CHAPTER ELEVEN
LUNA
I didn’t move from the floor for a long time.
The door stayed pressed against my spine, as if I needed its solid weight to keep me from coming apart completely.
My breath slowly evened out, the tremors in my arms fading into something dull and exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t still.
Thoughts flashed and spiraled and collided until they blurred into a frantic, looping storm.
Riley.
The water.
His chest against mine.
His fingers around the knot of my bikini.
The slow, devastating slide of fabric giving way.
His voice in my ear.
The look he wore when I pushed him back.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I didn’t want to remember.
But my body remembered anyway.
The cold air on my bare skin.
The heat of his hand on my hip.
The moment I realized he wasn’t teasing anymore.
He was taking.
Not in the violent way he had earlier.
No.
This was worse.
He had taken with a smile.
With patience.
With the confidence of someone who knew I would come to him to get it back.
A quiet, humiliated sound slipped from my throat.
I pushed myself off the floor and stumbled toward the bathroom. The vanity light was too bright when I flicked it on, cutting the room into sharp, unforgiving edges. My reflection stared back at me, damp hair tangled, eyes wide and shining in a way I hated.
I looked like someone who had been touched.
Someone who had been shaken open and didn’t know how to close again.
I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles whitened.
This is nothing.
He is nothing.
You’re fine.
You’re fine.
You’re fine.
But the trembling in my legs said otherwise.
I wiped my face, brushed my teeth mechanically, avoiding my own reflection as much as I could. Every movement felt disconnected, like my body wasn’t entirely mine anymore, like I was watching someone else move through the motions.
Back in the bedroom, I pulled off the wet bikini bottoms and put on a loose sleep shirt, the soft cotton sliding over my skin in a way that felt too gentle. Too kind. It made my throat tighten.
I crawled into bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin, cocooning myself in layers of fabric that still smelled faintly of sunscreen and fresh laundry. The scent should have comforted me.
Instead, it made me feel like a child pretending she wasn’t drowning.
The room was dim, the only light coming from the sliver of moon pressing through the curtains. I turned onto my side and curled my knees up, hugging a soft pillow to my chest.
But no matter how tightly I held it, I still felt the ghost of Riley’s chest pressed against me.
The heat of him.
The quiet command threading through his touch.
I hated him for that.
I hated myself more.
Because beneath the humiliation, beneath the fear and the fury and the hollow ache left behind… something deeper twisted inside me.
Not desire.
Not wanting.
Just… confusion.
A dangerous, spiraling confusion that made every breath feel too shallow.
I tried to pull my thoughts somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
The new school.
The new home.
The flight tomorrow.
Nothing held.
Every path led back to the pool.
Back to him.
Back to the moment I realized I had been na?ve to think the worst part was already over.
My eyelids grew heavy, the exhaustion finally catching up with me. The storm in my head didn’t stop, but it slowed, the edges softening, blurring, drifting.
My last coherent thought before sleep dragged me under was the one I wanted least.
He still had my bikini top.
And I had no idea what price he’d decide I would pay for it tomorrow.
I did not know how long I slept.
It felt shallow, broken, more like falling into a fever-dream than true rest. My body drifted somewhere between waking and unconsciousness, tangled in images of dark water and Riley’s hands and the soft snap of a knot coming undone.
At some point the dreams shifted.
Something cold dragged across the back of my mind.
A prickle.
A warning.
Then a sound.
Soft.
Too soft.
My eyes snapped open.
For a disoriented second, the room was only shadows layered on shadows, the kind that made everything look unfamiliar. The curtains breathed with the ocean breeze. The clock on the wall glowed faintly.
But something was wrong.
I felt it before I saw it.
A tension in the air, a subtle displacement, like the room had inhaled and held its breath.
My heart began to pound.
I pushed up onto my elbows, blinking rapidly, my gaze sweeping the darkness. The bathroom door was closed. The closet was still ajar, just as I had left it. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.
And yet every instinct screamed that I wasn’t alone.
I sat fully upright, pulse quickening, breath caught high in my throat. The sheets whispered as I shifted, the noise far too loud in the suffocating quiet.
Then a shape separated from the shadows.
Just a fraction.
A darker dark in the corner near the balcony doors.
I froze.
