Page 80 of Lunar Crest University

“Absolutely not.” She scrunches her nose in distaste. “Matthew MacFayden is the best Mr. Darcy.”

Nodding, I take a sip of my wine. “May I ask what sways you?”

The hand clench.

“The hand clench.”

It’s…comforting, doing simple things like this with her. It’s the one time when I don’t feel immediately on edge about something. Finley cuddles up to my side, and I wrap my arm around the back of the couch to allow her more space to cling to me as she gazes up at the TV. That’s how we spend the next hour, her watching the movie while I mostly watch her. Her micro-expressions. Her body language.

Her eyes water as Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth she has bewitched him, body and soul, and I can’t seem to look away. She wears her emotions on her sleeve. She cares. I wish with every ounce of me I was capable of feeling like that. Things like this don’t bring me to tears. They don’t make mefeel, but watching her does.

“Have you ever felt like that?” she asks in a whisper.

I’m gawking down at her, but she’s still watching the movie. I don’t answer because I’m not sure if I’m meant to. It was so quiet, I almost didn’t hear it at all.

“I haven’t,” she continues. “But I want to.”

I’ve never felt like that.Bewitchedby someone. At least, not before. No one has ever inadvertently cast a spell over me or reeled me in to the point of being borderline addicted. I think I am addicted to Finley Dunaway. I crave her voice, her green eyes on me, her smile, her rosy cheeks, her touch, her skin, her…everything. The more at stake things become, the more danger that presents itself, the more my chest aches at the thought of anything happening to her. I’d go into a fit of fiery rage if something happened to her.

I don’t think anything would be left in my wake if anyone hurt her.

Fuck.

She’s bewitched me.

Chapter Thirty

LUCA

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH, 2023

Finley sleeps peacefully beside me, leg thrown over my middle as she curls into my side. Her dark hair is strewn across my bare chest as she snoozes softly. The warmth of her body has my skin pricking with sweat under this comforter, but I can’t bring myself to move. Her lips are parted just faintly in a pout, and her lashes rest against her porcelain cheeks.

She’s beautiful.

I have to move.

I have to check if the apartment is bugged. It’s the one thing I haven’t done, and I meant to do it last night after she fell asleep, but I wasn’t far after her. She’s a cuddler, and I guess I never realized that I am too. How would I? I’ve never spent the night with any woman before. Once she intertwined herself with me, it was like someone slipped me some melatonin. I haven’t slept that well in a while.

Or have I ever?

Easing my way out from under her, I replace my empty spot with a pillow. She curls up to it almost immediately in herslumber, like I had never moved at all. After a quick freshen-up in the bathroom, finding no signs of any cameras, I quietly head into the kitchen. It takes me less than five seconds to find one hidden behind the coffee bar decor next to her Keurig machine, giving a view of the entire layout of the apartment from that angle alone.

And the lamp in the living room.

And the picture of a smiling Finley with her dad on the wall.

It takes even less time for me to see red. The blood boils so hot under my skin, I’m sure I’ll explode, the anger bubbling inside me like a volcano ready to erupt. My nostrils flare as I clench my hands into fists at my side, the veins in my neck straining so hard, they could burst. I want to hit something. I want to slide all the shit on these counters into the floor. I want to break someone’s fucking neck. Red. It’s all red.

Someone was in her house. Someone is watching her—heis watching her. Watching us. He has seen her fucking naked.

I’m going to fucking kill someone.

There’s no one to kill here, so I take my fury out on the bug cameras as I rip each one out, slicing through the wires with a kitchen knife and burying it so deep in the trash, I know she’ll never stumble across them. Then, for good measure, I start making breakfast because if she comes out to see me right now, I know I won’t be able to hide the rage that’s written all over my face and in my body language.

I have to get her out of here. Now, not this weekend, not even tomorrow.Today. Javier is ten steps ahead of me, and I need to get my shit together.Today.

“You’re making breakfast?”

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