Page 45 of The Sin Binder's Vow

“I was going to,” I murmur, “but then you shoved me against a door like a fantasy, and now my brain is just… tits and dragons.”

His eyes blink. “Tits and—what?”

“Shut up. I panicked.”

“No, no,dragons?” He laughs, real and wrecked, dropping his forehead to my shoulder with a groan. “I finally go full seduction andthat’syour internal monologue?”

“You’re the one who started it with your face,” I mutter, biting back a grin.

His knee nudges between mine, parting them just slightly, not enough to break me open but enough to make me feel like I already have. My heart's thudding against my ribs, and he hasn’t even touched me yet—not really.

I tilt my chin up. “You’re drunk.”

“Drunk on you,” he whispers, and even he cringes. “Shit. Shit. I didn’t mean that—”

Too late. It’s already out there. Floating between us like the worst line in the worst tavern song ever written.

“Are you quoting yourself?” I blink up at him, trying not to laugh. “Because that sounds suspiciously like something Silas would say while doing finger guns.”

“Don’t insult me. I’d never do finger guns.”

“You just fingered my dignity into oblivion.”

He lets out a broken, embarrassed laugh and drops his forehead to my shoulder. “This is why I don’t do sexy. My brain short-circuits. My cock takes over. He’s got no social skills, Luna. He doesn’t know how to talk to women.”

I curl my fingers into the hem of his shirt, tugging him closer. “You were doing so good too. All that broody intensity back there—very hot. Ten out of ten. And then—”

“—I said drunk on you.” His groan is muffled against my neck. “End me.”

“I might.” My hand slides up his chest, nails grazing over his heart. “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He lifts his head, and the look in his eyes is feral and soft all at once—like he would let me destroy him, and thank me for the wreckage. “I love you,” he says, too low for anyone but me to hear, even in the silence of this room. “Even when I’m a walking cringe compilation.”

I don’t need poetry. I don’t need perfect. I just need this—him, here, real, trembling slightly from everything he feels and can’t hide anymore.

“I know,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss the corner of his smirk. “And I love you too, you idiot.”

His breath catches. “Does that mean I’m getting lucky?”

And instead of saying something sexy or smart or even vaguely alluring, I blurt—

“If you keep pressing me against things, I might develop a door kink.”

His silver eyes catch mine and something in them snaps.

“Gods, you’re going to ruin me,” he murmurs, and his mouth dips to the edge of my throat like it belongs there.

And because I’m drunk, and flustered, and an absolute disaster when this much heat coils low in my belly—I say, “If you want me to ruin you, you better tell me where you keep the warranty.”

His body jerks once—an aborted laugh? A groan? I have no idea—but he drops his head to my shoulder like I’ve just committed a war crime.

“I was this close to being hot,” he mutters into my skin. “Like—legitimately hot. Door slam, wall pin, forbidden tryst levels of hot.”

“I felt it,” I whisper dramatically. “I was tingling.”

“You were tingling,” he echoes with mock betrayal, lifting his head and narrowing his eyes. “And that’s what you chose to say?”

I try for a serious nod but the giggle escapes before I can stop it. “There’s more where that came from. My entire sexual repertoire is puns and regret.”

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