Page 142 of Luca & Luna

Luna looked like I snatched a treat right out of a puppy’s mouth when I climbed out of the nest.

“Don’t make those eyes at him,” Auggie said with a laugh. “We have to do extra steps to get you both through this.”

I didn’t have it in me to worry about Auggie seeing me butt naked. My calves screamed as I stretched them out. “Jesus Christ.”

“Keep going.” Auggie parked himself near the door, keeping an eye on the two of us while Luna disappeared beneath the blankets and I worked my way through my protesting muscles. “You’re doing better at this than I expected.”

“I am as surprised as you are.”

“If you can get her out of the nest and into the bath, that should help both of you, but I don’t know how amenable she’s going to be to that.”

“I’ll work on her if you get it running for us.”

“You got it.”

I cycled through stretching from head to toe while the bath filled. “Luna, can you get out of the nest?”

A muffled no came through the blankets.

“Can I soak in the bath without you?”

Another muffled no. Her head popped up. “I need you in here.”

“Babe, you gotta get a handle on yourself,” Auggie yelled from the bathroom. “Let your boy soak. You can go in the tub with him.”

Luna pouted, looking at me imploringly. I didn’t want to make her get out, but I wasn’t an alpha, and while I could pretend for a while with the synthetics, I wasn’t going to last to the end of this without some self-care.

“Please? Just for a bit.”

With some grumbling, we managed to coax her out of the nest and into the bath. The hot water felt like heaven, and Auggie brought us ice-cold drinks and chocolate chip muffins. Luna was plastered to me, sitting in my lap with her arms around my neck while she munched on her snack. I sucked back the drink like I was dying, determined to get the most out of this soak so I would be able to help her through the next spike.

Auggie did the testing for the study, recorded results, and sat nearby for when we were ready to get out.

“The collar and cuffs are itchy in the water.” I ran my fingers beneath them to ease it, but there was no helping it with how much sweat and water they’d been exposed to.

“You can take them off and let them dry, but I’ll have to supervise Chompy.”

“That’s not fair. I’m lucid now,” Luna defended.

“No, you’re fresh out of the heat haze and we don’t know how long you’re gonna stay there,” Auggie insisted. “You’re too busy being stuck to him to see how red his throat is from you trying to bite through the collar. You can’t be trusted with this.”

“It’s not that bad, is it?”

She leaned back to survey the potential damage to my body. Bite marks and hickeys covered everywhere she could reach, and I loved every single one of them.

“Oh god. Why did I do that?”

Auggie grinned. “I have my theories, but if I say them out loud, you’ll hit me.” He gathered up her hair into a high ponytail and then braided it, passing the braid to me. “Hold this just in case and I’ll get the cuffs and collar washed up.”

Once I had a firm grip on Luna’s braid, Auggie removed the collar and held it up, showing me the bite marks Luna had made.

“I feel like this is overboard,” she said. “I feel fine.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t know how much willpower I have to not reciprocate if you bite me for real. Let’s save us both the potential grief and be overly cautious.”

The hot water worked a lot of its magic on my body, and breathing in the absolute cloud of heat hormones perfuming off Luna did the rest. Hopefully Jasper would go easy on me when I got back to the bakery.

When Auggie had finished with his task, he came to sit by the bath and took over holding Luna’s hair leash.

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