I stepped up to one of the walls in Kieran’s bedroom and ran my fingers over the many hollows in it, wondering how many were due to boredom and training, and how many were in response to his darkness.
I’d woken to an empty bed and room, but somehow, I’d felt calm and safe.
Maybe it was this room. Maybe it was still being wrapped in his comforter and scent. Maybe it was simply his lingering presence.
I wanted this comfort forever.
I was going to miss it.
As much as I wanted to stay here, I now only had five days before I had to come up with three thousand dollars . . . and I was struggling with how to do that.
I knew how, but five days wasn’t enough time. A week wouldn’t have been enough.
And now I had no phone to contact my clients. I had a man in an SUV stalking my every move. And I had Kieran . . .
But he would never look at me the same.
I knew he would find a way to help me if I asked. I knew he would put an end to AJ.
But it wasn’t his job, and I never wanted to owe him for anything.
Momma was my responsibility. Always had been, always would be.
A shudder moved through my body and I dragged in a sharp breath.
There.
I bit at my lip to hide my smile. He was just so silent.
“What if I was made for you and you were made for me?” I asked quietly.
His strong arms folded around my waist, pulling me against his chest.
My eyes shut as I tried to memorize the feel of him molded to me like this.
“Talk to me,” he begged.
“About what?”
“Everything.”
I looked at him and smiled against the quick kiss he pressed to my lips. “I hate that I miss you when you’re not around. I hate that I feel so weak without you . . . and so vulnerable with you.”
He traced a thumb down my jaw and over my throat. “You’re the strongest woman I know.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
His pale eyes studied mine for a long time before he said, “Maybe because you feel like you can let your guard down for the first time. That doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
Dropping your guard allowed emotions to slip through.
Emotions made you weak.
Being seen made you weak.
And he saw pieces of me that should’ve been silenced years ago.
The corner of my mouth twitched into a small smile. “If you say so.”
He dropped another swift kiss on my lips then slowly moved away from me, giving me time to steady myself now that he wasn’t supporting me.
When I turned to face him, he was a few feet away, his expression grave and his arms folded over his chest. “This morning . . .”
“Don’t.”
“We have to. What I did—” A pained noise sounded from deep in his chest. “I should’ve never let it get to that point.”
A breath of a laugh fell from my lips. “What you did? I liked what you did.”
His eyes darkened with a mixture of need and frustration.
“I did,” I repeated, my voice firm. “What happened at the end was just . . . unfortunate.”
“Not the word that comes to mind,” he ground out.
“I wanted you to continue. But with everything going on—” I bit down on my lip and swallowed thickly. The ache in my throat another reminder. Another piece of that everything. “It just consumed me so fast, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“You’re not going to tell me what’s happening.”
I shook my head.
He studied me, his fingers moving in a rolling motion to calm himself where they remained crossed over his chest. “I should’ve never let it get to that point,” he repeated.
“It’s a shame you feel that way, because I’ve been thinking . . .”
His brow ticked up at my tone, but he didn’t respond or move as I walked to where I’d left my bag—where I’d left what I’d borrowed from AJ’s warehouse.
I’ve been thinking we need this.
I’ve been thinking I need one last time with you before you can’t stand to look at me.
I’ve been thinking you mean more than you were ever supposed to.
My heart squeezed painfully, but I forced myself to ignore it—forced myself to focus on the way I was suddenly breathless. On the way my stomach was curling with want. On the way I was trembling with excitement and fear at the thought of what I was going to suggest.
Kieran’s eyes narrowed at the sound when my bag shifted, his brow dropping low.
“I’ve been thinking.” My voice was rough and barely audible to my ears as I reached into my bag. “I don’t think you’d ever be able to actually hurt me.”
His head had already started to shake, whether to assure me or warn me, I wasn’t sure, but he stopped. His expression morphed into confusion and apprehension as I slowly pulled out the long steel chain. “What—?”
“You can’t face me. I can’t give up control.” I tossed my bag to the side and gathered the chain in my hands. With a deep breath, I looked up at him and said, “Take control.”
Heat and want and carnal need burned in his eyes.
His chest moved with shallow, heaving breaths as his stare pierced me to the floor.
“Jessica,” he murmured, his voice wary, “after what happened this morning—”
“Take control,” I said again, my tone almost pleading.
Fight my demons, I silently added.
His arms slowly fell to hang at his sides, his hands clenched in tight fists as he stared at me with a look so raw and animalistic my belly flooded with heat.
