Chapter 7-Sten
Eight days.
Eight gods be damned days of sheer, relentless torture.
Not because Amrin was difficult.
Not because she was unintelligent.
Quite the opposite.
The torment was entirely mine.
Every evening she arrived at my quarters carrying notebooks against her chest and looking faintly nervous, like she still expected me to change my mind and throw her out.
Every evening, I told myself I would keep things professional.
And every evening, I failed a little more.
Because the curvy little Witch was slowly unraveling me.
Her scent alone should have been classified as a weapon.
Warm vanilla.
Jasmine.
Rain.
Something soft and feminine beneath it all that lingered in my rooms long after she left, clinging to the furniture and blankets and my fucking sanity.
And the more comfortable she became around me, the worse it got.
At first, she’d sat rigidly beside me at my desk, shoulders tight, trying not to take up space.
Now?
Now she tucked one leg beneath herself in the chair.
Now she sprawled across my couch while studying, mumbling insults at celestial equations under her breath.
Now she absentmindedly stole my hoodies when cold and walked around my quarters smelling like me while simultaneously making the place smell like her.
It was driving me insane.
Because every tiny thing she did felt intimate.
Domestic.
Dangerously easy to grow attached to.
And I already was.
Far more than I should have been.
The worst part?
Watching her learn.
Gods.
Watching Amrin understand something for the first time was nearly enough to bring a male to his knees.
Her moonbeam-colored eyes would light up, brightening with genuine excitement whenever she successfully mapped a constellation or solved one of Franco’s impossible realm calculations.
And every single time, she looked at me first.
Like she wanted me to see it.
Like my approval mattered.
That alone nearly fucking destroyed me.
Then there were the thoughts.
Violent.
Explicit.
Constant.
Because sitting beside her night after night had become its own form of ritualistic suffering.
She was always so close.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough to smell.
Close enough that I could imagine exactly how those soft curves would feel beneath my hands.
Against my body.
Under me.
Fuck.
I shifted slightly in my chair, adjusting my sweats before she noticed the increasingly familiar problem between my legs.
Again.
Another hard-on.
At this rate, I was going to spend the rest of the semester perpetually erect and one minor inconvenience away from losing my mind completely.
And ever since she’d tried to touch me the other night?
Well, my desire for her had gotten so much worse.
Maybe I should have allowed it because right now I was this close to begging for it.
Fuck.
I should have asked for something better in return for helping her with the assignment.
Not cleaning.
Not laundry.
Not helping organize my quarters like some celestial idiot desperate for domestic companionship.
No.
I should have demanded something impossible.
Something reckless.
Like a blowjob.
The thought hit hard and immediate.
Fuck.
I could practically see it.
Those plush pink lips wrapped around my cock while those huge pale eyes looked up at me—I shut my eyes immediately.
Absolutely not.
I was not getting hard over imaginary blowjobs while she folded my clothes ten feet away.
That was a new low.
Besides, I never could have actually asked her for something like that.
Not really.
It would have frightened her.
Or worse—made her think I was like every other male who saw a soft-bodied Witch and assumed that made her easy.
Amrin wasn’t easy.
She was careful.
Tender in strange ways.
Like she expected the world to disappoint her and had learned to soften the blow before it could.
And gods help me, I hated that.
Hated imagining all the people who had looked at her and failed to see what I saw immediately.
Because she was stunning.
Not despite her softness.
Because of it.
Her body was lush in all the ways that mattered. Plush thighs. Full breasts. Rounded hips that looked like they were designed specifically to fit beneath my hands.
And me?
I had thought I was above this.
Above the desperate, mate-hungry males prowling Runevald’s halls every semester.
I’d watched them lose themselves for females before.
Watched powerful Monsters become pathetic wrecks over women who barely glanced their way.
I had pitied them.
Mocked them.
And now?
After a little over a week of conversation and stolen glances and silently following behind her cloaked in moon-shadow whenever she walked back to the graduate dormitories—I was more than ready to do what I really wanted.
I was ready to bend my sweet Luna over the couch and take her hard and fast until I felt her pussy flutter around my cock while she screamed my name.
“Fuck,” I muttered aloud.
My cock thumped inside my pants harder than stone and leaking precum like some prepubescent punk.
Fucking unbelievable.
Across the room, Amrin glanced over her shoulder while sorting through the disaster zone I called a wardrobe.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Definitely not imagining you naked on every available surface in my quarters.
Gods.
The whole clean my room and I’ll tutor you arrangement had started as a joke. A stupid, impulsive attempt to keep her around longer.
