatever it is—but you don’t want me around. I woke up the morning after we had sex and you were gone. You ran from the room earlier tonight when I tried to kiss you.” Luna looks down and chuckles sadly. “Look at you. You’re clenching your fists so hard you reopened your cuts. I just don’t understand why being around me is so terrible for you.”

Being around Luna is terrible.

The night I first brought her back here, I knew she was a mistake. I just thought she was a mistake I could get rid of in the morning.

Now, she’s here day in and day out. A temptation I can’t escape.

I have no desire to be close to someone. I know how that ends.

But everything that has happened tonight—the dinner, Benjy, sitting here while she patches me up like we’re playing fucking newlyweds—is proof that it’s too fucking late. Whether I wanted to or not, I’ve given in to Luna’s temptation.

I’m in deep.

“Yakov?”

The sound of my name in her soft, trembling voice is the last straw. I release my tight grip on my self-control and grab Luna instead.

Then I haul her against me and kiss her.

20

LUNA

I’m frozen. Yakov Kulikov is kissing me and I’m frozen.

I can’t understand how we got here. He doesn’t like me. He can’t, right? It’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. Why else would he pull away? Why else would he refuse to tell me anything, refuse to let me in?

Now… this?

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

By the time he sucks my lower lip into his mouth, my body decides it doesn’t matter how we got here. I plant my knees on either side of him and arch against the solid wall of his body.

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