The air thickened, the silence pulling tight around my chest. The shape didn’t move for several seconds. It just existed, patient and unhurried, watching me with the stillness of a predator waiting for prey to realize it has already been caught.
My breath hitched.
Then he stepped forward.
Riley.
The moonlight slid across his face, outlining the sharp cut of his jaw and the careless fall of hair that made him look both wild and beautifully untamed. His expression was unreadable, but the energy rolling off him was unmistakable.
A quiet, controlled danger.
He leaned one shoulder against the balcony frame, arms loosely crossed, as if he had been there for hours. As if breaking into my room in the middle of the night was nothing more than slipping into a conversation we had paused earlier.
My stomach dropped.
My skin prickled.
Every part of me jolted awake.
“Riley…” My voice cracked around his name, thin and whisper-soft. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes traveled slowly over me, lingering in a way that made heat crawl over my neck. I clutched the blankets tighter, lifting them to shield the bare skin of my thighs, suddenly unbearably aware of the oversized sleep shirt riding up and me wearing nothing underneath.
He took in the small movement.
His lips curved, not into a smile, but into something quieter.
Something that made my pulse stutter.
“How did you get in here?” My voice cracked, hoarse from too little sleep and too much silence. It was barely more than a whisper, and I hated how small it sounded.
I remembered I closed the door. I remembered the final click of metal sliding into place, that fragile illusion of safety.
He didn’t answer at once. Didn’t move. He simply tilted his head, that slow, predatory gesture that made the space between us shrink even though neither of us had shifted.
Then he smiled, the same smile that had gutted me at the pool.
It wasn’t warmth. It wasn’t charm. It was knowledge. The knowing of power.
“Oh, princess,” he said softly, and the sound of that word coming from his mouth made my stomach tighten. “Did you really think a latch could stop me?”
He rose slightly in the chair, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The sunlight caught his profile, outlining the sharp edge of his jaw.
“After last night, did you honestly believe I’d wait politely for you to wake up?” he continued, his tone light, conversational, as though this were breakfast talk between friends. “We’re family now, remember? The receptionist was more than happy to give Mr. Maddox a key to his dear sister’s room.”
He said sister like a curse.
My blood ran cold.
The room felt smaller.
The bed felt smaller.
My own breath felt too loud.
He moved closer, not enough to touch, but enough to make the sheets between my fingers tremble. His gaze flicked to the dresser. Something rested there. Something I hadn’t noticed in the inky dark.
My bikini top.
Folded.
Perfectly.
Mockingly.
He must have placed it there deliberately, like a calling card or a challenge.
My pulse thundered.
Riley’s eyes returned to mine, gleaming with that dangerous, toying edge that both terrified and infuriated me.
“I thought you might want that back,” he murmured.
He was close enough now that I could feel the heat from his body, a whisper away from my knees beneath the blanket. The scent of him clung to the air, clean clothes and warm skin and something darker I couldn’t name.
I struggled for breath, my voice shaking. “You can’t just come in here.”
“Seems I already did.”
My heart tripped violently.
“Get out,” I whispered. “Please.”
He tilted his head, considering the word please like it was a gift he had not expected to receive.
Then he stepped closer.
The mattress dipped under his knee. One moment he was a silhouette in the moonlight, the next he was inches from me, invading my space with quiet, devastating certainty.
“What if I’m not finished with you yet?” he murmured.
And every part of me broke into terrified sparks.
I shrank back instinctively, but the headboard stopped me. Riley’s shadow swallowed the space between us, his knee sinking deeper into the mattress. The faint creak of springs felt deafening.
“Finished with me?” I echoed, hating the tremble in my voice. “You don’t even get to start.”
His smile wasn’t really a smile. Just a slow curl at one corner of his mouth, like he’d heard a joke meant only for him. “You keep saying things like that,” he said softly, “and yet…”
His fingers reached out, not for me, but for the blanket bunched in my fists. He didn’t tug. He didn’t need to. Just the sight of his hand near mine sent electricity skittering across my skin.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured. “Are you afraid I’m gonna take something else? Besides your bikini top?”
I clenched my jaw. “You think this is funny?”
“No,” he said, gaze darkening. “I think it’s interesting.”
The air between us tightened. My heartbeat roared in my ears. If he leaned forward even an inch, he’d be close enough for his breath to brush my cheek.