Chapter Six #2
He kissed harder, pressing her further into the room. Actively fighting the voice of reason in favor of something far more compelling. The bed hovered just behind her, draped in a dusty cloth to protect the duvet from the years of neglect. The bed…
You can’t fuck her in your brother’s room.
Kieran pulled back, pushing her at arm’s length in one motion. He fought to catch his breath. Sera remained frozen, dazed. Her eyes heavy with lust. Was she that good an actress? He couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.
“Talk. Or I call the Watchmen.”
Tears pooled in her eyes, but he couldn’t be sure if this wasn’t another manipulation.
He gripped her chin, gently turning her head so that her imploring gaze focused elsewhere.
Her eyes, when directed at him, were too tempting, but he couldn’t look away from her or he risked the horrors in that room.
“I’m warning you, Sera. No more tricks. No more distractions.”
He was contemplating the risk of kissing her again, just once more, just a little longer. Her touch, her taste, she had felt better than any indulgence. He knew she was dangerous, but he had gravely underestimated the extent of that danger.
“Cole is after something. That’s why he wants me dead. He’s afraid I’ll tell you.” Her eyes darted forward, attempting to see him, though he continued to hold her chin in place. No looking. If he met her eyes directly, he’d do more than kiss her.
“I have nothing he could want.”
“A charm. A necklace of some kind. I only saw the picture once. The…” She sighed. “The Wayward Charm?”
“Waylain Charm?” His grip eased.
“Yes!” She started to turn, taking advantage of his relaxed hold on her. “Yes, he wants the Waylain Charm. He says it belonged to his family, but he left it behind when you banished him. It’s not in his estate. He’s had it searched. He is convinced you took it.”
Kieran pulled his hand away, taking a step to put distance between them. She was not making sense. “The Waylain Charm is a Legendary Artifact.”
“Of course, something powerful. Otherwise, I can’t imagine why he wants it.”
“The powerful artifacts were destroyed centuries ago. Only trinkets with minor magical enchantments survived.”
Sera shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. He wants this. Desperately. He threatened to kill me if I failed to retrieve it.”
“Which you did, that first night.” Kieran observed her, not certain if he could trust his instincts that she was telling the truth.
“Yes, but then you said we needed a way to end this. You thought Wraith was the only way, but if I give Cole the Charm then this ends.”
He studied her for any sign of deception. “You were searching my home at night, again, in secret, to save me from having to confer with Wraith?”
She swallowed. “Yes and no. I… look, I know I’ve been a pain in the ass. You’ve given Seth and me every comfort. But this situation is a nightmare. I figured if I could end it, then problem solved. One less nightmare.”
“And if this artifact was important to me? If I didn’t want it in Cole’s hands?”
“I suppose I didn’t consider that. I’m more of a ‘trust no one cause everyone hurts you eventually’ girl. You’ve been nothing but kind—in your own way—and I still can’t bring myself to trust that you don’t have an ulterior motive for helping me.”
He kept his breathing measured. Her words aligned with his impressions of her so far. “And kissing me?”
Her eyes went wide, color blooming on her cheeks. “I…”
“The truth, Sera. The truth is your only chance of redeeming my trust.”
She bit her lip. “You looked angry.”
He waited, somehow anticipating her next words, and as the seconds passed, dread started to replace the anger.
Tears fell down her cheeks.
“It’s the only way I know how to… to stop the anger before it becomes more.”
Something he thought long buried and forgotten broke inside him.
Kieran took another step away from her, unable to meet her eyes.
He knew. He had noted the signs. He was stretched too thin, the events of a day he couldn’t shake, and entering this room when it did nothing but throw his failures and loss back in his face, and then Sera.
The idea of her betrayal had been painful and it manifested as anger.
She had kissed him because she was terrified of what he might do if she didn’t.
That wrongness he had sensed, it was as much her duress as it was this cursed room. Duress that he had caused.
“Kieran?” She asked. The tears stopped, but her cheeks still glistened where her rushed, hard swipes to brush them away had missed.
He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair, upturning the already disordered strands into tangles.
