CHAPTER NINE
LUNA
Dinner arrived in courses that glimmered like art pieces rather than food.
Silver domes lifted to reveal butter-poached lobster resting on a bed of saffron risotto, its gold threads glistening under candlelight.
Crushed pink peppercorns dotted the plate like tiny wounds.
Crystal flutes shimmered with pale champagne, sweating delicately in the tropical heat.
Everyone around me sighed with pleasure, murmured approval, lifted forks with reverence.
But to me, the flavors were ash and smoke. Empty. Hollow.
Nothing could compete with the heat pressed relentlessly against my thigh under the pure white tablecloth, a heat that radiated from one unyielding column of muscle intent on reminding me he existed.
That I was trapped beside him. That my body, traitorous and weak, felt every heartbeat of proximity.
I lifted my gaze from the untouched lobster, desperate to stay anchored to something that was not him.
My mother sat directly across from me, laughing softly at something Marcus whispered into her ear.
Her laugh was a sound I had forgotten. Light.
Clean. Unburdened. It fluttered across the table like a small, brilliant bird freed from a cage.
Her face glowed under the string lights, no longer carved with lines of exhaustion.
Her smile was gentle and shockingly young.
She leaned into Marcus as if her body trusted his without question, and he mirrored her instinct with quiet devotion.
One hand rested on the back of her chair, thumb stroking once, tender, certain.
He makes her happy. The thought pierced me, sharp as torn metal. He makes her so impossibly happy. I could never be the reason that ends.
My chest tightened with a fierce, protective ache.
Riley wanted to destroy this. All of it. My mother’s peace. Her second chance. Her softness. The fragile, luminous world she had built from the ruins of a decade spent alone.
And I would not let him.
Even if he followed through on every threat whispered against my skin. Even if he dragged me into a private hell crafted from my fears, my weaknesses, my terrible attraction to him. Even if he carved my sanity into thin, trembling ribbons.
I would stand in front of him as a silent wall he could break his fists against.
The thought strengthened me, a single iron bar inside a collapsing structure. I inhaled slowly, drawing in the perfume of warm sea air. My lungs stretched, painful but freeing, as if taking in my first breath in hours.
But Riley sensed peace like a predator sensed prey.
He shifted his weight, not overtly, just enough for his knee to grind into mine in a lazy, rhythmic pressure that felt like a private exchange no one could witness. A reminder. A claim. A warning.
I stiffened, breath catching.
“Enjoying the view?” he murmured, leaning close enough that his breath stirred the tendrils of hair at my temple. “You look dreamy, princess. Is it admiration… or strategy? Planning your escape route? Or perhaps planning theirs?”
His tone was a blade wrapped in velvet, slicing through my fragile calm.
“They look content,” I said, my voice deliberately flat. I aimed for numbness. Neutrality. Anything that did not reveal the way my pulse raced.
“Contentment is simply the quiet before something breaks,” he replied, flicking his gaze to my lips, then back to my eyes. The lights caught in his irises, two molten embers gleaming with cruel humor. “But I suppose some people like pretending stillness is safety.”
Before I could respond, he reached across the small space between our chairs and plucked the glossy cherry from my dessert plate.
He held it between his fingers, studying it for a moment with lazy interest, then brought it to his mouth.
His teeth sank into the fruit with slow, deliberate sensuality, a flash of white against red.
He never looked away from me.
“Share the sweetness, sister,” he said softly, as if confiding something intimate rather than taunting me. “You seem too tense to enjoy it.”
The word sister was an arrow dipped in poisoned honey. I heard the adults laugh at some joke Marcus made. I felt the string lights warming the air, the softness of the music. And none of it mattered. Riley’s voice drowned it all.
His taunting was relentless, a drip of molten wax across the skin of my composure. Each comment. Each lean of his body. Each slight brush of heat. He dismantled me with an expert’s touch, sculpting my unraveling with a cruelty almost artistic in its precision.
The band shifted key. The final chords of the jazz number swelled through the humid air. The lights dimmed, soft and romantic, casting the reception in a wash of amber.
Marcus rose and extended his hand to my mother. She took it without hesitation, and together they walked to the center of the dance floor for the first dance.