“And face me.”
Like a switch, everything was gone.
He was still. His eyes were cold.
“No.” The answer was sharp, slicing through the air between us like one of his blades.
“You won’t hurt me.”
Kieran looked at me like I was . . . well, like I was insane. “You’ve seen me,” he argued.
“You won’t hurt me,” I repeated. “You have too much control even when you think you don’t.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t remember doing things. Grabbing things. Grabbing knives. No.”
“And you’ve never cut me.”
“I will hurt you,” he said roughly, his voice pained. “Jessica . . .” He raked his hands through his hair. “Did you forget what happened the first time? What happened this morning? And I was still me.”
“I remember everything with you. I’ve already thought through everything. I trust you.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “It will be there. It will come. I’ll hurt you, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
“I trust you.”
“I can’t.” He shrugged helplessly. “I can’t take that risk with you.”
“You’re going to be afraid of what that thing inside you is capable of for the rest of your life if you don’t face him.” My throat tightened and I choked out, “I’m going to be forever wrecked by the demons in my head if I don’t face them. And I’m not facing them without you.”
Minutes passed in weighted, pressing silence as we watched each other.
I’d already spent every minute of last night thinking of what I wanted. What I needed.
What we both needed.
I already knew I could trust the man standing in front of me.
I’d known when he spun me around with his sights on a man he wanted dead, a knife in each hand, and hadn’t so much as touched me. I’d known the morning in his shower when he’d stopped me from slamming into the wall, letting me fall gently against it instead, even though his movements had never seemed to slow.
No matter what took over his mind, he was always there. And he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.
He just needed to trust himself.
“Why are you pushing this?” he finally asked, his words ragged. “Why are you pushing what you shouldn’t? Why can’t you be content with what I can give you?”
I took a few slow, calculated steps toward him. “Because you know me. And I know you. I know you’re not afraid of anything except what’s inside you.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched, his fingers moving restlessly as he waited to see where I was going with that.
“I hate being weak. I hate being afraid. But my demons make me both. You’re the only one I would trust with those fractured pieces of me.”
His chest hitched. His eyes pleaded with me not to do this.
But I could see the need slowly creeping back in.
“Tell me not to do this,” he begged.
I shook my head slowly as I dropped the chain so it was only hanging from one hand.
“Take control.” My body rebelled, begging me to take back the words. “Face me. Don’t fight what happens in your mind. I trust you.”
When he took the last step to close the distance between us, his eyes were dark with need and desire, but his face was twisted with pain. “If I hurt you—”
“Just because my mind is fractured doesn’t mean I’m breakable.” I trailed my free hand down his chest, digging my nails in harder the farther I went. “I like it when you’re rough.”
A groan crawled up his throat in response.
He took the chain from me, feeling its weight in his hands for a second before grabbing my hands and pulling them forward. Curling my fingers into fists, he squeezed my hands before releasing them.
His intense stare met and held mine as he slowly wound the chain around my wrist. Once, twice, tugging gently when he drifted to the other wrist and then back again until only a couple inches of the chain hung from each side.
My fear and excitement were growing, both trying to outweigh the other.
The tremors steadily grew with each achingly slow movement he made.
One of his hands pressed to my chest, his strong, lethal fingers digging in ever so slightly as he stood there. Waiting.
And then the corner of his mouth twitched into a wicked grin.
He moved so fast I didn’t have time to prepare, didn’t have time to scream.
One second we were standing, the next he was forcing me back with nothing but his hand on my chest. My hair flew forward around me and the air rushed from my lungs. At the last instant, everything slowed so I landed against the wall as though I’d purposefully stepped back against it.
His face was there, directly in front of my own with that damn grin that was making my stomach heat and knees weak. His nose dipped along mine and his mouth brushed across my jaw as his fingers dragged down my chest so slowly and with such a teasing amount of pressure that I was already writhing against the wall.
“You want this?” he asked, his voice rougher than I’d ever heard it before.
I nodded, trying to reach his kiss despite how he held me back.
“If I hurt you . . . if you need me to stop . . . don’t scream.”
I looked into his murderous stare, trying to understand what he wasn’t saying.
With a slow curl of his mouth, he said, “That part of me might like it.”
And then he stopped breathing.
Before I could respond, Kieran grabbed my forearm and forced my arms up, his mouth crashing down onto my own to swallow the surprised cry that ripped from my throat at the sudden movement.
