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“How long do you have?”
“As long as you need.”
I let out a little hiss, the anger and hurt from that night all prickling my skin as they come to the surface. “Because you deserve a lot more.”
“I do. But you’re wrong about one thing—itismy business.Youare my business. So, I’m going to ask you one more time. Is Alex going to be a problem?”
“No.”
Kingsley nods and runs his fingers down the side of my arm, a path of goose bumps following the trail of his touch. “Good. Because I lied. If you had been with him, I wouldn’t have sent him some cigars. I would’ve sent a fucking hit man.”
“I thought you said you don’t get jealous.”
“That’s before I had something that I wanted to be mine and mine alone.”
He steps in behind me, so close my body gets pulled into his orbit, and we breathe in unison for a few seconds without touching.
“You think you have me?”
“I’m trying, Luna. I’m really fucking trying.”
“Try harder, because I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
He reaches around to lay his hand gently around my throat, tilting my head back toward him. “You don’t believe that I wouldn’t rip Alex’s beating heart out of his chest if you’d told me that you two slept together last night? You didn’t feel me watching you all night at the dinner? You don’t know that every time you looked at another man, I was burning with hate for him? You don’t know that I couldn’t hear a single word anyone else was saying to me when you weren’t by my side, because I was straining to hear if some other man was making you laugh? Because your laugh belongs to me and nobody else? That I didn’t corner poor Perry and tell him I’d burn every single one of those damn cafés to the ground if he thought he was going to touch what’s mine?”
Oh my god.
“Kingsley, you didn’t.”
He sneers. “You can call him and ask, but I doubt he’ll answer. He didn’t strike me as the stupid sort. Sweet. Might even have been a good date for you, if you weren’t already mine.”
Every time he says that word, my resolve thins another layer.
Mine.
“I missed you,” he whispers against my temple. “I hate when you’re not near me.”
The words ingrain themselves into my skin, alongside the parting words he said yesterday. Words that still feel like a dream.
“You’re my undoing. And I need you to put me back together.”
Every word he says sizzles, the air sparking painfully between us.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to catch alight, and there’s going to be nothing left of me.
“Luna. You need to forgive me. I know I was wrong.”
I want to play with him. Want him to feel just for a moment what it felt like for me to see him close the door on me like that.
But when he’s touching me like this, all I have is the truth to give.
“You hurt me, Kingsley!” I hurl the words at him. “What makes you think you have any right to expect anything from me anymore?”
He pulls his hands off me and moves to face me, both hands running through his tousled hair, the pain stark on his face. “I fucked up, Luna!” he answers with the same veracity as my words. “God, I fucked up. I know I did. I lost my mind for a moment.”
I push him away, my nails dragging on his chest. “You lost your mind when you practically fucked me on your front porch, or when you rejected me?”
“The truth? Both times! You know as well as I do that this was a line we should never have crossed. But… I shouldn’t have walked away. And I’ve been killing myself over it since.”
