His Lost Luna

The elevator doors slid shut, cutting off the laughter behind her. But those mocking faces were burned into her brain—Jenna's especially, with that fake sympathetic smile she always wore right before destroying someone's life. "Room 1208, Sophia. Don't screw it up." Jenna's voice still echoed in her head as the red numbers above the door blinked: 6...7...8... Sophia's head spun. Not from the single glass of champagne—she never drank much at company events. This was something else. The whole elevator car swayed, and her legs felt like they were filled with wet sand. She put something in my drink. Jenna had been after her position for months. Tonight—Blackwood International's annual gala—she'd found the perfect way to get rid of her. 12...13... Ding. The doors opened onto a hallway stretching endlessly, identical doors gleaming under sconce light. Sophia stumbled out, clutching the wall for support. Room 1208 had to be at the end. Of course it did. Each step was a battle. Her vision blurred, doubling the doors until she couldn't tell which was which. But she'd been here before—the executive floor, reserved for VIP clients and board members. She just needed to get inside, sleep it off, and figure out what to do in the morning. She finally reached a door. Squinting, she tried to read the number: 1-2-0-8. Yes. This was it. The door wasn't locked. She pushed it open and stumbled into thick darkness. She couldn't see a thing. But the bed had to be there—she felt along the wall, and her knee bumped into something soft. The edge of a mattress. As she collapsed onto silk sheets, her last coherent thought was: Tomorrow, I'm going to kill Jenna. What happened next was lodged in her memory like shards of glass—impossible to piece together. Something moved in the dark. The mattress dipped. A body—scorching hot—pressed against her from behind. An arm wrapped around her waist, too strong to fight. She tried to struggle, but her limbs were useless, too weak to lift. The person behind her was breathing. Heavy, deep breaths carrying a strange scent—cold, wild, like wind sweeping down from snow-capped mountains, or some beast stirring deep in its lair. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. His nose traced slowly down her skin. Smelling her. Like an animal claiming its prey. Then he stopped. "...You." He spoke. The voice rumbled from deep in his chest—hoarse, strained, carrying the satisfaction of something finally, after too long, claimed. Sophia didn't understand what he meant. She tried to open her eyes, but her lids were lead. She tried to speak, but her lips wouldn't move. He turned her over. Moonlight slipped through a gap in the curtains, and she caught a glimpse of eyes. Not human eyes. They glowed in the dark with an icy light—like a wolf's, like something out of ancient myth, burning with emotions she couldn't read. He looked down at her, gaze tracing from her brows to her lips and lower, as if confirming she was some long-lost treasure. Then he lowered his head. Hot lips pressed against her collarbone. Then came the sting—he bit her. Not a gentle kiss. A real bite. Teeth sinking into skin, pain shooting through her. But the pain mixed with something else—an indescribable, shivering pleasure that spread through her veins, pooling in her limbs. She heard him make a low, satisfied sound. Then consciousness shattered, and she sank into darkness. Sunlight stabbed through her eyelids. Sophia bolted upright. Her head throbbed like someone had split it open with an axe. Where was she? Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, an unfamiliar skyline sprawled—she recognized Midtown Manhattan, but the angle was wrong. Too high. She looked down: Central Park lay like a green handkerchief beneath her. Fortieth floor? Fiftieth? She looked at herself. Her burgundy cocktail dress was a wrinkled mess, one strap slipped to her elbow, the hem hiked up to her thighs. A patch of dark marks dotted her collarbone—hickeys. Or rather, bite marks. She could still see the clear imprint of teeth. Her brain exploded in alarm. She tried to piece together last night, but only fragments remained: the elevator, the hallway, the door... and a pair of hands. Hot, strong hands that held her against a hard chest. And those eyes—glowing in the moonlight, inhuman eyes. A nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. She scrambled out of bed, almost collapsing as her legs gave way. A small dark stain on the sheets caught her eye, but she looked away quickly, stumbling around to find her bag. Her bag lay by the door. Her phone had fallen beside it, the screen cracked into a spiderweb. She grabbed it and checked the time: 7:30 AM. An hour and a half before work started. Enough time to get home, change, and pretend none of this had happened. Before leaving, she glanced back at the room. A luxury suite. Understated elegance. Dark furniture, abstract paintings on the walls. A silver frame on the nightstand faced away from her. She didn't dare go near it. Run. She yanked open the door and fled down the hall. The elevator descended. The numbers ticked down, but her heart wouldn't slow. When she reached the lobby, she kept her head low, hurrying through, praying no one would stop her. Wait. She stopped dead. Looking down at her clenched right hand—she didn't remember grabbing anything. But something was pressed against her palm. A cufflink. Gold. Heavy, exquisitely crafted. Engraved with an emblem: a wolf's head, fierce lines, eyes set with tiny deep-green gems that glinted in the light. Not hers. Nothing the men at the party could afford. His. The man who'd bitten her in the dark. Sophia shoved the cufflink into her bag and ran outside. As she waited for a cab, she glanced back at the hotel's name: Blackwood Palace. One of the most expensive hotels in Manhattan. The penthouse suite went for twelve thousand a night. She'd stayed for free. The price, she didn't dare imagine. Three days later. "Did you hear? The new CEO from headquarters is here today!" "I saw the photo—oh my God, he's too hot to be human..." "And so young! Only thirty-two, worth billions, never