Chapter 2 The Encounter

Lyssara Velmora:

The moon outside the café seemed brighter. Night had barely fallen, and it was already in the sky, competing with the sunset and the Umbra Mountain Ranges in the background. It looked like a landscape painting.

Contrary to common sense—when one spoke of the moon, a full moon automatically came to mind—this one was different: a jagged moon, missing a sliver, as if it were a waning crescent inverted that, instead of hiding, revealed.

A waxing gibbous moon, I thought to myself. What the fuck is "gibbous"?!

Inside Dawson's Café, the view had always been the best thing. Better than the coffee they served or the apple pie.

"Here, Lyssara," Lucien set down the large mug of coffee with cream and cinnamon that I always ordered.

His figure blocked my view of the window. Lazily, I raised my gaze from my cup up his narrow hip, covered by a dark gray apron with the Dawson's logo: a rising sun through the Canadian Umbra Mountains—the postcard of Ravenmoor, the university town where I'd lived my entire life.

His dense, dark-blond beard, boyish smile, the expression lines around his hazel eyes, and his thick eyebrows seemed like an invitation.

"Are you coming up or waiting for me to finish my shift?"

I didn't answer him. I held the warm mug and blew over the rim before taking small sips.

Something was wrong with me today. Very wrong.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Lines of fiery chills ran across my skin from the base of my spine all the way up. At the same time that I trembled from the cold, desperate for the hot drink, drops of sweat ran between my breasts and down my back.

A low growl reverberated in my mind and made me throb between my legs so wildly that I spilled hot coffee on my blouse. Startled, I threw the mug onto the table. It tipped over onto my notebook's keyboard.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

I didn't have the money to fix this! If it could even be fixed!

Lucien tried to help me. His firm forearms holding the computer and drying the keys as fast as he could. I grabbed a bunch of napkins from the holder and dried myself, taking the heat off my skin. Then I tried to clean the notebook.

"I think I'll need to go upstairs," I stated, defeated, looking at my powered-off computer, terrified that it might be ruined. "I need to change my blouse and get a clean bra."

"I did laundry the day before yesterday. Some of your stuff was in it. It's in the drawer," Lucien said, somewhat embarrassed.

Another growl. This time more aggressive and animalistic. It made my insides twist, and another chill ran down my spine as if it were a line of fire instead of ice. At the same time that I felt fear, I felt ashamed, as if I were doing something wrong and being scolded like a child.

I lowered my head until my chin almost touched my chest. In a gesture of submission that wasn't a characteristic of mine. Not at all. I had always been combative.

The growl grew louder. I raised my head in curiosity. There was no way anyone else was hearing this. Darla, the café owner, always said Dawson's was pet-friendly, but someone in there had a dog about to attack. I looked around, however, and saw none.

What I found was a guy sitting near the entrance, his back to me, looking at me over his shoulder. He was surely watching the spilled coffee commotion. But his yellow irises locked onto me, trapping me in place.

The heavy leather jacket, with sheepskin lining on the collar, covered half his face. But his eyes held me captive.

Yellow eyes were extremely rare! I knew this because I had them too.

Mine were nowhere near as vivid as his, but that small similarity left me breathless. His dark eyebrows were furrowed, with a deep crease between them. His wavy light brown hair fell in waves to the nape of his neck.

But it was his aggressiveness, coming in waves in my direction, that made me wary.

I closed my cream, cinnamon, and sugar-sticky notebook, shoving it into my backpack. At least the file was saved, and I wouldn't lose what I was writing before Lucien's indecent proposal derailed me.

I was never affected by Lucien's insinuations. Never! We'd become friends as soon as I arrived at university. The benefits came sometime later, but the status wouldn't change. We were friends—on my part, at least.

Lucien was eight years older than me. A difference that only mattered now. When I was fifty and he fifty-eight, no one would even say anything. But now, me being twenty-one and him twenty-nine, it drew attention. Especially from my mother, who was terrified that this was some kind of search for a father figure and that I was looking for a daddy because of my "daddy issues"—in this case, the lack of a father.

The problem with changing the relationship status between Lucien and me had another, completely different reason.

He wanted more.

I couldn't. I never could. No matter how "charmed" I became with someone, the second a label was put on it, things went downhill, as if I already knew it would end.

"Are you okay?" he asked me, worried.

"More or less... I'm going upstairs, take a shower, and we'll talk when your shift is over, okay?"

There was no point in lying to him. Lucien had the gift of seeing my lies.

I didn't even remember exactly how I met him. Suddenly, Lucien was there everywhere: protecting, caring, and loving. It had always been like this between us, a world of our own. I never met any of his friends, nor had I ever introduced him to any classmates. Two loners who converged in life.

I went up the stairs at the back of the café's hall and, using his apartment key, entered.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. Musky male sweat and... sour milk?

The place was what anyone would define as a bachelor pad: a gigantic television, video game consoles, an enormous sectional sofa, a sandbag hanging from the central wooden beam right in the middle of the path to the "bedroom," and some shelves with dumbbells. There was no decoration or photographs. Behind the partition, a king-size bed with messy bedding.

He needed someone to sort this shit out. It wasn't going to be me.

The chills continued running down my spine, and the sweat made me take off my coat and hang it behind the door, next to his. I left my backpack on the small island in the open space and went straight to the cramped bathroom.

I took off my clothes, not wanting to put them in the hamper and abuse his hospitality. I wasn't Lucien's girlfriend; he didn't have to wash my clothes. He shouldn't have "a drawer" in his apartment. Maybe we were doing this too often.