Stolen panties

Thalia's POV

I woke up to the chill of exposed skin and the terror of stolen panties.

I was scared. Not because of the "Lunar Surge" everyone talks about, or even the four guys in this house who are supposedly part of it.

What really freaked me out was that someone had come into my room, touched me, and stolen my underwear.

And I am supposed to be their Sister?

The thought of not knowing which of them had done this was driving me crazy.

I needed to know who.

But first, I needed to eat. And to eat required descending to the kitchen, required facing them.

I took a couple of shaken breaths, attempting to calm the frantic thud of my heart, and told myself to get dressed in clean clothes.

I would not let them glimpse so much as a glimmer of what I then suspected, or of what had happened.

The house was horribly quiet as I crept down to the ground floor. No voices.

They're all likely to be busy in their secret lair, trying to understand people's body languages and donating millions to charity.

A momentary feeling of relief.

I entered the kitchen, the gleaming surfaces unsettlingly spotless. I needed something simple, something to anchor me.

Eggs.

Toast. Something to fill the hollow thrum in my stomach that wasn't hunger.

I pulled open a cutting board, a knife, and started chopping peppers for an omelet, the thwack-thwack of the knife on the wood a small, comforting familiarity in the midst of the strangest of aliens.

My back to the door, my gaze on the colorful vegetables, when warm, large hands suddenly encircled my waist.

I froze, all my muscles locked.

The scent that enveloped me was earthy, wild, with something keenly mournful.

Rhys.

"Hello, Thalia," his deep voice rumbled, husky and low, by my ear.

His hands around my waist contracted infinitesimally, not hurting, but imprisoning me. "What are you doing in my kitchen?"

My breath stuck. He must not know, be aware of the violation. But how could he not? Should he not? Was this his way of explaining it to me?

"Making breakfast," I struggled to answer, my voice uncertain, chopping another pepper. "What does it look like?"

He smiled gently, his laughter vibrating within me, even as his body didn't move any closer to me. "It looks like you're cooking breakfast. But did nobody tell you that you don't have the authority to prepare anything whatsoever in my kitchen without asking?"

A blinding, crackling jolt of electricity shot through me at his touch, a shivery echo of the dream. My arm burned where his fingers rested.

"I didn't know a kitchen needed a permission slip," I snapped at him, trying sarcasm, trying to keep my voice even.

My hands were still clamped around the knife, but it felt flimsy, insufficient. "And no one told me." I added.

As if in answer, his body shifted, totally closing the gap between us.

He pressed his body fully against my back, shoulder to hip, holding me fast against the counter.

My breath hanged. He smelled of wet earth and something much older, something that thrummed deep within my bones.

His head lowered, jaw against the curve of my ear, and a low, raw growl trembled in the back of his chest. It wasn't threatening, not really, but it was raw, primal, and utterly unnerving.

"Well, now you know," he whispered, his voice a low thrum against my ear. His hands shifted, his fingers digging gently into my sides, then, slowly, slowly, he began to rub against me.

His hard body, unyielding and warm, pressed into my backside, the friction building, impossible to resist.

My breath stuck again.

This was wrong.

So wrong.

All of my instincts were howling to turn and leave, to recoil, to fight. But I couldn't. I was stuck, held pinned by a nauseating mixture of fear and something else, something shameful which coiled deep within my gut at the pressure of his flesh against mine. His scent filled my lungs, making me reeling.

"Ask next time," he whispered, his hips still rotating slowly, tauntingly

"ask."

Finally, after what seemed like forever but was probably just seconds, he withdrew.

I missed his warmth and weight.

Shamefully.

I was cold and shaking in the instant he disappeared. I rocked forward slightly, holding to the counter, the knife still in my hand.

I did not dare turn around. I did not dare glance in his eyes. But I sensed his eyes on my back, heavy and knowing, before I heard his soft, near-silent footsteps recede from the kitchen.

My fingers dropped the knife onto the cutting board with a clatter. My legs were jelly. Was it him?

Could it be him that touched me last night?

After Rhys's terrifying departure from the kitchen, I hurriedly made my food and fled.

My trembling legs carried me once more up the sweeping staircase and straight into my room. The door slammed shut behind me with a deafening thud, one that was more like a lock clicking into place. I stumbled back, falling onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, lost.

My mind flinched back, screaming improper- improper-improper.

I couldn't think of it.

I would not think of it.

It was wrong. All of it.

The missing panties, the sheer disrespect for my boundaries, my consent. And now, the terrible truth of the Lunar Surge, making these already dangerous men something perhaps monstrous.

I hugged my knees to me and held them tight against my chest, trying to shrink, to disappear. I did not want to come out again at least for now.

---

Hours crept into a full throb of isolation. Sunlight outside my window shifted from morning brightness to evening breeze.

My stomach rumbled, but the prospect of going back to them once more, of entering that kitchen, made me sick.

Starving for any release, any relief from the suffocating fear and embarrassment, I clung to my phone.

The blue glow of the screen was a lifeline to the world that I had lost. I scrolled numbly through my social media pages, the comforting ritual of forgetting.

Friends' faces, inane memes, headlines – anything to force the memory from my head.

I stopped.

My thumb numbed its way across the screen.

A picture. A selfie, smiling and lovely. Ryan. And to his side, her head on his shoulder, was Chloe. My friend.

The caption of heart emojis. with the abbreviation “LOML”

What?

No.

My breath hitched, caught in my throat. My vision grew fuzzy, but the image remained, gruesomely clear.

Chloe that bitch!

He left me—

He left me for my best friend?

My heart literally shattered.