Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
BASTION
Lunch in the dining hall was louder than usual.
Our cousins were in a great mood. Probably because the breakfast platters were back—baskets of croissants, mini quiches, sweet buns glazed with vanilla, those weird little fruit tarts that Rome inhaled like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
Apparently, Emilia was ordering them again.
No one said her name. No one had to. Every Crow in the house knew who to thank when the sugar hit the table.
And I hated how that made me feel.
I took a slow drink of water, trying to drown the annoyance rising in my throat—not at her.
At myself .
Because I’d pulled the string.
I was the reason she was back in the house.
The reason the curfew app clocked her location every night under our roof.
I told myself it was strategy. Control. Making sure she didn’t spiral so far out we couldn’t fix it.
But it was more than that.
I’d missed her .
I missed the smell of that damn perfume in the hallway. I missed the sight of her tea mugs lined up like little declarations of her moods. I missed her noise—her humming, her pacing, the sound of her soft voice when she thought no one was listening.
So yeah, I got her locked back in.
And then I made sure she’d stay.
I took her shirts.
The oversized ones. The ones she used to sleep in.
Soft cotton. Stretched at the collar.
And two of them—two—were clearly men’s shirts. Big, boxy, loose in the way women liked when it came from someone else’s wardrobe.
Her ex, probably.
The thought of her crawling into bed wearing something another man gave her?
No. Fucking. Way.
So I took them.
Luca knew. He didn’t say a word. Just raised an eyebrow when I folded them into my gym bag like they were mine.
He’d probably done the same with something else.
We never talked about those kinds of habits.
They were just… understood.
And now?
Now she was back in satin.
Satin. Silk. That barely-there fabric that caught the light when she walked past us.
I’d seen it—just a glimpse at first, when she walked across the dorm.
Crimson. With black lace trim.
I already had a favorite.
And I hated that I did .
Hated how easily it turned me into someone I didn’t recognize.
Someone watching the clock tick toward bedtime just to catch a second of her walking past.
Someone who sat in the dark and listened for the soft click of the ensuite door.
I had a new favorite.
And it wasn’t silk.
It was a girl trying not to be seen.
Rome reached over and stole another tart off my plate. I didn’t even blink.
Because the only thing I could think about was Emilia… in our room.
And the fact that tonight, she’d probably walk out of the bathroom in something silk.
And I’d be right there. Watching.
Again.
She came out of the ensuite like she didn’t know.
Didn’t know what that color did to me.
Didn’t know I was sitting on the edge of my bed with a glass of top-shelf shit in my hand, pretending to scroll my phone—just so I wouldn’t look like I was waiting .
But I was.
And then she walked out.
Blush fucking pink. Two-piece satin.
Cropped just below her ribs, clinging like it was made for her.
The shorts rode up her ass with every goddamn step she took .
It showed her stomach. Smooth. Bare. The soft dip of her waistline as she adjusted the hem.
That little movement nearly did me in.
She didn’t even notice me.
Didn’t notice how I watched every step she took.
How I loved every second of it.
That scent hit a second later— her . Fucking intoxicating. My throat tightened. My jaw locked. My grip on the glass tensed hard enough to crack it.
She moved past me like it was nothing.
Like I wasn’t losing my mind sitting here.
She didn’t know I’d taken her shirts. That I’d made sure satin was her only option.
That I waited all damn day to see what she’d be forced to put on.
And now that I had?
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
She reached for something near her bed, still oblivious to the fact I hadn’t looked away once.
Luca, on the other side of the room, tracked her just as quietly.
We didn’t need to speak. We never did in moments like this.
We just watched.
Waited.
Burned.
And she had no idea.
She bent over to grab something off the floor.
And I fucking choked.
Not audibly. Not outwardly. But inside?
My lungs seized. My brain stopped. My body went rigid.
The hem of those satin shorts slid higher—barely there to begin with—and now ?
Now I could see the full curve of her ass. The way her thighs met.
