Page 10 of The Shadow Sanctum

But I don’t.

I listen for Luna’s footsteps, or rather, the lack of. A faint pitter patter as opposed to heavy stomps.

A board on the staircase creaks. Then another.

When Luna opens the door, my lungs seem to scream with a held breath. I release it but don’t take another until I’ve scanned for injuries, extra injuries.

Nothing. She’s fine.

“Hi.” Way too high-pitched. I swallow and try again. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

She stares at me like I just pissed on her houseplant. Nothing leaves her lips, but the severity carved into each facial divot and angle of bone says all.

She knows.

“I can expl⁠—”

My eyes follow her hands as they find the button on her black pants. It pops free with a brutal yank, and a sharp zip follows.

“Lie down on the bed.”

Her eyes never leave mine as she curls her fingers inside her waistband and peels her pants over her hips. She shimmies them down her legs with slow but rigid movement, each jut of her hips like a strike I’m surprised I don’t feel.

“Did you hear me, slave?”

I drag my eyes back to her face just as she kicks the pants aside. All I can do is blink.

She doesn’t know … ?

That’s even worse. Now I have to warn her.

“I gave you a command.”

Soon.

“Slave.”

Her voice is the crack of a whip—not sexy; not playful. Certainly not horny.

But she’s been like this before, hasn’t she? Again at this house, choking me until I passed out, assaulting me until I begged for mercy. She was horny then.

My cock stirs, so abrupt and so bizarre that I have to look down at the bulge in my pants just to believe it’s real.

Something is wrong with me.

I hold my hands up; backpedal toward the bed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

The chorus of rickety creaks the mattress makes as my weight settles is like music Luna uses for the final part of her strip tease.

Her sweater on the floor—creak.

Rose-pink nipples revealed with the snap of her bra—squeak.

Bruise-covered ribs exposed with the unraveling of a bandage—groan, as I sit up and plant my feet on the floor. The look in her eyes is like a weight that lays me back down, a silent command I’m hopeless to defy.

Hopeless?

My cock grows as she saunters toward me with a tigress sway and a devilish sneer, out for blood. I should tell her to stop, to talk to me, but for the first time since seeing Angel, my mind clears. In the three seconds it takes for her to straddle my waist, I’m myself again.