Page 59 of The Vixen

Would Sawyer reject me?

I blink, thinking. When the answer comes, the decision is made for me.

It’s pathetic.

And wrong.

But I go to the door, put my ear to the wood...

And twist the knob.

CHAPTER 16

LUNA

He isn’t asleep.

Sawyer lifts his head as I flip on the light, his hand mid stroke over Cinder’s back. She meows as if she knows she’s been caught and bounces off his chest. As she trots into the hall, she glides along my leg with a soft whine.

Funny that even cats understand betrayal.

I kick the door shut behind me and inspect the knob. My eyes wander up the doorframe, to a crack in the wood. As I turn, hands cupped behind my back, I examine a tear in the striped wallpaper, metal bars bracketing the window, a blue T-shirt piled atop jeans on the floor.

On the nightstand is a fresh stain, a discolored ring presumably from a water glass. At least twenty other men have occupied this room since I added the nightstand, and not one ignored the stack of coasters neatly arranged by the lamp.

I wouldn’t have bitten my tongue for any of them.

My wandering eyes continue, tracing the metal rods of the headboard until the only thing left to examine is Sawyer.

Fully dressed with the bedspread bunched beneath dirty shoes, his head lifted an inch as he watches me. No surprise crosses his expression. Not even curiosity. It’s as if he knew I’d come. That his late night summons weren’t over.

I promised him I wouldn’t do this again.

Hands falling to my sides, I walk to the bed and don’t make a sound as I pause at Sawyer’s feet; trace a finger around the cuff of his shoe.

He doesn’t move. Even as I run the same finger along his shin, over the hill of his knee, and cut across his hip. When he goes to sit up, I press his chest back to the mattress.

His mouth opens. I shake my head.

“Don’t speak. Not a word.”

A single line breaks between his eyes as his mouth closes. We both wait to see what I’ll say, what atrocious violence I have in store.

Endless possibilities—filthy—flit through my mind and speed my heart.

“Put your wrists by the headboard.”

He blinks at me and lets a moment pass. I’m careful not to lick my lips as they dry; careful not to show any emotion at all. Sawyer does the same.

He stretches his arms to the metal bars.

“Good… Now don’t move.”

I go to the end of the bed, Sawyer’s eyes pinned to my every movement. I pull off each shoe and remove the laces while he watches—silent, obedient, even without a Keeper outside my door or a weapon at my belt.

I cansmellhis fear, and it must be contagious because my fingers still for half a second. When I resume, the laces dragsoftly between my fingers, a faint rasp as I pull them free, slower this time.

Liberty is neither his ally nor his friend. From the sound of it, she’s his enemy.