19. Luke

I seeher before she sees me. She is staring at her phone as she crosses campus on this freezing cold December day. The sun is weak even though it’s nearing midday, but it still makes her raven hair shine like obsidian. She is alone, completely alone. No friends. No boyfriend. Just her and her phone.

Watching her closely, I feel my phone buzz in my coat pocket and pull it out, glancing at it absently.

The message is from Victoria. She is standing fifty feet away, and she sent me a message, probably not even aware I’m watching her.

Not wanting to draw my gaze from her, but aching to know what she sent, I open the message and see it’s another video. With a trembling hand, I click play.

Then I swallow back the mouthful of saliva that flooded into my mouth as I watch her and Cian fucking against her front door. A brutal, savage fuck that has my cock hard as iron. My gaze flicks up to hers, still engrossed in her own little world, and I shove the phone into my pocket. Marching up to her, I stop in her personal space, and she looks up at me with a slow smile, knowing it’s me. She knew I was watching her.

“Enjoy that one?”

I growl, low, menacing and grab her upper arms, a move she hates because she loses all control. My grip is like a vice as I shake her slightly.

“What are you doing?”

“Playing,” she spits back, her eyes full of fire.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, hearing the desperation in my tone. She does, too, and it gives her pause.

She licks her lips and loses a shred of her defiance. “What do you want, Luke?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” I snarl, keeping my voice low. “I want you, Victoria.”

“Do you?” she asks quietly, almost sadly. “Is this something you really want, Luke?”

“Yes.”

She blinks. “I’ll talk to him.”

“No, you can’t do that. He won’t understand. You are his, even though I want you to be mine. You are his.”

“Why can’t I be both?”

Her words catch me off guard, and I loosen my hold a bit, but she doesn’t break free. She only stares at me with those cornflower-blue eyes, expecting an answer.

“That isn’t how this works,” I murmur.

“He wants me to be happy. I can talk to him, make him see this will be a good thing but I need to know you are all in. I can’t jeopardise everything with him if this is just a game to you.”

Her seriousness nearly kills me. “I’m all in, Victoria. Can’t you tell? Don’t you see what you fucking do to me? I’m always in control. Always. But you unravel me like a fucking loose thread on a cheap jumper.”

My words are like gasoline to her, I can see it in her eyes. They flare with something dangerous, something promising. She steps in, her breath a warm whisper against my cold skin. “Then prove it, Luke.”

That’s the one thing I want to do more than anything else. Prove it. Prove that she’s not just another conquest, that it’s not just the illicit thrill of wanting what Cian has. But how do I prove something like that? Especially when every cell in my body is screaming at me to take what I want, my best friend be damned.

“How?” I croak. “How can I prove to you that I don’t just want you because you’re his? How do I prove to you that you are it for me, Victoria? How? Tell me because I can’t seem to come up with any fucking answers that are even remotely adequate.”

She holds the power now, and she knows it. But who am I kidding? She always did. Her eyes roam over my face, reading every line of stress, every shadow of lust. She moves closer, so close that each breath she takes sends shivers down my spine.

“You be the one to talk to Cian.”

My heart plummets down to my feet and then shoots back up to hit the top of my head and sinks slowly back into place as her words settle on me. “Okay. I will. But if I do this, Victoria, I need to know that this isn’t a game to you. Playing me off against Cian is a deadly move?—”

“I’m not playing,” she interrupts.

Her voice is steel, hard and cold, and I believe her. She’s made of the same darkness that inhabits the corners of our lives, and she’s not afraid to walk through it. I nod, unable to find my voice for a moment, because there’s a sense of finality in this. A sense that everything will change.

“I’ll talk to him,” I affirm once the power of speech returns to me. My words feel heavy, like they’re etching themselves into reality.

She nods back, her expression unreadable. She doesn’t say anything else; she just turns on her heel and leaves me standing there like an idiot as the sharp winter air picks up around us. I turn from her, so I don’t follow her and slam her up against the university admin building and kiss her like a man possessed.

Movement catches my eyes, and I look up just in time to see a figure clad all in black, duck behind the topiary hedges in the garden nearby.

“Beast,” I murmur and follow his trajectory into the garden, but it’s empty. “Who are you?” Bringing up the feed outside Victoria’s townhouse, I see another box has been left. “Time to fucking find out who you are, asshole.”

Deciding not to tell anyone about this third box on the third day—which is a clear pattern now—I hurry across campus and across the road to Victoria’s house, glancing around as I creep up the path to the front door where the black shoe box awaits with whatever fresh horror is inside.