Page 10 of Luna

TWO MONTHS AGO

When I reach the bookshop, I pause and tilt my face up to the air. I inhale deeply. There she is…

It is seven p.m. Her shift ended an hour ago, and yet I still sense her on the breeze.

I follow her scent.

Through side streets, across the green. Until I come to a small, terraced house. The kind that looks unassuming but costs a small fortune to rent.

I should know; I own ten of them.

Not this one, though.

This one is different. It has been modernized – new windows, new door, incongruously neat paving in the small front garden.

The lights are on. A dull orange glow comes from the living room.

I approach in the shadows and peer in. Here, I don’t just smell her – I smell him too.

The boyfriend.

From the very first time he picked her up from the shop after work, I had my suspicions about him. He is the kind of man who thinks too much of himself too often. Who moves through the world as if he expects everyone to bask in his brilliance, and who wants nothing more than to capture Luna’s light and twist it for his own pleasure.

If he was a kind, honorable man who treated her the way she deserves to be treated, I’d be able to sit back and enjoy watching them together. Knowing she was taken care of.

But him? I could never enjoy watching her with him.

The thought of him fills me with pure, unadulterated rage.

When she comes into view, I lick my fangs and heat pools at the base of my spine.

I have been watching her for years.

Usually, I see her dressed for work. But now, I’m staring at her in nothing but a towel. Pristine and white, it is wrapped tightly around her, but strains across her breasts and her hips.

Her hair is wrapped in a towel too, but when she sits down on the couch opposite the fireplace, she removes it and shakes her curls free. Wet, they look much darker than they are. But they hang in delicious ringlets around her face.

A bead of water escapes from the tip of one of the curls and trickles down between her breasts.

Hell damn it, I want to lick that water from her skin.

I didn’t always feel this way about her. When I first started watching her, it was a favor. The Human Extinction League were looking for someone. They thought she might be the one they needed. I thought it would be useful to have them indebted to me. So, I agreed.

They probably thought I’d assign it to one of my men.

But the second I saw Luna, I knew she was mine to watch.

Mine to protect.

Now, holding the towel in her hands, she twists it, her knuckles pale with the pressure. Then she leans forward. Her shoulders begin to shake.

Just like that… she is crying.

My stomach constricts with something I am not used to feeling.

I have never seen her cry before.

There is movement further back in the room. It’s him.