And now?
Now she moved through my space like she belonged there.
“You don’t have to do that,” I mumbled as she continued to fold.
“That wouldn’t be fair, Sten,” she called from beside the laundry basket. “We made a deal, and you’ve been keeping up your end.”
Yeah.
I’d been keeping up my end, all right.
Teaching her astronomy.
Showing her how to use the celestial mapping system I’d designed.
Helping her chart ley lines and stellar movement across realms.
All of that was part of the deal.
The part where I followed her invisibly through the forests surrounding Runevald on nights when I had no classes without her knowing just to make sure she reached her dorm safely?
Those were not part of the deal.
That was just me being a completely unhinged stalker.
I closed my eyes and counted slowly to ten, trying desperately to ignore the growing warmth of her scent filling the room.
Vanilla.
Jasmine.
Amrin.
The more she moved around my quarters, the stronger it became.
And I already knew what would happen after she left.
Everything she touched would smell like her.
My blankets.
My couch.
My clothes.
The black t-shirt she’d borrowed the first rainy night she’d come here.
Gods.
I still hadn’t washed it.
Couldn’t.
Sometimes I picked it up and inhaled her scent like some lovesick beast.
Because it smelled like both of us now.
Moon-shadow and jasmine.
Darkness and warmth.
Mine and hers tangled together.
Luna.
My sweet Luna.
The possessiveness of the thought startled me every single time.
Lost in the increasingly dangerous spiral of my own thoughts, I nearly jumped out of my skin when her sharp little yelp cut through the room.
“What is it?” I demanded instantly, already moving.
I crossed the room in seconds.
Fast enough that she startled when I appeared beside her.
“Is that a m-moth?” she whispered.
I blinked.
Then looked where she pointed.
The crystal lunar moth.
Relief hit me immediately.
Gods.
The way she’d reacted, I’d half expected something dangerous had gotten inside my quarters.
Instead, Amrin stood there pale as moonlight, clutching one of my hoodies in her hands while staring in horror at the palm-sized model resting on the shelf.
“It’s not real,” I said gently.
She still looked unconvinced.
Carefully, I picked it up and held it in my palm for her to see.
“It looks real,” she muttered skeptically.
I smiled despite myself.
Fuck.
She was adorable.
“No, really. It’s crystal.” I turned it slowly in the light. “I made it when I was young.”
Her eyes widened.
That expression again.
Wonder.
Pure, open curiosity.
No fear.
No judgment.
Just interest.
I had no idea why that affected me so strongly.
“A model?” she asked cautiously. “So it’s not alive?”
“No.” My voice softened automatically. “Not alive.”
“Oh.” She relaxed slightly. “Okay. That’s, wow, that’s actually kind of beautiful.”
Something in my chest tightened painfully.
I wanted to hear her say that about me.
The realization hit hard enough to make my stomach twist.
Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
“Lys,” I murmured softly, letting lunar magic thread through the crystal.
The moth immediately began glowing silver-blue in my palm, delicate wings sparkling like trapped starlight.
Amrin gasped softly.
And gods—that smile.
Bright.
Warm.
Unfiltered.
Something inside me clicked painfully into place.
I wanted that smile.
Always.
I wanted to be the reason for it.
“Lunar moths are considered harbingers of good luck in my realm,” I explained quietly.
She stepped slightly closer this time, curiosity overcoming fear.
“It’s silly,” she admitted softly, “but I’ve been terrified of moths since I was little.”
Immediately, my focus sharpened.
Why?
Who frightened you?
Who made you afraid?
The protectiveness hit hard and immediate, ugly in its intensity.
I did not like imagining her scared.
At all.
“No,” I said quietly. “That’s not silly.”
Her eyes flicked to mine in surprise.
“Did something happen?”
She hesitated.
And suddenly I wanted more than surface-level things.
Not just the way she twisted her hair while concentrating.
Not just the fact she ate gummy bears while studying and despised peanut butter with irrational passion.
I wanted something real.
Something deeper.
I wanted her trust.
The realization stunned me.
Because trust implied permanence.
Implied closeness.
Implied that somewhere inside me, I had already started imagining a future that included her.
“It’s nothing,” she said softly.
I narrowed my eyes immediately.
“Luna.”
“It’s Amrin,” she corrected automatically.
Maybe for everyone else.
But not for me.
Never for me.
For me, she was Luna.
My Luna.
I knew I was becoming dangerously attached to the idea that she was mine.
And worse?
I was seriously unwilling to let that go.