9 - LEXI - YOU MADE ME HUNGRY

I open my eyes. The ceiling is high, white, bare, and the light slipping through the heavy curtains is faint. It takes me a second to process that I’m not in my apartment. I’m in Cael’s room.

The bed is massive, soft, dressed in stark white sheets. Two oversized nightstands, a stone floor softened by pale rugs, and a closet big enough to swallow my entire place. This bedroom alone is larger than my whole apartment.

I’m alone. I don’t know where he slept — or if he did.

But the emptiness of the space, its cold decoration, drags me back to last night. To my new, unwanted reality: threatened by some kind of… gangster, and hiding with the two most enigmatic men I’ve ever met. Men who unsettle me… men who draw me in. Especially one of them — the worst of the two.

I step out and explore the apartment: an enormous open-plan space, almost like a studio, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing a breathtaking view of the city. Dark leather sofas, glass-and-metal coffee tables. At the center of it all, raised on a platform two steps higher than the rest of the floor, a grand black piano commands the room.

Everything is black, white, or gray. Beautiful, but far too impersonal for me. It feels like an extension of the club downstairs, except for the thick rugs trying to warm the space. No photos. Just paintings — morbid, heavy — and strange sculptures, clay-like, scattered over the furniture.

The clock on the wall says almost noon. How long did I sleep? And where the hell are they?

I find everything I need in the bathroom, and head down one floor, ready to work, but the place is eerily silent. I check the office, the game room — no Samiel. Then I find them.

In the center of the training hall, Sami and Eryon move in a dance as brutal as Cael’s fight had been — and it’s strange to see the bartender fully recovered already, when Cael had nearly broken him in half. The wall is still cracked, plaster ripped out by his body.

Samiel is shirtless, his defined torso gleaming, his almost-blond hair sticking up with sweat. Beside him, Eryon is a mountain of dark-skinned muscle, moving with impossible speed and flexibility for his size.

The two of them are unreal. And they look dangerous as hell. I bite my lower lip, captivated by the fight. I don’t see the brutality I saw when Eryon fought Cael. Now it looks like something else — an exhibition of strength, a contest perfectly natural between two creatures fueled by testosterone.

God, when did I start thinking this kind of raw aggression was normal? What are these men doing to my head?

Samiel’s the first to notice me. A slow smile spreads across his face. He stills, and both of them turn to look at me.

— Morning, Sleeping Beauty — Sami says, voice dripping with irony. — Sleep well?

Eryon brushes past me, reaching for a towel. His dark eyes rake over me head to toe, and a wicked smile plays at his full lips—lips that look far too easy to imagine against mine. He leans in, his voice low, a whisper meant for me alone.

— Wanted to get to know you better… but you made me hungry.

He pulls back with a laugh, and a shiver runs through me that has nothing to do with the chill in the air.

Hungry? What the hell does he mean by that? The question coils inside me, unsettled.

Samiel steps closer, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel.

— Did you like the fight?

I catch my bottom lip between my teeth again, and his eyes flick down to the movement. But before I can answer, a woman strides into the room.

She’s elegant, with dark hair and startling blue eyes. I recognize her instantly — the woman who’d been sprawled across Cael’s lap the night I first met him.

— Alexia, right? — Her voice is smooth, marked with a heavy European accent. She offers her hand.  — I’m Zara. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.

I take her hand, though something sharp pricks at me. Jealousy? No. That can’t be it. Why the hell would I feel jealous over Cael? And yet the sting is there, a fine needle under my skin. What is she doing here? What’s her role in this place? Or does she come only for him?

Eryon and Zara leave together, and suddenly it’s just me and Samiel.

He tugs me toward the sofa, and a rush of heat prickles my skin at the memory of the last time he and I were on a couch together — my couch, in my apartment.

— So what’s it going to be? — he asks, his voice low, a near purr. His eyes don’t move from mine. — You staying? Drinking our bad wine?

I study him, trying to see past that charming smile, past that angelic voice he’s chosen to use again.

I arch a brow.

— Stop talking like that… with that voice of yours…

His smile widens, and I lose my breath. His gaze drifts slowly across my face, dips to my mouth, slides down my neck… lingers over the silk stretched across my breasts… before climbing back to my eyes.

— I want you to stay.

I hold his gaze for a moment. He knows I don’t have a choice, but he wants me to say yes, as if this were mine to decide and not theirs. Since the moment we met, Samiel’s been luring me into their game — inviting me to surrender — but never spelling out the rules, never saying what they truly want from me.

— Why? — I ask, my voice barely more than a whisper.

Silence.

Then — a noise. From the first floor.

Sami rises and strides quickly toward the back doors of the club.

I follow, heart racing. I reach the doorway just in time to see Cael staggering inside.

The gasp tears out of me so hard it makes a sound.

His suit is shredded across the back, skin split open and slick with ruby-red. His face is streaked with blood, dripping into one eye. He can barely hold himself upright, his body trembling with exhaustion and pain.

— Zara! — His roar shakes the walls, deep and sharp with impatience.

Samiel hauls Cael’s arm over his shoulder, bracing him, carrying his weight down the hall toward the office. Seconds later, Zara rushes past me, horror etched across her face, and the three of them disappear inside.

The door slams shut in my face without a word of explanation. But in that instant—just a fraction of a second before it closes — Cael’s eyes find mine.

And what I see in that steel isn’t just pain.

It’s hate.

His stare cuts through me with brutal force… the force of an accusation.