Page 128 of Under an Endless Moon

The paper littered with the threat fluttered to the ground, and I gripped her by the sides of the head, my fingers delving into the soft locks of her hair as I urged her to look up at me.

Ink-stained eyes blinked at me in surprise, her breaths coming in short, jagged puffs.

That intoxicating moonflower scent invaded.

“Who’s after you?” I basically croaked the words, unable to keep the desperation from bleeding into them.

She struggled to inhale, to breathe through the heat that flamed around us.

A circle of fire that kept us trapped.

“I truly don’t know.”

“What about someone else you’ve dated the last couple years?” The question was shards.

I was barely able to tolerate thinking about someone else having their hands on her. Except I didn’t have to contend with that any longer. The truth that she’d never let anyone get close enough to actually touch her the way I’d been dreaming of doing. The way she’d let me do last night.

This fuckin’ fierce, innocent, beautiful girl who was nothing but a light in the middle of the darkness.

And some motherfucker was trying to drag her back into it.

I could see her process through each one, calculating their risk.

The faintest line dented between her brows when she whispered, “None of them were really anything. A couple dates here and there. A kiss on the cheek. Most of them got bored and stopped texting when they realized I moved way too slow for their tastes.”

That made me fuckin’ ragey, too. Seemed there wasn’t one thing about her that didn’t send me into a tailspin.

“Anyone at the shop set you on edge? A customer or a supplier? Someone who might have gotten obsessed?”

She gulped, and she was barely able to shake her head with how tight I was holding onto her. “I don’t think so. No one has given me the gut sense that something was off.”

“Anyone in your past?” I grasped for anything.

Straws.

A needle in a giant fucking haystack.

I mean, how many goddamned people had she come into contact with over the years?

I felt the slightest flinch beneath my palms, the tiniest indication that maybe her brain had gone to a moment in time that might have meant something, before she blinked it away. “No. There’s no one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I pushed closer, and my nose brushed hers as the urgent words fell from my mouth. “If you think of anything…absolutely anything…I need you to tell me, Raven. Trust me with it. Because I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you. Of letting some asshole get to you. I need to stop this.”

“And I hate that something in my life has brought this on you,” she rasped. “I hate that you were hurt because of me.”

She stared at me through the dense air that swirled around us in a disorienting cloud.

A haze that distorted everything I should cling to.

The reality that I couldn’t have this girl.

But I couldn’t find that footing right then.

“You think I wouldn’t stand in front of every bullet for you? Take every blow for you? Suffer any consequence?”

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