CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LUNA
Riley’s fingers slid across my phone screen with unhurried confidence, each tap loud in the steaming quiet. He didn’t bother hiding what he typed. He wanted me to watch. Needed me to see.
I pushed up higher in the water, bubbles slipping down my chest, but I couldn’t make myself move closer. Couldn’t make myself stop him.
He angled the screen just enough for me to catch the words forming beneath his thumb.
Girls… you can relax.
Yes, Luna and I have already hooked up.
Actually, she kind of begged.
My heart detonated.
Heat, boiling, furious, mortified, lit under my skin.
“Riley—”
His name scraped out of me.
He ignored it.
The next line appeared slowly, each letter a deliberate cruelty.
She’s obsessed. I can barely take a bath without her staring.
A shocked breath punched out of me, water rippling around my ribs.
“I never—Riley, delete that. Now.”
He didn’t.
He kept typing.
And no, I don’t have a girlfriend. Luna wouldn’t be able to handle the competition.
My face burned so hot I thought the steam might sizzle against my cheeks.
“Stop,” I whispered, the word breaking open. “Please.”
That made him pause.
Not out of mercy.
Out of interest.
He lifted his gaze to me, slow, patient, and devastatingly entertained. Like he was savoring every second of unraveling me.
His finger hovered over the send button.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “That’s the first time you’ve said ‘please.’”
My lungs strangled around air.
“If you send that,” I breathed, “I swear—”
“You’ll what?” His voice dipped to something dangerous and soft, the kind of tone that could make a threat sound like a promise. “You gave me permission, princess.”
I shook my head, a tiny, helpless movement.
He smiled.
A quiet, lethal curve of lips.
“Relax,” he said, voice low and wicked. “I haven’t sent it.”
His thumb tapped the screen again, highlighting the unsent message.
“But knowing I could…” He let the unspoken power coil between us. “…is much more fun.”
The phone remained in his hand.
The message remained unsent.
But the damage?
He already knew he had me cornered.
He stepped closer to the tub, the steam wrapping around him like it wanted to claim him too. Droplets clung to his skin, sliding down the hard lines of his chest, tracing the cut of his abs, disappearing into the waistband of the only thing he was wearing.
My breath trembled.
I hated that he noticed.
His eyes dragged over me, slow, deliberate, possessive, before returning to the glowing screen in his hand.
“That look on your face,” he murmured. “The one you’re trying so hard to hide right now?”
He tilted his head, studying me like a puzzle he already knew he could solve.
“It’s almost making me want to send it.”
I swallowed, pulse ricocheting beneath my skin. “You wouldn’t.”
He crouched beside the tub in a smooth, predatory motion, bringing his face level with mine. The heat of him rolled over my wet skin, turning the water hotter, my breath tighter.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” he whispered, the words caressing me like a touch.
My fingers curled under the surface of the water, nails digging into my palms. “Because it’s not true.”
His lips curved. He was close enough that I could feel his smile against my cheek.
“Really?” His voice dropped to a velvet murmur. “You’re telling me you’re not thinking about all the things those messages imply?”
“Riley.”
He hummed, the sound low, amused, sinful.
“You’re blushing everywhere,” he said softly. “Even under the bubbles.”
I hated my body for reacting.
I hated the way heat pooled low inside me, the way my skin felt too aware of him, the way my breath betrayed me with every unsteady inhale.
He noticed all of it.
Of course he did.
Riley lifted my phone between two fingers like an offering, or a weapon, and let his gaze sink into mine.
“You don’t want me to send this,” he said, voice a dark caress. “But you’re not telling me to get out.”
His eyes flicked down my bath foam covered body, then back to my face.
“You’re not even covering yourself.”
Humiliation and something far more dangerous twisted inside me.
“Why would I?” I forced out, even though my voice was barely steady. “You’re the one invading my bath.”
His grin was slow, wicked.
“Trust me, Luna.” His thumb hovered over the send button again. “If I were invading your bath…”
His gaze traced the line of my throat, the rise of my shoulders, the way the water clung to me.
“…you’d know.”
My heart tripped, stumbling into something breathless.
Riley leaned in just a fraction more, close enough that the steam between us felt electric, and murmured, “Now… do you want me to erase this message?”
A pause.
“Or do you want to keep pretending you don’t like the way I make you feel?”
Riley’s thumb hovered over the send button.
Not touching it.
Just close enough to make my stomach drop.
“Delete it,” I said quietly.
He smiled like I’d just offered him something sweet he planned to ruin.