I watched them through the blur of candlelight and guests, surrounded by movement yet strangely alone. The space they left behind at the table felt colder, emptier, a hollow in the evening that seemed to echo inside me.
My mother’s white silk dress shimmered as she stepped into Marcus’s arms.
And Riley stood.
He rose with languid confidence, stretching his arms above his head, muscles shifting beneath his tailored jacket in a way that drew eyes without him ever intending it. Or perhaps he always intended it. His kind never moved without purpose.
He looked down at me, a shadowed grin forming on his lips.
“Showtime for them,” he said, pushing his chair back. The scrape against the patio stones sounded indecently loud. “And time for me to check the terrain. While I am gone, do your best to look bored instead of terrified.”
He did not wait for my reaction. He simply turned and walked away, melting into the wedding crowd, his dark head angling toward the bar.
The relief was instant.
The heat vanished. The crushing pressure along my thigh dissipated. His presence unfurled from around my spine like a constricting vine losing hold.
I did not move for almost a full minute.
I sat in silence, letting my body adjust to the sudden absence of danger, letting my pulse find a new rhythm that was mine alone. When I finally lifted my glass of water, my hand was steady. The water was cold, pure, and startlingly refreshing.
Freedom.
It tasted like ice melt running down a mountain, crisp and wild. It washed through me, clearing out the fog he had wrapped around my senses.
The moment lasted only a breath.
Because as I lowered the glass, I caught sight of him at the edge of the crowd, tall, still, dangerous in that quiet way predators are before they strike. And his eyes pinned me, as if he’d hooked something invisible between us and was slowly, deliberately reeling me in.
My pulse stuttered.
No, not stuttered, tripped over itself.
I told myself to look away. I didn’t.
His stare slid over me like a slow caress and a warning all in one, and my skin prickled in rebellion. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t need to. His silence was its own kind of threat, heavier than anything he could have whispered in my ear.
Then a familiar voice, bright, buoyant, impossible to ignore, cut through the chatter.
“Luna, darling!” My mother’s joy had a texture, soft and shimmering, like morning dew rippling in sunlight.
I turned anyway from Riley’s stare, and there she was, dancing toward me in Marcus’ arms, her happiness spilling out of every step.
She glowed in her gown, the faint flush in her cheeks proof of champagne and the heady intoxication of being in love.
“You and Riley have to join us on the dancefloor,” she gushed, the words tumbling out like a wish she’d been aching to make. “This is going to be our first dance as a family.”
My stomach dropped so fast it felt like I’d stepped off a cliff.
“Mum, I don’t think—“
”—you don’t think what, sister? That I’d like to dance with you? I’d love to, actually.”
And there he was.
One heartbeat ago, he’d been standing on the edge of the crowd, watching me like I was some delicate animal he was deciding whether to cage or kill.
Now, he moved. Not quickly. Not lazily. Just…
with the kind of calculated ease that comes from knowing every room bends for you.
His suit shifted with each step, all black lines and tailored arrogance.
He didn’t look at me. Not at first. His eyes flicked to his father, his expression softening into perfection. The charming son. The dutiful stepsibling. The mask.
And then his gaze found mine.
Not like the others in this room who saw me as the bride’s daughter.
No, his eyes stripped me bare, reminding me in one slow, deliberate sweep of everything that had happened since we met.
The veiled threats laced into meaningless flirtation.
The brush of his knee beneath the tablecloth, electric and wrong.
The certainty that he’d done it not in spite of my discomfort, but because of it.
He stepped closer, extending his hand.
To anyone watching, it was polite. A chivalrous gesture.
To me, it was a chain.
My spine locked, breath catching. Every instinct screamed to refuse. To walk away. To break whatever this was before it grew teeth. But then my mother’s eyes, hopeful, unguarded, found mine.
And that was my undoing.
She’d never looked happier. Never looked younger. I couldn’t be the shadow across that light.
So I swallowed my pride, swallowed my fear, and placed my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, gentle for the audience, iron beneath.
The moment my hand slipped into his, the room changed.
It was subtle, like a shift in weather you feel in your skin before you see the clouds, but it was there.
The chatter faded, the music dimmed, the fairy lights seemed to blur at the edges.
My awareness tunneled until there was nothing but the heat of his palm and the inexorable lock of his fingers around mine.