His mouth moved against mine roughly, possessively . . . his teeth nipping my bottom lip just as his body began shaking.
“I trust you,” I breathed against the kiss. “I trust you.”
A growl rumbled deep in his chest as his other arm arced overhead to slam into the wall.
My eyes flew open and I looked up, a stunned breath punching from my chest when I did. There, sticking out of the wall between my hands, perfectly inserted in the chains, was a large knife.
Kieran released me to run his strong hands down my arms and over my body, the knife holding me in place on the balls of my feet. Forcing me to arch and stretch, and causing the most exhilarating pain when I moved certain ways.
Gripping my shirt, he pulled it up over my chest and shoulders, but left it covering my arms and face so all I could see were the chains and knife above me.
“Still trust me?” he asked when his hands went to my shorts.
I nodded quickly, my voice trembling when I answered, “Yes.”
My chest rose and fell with rough jerks as he rid me of my shorts and underwear. The heat inside me intensified and created an ache that I tried to appease by squeezing my thighs together.
“Good.”
A breath of a whimper tumbled from my lips, growing louder when he gripped my legs and pushed them apart.
And then there was nothing.
I stood there, aching and waiting on the balls of my feet for what felt like an eternity of the sweetest torture and purest agony. Half of me was begging for him to touch me while the other half was screaming to be able to see. To be able to get free.
I cried out and arched away from the wall when his tongue swiped against my aching clit. Another long lick sent a shudder ripping through my body.
His lean, muscled shoulders settled between my thighs, spreading me farther as his movements quickened and hardened, and he devoured me in a way I never knew was possible.
And, oh God, I didn’t want it to end.
And then he pressed a finger inside me . . . and then another.
My legs were wrapped around him as he tormented me with his fingers and tongue. It was rough and everything I needed, and not nearly enough. I was completely at his mercy . . . and I’d never felt more desired.
Being desired like this? By Kieran?
It was something that made me feel whole and alive rather than the crumbling feeling of disgust and being dead inside.
The heat in my body was nearly overwhelming as I shook and trembled against the wall—in part from what he was doing to me, in part from his own shaking. My toes curled against his back as he drove me closer and closer to that escape my body craved, my breaths becoming shallower.
“I’m . . . oh God. Kieran . . .”
My body tightened, and my head fell against the wall, a moan crawling up my throat when his fingers slid back to the crease of my butt. And this time I was ready for it. This time I was craving it. My breath hitched and my body exploded when he bit down on my clit and slid his finger inside that tight hole.
He pumped in and out slowly as my body shook against him, his tongue never ceasing his beautiful torture until my body was limp.
Slight aftershocks were still traveling through my body when he set my feet on the floor, and a whimper left me when I heard his zipper.
I didn’t know how much more I could handle.
But when his trembling hands roughly ran over my hips and down my thighs, my core tightened at the remembrance of what he’d just done to me with those hands.
I jerked against the wall when his forehead fell to mine, the unhurried shake of his head slight, but still noticeable. Like he was trying to talk himself out of this. Like he was still begging me to stop this.
He stepped between my legs, his thick erection pressed against me, forcing a moan from my chest when he rocked against me, sliding teasingly against me.
Everything had flipped.
His movements were now slow, his touch gentle. Everything calculated and agonizing as his hands slid to my knees to hitch one leg up around his narrow hip and then the other. They raced back up my legs to tighten around my hips, forcing my body away from the wall.
His body was shaking harder and his chest was now heaving against mine, like he was trying to force himself to breathe again.
I’d been near Kieran enough times when he’d been on the edge of going dark. It was so physically taxing that he shook from the strain of trying to stay in control of his own mind—from fighting that thing inside him.
If he was shaking now . . .
He was still fighting.
“Let go,” I said, my voice raw and bordering a plea.
His forehead rolled along mine, his lips brushing across mine from where they peeked out beneath the shirt.
“I trust you.”
Another shuddering breath ripped from his body. And then another. With the next, he breathed the words “I love you,” across my lips.
My heart wrenched and tears filled my eyes.
And then Kieran went completely, utterly still.
No breathing.
No trembling.
The room around us felt so silent and so cold. I’d never felt anything more evil pressing down around me.
I could feel my own twisted mind responding, that old weakness flaring up. But it was silenced from the echoing of those three words.
Men had said those three words to me my entire life.
But those words had never broken me. They’d never stripped me bare. They’d never made me hate myself or had me longing to say them back.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Kieran . . .”
