Kian

“It wouldn’t be the same way.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

I advanced toward him, touching my chest. “I am the only one who knows what you’re capable of, just like you’re the only one who’s seen me at my most vulnerable. You’ve seen me stripped bare. He could’ve done whatever he wanted. I was the most helpless that I’ll ever be in my life.” A ball grew in my throat.

The words didn’t want to come. Hell, I didn’t want to say them, but this was important. Everything in me was screaming to let this out. It needed to be said, and somehow, I hoped it would help him. Somehow, it had to.

“Kian,” I murmured, moving with caution toward him. I was nearing a cornered wild animal, one that was wounded. I needed to go so carefully. “You lost control with Edmund because he was hurting me. You stopped him. Losing control that day and losing control with me—they’re two very different things. This is something else. It’s life. What you did to Edmund was to punish him. You saved me. You ended a life. Two completely separate things.”

“I can’t ever hurt you.” He shook his head. “I was in prison for two years. Thinking of you…I wanted to be with you even then. You were the first thing I thought about when I got out. I could finally see you. I realized you were hiding, and I had to find you. It felt like it did in high school—” He bit off his next words.

What? I frowned. My voice was hoarse again. “Finish that sentence.”

He didn’t. He waited, holding my gaze steady.

“It felt like it did in high school,” I started for him. This was important, whatever he was holding back. “What about high school? How was it like in high school?”

His gaze was lidded as he watched me. There was yearning there, but anger sparked, too. It flamed up, and his jaw clenched once again, but he still said nothing.

I had to know. “Kian.”

“Nothing.”

“Kian.” I reached for him.

He brushed me off, retreating from the room. He’d moved with such litheness that I stopped from going after him. It hadn’t been a big movement, but it was how he’d moved.

I remembered how fast he’d sliced Edmund’s throat. At one moment, Kian had stared at me. I had seen the intent in his eyes, but before I could register it and say something or even consider saying something, it had been done. He’d held Edmund in front of him, his arm paralyzing Edmund against himself, and then his arm had slashed in one smooth motion. It had been done. Edmund had watched me, too, his eyes wild and frenzied. He had tried to struggle against Kian’s hold, but Kian brought the knife across Edmund’s throat and then let him fall.

Kian was a killer.

The reminder was glaring to me. Caution and warning mixed with the lust swirling inside me.

It didn’t matter. I still wanted him. “Kian.” My throat was filled with emotion. It hurt to call for him. When I stepped from the room, he was pulling on a jacket by the back door.

“Where are you going?” I asked, bracing a hand against the wall.

His eyes were tortured. The fury and desperation were gone. He was haunted now.

“I need to calm down because I’m two seconds away from grabbing you and taking you against the wall.”

Yes! My eyes lit up. I started to grin.

I wanted nothing else, but he clipped his head from side to side and reached for the door. He was outside in the next second. I hurried to the door, grabbing the handle. It wouldn’t open. He was holding it from the other side.

His voice came through the door, low and quiet. “You can’t follow me.”

“Kian.” I hit the door with my fist.

“When I’m with you, it won’t be while we’re hiding. It won’t be when I can’t hold your hand in daylight. It won’t be when I have to call you a different name. And it won’t be fucking. It’ll be tender. It’ll mean something.”

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the door. With each statement, the fight left me.

He added, his voice rough, “It’ll be when I can call you mine to the world. Until then, let me cool off.” He quieted for a beat. “I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”

I felt his absence more than hearing him walking away from the door.

I took in a gasping breath, feeling the tears burning at the corners of my eyes, waiting to be shed. I didn’t let them fall, but they burned me, just as his words had singed me. Turning against the door, I slid down to the floor and bent forward, my head hanging over my knees.

I let the tears fall.

They weren’t falling because Kian had left me. They were falling because, for once, I didn’t have to hide.