Chapter 27 #2
He turns and paces away, boots thudding against my floor, all coiled energy and barely restrained violence. A caged predator looking for an exit. When he wheels back around, grief carves itself into every line of his face. His mouth opens and closes as if the truth is choking him.
“Because I knew the second I kissed you, the second I let that part of my mask slip, I’d be lost. There’d be no coming back from it.”
The width of my living room separates us, but it might as well be a canyon. Every muscle in his body screams with the effort it takes to stand there and bleed the truth out in front of me.
“It would’ve destroyed me.” His voice drops to a whisper.
He’s stopped pacing, standing motionless, looking almost lost. “Opening myself up like that. Letting you see everything and then having you reject it.” His hands dive into his hair, fingers tangling in the strands.
“I wanted all those things. Fuck, Luna, I wanted to kiss you until you forgot your own name. Wanted your skin on mine with nothing between us. Wanted to make love to you with the lights on instead of just taking you in the dark.” He drags a hand down his face.
“But I’m a brutal asshole who takes what he wants and kills who he wants. I’ll never deserve you.”
The confession fills the space between us, more intimate than anything we’ve shared in the darkness of my bedroom.
“I didn’t plan to kiss you that night after dinner.
” His jaw works, teeth grinding. “But I couldn’t stop myself.
You were so beautiful, so perfect, and I’d been starving for you.
And it was exactly what I feared.” He takes a step toward me.
“One touch of your lips. One taste. That’s all it took to ruin me. ”
My feet move before I decide to let them, closing the distance between us even as my brain screams warnings. Each step feels inevitable, like falling. Like gravity.
“But why pursue me that way at all?”
“Because those few hours at night were no longer enough. I wanted more than just your body, Luna.”
“You could’ve had it.” My voice breaks, shattering the composure I’m trying to hold. “I offered you more of me so many times, and you always rejected me. But then you’d show up during the day as Damien. Bringing me coffee and making me laugh like some kind of…”
“Some kind of what?”
“Some kind of normal man who wanted something real with me.” Tears burn my eyes, but I still refuse to let them fall. “Was any of it real? Or was I just some elaborate game to you?”
“All of it was real.” His eyes search mine, black and bottomless. Desperation bleeds through his composure. Fear, too. Raw and unmistakable, as his chest rises and falls too fast. “Everything between us was real, and that’s what’s fucking destroyed me.”
I want to believe him. The wanting aches in my chest. But I can’t afford to trust anymore. I step back, widening the gap between us.
“What was your endgame? Did you think I’d never figure it out? That I’d sleep with Damien and not recognize you? Not know exactly how you feel inside me? How you move? How you fuck?”
His hands flex at his sides, and his throat works around the words he’s trying to force out. When they finally come, they sound like they’ve been dragged over broken glass.
“I thought I could keep them separate. Have you both ways. Have you the way we are in the dark and still have what I crave in the light.”
“And what is that, Damien? What is it you crave?”
“You.” The word explodes out like he’s been holding it back too long.
He eliminates the last of the space between us in two strides, and then he’s there, so close the heat and scent of him wrap around me.
“Your smile. Your laugh. How alive you get when you talk about your animals. I want to be the man who makes you happy, not just the one who fucks you until you’re sobbing.
I want to be the man who fulfills every dark fantasy you have and every dream you’ll ever have. I fucking want to be both.”
The honesty in his words guts me. I stagger back, pressing my hand to my chest. Beneath it, my heart pounds, wild and chaotic.
“So, you fed me lies on both sides.”
“What the fuck was I supposed to do?” His voice rises, anger sharpening the words. “You think I planned this? You think I wanted to fall in love with you?”
“Fall in love with me? Is that what this is? Love? Because it feels a lot more like manipulation.”
His expression darkens. For a second, I see the dangerous man underneath. The killer who wears the mask.
“Don’t do that, Luna. Don’t twist this into something it’s not.”
“Then explain it to me!” My composure shatters. I surge forward and jab my finger into his chest. “Tell me why you did this to me!”
“Because I’m fucked up!” His hand shoots out and catches my wrist mid-jab, his grip firm and unyielding.
“Because I’m dark and broken inside, and I don’t know how to give you what you deserve!
I knew this would blow up eventually, but I couldn’t stop.
By the time I realized I was in love with you, it was too late.
I was in too deep. Letting you go wasn’t an option. It never was.”
He loves me. Or believes he does. But it fixes nothing. If anything, it makes everything worse.
I pull my hand free from his grip. “You fell in love with me. And your brilliant solution was to keep lying to me?”
I draw in a breath, steadying myself.
“Look, I get why you didn’t tell me at first. You were stalking me, fucking me while wearing a mask.
You admitted you’re a serial killer. So yeah, in some sick way, I understand the initial deception.
But later? After it became more than sex?
