The sickened luna’s last chance

Chapter 91

Alexander

Business to handle. Right.

The truth was, I’d made up the excuse because I needed to get away from Ella before I did something stupid again.

Dancing with her under the moonlight had been torture of the sweetest kind. The way she’d felt in my arms, the rose in her hair, the utter adoration in her eyes every time she looked up at me.

And that kiss. Goddess, that kiss at the banquet.

My wolf had gone absolutely feral when Ella had pulled me down to her mouth. The taste of her, the way she’d responded to me, the little sound she’d made when I’d kissed her back… It had taken every ounce of self–control I possessed not to carry her out of that ballroom and straight to our bed.

I wanted to strip that midnight blue gown off her body and worship every inch of her skin. I wanted to mark her again, deeper this time, until there was no question who she belonged to. I wanted to bury myself inside of her and make her mine in every way possible.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

Not until I knew for certain whether she was a spy sent by her family to destroy me..

Gabriel’s letter had been eating away at me for days now. Ella’s family had definitely orchestrated my parents‘ deaths–I had concrete proof of that now. And whether Ella knew or not, one thing was abundantly clear: they had sent her here as a tool to manipulate me.

What if she was exactly what Gabriel suspected–a perfectly trained weapon designed to make me fall in love with her?

What if she did know and all of this was just a beautiful lie.

The thought made my chest hurt, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility. My parents had been killed by Ella’s family. I couldn’t risk letting the same thing happen to myself, or worse, if I opened myself up to her too easily.

So instead of following Ella upstairs and showing her exactly how much I wanted her, I’d locked myself in my office with a bottle of whiskey and tried to drown out my wolf’s increasingly desperate demands.

The whiskey wasn’t helping much.

I poured another glass and stared at the amber liquid, trying to focus on the way it caught the firelight in a desperate attempt to stop thinking about the way she had looked at me tonight.

she might actually

her from childhood to play this role, she’d

the whiskey and immediately poured

lighter. My head grew fuzzier, but the ache in my

mansion was quiet and dark. Ella would be asleep by now, curled up in our bed wearing one of those

a sliver of buttery light spilling across the corridor floor from inside. I heard Ella’s soft voice coming from

“Goddess fucking dammit…”

She sounded awfully frustrated.

MOJI CO

Chapter 91

enough for me to see inside, so I quietly crept over and peered through, just to see what

hair had fallen loose from its elegant updo, tumbling in waves down her back, and the sight of all that dark silk against her pale skin

to contort her arms behind her back to reach the laces. Every time she stretched, the bodice of her dress pulled tight across her breasts in an all–too–delicious way, but it was the obvious

muttered, twisting

But the way she was struggling made me feel like an asshole for leaving. She had clearly been struggling

I could second–guess myself, I pushed the

“Need help?”

spun around, eyes going wide. A flush crept

you were… I thought you

The lie came easily. “You

glanced back at the mirror, then at me, uncertainty written all across her face. Finally, she sighed. “I can’t reach the laces.

“Turn around.”

back to me. Her pale skin and the sight of the beautifui nap of her neck practically made

her hair and the faint vanilla of her

was perfectly still as I worked, but I could see her watching me

as the first few inches of lacing came free.

she reached behind her to continue on

of her back through the gaps in the lacing. Each lace was fucking torture. My

task.

The bodice of her