Page 107 of Unholy Obsession

She wins. Every time.

I set her down, and she watches me in the dim light of our bedroom, something quieter settling into her expression. She reaches out, tracing her fingers down my arm.

“You had fun today,” she murmurs like it surprises her.

I catch her hand and press a kiss to her palm. “Of course I did.”

Her lips twitch like she doesn’t quite believe me.

I don’t blame her. I don’t always make it easy to read me. But I know the truth of it, even if she doesn’t.

I had fun because she’s fun.

Because she’sMoira.

And because, more than anything, I’m just fucking glad she’shere.

FORTY-ONE

MOIRA

After days,I emerge from my self-imposed exile covered in oil paint, exhaustion dripping from me like the last dregs of coffee at the bottom of the pot. My hair’s half in a bun, half in a bird’s nest. My tank top used to be white, but now it’s a canvas of its own, Jackson Pollock-ed in black and deep red and a big smear of ochre right across my tits.

Bane is waiting when I push out the door of the spare room in my apartment. Of course he is. Leaning against the wall in that broody, too-intense way of his, arms crossed like he’s trying to keep himself from either shaking me or dragging me against him. His dark eyes rake over me, slow and assessing, like he’s cataloging every exhausted breath and speck of paint on my skin.

I cross my arms back at him. “What?”

He exhales through his nose. “Three days, Moira.”

“Yes, darling?” I bat my eyelashes. “Is this the part where you tell me I look a fright and should go take a bath?”

“No.” His voice is low and steady. Too steady. “This is the part where you tell me what the hell you’ve been doing locked away without eating or sleeping.”

I stretch, my bones cracking in protest, and give a little yawn. “I was eating. I had peanut butter straight from the jar. And coffee.”

“That is not eating.”

“Says you.” I smirk, then hesitate. My fingers tighten around the doorframe, and suddenly the bravado feels heavier to hold. I chew my lower lip, glancing back through the door toward the canvas propped up against the wall. “I was… working on something.”

Bane’s eyes flick to where I look, and he pushes off the wall in one fluid motion. “Show me.”

I stay planted. For once, not out of defiance but out of something sharper. More uncertain.

This is stupid. It’s just a painting. Just something I do every few years when I get a hare up my ass. It doesn’t mean anything.

Except it does.

Bane sees too much already. What if he sees this, then sees right through me in a way I don’t know how to undo?

I almost tell him never mind, that I was kidding, that it’s a giant erotic mural of him on a horse just to see if he’ll blink, but it’s too late. He’s already moved, already stepped past me into the room, already standing in front of the canvas.

And he’s staring.

I tap my foot and bite my bottom lip.

My painting stands there, raw and open, like I cracked open my ribs and smeared my insides across the canvas.

The woman in the painting is almost swallowed by darkness. She’s a silhouette of curly hair barely discernible from the midnight tones that press in around her. But at her center, inthe place where her heart should be, embers burn. Small, fragile. Flickering against the vast nothingness.

---