Why keep lying? Why make me fall for two versions of you? ”
“I’d never…” He tears at his hair again as he turns to face the window, and I worry he might actually tear it out.
“You don’t know what I come from, Luna. Love wasn’t something I understood before I met you.
I didn’t know how to handle it. All I knew was that I needed you in every way possible.
The dark parts of me needed to own you, possess every piece of you.
But there was this other part. This part that just wanted to make you smile.
Be worthy of you. I thought I could give you both. ”
“By lying to me.”
“By protecting you!” He wheels around to face me, his eyes wild. “Do you think I wanted you to know how depraved I really am? Wanted you to think about the blood on my hands every time I touched you?”
“I already knew the hands you touched me with were covered in blood, sometimes before you even came to me at night. But it didn’t matter. I wanted your hands on me, anyway. I always accepted you, even when it cost me pieces of my soul to do it.”
“Do you really think knowing the truth would’ve made you feel better? Do you feel better now, knowing it?”
“No. I feel betrayed and used.”
“It’s one thing, Luna, to know that the masked man you’re fucking in secret is a killer. It’s quite another to know he’s also your neighbor. The seemingly civilized man who takes you to fancy galas and also devours you against the windows in his penthouse.”
The weight of it all slams into me at once—the lies, the manipulation, the months of living in two different worlds with the same man. My shoulders cave inward, and my spine curves forward like I’m trying to fold myself in half.
“Knowing doesn’t change anything.”
He scoffs, and his mouth twists into a smile that makes him look like a different person, all sharp edges and self-loathing. His eyes flash with bitter amusement, the kind that comes from watching your life burn down around you and finding it grimly funny.
“Now, who’s the liar?”
“Is it because you don’t trust me?” I move closer to him again, drawn by some invisible force I can’t resist. “Do you think I’ll turn you in to the authorities? I told you I’ll never betray you.”
“It isn’t a matter of betrayal. It’s a matter of burden.
You don’t fucking deserve the burden of knowing what I do and who I truly am.
Because make no mistake, Luna, the man I am is the one standing in front of you right now.
I’m a man who kills without remorse and then comes to you after and pours all his darkness into you along with his come.
I’m not the man you see in the daytime. That man is the true mask I wear. ”
“It wasn’t your decision to make for me, Damien.”
“I never wanted my darkness to touch you.”
He reaches up, his thumb tracing my cheek, wiping away tears I didn’t realize were falling. The touch is so gentle, so familiar, that I almost lean into it before catching myself.
“Your darkness touched me the second you put your hands on me.”
I step back, pulling away from his hand, and the separation hurts, like a physical ache that radiates through my ribs and settles heavy in my stomach.
“I save lives, Damien, and somehow, I made peace with loving someone who takes them. I’ll never tell anyone. I’ll take your secret to my grave. But this… the lies, the deception…”
His eyes widen, panic flickering across his features. “Luna—”
I gesture between us. “This… us… It has to end.”
The words tear a hole so deep inside me, I don’t know if it will ever heal.
“No.”
The word is flat and final, carrying all the authority of a man accustomed to getting his way. He’s gotten his way with me too many times.
It stops now.
I move toward the door, needing distance, needing him to leave. “I can’t trust you, Damien. How could I ever trust you again? You lied to me for months. Made me question my own feelings, my own sanity. You made me feel crazy.”
“I won’t let you end this.” He blocks my path, and all of a sudden, he’s the predator again, all coiled muscle and dangerous intent. I nearly collide with his chest, stopping short at the last second.
“You don’t get a choice.” I try to push past him, but he’s immovable. “Leave. Now.”
“No.”
The possessiveness in his tone, the casual dismissal of my autonomy, snaps something inside me. The hurt and betrayal and months of confusion crystallize into pure, white-hot rage.
“Get out!” I shove against his chest with both hands, putting every ounce of my strength behind it. He barely rocks back on his heels. “Get out of my house!”
“Luna, calm down—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I swing at him, tears streaming down my face despite my determination not to cry. “You lied to me! You manipulated me! You made me fall in love with a wolf in billionaire’s clothing!”
He catches my wrists, pinning them between us, his grip firm but not painful.
Still, I struggle against him, all my hurt and rage pouring out in a frenzy of movement.
I’m not trying to hurt him. We both know I couldn’t even if I wanted to, but I need to move, need to fight, need to do something with all this pain threatening to tear me apart from the inside.
“Are you going to zip-tie me now? Fuck me into submission?”
“Do I need to?”
“Let me go.” I sob, still struggling against his hold. “Just let me go.”
“Never.”
His mouth crashes onto mine, urgent and possessive. The lies are still there. The betrayal. The trust ground to dust between us. My mind knows this. But my body, my traitorous body, responds, lips parting, hands fisting in his collar, meeting his desperation with my own.
Because this is real. This heat, this need, this devastating connection that transcends both his identities.
This is the one thing that was never a lie.