23. Ghost

23

Ghost

It takes Luna seventeen minutes after she wakes up before she comes to find me.

It’s possible she thought I was joking when I told her I was going to install cameras in my bedroom so I could watch her from every angle, but I wasn’t. And I don’t regret that decision when I have work to do in my office, but I don’t want to leave her alone.

So while she sleeps, I keep her up on one of my screens while I work on the other. Her nightmares have been getting worse lately, but she doesn’t talk about them, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the person who is after her.

She’s buried something in her beautiful mind, and I want to know what it is so I can make it right.

After Luna moved to Vegas with the club, I looked into her. I unsealed her juvenile records and dug into every foster family she lived with. She was put in the system at three years old, and from then to the age of eighteen, she lived with six different foster families.

Between eighteen and twenty, there’s no record of her. All I know is I met her a couple weeks before she turned twenty-one, and it was a few weeks later she moved to Vegas when we returned home.

Since then, I’ve studied everything there is to know about her. And now that she’s mine, I’m determined to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

When Luna used to wake up in her bed, she’d spend a long time scrolling through her phone. In my bed, she sleeps a little longer, and when her eyes finally flutter open, the first thing she does is reach for me.

It makes me wish I’d grabbed a laptop and worked from there. But I know I wouldn’t get as much done.

When she finds my side of the bed empty, she buries her nose in my pillow, and I wonder how that makes her feel. Because ever since that first night I fucked her, I don’t want my room to smell like anything but her.

Vanilla hand lotion.

Honeysuckle shampoo.

I made sure to move hers into my bathroom so she could get ready in there while filling my space with her scent.

Luna curls into the blanket and stares up at the ceiling, but I can’t read her face. She chews the inside of her cheek, and I wonder if this morning she woke up with the memories from her dreams.

After seven and a half minutes, she pulls back the sheets and makes her way into the bathroom. She piles her hair on top of her head, washes her face, and puts her glasses on. I like that she doesn’t feel the need to cake her face in makeup for me. She looks pretty with or without it, but it says something that she knows I don’t care either way. I’d rather she be comfortable.

Luna rubs her fingers under her lashes and tugs at the dark circles, but they don’t go away.

Her past is haunting her, and it’s showing in her eyes.

I’m getting close to fixing it, but there are still pieces missing from the puzzle. I know the new Iron Sinner tech specialist is the one who hired Luna a year ago, and I know they’re the same person who used a flash drive to hack our payroll records and find her. But I still have no idea who they are.

They’re skilled.

They ping their location off satellites so I can’t nail down their location or hack their server remotely, and it’s irritating the hell out of me.

I watch Luna on the screen. She leaves the bathroom, wandering around my room naked. She walks over to the T-shirt she was wearing last night, brushing her fingers over that and her pajama shorts. I can tell she’s considering putting them back on, but she moves to my dresser instead. She opens the top drawer and slips into a pair of my briefs. They’re baggy on her small frame. And when she slips one of my T-shirts overhead, she’s swimming in it.

I was wrong if I thought she couldn’t be sexier than when she’s wearing nothing because there’s something about her wearing my clothes that has me gripping the bulge in my jeans. If I wasn’t almost done with this trace, I’d storm into my room just to fuck her in that outfit.

She’s let the beast out of the cage, and now there’s no putting him back.

Luna leaves my room wearing her favorite fuzzy pink slippers, and she makes her way to my office first. I kill the feed before she opens the door, turning to face my other screen.

She cracks the door and peeks her head in. “Good morning.”

Her blue eyes shine when she blinks at me, and there’s no lens that can capture her unfiltered beauty.

“Mornin’.” I lean back in my desk chair and spin to face the door when she’s yet to step inside. “Come here.”

I can’t help it.

I need her near me.

Luna smiles, slipping inside my office and shutting the door. The moment she’s within reach, I snatch her hand and pull her onto my lap. She sits sideways, and I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her in for a kiss. She tastes like spearmint toothpaste and heaven.

Her fingers tangle in my hair as she brushes it off my forehead, and when she pulls back, she trails her fingertips over my temple. “Do you ever sleep?”

“Only when my body gives out on me.”

“That can’t be good for your health.”

“I’m fine. There are things to do. People to look out for.”

Including her.

Luna scans the room. “Need any help? ”

As much as I could use it, I’m the one who made this mess, so I need to clean it up. And the more she knows, the more trouble she’ll be in.

I shake my head. “I’ve got it covered. Most of the guys are still sleeping or at the shop today, so it’s quiet. Do you have any tests you need to study for?”

“I just turned in my programming final. But it’s okay; I’ll see what the girls are up to and keep busy.”

“Or you can hang out with me in here while I work.” I eye the chair no one ever sits in at the side of the room.

“In the Ghost cave?” She quirks an eyebrow, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Sure. If that’s what you’re calling it.”

“That’s what it is.” She smiles. “You rarely leave, and it’s not very well lit.”

“You can turn on another light if you want to.”

“Or I could just open the curtains… unless you’re suddenly allergic to sunlight.”

“Whatever makes you happy, beautiful.”

Her cheeks pinken when I use that word, and I love that I draw out that reaction.

She glances around the room. “I guess I can bring my laptop and game here if it won’t bother you.”

“You never bother me.”

“Even when you’re trying to focus?” She skates her fingers down my cut, aiming for my belt.

“Even then.” I catch her wrists before she dips her fingers beneath the band of my pants. “But unfortunately, that’s going to have to wait until I get this data to Steel. He’s been waiting on it since yesterday. ”

“Wouldn’t want to piss off the president.”