After a moment he straightened and let out a deep breath. His words were clipped, mechanical. Showed nothing of the utter chaos in his head. “I apologize for my behavior. I… it has been a particularly long night and this room holds painful memories for me—”
“Oh shit, I didn’t reali—”
“I was not in my right mind. If I caused you any distress, I sincerely apologize.”
Sera shook her head. “No, I wasn’t. I mean, I was, but I—”
He flinched. He held up a hand to stop her. “I am in the wrong. There is no need to assuage my guilt.”
She pressed closer, advancing and he retreated another step. “But, I was the one snooping around your house. I can only imagine how pissed I’d be if I were you… I shouldn’t have kissed you, it was instinct.”
He took another step toward the door. “Don’t.”
“Kieran, wait. I know you like to blame yourself for everything, but this was—”
He backed into a chair, nearly tripping as he moved it from his path without taking his eyes off her.
The ghost of his wrongs. The manifestation of his guilt.
His wild gaze began to flicker around the room, slapping him with memory after memory.
He reached behind him, desperately grasping for the door.
“Kieran, you’re not listening.”
He found it, nearly out breath. He put his arms behind his back and bowed. “Good night.”
And he fled. Like a coward.
Running from her. Running from the jumbled, chaotic emotions.
Running from the kiss unfairly taken.
Sera shut herself in her room and leaned into the door. The heat inside ignited her already flushed skin as her back sagged against solid wood.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She should never have gone snooping. Good intentions hadn’t made a difference.
Not when she had panicked. Sera was used to finding her own solutions.
Finding the Whatever Charm would have appeased Cole enough that he would—probably—no longer wish her dead and—a weak maybe—honor his deal of releasing her.
It also might have stopped Kieran from seeking out Wraith.
She owed him enough as it stood, adding in his potential ruin via Crime Boss was not a debt she could easily repay.
When she couldn’t sleep, Sera thought to try and find her own solution and hadn’t bothered to confide in Kieran.
Stupid.
If he thought the worst of her now, she couldn’t blame him.
Kieran had offered protection, his home, taken in Seth without hesitation, seeing her snooping through another room—no, not just any room, but the Trauma Room, of all places—she could understand his anger.
Anger enough that Mr. Perfect had looked…
disheveled. His eyes had seethed with unsuppressed rage and so many other emotions at once that she doubted she could have deciphered them all with her mind fully present, impossible under the circumstances.
He offers her nothing but kindness and then she appears to be stealing from him to appease the monster he tried to save her from?
Stupid.
Her mind replayed the moment, the awful moment when he had first found her, now safe in her room she could see things more clearly.
At the time, she had only seen his anger.
Anger was a scary thing for a human woman in a world of supernatural creatures.
She hadn’t been able to see beyond that and every instinct for self-preservation took over.
How did a physically weaker being, who’s only asset was her body, save herself from the wrath of those stronger than her? Temptation.
Sera set her fingers against her lips. Offering herself was the most effective means to diffuse anger. If she caught it at the right moment, before it teetered into violence, the heat would fuel alternative urges, urges she could manage.
She should not have kissed Kieran.
But she did not regret it.
She expected stone and instant rejection. Kieran was predictably rigid… until he wasn’t.
He had kissed her back. Thoroughly. Like he had been fighting the urge to kiss her for years.
There was urgency and need, an almost desperate ache hidden beneath the most searingly passionate kiss she’d ever experienced.
She lost herself in the scent of evergreens.
The all encompassing cold could not reach her where he held her, where his hands gripped and caressed.
The memory alone was thrilling, her heartrate rising to re-live the intensity.
One, tiny fraction of memory soured that fantasy.
Looking back with a clear head, she realized that she hadn’t truly been afraid he would strike her.
Which was absurd. The imagining of a na?ve child.
Maybe she didn’t believe him capable of striking her, but there were other ways to hurt.
His words could be as sharp as his eyes, but what was worse, were the flutters in her stomach and the dreamy sighs.
She was in danger of allowing him to hurt her in ways she had not allowed since she was an ignorant eighteen year old on her own for the first time, willing to believe that love was a genuine emotion, instead of a weapon used to ply consent out of her until she was ultimately discarded.
Sera had not slipped since that first time, not with her heart.
Love, romance, they had no place in sex and pleasure. Not in her world.