She wasn’t playing a game anymore. Her mother had warned her about severing from Lucas. In the few cases it had happened, the people had been recorded as being nothing but shells of themselves.

That image wasn’t something she wanted for her life, or for Lucas. There was no way she could be that cruel to him.

****

Lucas sat reading his book.

The hour grew late, and still, he kept reading the same page he had for the last half an hour.

Was Mabel back in her room or asleep in his bed?

He wanted to go up and see, but he held himself back. Disappointment was a feeling he knew and had experienced often.

He continued to stare at the page until he finally gave up. Reading was supposed to relax him. Not make him even tenser than ever before.

He ran fingers through his hair and expelled a breath. He wasn’t in the best of moods. Mabel was different. At breakfast and dinner, he’d noticed her stares, and he was too fucked up to even ask her why. Like so many times before, he ignored it.

At the moment, their relationship was too volatile to keep on questioning everything.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Mabel said.

He turned to find her wearing a silk nightgown. “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

“Is that why you’re here? Hoping to avoid me?”

The silk molded to her waist but flared out, covering up way too much of her body. She stepped into the room.

“I never want to avoid you.” Arguments, he did. They tended to draw the worst out in each other.

“Is it a good book?”

“Apparently.”

“You’ve been reading it since we got here.”

“It started out great. I don’t know what the fuck I read tonight.” His hands itched to touch her. She’d walked closer so she was right in front of him now, their knees practically touching. All it would take was for him to reach out and he’d be able to hold her.

He stayed perfectly still.

“I was thinking about you upstairs, us.”

“Anything good?”

She played with the belt of her robe. She tugged it open and he watched in amazement as she removed the robe from her body and stood before him naked. Her long hair fell around her, framing her body.

She spread the thighs open and then she straddled his lap.

As he ran his hands down her back, his cock was instantly to attention.