“I promise I’ll make it up to you later.” I kiss the back of her hand. “Go get your computer.”

“And coffee.” She yawns. “I’m barely functioning after last night.”

Good. If she was, I’d be worried I hadn’t done my job of properly fucking her.

“Want a cup?” she asks.

“I’m good.”

I limit caffeine like I limit alcohol. It’s easier for me to focus when I’m not wired or foggy. The work I do is meticulous, and if my head isn’t clear, I get sloppy.

“I’ll be back.” She smiles, dipping out of the office.

“I’ll be here.”

The second she’s gone, I flick on the feed to watch her make her way down the hall. If she knew I was always watching, she might think I was stalking her.

Maybe I am.

Doesn’t mean I’ll stop.

I’ll just keep it to myself. After all, it’s for her own good.

Luna sits with her feet kicked up on the desk and her laptop balancing on her lap. Her fuzzy pink slippers shift back and forth as her feet tip side to side. She has a coffee mug and a bottle of water on the table, and a collection of phone chargers, textbooks, and nail polish bottles slowly taking over my desk .

While I’ve spent the day working, she’s alternated between studying, gaming, and painting her nails.

Looking up, I catch her eyebrows scrunching as she frowns.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine. Just a little annoyed. Rider was supposed to help me with this raid today, and he’s been M.I.A.” She glances up at me when I don’t say anything. “He’s just a friend, nothing more. I’ve never even met him. It’s a raiding thing. We dungeon together; he heals me. Never mind. I should stop talking.”

“I like when you talk.” I lean back in my chair, watching her.

“Even when it’s about nothing?”

“Especially then.”

When she talks about her game, she lights up, and I can’t help but absorb that energy. There’s only one other place she gets this excited, and it’s in my bed. Someday, I’m going to mix the two together and see what happens.

“So you like gaming, huh?”

“It’s a nice escape from the real world.” Her game makes a sound, pulling her attention back to the screen. “And it was a good distraction growing up.”

“In what way?”

Her eyes flick back and forth from her game to me, and she bites her lip, likely debating how she wants to answer. Official records never paint the full picture, and from her nerves, I can tell there are probably stories that never made it into her case worker’s files .

“Not all of the houses I lived in growing up were good ones.” Luna shrugs. “Some were fine. Some were amazing even. But the one I moved into when I was fifteen wasn’t. Lots of yelling. Sometimes worse. It depended on the day, so gaming made for a nice escape.”

“They hurt you?”

Her fingers pause on the keys, and I swear the oxygen leaves the room while I wait for her answer.

“Not on purpose.”

She says it like I’m not going to have to kill someone for accidentally laying a hand on her. Intentional or not, no one touches this girl. Past or present. But I manage to swallow that down for her sake.

“Explain.”

Luna leans back, nervously biting the inside of her cheek. “No one was trying to hurt me because they knew my case worker would check in regularly, and they couldn’t risk losing the checks I came with. But my foster dad was an asshole, and everyone else in the house wasn’t as lucky as I was.”

My fingernails dig into my palms, and I make a mental note to go back and figure out what foster home she lived in when she was fifteen.

“My foster brothers got the worst of it. Steven was older, so he’d take the brunt of it for Brandon, but if their dad got drunk enough, there was no stopping him.”

“He beat them?”

She nods, and her eyes gloss over. “The worst I got was when he accidentally hit me with a book he was throwing at Steven from across the room. It nicked me on the shoulder and left a little scar. But that was nothing compared to witnessing what he did to them and not being able to do anything about it. He told me if I said anything to my case worker, he’d make them pay for it, and I couldn’t risk that.”

Of course she tried to protect them. That’s who Luna is. Her heart is good to the very center.

“What happened to them?”

She blinks, like my question snapped her back to this moment.

“I don’t know. I never looked back after I left, and I’m guessing they didn’t either. Sometimes bad things draw people together; other times, the people you experience it with are too much of a reminder, and it pushes you away.”

“I get it.” I scoot my chair back. “Come here.”

She slaps her laptop shut and stands, walking over to sit on my lap.

“What about you? How did you grow up?” she asks. “You lived with Legacy’s family, right?”

“Most of my childhood, yes. I moved in with his family when I was ten.” I wrap my arms around her waist, holding her against me.

“What about before that?”

“My parents were still around.”

“I didn’t realize you knew them.” She frowns. “You never talk about your parents.”

“There’s not much to talk about. My father was an alcoholic, and my mom wasn’t much better. But at least she pretended to give a shit.” My throat burns thinking about them. “Even when they were around, I spent more time at Legacy’s house than mine. So, after they died in the car crash, his family took me in.”

“A car crash?”

I nod. “Dad was wasted. He and my mom started arguing, and she swung at him, then he lost control of the car.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“I was in the car with them.”

Luna’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry, Marcus. I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have.” I brush her cheek with my thumb. “I only remember it in bits and pieces. I remember the before, and I remember the after. The actual accident is really fucking blurry.”

“Now I understand a little more about why you and Legacy are so close.”

“He’s the closest thing to family I’ve got left.”

And the last person I planned to let in until Luna stormed into my life and changed everything.

“Well, you have me now.” She smiles tentatively. “If you want me around, that is.”

“Want you around…” I dig my fingers into the back of her hair. “More like I need you around.”

“You mean it?”

“More than you can process, Luna Cassidy.”

She smiles, and I pull her in for a kiss. I sink into the illusion that her good balances out my evil. Maybe it does—even if just for this moment.