I felt his mouth pull into a grin against my own. I didn’t have to be able to see it—see him—to have fear pulse through me in response.
I pressed my forehead harder against his, my chest rising and falling unevenly. “I trust you.”
My cry shattered the deafening silence in the room when his hands flexed against my hips and he forced himself inside me.
He was rough and possessive, demanding and unrelenting.
His fingers gripped and worshipped, powerful and sure to bruise.
And yet . . . a plea for more was on the tip of my tongue. But I couldn’t catch my breath as he forced his length into me again and again.
His hands ran up my stomach and skimmed my breasts, my head falling back against the wall when they continued over my arms to grip just below the chains as his mouth fell to my lace-covered breast.
His teeth scraped and mouth sucked on my hardened nipple as his hips rolled forcefully between my thighs, building me higher and higher.
I was going to come crashing down. And it was going to be earth-shattering.
That heat from earlier . . . it was nothing. Nothing compared to the consuming, white-hot need racing through me that was getting hotter. Tighter.
I trembled, a whispered cry catching in my throat when the beginnings of my orgasm pulsed through my body.
My eyes fluttered open in time to see Kieran’s hand snaking across the chains and gripping the hilt of the blade.
My heart skipped painfully. I tried to force that breath of a cry into a scream, but nothing would come out. I just watched in horrified denial as Kieran wrenched the knife out of the chains and dropped his hands to my hips in the same instant.
Before I could catch my breath, my arms were falling around Kieran’s neck and the blade was flat against my thigh. And Kieran was smashing me back against the wall with an inhuman growl as he thrust into me, pushing me over the edge.
I shook almost violently from the mixture of adrenaline coursing through my body and the force of my orgasm. Their combination making each other greater until pleasure was all I knew.
I whimpered when he suddenly moved me away from the wall, my thighs tightening weakly around him when he began lowering me until my back hit the bed.
The movements were so fluid, even with me in his arms, that I never noticed him take a step or turn us.
A delicious moan slid up my throat when he rolled his hips slowly but forcefully against me, the sound cutting off when I felt my bra snap open from the front. And then he was pulling the shirt higher up my arms and above my head, giving me my first look at him.
He looked like a lethal contradiction.
So calm. So savagely animalistic.
Eyes wild. Yet lifeless.
He was terrifying. And he was beautiful.
I lifted my head, pressing my mouth to his and crying out when his slow movements shifted. Giving me everything I’d begged him for.
He raked his teeth over my bottom lip, biting roughly and drawing a sharp inhale from me. Then his mouth was moving over my jaw and down my throat, and his hands were tightening on my forearms. A visceral growl sounded from somewhere deep within him as he ground his hips roughly against mine once . . . twice . . . and then found his release inside me.
“I love you.”
His hushed confession replayed in my mind, mixing with my own.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
I ached to say the words, but some part of my destroyed soul choked them back.
They felt like freedom and clarity.
They felt like premonitions and death.
My body shuddered lightly beneath him when he slowly pulled out of me and shifted so his painfully handsome face was directly above mine again.
I was spent. I was already sore in the most amazing way. And I was in awe of him . . . of us.
There had been those moments of lingering fear when we began, but I hadn’t thought about the control I’d given up once he’d taken control.
And Kieran . . .
I studied his expression and quickly realized he was still consumed by something else entirely.
That same savage calm was covering his face. That heavy silence filled the room and pressed down on us like a dark cocoon.
Lifting my head, I brushed my mouth against his jaw, then whispered in his ear, “Kieran.”
His grip tightened on my arms.
“Kieran, come back to me.”
Nothing.
“Come back to me.”
His chest jerked against mine, the movement slight at first, then rough and uneven as he sucked in ragged breaths.
I let my heavy head fall back to the mattress, a ghost of a smile pulling at my mouth.
I kept my eyes trained on his as that lifelessness disappeared and was replaced with a mixture of worry and exhaustion.
His eyes darted everywhere. My face and chest, my body when he lifted his enough to look, and then finally to my arms. As soon as he saw it, his expression fell and eyes shut as a jagged curse escaped him.
“I knew,” I whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I’m holding a knife against you,” he said roughly.
I glanced at my arms and at the knife flat against one of them. When I looked at him, my smile was wide and unrestrained. “And there’s not a scratch on me.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
Well, more so than usual.
“How are you smiling?”
As soon as the question left his lips, it was all I could do to hold on to the smile that had been so effortless just seconds before.
