Late night. A single desk lamp cut through the gloom of the study.
Selena sat at the desk, her fingertips hovering over the edge of an open page. She didn’t press down immediately. A faint curve still lingered on her lips—the ghost of a smile Lucian had teased out of her before she left the Andersons'. It was like the lingering taste of a sweet, refusing to dissolve.
It was perhaps the most relaxed she had felt in days.
Her thoughts drifted back to the moment she arrived home. Lucian had beaten her back to the Blackthorn manor and made a show of greeting her, looking freshly showered—hair slicked back, shirt hanging open, practically forcing her hand onto his bare chest. Her fingertips had brushed against warm droplets of water sliding down the hard contours of his pectoral muscles.
Se
