Kian(70)

“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.#p#分页标题#e#

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.





Kian was gone for an hour when my phone started ringing. I moved to the couch earlier and grabbed a blanket. My phone was next to me on the nightstand, and I grabbed it, bringing it to my ear.

I hit the Answer key. “Hello?”

“Dude, where are you?”

It was Erica.

I yawned into the phone. “What time is it?”

“It’s one in the freaking morning.”

“It is?” I sat up on the couch and checked my phone.

She was right. Kian had been gone longer than an hour.

“I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, about wherever you fell asleep, you need to give me an answer to give to Jake—in, like, two seconds.”

“Why?” Alarm filtered in. “Is he there?”

“Uh, yeah. He’s been going crazy since you left.”

“He called me earlier, but I told him I was fine.” I frowned, trying to remember what I had said to him. I’d been too distracted by Kian. My thoughts had been jumbled when I was on the phone with Jake. “Didn’t I?”#p#分页标题#e#