married, no scandals!" Sophia walked into the open-plan office with her coffee and found a cluster of female colleagues crowded around the reception desk, buzzing like it was Christmas. She didn't care. She just wanted to forget the nightmare of the past three days. That night. Those hands. Those eyes. And the cufflink—she'd thrown it away three times, and each time it had reappeared in her bag. First, she dropped it in her apartment building's trash can; the next morning, it lay quietly on her pillow. Second, she flushed it down the office toilet; when she got home, it sat on her desk. Third, she dropped it between the subway tracks, watched it fall—and found it under her pillow that night. She stopped trying. She locked the cufflink in the deepest drawer of her desk and pretended it didn't exist. "All departments, meeting in the conference room at 9:30! The new CEO wants to address all employees—mandatory attendance!" Sophia sighed, grabbed her notebook, and followed the crowd. Blackwood International occupied an entire sixty-story glass tower in downtown Manhattan. The main conference room was on the fifty-eighth floor, capacity two hundred, with floor-to-ceiling views of the skyline. She squeezed into the back corner, leaning against the wall, staring at her phone. 9:29 AM. The conference room door swung open. The murmuring died instantly. The room fell into a graveyard hush. Sophia looked up. Then her blood turned to ice. The man walking in wore a perfectly tailored charcoal suit. Tall as a top model, features sharp and cold, lips pressed in a firm line. He radiated an aura that screamed keep away. He moved like a panther—each step precise, elegant, coiled with power. But his eyes. They were storm-cloud gray. Cold, piercing, utterly devoid of warmth as they swept across the crowd, as if everyone present were merely ants beneath his feet. Sophia had seen those eyes before. In moonlight. Glowing with an icy fire. Hovering over her. Her nails dug into her palms, sharp enough to hurt, the only thing stopping her from screaming. The man reached the front of the room, turned, and slowly let his gaze travel over the assembled employees. Then he stopped. In that instant, everyone felt something shift. The air thickened. The temperature seemed to drop. All heads turned to follow his stare—to the back row. To the corner. To her. Sophia met those gray eyes. Three seconds. Maybe two. But to her, it felt like an eternity. He recognized her. She saw something ignite deep in his gaze—recognition, possession, the satisfaction of a hunter spotting his prey. The corner of his mouth lifted. That expression wasn't a smile. It was a declaration. "Good morning." His voice rolled out, low as a cello string, each word striking Sophia's heart. "I'm Kaelen Blackwood. As of today, I'm the new CEO of Blackwood International." Silence. Not a pin dropped. And his eyes still hadn't left her. "I have only one rule." He paused, scanned the room, and then fixed his gaze on her again. "I don't like people touching what's mine." When he said it, he was looking at her. Sophia had no idea how she survived that meeting. She stared at her notebook, at the meaningless doodles she'd made, but she felt his gaze on her the entire time—like a brand. His voice filled the room, talking about strategy, future plans, performance targets. She didn't register a single word. Forty minutes later, the meeting ended. Everyone rose, applauding. She blended into the stream of bodies, fighting to escape. "Sophia Miller?" A hand touched her shoulder. She froze, then turned. A bespectacled man in an expensive suit stood there, a badge reading "Executive Assistant" on his chest. "Sophia Miller? I'm David Harrington, Mr. Blackwood's personal assistant. He'd like to see you in his office. Now." Colleagues who hadn't yet left halted in their tracks. Dozens of eyes snapped toward her—sympathy, schadenfreude, curiosity, jealousy. Everything. Sophia drew a deep breath. No escaping this. "All right." She followed David to the private elevator, enduring the whispers. The doors closed, sealing off the stares, but her heart pounded harder. The elevator rose. Fifty-ninth floor. Sixtieth. The top. When the doors opened, she faced a corridor carpeted in dark wool, ending in a black door. David knocked, pushed it open, and stepped aside. "Please." Sophia walked in. The door clicked shut behind her. The office was enormous. One entire wall of glass faced the Manhattan skyline, flooding the room with blinding light. A massive black desk stood before the window, flanked by a charcoal-gray sofa set. A huge abstract painting hung on one wall, colors blazing like fire. He stood at the window, back to her, long fingers holding an unlit cigarette. Sunlight traced a golden outline around his shoulders—broad, tapering to a narrow waist, legs long and straight, every line sculpted like a statue. Sophia stood still. Five seconds. Ten. "Come here." He spoke without turning, voice low, commanding. Sophia didn't move. He turned. Backlit, his face was shadowed, but those usually cold gray eyes now burned bright as ice on fire. He looked at her, gaze sliding from her face down to her neck—and stopping. Instinctively, she wanted to cover the faint teeth marks still visible on her collarbone. But before her hand could rise, he moved. He walked toward her. One step. Two. Three. She backed up until her spine hit the door. Cold wood pressed against her, nowhere to run. He stopped inches away, close enough that she could smell his scent—cedar, amber, and something wild, indefinable. The same scent from that night. He lifted an arm and braced his hand against the door above her head, leaning down. She turned her face away, squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath. His nose brushed her neck. He inhaled deeply. She felt his breath warm against her skin, sending tiny shivers across her flesh. Several seconds later, he lifted his head. She opened her eyes and met his gaze. Something dark churned beneath the surface, like a sea before a storm—power barely held in check. He spoke, voice lower now, roughened: "You still smell like me."