“I could,” he murmured, voice slipping low. “But then I’d miss out on something I want more.”
My breath caught. “What do you want?”
His gaze lowered, moving over the curve of my neck, the slope of my shoulder, the bubbles sliding down my skin. He dragged his eyes back to mine, nothing playful in him anymore.
“Stand up.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. “No.”
His smile deepened. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
He lifted the phone. “Which is why I didn’t ask.”
I swallowed hard. “Riley.”
“I’ll delete the message,” he said, his voice a slow, dangerous promise. “But you’re going to stand up in that tub, Luna. Right now. And you’re going to look me in the eyes while you do it.”
Heat flooded my face, my chest, my entire body.
“No,” I whispered again, weaker this time.
“Not to show me anything,” he continued, leaning in just enough that I felt the warmth of him through the steam. “Not for me to touch you.”
His eyes locked on mine with devastating intensity.
“But because you know exactly how wrong it is to let me see you like that. And you’re still thinking about it.”
My pulse tripped hard.
He tilted the phone, thumb poised. “Do it, and the message disappears. Don’t…”
A slow, merciless shrug.
“…and your friends get a very interesting update.”
The room felt hotter. Or I did.
His next words were a whisper meant to break me.
“Stand up, Luna.”
My body reacted before my mind could catch up, heat curling low, breath shaking, a pull so forbidden it terrified me.
And his eyes devoured every flicker of indecision.
He didn’t touch me.
He didn’t come any closer.
But everything in the air between us vibrated with want I wasn’t supposed to feel.
Riley watched me like he was already inside the decision I hadn’t even made.
“Show me you can,” he murmured. “And I’ll erase everything.”
My heart stumbled.
My knees bent.
My hands pressed to the edge of the tub.
The water clung to my skin like it didn’t want to let me go.
And Riley’s gaze never moved.
My fingers slid up the porcelain edge of the tub.
I couldn’t do it.
Every part of me trembled with the instinct to rise, to give him what he asked, to trade humiliation for escape. My muscles tensed, quivered, then locked. My breath stuttered.
I stayed exactly where I was.
Riley’s gaze sharpened the instant the decision settled in my bones.
“You’re not going to,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t mocking.
It wasn’t disappointed.
It was something worse.
It was knowing.
“No,” I whispered, the single word scraped out of a throat gone raw.
He nodded once, slow and almost thoughtful, as if cataloging the shape of my refusal, the exact second my courage snapped.
Then he lifted my phone.
“Alright.”
“Riley,” I choked out, lurching half forward in the water, sending ripples slapping against the tub.
He didn’t look away from me as his thumb moved.
Not with triumph.
Not with pity.
Just calm certainty.
The certainty of someone who understood exactly how to break me.
Click.
He hit send.
The sound might as well have been a detonator.
My stomach plunged. My breath collapsed. Heat flooded my face in a brutal wave of humiliation.
“No,” I whispered again, too late, too soft, too everything.
The message, his message, was gone.
Out there.
In their hands.
In their chat.
I didn’t need to see it to feel the blow land.
Riley held the phone loosely between his fingers, his expression unreadable except for that small curl at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Something quieter. Darker. Almost contemplative.
“You had your chance,” he murmured. “You don’t get to be shy now.”
A tremor rolled through me, unstoppable.
“How could you?” My voice cracked, small and furious and helpless.
“Very easily,” he said, tone soft as a blade’s edge. “But you knew that.”
Steam drifted between us, ghosting around his shoulders, turning his bare skin into molten shadow and light. I hated that he looked like temptation carved into a boy. I hated the pull I felt even now, even after he’d humiliated me.
He lowered the phone, tapped the screen once more, then set it down on the floor beside the tub with a deliberate click.
My heart hammered against my ribs, wild and confused.
His gaze swept over me. My wet hair, my flushed chest barely hidden by bubbles, my shaking hands gripping the edge of the tub… and the heat of it crawled under my skin like a brand.
“And now,” he finished softly, “you get to wonder what comes next.”
He stood, not leaving, just shifting, watching me absorb the wreckage.
Steam curled around us.
Silence rang.
My shame tasted like hunger. My anger tasted like want.
And Riley, standing half dressed and wholly dangerous, looked like the beginning of something I had no idea how to survive.
He looked at me.
Really looked.
Predatory calm.
Unhurried arrogance.
Someone who knew he had already won something.
“Get ready,” he said, voice low, steady, impossible to read.
My lips parted. “For… what?”