One Touch Away from Breaking
Selene
I didn't plan to call him.
I really didn't.
But standing alone in that motel room with the envelope still burning a hole in my pocket, I caved.
Because the walls were too thin, and my mind was too loud, and his voice—that voice—had always been the one thing that could cut through the chaos.
He arrived twenty minutes later. No questions. No tie. Black jeans, black shirt, no trace of the man the world feared—just Lucian. Just the man I once knew how to love.
"You okay?" he asked, his eyes already scanning the room like it might bite.
"I didn't ask you to fix anything," I said.
His lips twitched. "You never have to."
I shouldn't have let him kiss me.
But I did.
And it wasn't soft.
It was the kind of kiss you give someone when talking won't undo what's been broken. The kind you give when you don't want answers—you want escape.
His hands found my waist, my hips, then lower. His breath ghosted against my ear as he whispered, "You're shaking."
I was.
But not from fear.
From craving.
Because Lucian didn't touch like a man who wanted.
He touched like a man who *remembered*.
Where to press.
Where to bite.
Where to whisper filth that made my knees weaken and my throat go dry.
---
I pushed his shirt up, revealing all that perfect, devastating control.
And then I bit him.
Just below the collarbone.
His hiss was satisfaction and warning all in one.
"I've missed that mouth," he growled.
I shoved him backward toward the bed. "Then shut up and use yours."
---
He did.
Oh, God, he did.
On his knees between mine, spreading me open like a prayer he planned to defile. Every stroke of his tongue was possession. Every moan he dragged from me a reminder that no matter how many times I'd tried to forget—my body remembered *him*.
"Say it," he rasped, fingers buried inside me, thumb circling sinfully. "Say who owns this."
I hated him for that.
And I said it anyway.
"You."
---
But halfway through that breathless high, I blinked—and something shifted.
Liora.
Her name.
Where had I heard it before?
The pleasure hitched. My spine arched. My lips parted.
And I saw it—
Flashes.
Bright light. A silver tray. Gloves. A whisper in my ear.
"Shh, you're doing beautifully."
Then static. Like a memory trying to claw its way through sex and sweat and sensation.
I gasped, clutching Lucian's shoulders too tightly.
He stopped. "What is it?"
But I shook my head, forcing him back down. "Don't stop. Don't stop."
Because if I kept moving—if I kept falling—I didn't have to remember.
Not yet.
After, I lay on my back, skin humming, heart climbing down from wherever he'd sent it.
Lucian brushed a knuckle down my bare thigh.
"You're running from something," he said.
"I'm always running," I muttered.
Then he kissed the inside of my wrist—gently, like a vow he never said out loud.
"I won't let them break you again."
A knock at the door.
We both froze.
My pulse jumped. Lucian's hand found the gun he kept hidden in his coat, already halfway to the door in silence.
I pulled the blanket up to my chest and held my breath.
He opened it slowly.
No one.
Just an envelope.
He bent down. Picked it up.
And turned white.
"Selene," he said, voice suddenly razor-thin. "You need to see this."
I moved to him. Took the envelope with shaking fingers.
Inside?
A single photo.
A girl in a hospital bed.
Strapped down.
Screaming.
My face.
You were there too long, Selene.
Written across the back in red marker.
"Let's see what happens when you stay awake this time."