The soft skin I’d imagined touching more times than I’d admit even under threat.
She stayed bent like that a second too long.
And all I could see was me behind her.
Grabbing her hips. Pressing my chest to her back.
My hand slipping down the front of those fucking shorts while the other claimed her throat.
Her breath hitching—mine ragged—her skin so goddamn soft under my fingers.
I wanted to ruin her.
To feel her melt beneath me.
To hear her whimper my name like she meant it.
She straightened up, completely unaware of what she’d just done to me.
She sat on the bed, legs tucked up, scrolling her phone like none of this was happening.
Like she hadn’t just walked through the dorm in satin that clung to her like fucking sin .
Every few seconds, she reached up, fingers brushing her neck.
Maybe it itched. Maybe it was just habit.
But each time she did it, the hem of her top lifted.
Higher. And higher.
Until I saw it—the underside of her breast. The softest curve.
Just there. Just barely.
But I saw it.
And when I looked harder, closer, slower.
I could see the outline of her nipples beneath the satin.
God help me, I noticed .
I wasn’t breathing. I was watching .
Every shift of her hips. Every flex of her thighs beneath that pale pink fabric.
Every quiet inhale she took as her thumb moved across the screen.
And she had no idea the kind of torment she was putting me through.
Me—who took punches like air. Who kept knives like secrets.
Who once knocked a man without blinking—with one clean shot.
Now reduced to this.
To a silent storm brewing in my own damn bedroom because the girl we couldn’t stop wanting was back in our space—soft and satin-wrapped—like nothing had happened.
She pouted—just slightly. A soft little frown on her face as she stared at her phone.
Then she turned on her knees and started crawling toward the bedside table.
I nearly fucking lost it.
Her back arched, satin riding up just high enough to show the curve of her ass, those shorts clinging like second skin.
The pale pink lace pressed to her thighs like a promise I hadn’t been allowed to cash in on.
I pictured it then— really pictured it.
Pushing those shorts to the side.
Forcing her legs wider.
My hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave fingerprints.
Fucking her until she broke.
Until that little whimper wasn’t just imagined.
Until my name was the only one she could remember.
Her fingers reached the drawer, tugging it open to grab something—a charger maybe, or lip balm, I didn’t even know .
Didn’t care. I was too lost in the slow roll of her hips as she sat back on her heels.
I couldn’t stop staring.
Couldn’t stop wanting.
I wasn’t built for slow. I wasn’t built to watch .
And yet here I was—silent, fists clenched, jaw tight.
Luca was just as bad. That’s how I knew we were in trouble.
We never got emotionally involved. It always ended the same: with some girl whining that one of us needed to choose , complaining we were too close.
The first girl I dated made me pick between her and Luca.
Like that was ever a choice.
He’s half of me. Her hating him felt like she hated me.
Luca had the same problem.
Not that it mattered. We never let anyone get too close. Eventually, they’d see how fucked up we really were.
Fuck and forget. That was the rule.
And now?—
The only girl we’d ever needed was moving through our room in nothing but satin… and the scent I’d been aching for since she left.
That perfume. The kind of thing that embedded itself into my bloodstream.
Luca still hadn’t spoken.
But I could feel the tension pulsing off him like a second heartbeat.
He wanted her too.
But now? After the silence. After the distance.
After the way she flinched every time we got close.
Now, it was worse.
Because she was trying so hard to be polite. To stay out of our way. To make herself small .
But there was nothing small about her.
Not in this room.
Not in that fucking set.
Not in the hold she had on both of us without even trying.
She crawled back onto her bed, wrapped the blanket around her, and lay on her side facing the wall.
Still as a statue.
As if that would keep us from noticing her.
But I noticed everything .
I noticed her breathing had changed.
I noticed how her hand curled around the pillow—white-knuckled.
And I noticed the distance between us.
My distance.
I was the one who created this gap. And it was tearing at Luca.
I hated that. Hated that I’d done this to him . And now—I had no fucking idea how to fix it.