Page 55 of Moonlit Temptation

A gesture that would’ve made me melt hours ago. But now? My limbs were locked like steel.

“So, how was your day?” he asked to fill the silence in the room. “Do anything exciting?”

“I saw you,” I whispered, low.

“What?” he asked absentmindedly as he took napkins out of the bag.

“I saw you. In that house, in the library.”

Silence settled around the room, like the idyllic calm before a natural disaster.

“What?” The word crackled with thunder, followed by panic.

Saint was good at hiding his emotions, but his eyes frantically roved over me. As if making sure I was still intact.

I got to my feet, creating some equal ground between us, as I explained, “I saw you with that woman as I was eating lunch and it didn’t look like a work call, so I got curious. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but you lied to me, and I wanted to see why. I followed you to that house and watched you do that thing with those people, that man. The cutting and kissing, but I didn’t hear anything other than Welcome home, Brother… I left when you all exited the room.”

An easy, clean-cut, almost surgical explanation of the turmoil I was feeling inside me.

Saint studied me with his towering presence, his index fingers pressed to his lips in thought.

And when he finally spoke, it wasn’t what I thought he’d say.

“Okay.”

“Okay? Okay? That’s all you’re going to tell me after what I just saw?”

“What do you think you saw?” he spoke hesitantly. Carefully.

“A sex cult with a blood fetish.”

He barked out a laugh in shocked surprise. Sharp and short.

I didn’t find it funny. “Is that why you slept with me, Saint? Because you’re a sick freak?”

He stepped farther into my space, his heat mixing with mine as he got in my face and whispered in a no-nonsense tone, “I told you why I slept with you. You make me breathe, Madelayne.”

“And I don’t believe you.”

“Believe this.” He grabbed my face as our mouths clashed together, passion and ice. Controlling hands and deception. He tasted of lies; he kissed me with sin.

And I was a prisoner chained to him.

My body sank into his and his hands moved to grip my throat. Catching me on a gasp, he slipped his tongue inside. He backed us up against the wall, his strong grip still secure around my neck. His hands were a weapon he wielded with a master touch.

A Saint-induced cloud filled my head, distracting me from everything but him. His touch, his lips, his tongue. His everything.

Until my hip clipped the bedside table and the pain that shot through me chased the cloud away. I pushed him off me with a glare. “You don’t get to distract me with that.”

“I wasn’t trying to distract you, Mady. I was trying to prove a point.”

“Want to prove it? Tell me what exactly I saw in that room.”

He rubbed his hand along his jaw in thought. “You won’t stop until you find out, will you?”

“You know I won’t.”

He remained quiet until he released a tight breath that pulled at his shoulders as he rubbed the back of his neck. Nervous. Saint was nervous. “An initiation.” His voice was low. Almost ashamed.

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