Chapter 17
Kylie
The hotel room door clicks shut behind us, and the silence rushes in. But it’s not a peaceful silence. It’s the kind that presses on your ears until you feel like screaming just to prove you’re still alive.
I don’t know where Calloway or Kane went, but my mind was too scattered and overwhelmed to pay attention to the name of the hotel or try to overhear Rook’s conversations with his brothers before they left.
Rook doesn’t budge from where he stands near the door. He doesn’t make a move to sit down on the bed or the small chair by the window. He doesn’t say anything, tell me anything. He just freaking stands there while my mind reels in a million different directions.
I start to pace the room, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and when I catch a glance of myself in the mirror near the closet of the room, the feelings of shock and confusion and fear are quickly replaced by anger.
“So, this is it?” I snap. “You basically kidnap me without telling me why you kidnapped me after doing whatever it is you did to those men at my house—the ones who were apparently trying to freaking kidnap me too—and you brought me here? To a hotel room in I don’t even know where, and you still aren’t going to explain any-fucking-thing to me? ”
His jaw tightens. “It’s temporary.”
“Everything you’ve done today is temporary, apparently,” I fire back. “You don’t explain, you don’t ask, you just decide for me.”
I turn on him fully now, the fear from earlier burning off into something hotter and sharper.
“You don’t get to do that to me,” I say. “You don’t get to scare me out of my own house, throw me into a car, and then expect me to just…what? Calm down and go along with all of this insanity without demanding some answers?”
“I’m not asking you to calm down,” he says quietly.
“Oh good. Because that would be rich.”
He exhales slowly through his nose, like he’s counting to keep himself in check. “I didn’t have another option, Kylie.”
“That’s not an answer,” I shoot back. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to admit they took someone’s choice away.”
Something flashes in his eyes then—pain, maybe, or guilt—but he doesn’t interrupt.
Or give me any goddamn answers.
That makes me angrier.
“You know what’s really crazy? I actually trusted you, Rook,” I continue, my voice cracking despite myself. “I trusted you, and now…I’m wondering if that was a serious lapse in judgment on my part.”
“Kylie, you can trust me. I would never, fucking ever, do anything to hurt you. I’d let them ki—” He stops mid-sentence and then swallows hard.
Still, he’s not telling me what the hell is going on.
I laugh once, but it’s sharp and brittle. “God, you’re unbelievable.”
I move past him toward the window, then spin back around when the pull in my chest flares again.
“Why does it feel like this?” I demand. “Why does being near you feel like I can’t think straight?”
His shoulders tense.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask questions I can’t answer without making this worse.”
“Everything is already worse!” I shout. “You kissed me in the car like it was the only way to shut me up. But God, the things it made me feel…” I pause and let my head fall back as the rush of emotions and feelings and sensations my body remembers from that kiss consumes me.
I have to force a deep breath of air into my lungs before I can look at him again.
“And now you’re just…standing there. Just standing there and not telling me anything. ”
His hands curl at his sides.
“That kiss,” he says carefully, “was a mistake.”
The words hit harder than I expect. A mistake? How was that kiss a mistake when it felt like everything?
He looks at me then, and something raw moves behind his eyes. “It was a mistake because it made me want something I’ll probably never get to have. Something I want and need more than anything in the fucking world but probably don’t even fucking deserve.”
All of a sudden, the room feels smaller. Every nerve ending in my body, every inch of my focus, homes in on him and the electric tension that vibrates between us.
My pulse stutters and my mouth goes dry. “What do you want, Rook?” I whisper.
“You, Kylie.” His voice drops. “I only want you.”
Something in me snaps, and I close the distance between us in two steps and launch myself into his arms.
I kiss him.
And it’s not gentle or sweet. It’s all teeth and frustration and a desperate need to feel in control of something. It’s a vibrating instinct to feel all the things his kiss made me feel in the back seat of the car. It’s an overwhelming need to crawl inside his body and become one with him.
His body goes rigid under my hands, and for one terrible second, he doesn’t respond.
But then, he does.
He kisses me back. His hands come up to my waist, and his grip tightens on my hips like he’s barely holding himself together. There’s a heat in him that feels almost electric, like his body is shaking under the strain of restraint.
It makes me want more. Makes me want him more.
I press closer, my heart racing and my breath shallow, and I chase whatever this pull is that won’t leave me alone. Recklessly, I ignore all the red flags and things that should most definitely be freaking me out, and I chase whatever is causing this blooming, undeniable, overwhelming need for him.
His mouth moves against mine, hungry and controlled at the same time, like he’s fighting himself with every breath.
In this moment, I want to give him everything—my mouth, my tongue, my body, my heart, fucking everything that is mine.
But then he breaks the kiss and steps back as if he’s been burned.
“Stop,” he says, voice rough. “We can’t.”
The rejection hits harder than a slap to the face.
I stare at him, my chest heaving up and down in erratic waves. “You don’t get to decide that either.”
“Yes, I do,” he snaps, anger flaring now. “When it comes to you, my willpower is already hanging by a fucking thread, Kylie. You have no idea what you’re asking for when it comes to a man like me. When it comes to what is pulsing between us.”
The implication hangs between us, heavy and frightening and intoxicating all at once.
It’s all too much.
My eyes burn with emotion, tears threatening to flow down my cheeks at any moment.
But the most shocking part is that all I want right now is to launch myself at him again and give him every part of myself.
Never in my life have I ever felt like this about anyone.
And that’s beyond terrifying. It makes me feel like I’m the girl in the horror flick who runs up the stairs when the psycho with the mask arrives at the front door.
Immediately, I turn and head for the bathroom, yanking the door open and slamming it shut behind me. I twist the lock hard enough to make it rattle.
“Kylie,” Rook calls out, and tears start streaming down my cheeks.
“Leave me alone,” I call through the door. “I need a minute without you deciding things for me.”
The shower is on before he can say anything else. I remove my clothes, quietly sobbing the entire time, and step beneath the steaming spray.
Hot water pelts my skin, and I brace my hands against the tile, shoulders shaking as everything I’ve been holding back finally spills over.
Fear. Anger. Confusion.
And underneath it all is something worse—want.
I want him. I more than want him. It’s as if I can feel my want and need for him pulsing in my veins.
It feels as if each pounding beat of my heart is for his ears and only his ears.
It’s as if my mind and body are at war. It’s as if I’m fighting every sane instinct inside myself not to run out of this shower and beg him to make love to me.
It’s as if…deep down, I’m willing to do anything to be his.
And that is the most petrifying realization I’ve ever had.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, water streaming over me, and press my palm to my mouth to muffle the sound while I cry.
I don’t know what he is.
I don’t know what this is.
I only know that nothing in my life has ever made me feel this unsteady and grounded at the same time.
And that scares me more than being taken ever did.