Chapter 46
Chapter forty-six
Damien
Imake it back to the Range Rover in record time, my strides through the woods clipped and silent in the snow. Winter’s coming assault will soon turn these woods into a white fortress around Luna’s property, making it impassable on foot, and I need to figure out another route before that happens.
The taste of her is still on my lips, the scent of her still clinging to my skin and clothes. I grip the steering wheel as I navigate the short, winding road back home.
The duality of what just happened weighs on me like a physical presence in the car. Less than four hours ago, I was Damien Wolfe, kissing Luna goodbye on her doorstep. Now I’m returning from her bedroom, where I bound her hands and fucked her, reminding her—and myself—exactly who she belongs to.
My body still hums with desire for her. Taking her only once is not enough, but I had to get out of there because I was on the verge of blowing it all up and revealing myself to her.
I enter my house, pour three fingers of whiskey, and stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office, staring into the darkness. My heart pounds so hard it feels like it’s battering my ribs from the inside, trying to break free. The realization washes over me again and drowns me.
I’m in love with Luna.
This goes beyond want, beyond desire, and beyond the craving that’s consumed me for months. I’m in love with her—a new and overwhelming emotion that shatters everything I thought I knew about myself.
It’s been creeping up on me for weeks, but tonight, her expression when she looked at me as Damien, not with desire or submission, but with genuine warmth and affection, hit with the force of a wrecking ball.
The way she returned my kiss on her doorstep, surrendering to Damien in a way she’s never surrendered to me.
When this started, it was supposed to be simple.
Take her. Claim her. Make her mine in the most fundamental way possible.
Use her for both our pleasure until I ruined her for any other men, so she would be irrevocably mine.
It was meant to be about control. About possession.
About satisfying an obsession that had been beyond my ability to manage the second I laid eyes on her.
I didn’t plan for her to affect me like this, didn’t anticipate her burrowing so deep inside my heart that I feel like it will stop beating if I lose her.
Luna isn’t like the other women I’ve known, the socialites and business associates who see only what I allow them to see.
Or even the other women I’ve fucked over the years, who were simply a hot, wet body to satisfy my needs.
She’s genuine in a way that’s both refreshing and terrifying.
When she looks at me, I feel exposed, like she can see through every part of me.
And tonight, when I kissed her…
Fuck!
I run a hand through my hair, pacing in front of the window. That kiss as Damien had been everything the countless hours with her masked watcher hadn’t been. Tender. Emotional. Real in a way that went beyond carnal want.
Tonight, her passionate and tender response to Damien’s kiss ripped something open inside me, leaving me bleeding and exposed. I wanted to punish her for it. Wanted to brand into her body that she’s mine, not some billionaire’s she met a handful of times.
The irony would be comical if it weren’t so fucked up.
I finish my whiskey and pour another, my mind replaying every moment of tonight. The way her eyes widened when I told her I knew she kissed him. Her confession that she’d wanted his kiss. Enjoyed it. The guilt and defiance warring in her expression as I bound her hands and claimed her body.
She came apart for me like she always does. Beautiful and desperate and completely mine.
For now.
The thought sends a chill through me because Luna is smart. And she’s starting to notice things. I knew she would eventually.
How long before she puts the pieces together? How long before she realizes that her billionaire suitor and her masked lover share the same build, the same hands, and the same scent beneath the deliberate deception of different soaps and colognes?
Part of me wants her to figure it out. Wants to stop living this double life. The compartmentalization that once came so easily is fracturing under the weight of my feelings for her.
Another part of me, the part that’s spent years learning that love is a weakness, is terrified of what will happen when she learns the truth.
Luna accepts me, her masked lover, for what I am.
She knows I’m dangerous, who I kill and why, yet she still spreads her legs for me every night.
She understands my darkness because she’s seen firsthand the evil I eliminate from this world.
Even as she struggles with it, in her mind, I’m almost a dark guardian angel.
Brutal but righteous.
But Damien Wolfe? He’s supposed to be civilized.
Refined. A billionaire philanthropist who donates security systems and charms her over dinner.
When she realizes that the man who made her laugh over lasagna and wine tonight is the same one who binds her hands and fucks her into oblivion, will she see it as a betrayal?
Will she feel manipulated? Used? Or will she understand that both sides of me are real, that I need her to see all of me?
I set down my glass and move to my desk, where multiple monitors display feeds from Luna’s sanctuary.
The screens show her property from every angle, even her bedroom and bathroom.
She knows her wolf watches her, but she has no idea how much or that I have cameras in her most private areas. She’d gouge my eyes out if she did.
I pull up the recording from earlier, turn up the volume, and watch from the beginning. From the time she returned to her room after Damien left, stripped and showered, and then brought herself to orgasm, with Damien on her mind, I’m sure.
Then, I watch as I come to her, furious and accusing, which I had no right to be. But she still surrenders and gives me everything. Every part of her. She holds nothing back. And all she wants is for me to do the same.
Despite how furious and hurt I was tonight, she doesn’t deserve my anger because my deception isn’t her fault.
Now, after taking her lips for the first time, I won’t be able to live without them again. But I can’t kiss her as the wolf. Not until she knows the truth.
So what the fuck am I supposed to do?
I have to pursue her as Damien. And I can’t punish her if she accepts his attentions. That’s not fair to her.
But when was life fucking fair?
Somewhere along the way, claiming, owning, and possessing Luna stopped being about obsession and started being about keeping the woman I’ve fallen in love with. The woman I may be in real danger of losing to… myself.
How did I fuck this up so badly?
On top of everything else. I have Caleb Hunter to deal with.
Her piece-of-shit ex, who threatened her tonight, who dared to lay hands on her.
He’ll die because of what he did. But I have to be more careful this time.
Luna can never know what happened to him.
Can never connect his disappearance to me.
The kill will be easy. It’s the lying that will be impossible.
First, I need to decide what to do about the fact that I’m living a lie that’s becoming impossible to maintain. That I’m in love with a woman who doesn’t even know that the two men in her life are the same person.
I close my eyes and lean back in my chair, remembering the taste of her lips as Damien, and the taste of her surrender as her wolf. Both encounters were real. Both versions of me want every part of her.
But which one does she want? The civilized man or the savage?
This can’t continue. Soon, I’ll have to make a choice. Reveal myself and risk losing her, or disappear from her life entirely.
Neither option is acceptable.
Maybe there’s a third way. Maybe I can guide her to the truth, help her see the connections without shocking her with the full revelation. If I’m careful, if I’m clever about it, I can make her understand that both versions of me are real, that they’re both hers.
That all of me is hers.
Or maybe I’m just a fucking selfish bastard who wants everything his way.
But the real question is… Will she still want to belong to me when the truth comes out?
And will I be brave enough to give her the choice?