The Sickened Luna's Last Chance novel Chapter 332

The club was dark–deliberately so, I realized. The lighting was dim and red, pulsing like a fire. Maybe it was the color or the alcohol clouding my senses or both, but I couldn’t make out anyone’s faces.

It created an atmosphere of mystery, of possibility. I could see why singles flocked here during full moons. The anonymity was intoxicating.

I decided to let myself get lost in it, just for a few minutes. Taking my drink, I made my way to the dance floor and pushed toward the center, winding around writhing bodies and groping hands and hot breaths.

The music seemed to intensify at the center of the dance floor, a wild array of beats and flashing lights and twisting forms all around me. Without conscious thought, I started to move to the music. I shut my eyes and let the music take me somewhere else, somewhere far away from the pain of everyday life.

It didn’t take long before I felt hands on me. They were warm and gentle on my waist, and when I cracked my eyes open just for a second, I found that a tall, broad–shouldered man had begun to dance with me.

I couldn’t make out his face between the lighting and my drunkenness, but judging from the set of his jaw, he was handsome.

Sober me would have slapped his hands away and probably thrown my drink in his face for even touching me without permission.

But the alcohol, my pain, and the pull of the full moon lowered my inhibitions.

So I let him dance with me. I let him guide my hips to the beat of the music. Hell, I even pressed my free palm against his chest, fingers splaying wide to feel the broad plane of muscle and skin through his thin white button–down.

I could feel his heart beating in tandem with the music, in tandem with my own.

My wolf went wild at that sensation. She urged me closer, closer until our bodies were pressed flush and groins grinding against one another. Excitement sparked through my haze of drunkenness at the feeling of him against me–and at the sensation of his equal arousal pressing against my leg.

This was dangerous. Frivolous, too, especially with the state of my life right now.

The irony wasn’t lost on me, of course; this was the life I had dreamt of all those months ago when I was dying. I’d imagined being single, beautiful, dancing in clubs with handsome strangers and living the life I’d never gotten to live.

Well, here I was. Only the circumstances were far darker than the ones I had imagined back then.

But in this moment, I found myself tilting my head back to let him kiss me. I found myself groaning, my voice lost beneath the music, as he grazed his lips across my neck. Pleasure fluttered through me like a thousand hummingbirds all at once.

When his lips finally met mine, it was like those birds turned into pure electricity. It shot beneath my skin, curled around my muscles, pooled in the lowest depths of my belly where my arousal lay.

Reaching up to hook my arm around his neck, I whined into his mouth, tasting the sweetness of his tongue as it swirled around. mine. My drink was forgotten–this was what I truly needed. Not alcohol, but intimacy. Passion to drown out the bad thoughts.

I curled my fingers into his silky hair and drew him closer, aching to taste every inch of the inside of his mouth even if we would never see each other again or even know each other’s names.

But when I pulled back for air and met a pair of husky green eyes, my mind immediately sobered and the plastic cup slipped from my fingers.

Because it wasn’t a stranger after all.

It was Alexander. Staring at me with the same shock on his face as on mine.

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“Stella?”

I couldn’t hear his voice over the music, but I could see the way his lips formed my name. My fake name.

This wasn’t a beautiful, sordid fantasy. It was a mistake.

Without a word, I turned and ran away, leaving him standing there amidst a pool of vodka and regret.