All I could think of was how I was about to obliterate my heart.
All I could feel was the pain in my chest, rapidly spreading.
All I could see was the disgust Kieran had once looked at me with.
“Because I knew you could do it.” I forced something like a laugh from my lips. “And because I never imagined I could enjoy something so much.”
He released a weighted breath and dropped his head to my chest. After a few seconds, he leaned forward to gently kiss my bottom lip. “Not completely unharmed.”
I tentatively licked there, noticing the sting, and forced a grin. “Told you I wasn’t breakable.”
He kissed me again, slowly and thoroughly, before sitting up and bringing my arms to rest on my stomach.
The knife sliced through my shirt as if it was air and was quickly dropped on the bed beside me.
A sound of protest left me too late. “You’ve destroyed almost all of my bras and shirts.”
The corner of his mouth curled into a boyish smirk, his pale eyes meeting mine. And then he winked.
The action and expression so carefree and so unlike him that for a second, I wondered if I could put off leaving for another day . . . or forever.
“I’ll buy you more,” he murmured as he removed my shirt and began unwrapping the chain. “Or you can just stay in nothing but my . . . shirts . . .” The offer slowed and trailed off, his body tensed as he stared at the tops of my forearms.
I couldn’t see, but from the ache that had pounded through my arms when he’d released me, I had a feeling I already knew.
“Kieran, no,” I pleaded, my voice soft.
“How hard was I holding you?”
“It didn’t bother me—”
“Bullshit,” he said. “You should’ve stopped me. You should’ve done something to let me know.” Each word was full of agony and revulsion.
“There was no reason,” I assured him. “There was nothing to stop. Is it so hard to believe that I liked what you were doing? What you did?” When he didn’t respond, when he just looked at me with that pained frustration, I wondered if it was.
And then it hit me.
And I felt like an idiot for never seeing it before . . . for missing it until now.
The way he always asked or confirmed things directly after. The way he’d just been surprised.
A sinking feeling filled my gut. “Do you . . . do you remember it?” I asked, my words strangled. “Do you remember anything from those times?”
He rubbed a hand over his face, his shoulders sagging as he did. And then his hands were on my arms again, making gentle passes over the marks he’d left before he continued unwrapping the chain.
“Yes, I remember it. I remember everything, I just don’t . . .” His piercing eyes traveled from the chain to me, pleading with me to understand what he was about to explain. “I know what’s happening when it happens. It feels like it’s someone else, but I know it’s me. It’s my thoughts and wants with a twisted, disgusting need layered over them. But it feels like I can’t stop whatever is happening. And when I come out of it, everything feels like a hazy dream I’m trying to remember until it slowly comes back one piece at a time.”
By the time he was finished explaining, the chain was lying in a heap on top of the knife and he was rubbing my wrists.
“You said you don’t remember sometimes.”
Kieran’s jaw clenched. “When it starts. If it takes over suddenly, and I’m not prepared.” He rubbed at his forehead then moved his hand to grip mine. “If I try to fight against it too hard, it takes over completely, and I don’t remember anything at all. Like the shower.”
I nodded slowly, understanding even if our darks were so opposite. “And what about the knife?” I asked softly. “You had it in your hand and were facing me, and you didn’t do a thing.”
“I know,” he said in a low tone.
No explanation.
No excuse.
“I told you I trusted you.”
“I still don’t,” he said gravely. “That could’ve ended . . .” He shook his head but didn’t continue.
“But it didn’t. Like I told you, I don’t think it will. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
A huff that sounded like a sneer burst from his chest as he crawled off me and the bed.
“Did you even enjoy it?”
He stopped, twisting his neck to spear me to the bed with his glare.
I wanted him to tell me it was incredible.
I wanted him to tell me he didn’t know it could be so good.
I wanted so much that I couldn’t have . . .
“If you didn’t, then fine. Tell me. I just wanted to show you that you wouldn’t hurt me. I wanted to show you that you didn’t need to be afraid of what’s in your mind. And I did.”
He knelt on the bed, gripping my chin in his fingers and slamming his mouth onto mine.
His mouth and his tongue were relentless.
And it made my exhausted body ache for him.
“If you think for a second that fucking you isn’t the best goddamn thing I’ve ever experienced, you really are insane.”
Oh, Kieran. Don’t you see that I am?
Why else would I have fallen for you?
Why else would I be looking for reasons to stay while trying to leave?