Chapter 4
Zane
Staring at the red GPS dot on my phone is murder on my eyes. I tell myself that I’m only checking where Kane is to make sure that he’s safe, but as soon as my eyes move past the blinking little dot to the street name, my blood runs cold.
King Street, otherwise known as Frat House Row.
The place I explicitly asked Kane not to visit.
Considering Kane’s history, I shouldn’t be surprised that he disregarded my request, but it still fucking hurts.
He could be balls deep inside of someone right now, fucking all of his pent-up frustration with me out of his system.
Yeah, I kept the video of Mercy declaring her interest in Reaper a secret from him, but it’s for his own good.
Our own good.
Clenching my fist, I slam it on my desk, then remove my glasses and rub my aching eyes.
Nothing good will come from tonight. My week of self-indulgence, rolling around in the sheets with Kane and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist, has clearly come to an end. It’s everything I ever wanted, and yet…
Somehow, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
This feeling of not enough has been nagging me over the past few days. Maybe that’s why I sent the video to Sam’s fraternity—blowing everything up means that I don’t have to confront the reality that what I always wanted might not be what I actually need.
But that’s fucking stupid. Kane is what I need.
He’s always been the one thing keeping me grounded to this shitty experience called life.
Without him, I’d be dust in the wind—too fragile to choose my own path and not strong enough to change anything.
With him, I have purpose. My life has meaning because he gives it meaning.
That’s all there is to it.
Blowing out a breath, I spin in my chair and stare up at the ceiling.
Despite any unrest nagging at me, being locked away indoors has its perks.
I don’t have to talk to anyone. I don’t have to worry about appearances or social etiquette.
The worst of my troubles is keeping Kane from spending too much money online shopping or flirting with disaster for fun.
Disasters like a six foot, chronically depressed, cynical ball of anxiety like me.
Maybe I’m the problem. I should be happy.
After years of pining for the man, he’s finally mine.
I wake up wrapped in his arms, warm and safe, his breath on my back and his scent on my sheets.
Everything should be perfect…but this wriggling doubt in the back of my mind taints even the most tender moments.
I lie awake and listen to Kane’s breathing in the middle of the night, desperately ignoring the anxiety clawing at my eyes.
I don’t even know what’s causing me to lose sleep—I just know that I’m uneasy all the fucking time.
Is Mercy the problem? Could it be that simple?
I clench my jaw as memories of her porcelain skin, silver in the moonlight, rise to the forefront of my mind. Does everything always have to come back to that fallen angel of a woman?
Something so ethereally beautiful shouldn’t exist.
The front door suddenly creaks, and footsteps sound down the hall. My bedroom door is open, but Kane smacks its face anyway, slamming it into the wall as he stomps into the room. I sit up straight, anticipating a confrontation.
It never comes.
Kane pulls open my dresser drawers and grabs a duffel bag from my closet, shoving clothing inside without speaking to me. Without looking at me.
Nerves skitter down my arms. How long have I been staring at my computer?
I glance at the clock in the corner of my monitor.
It’s past sunrise by now. Shit. He never called to check up on me, and I never called to check on him either.
Is he mad about that? Or is this about Mercy again?
Daggers stab the back of my eyes as I think of her and Kane together, the two of them canoodling in every sense of the word.
Maybe he’s going to leave me for her. But he’s packing up my things, so he could be kicking me out instead.
Taking a breath, I try to calm my racing heart. I’m being paranoid when I have no reason to be. Calm down.
Calm the fuck down, Zane.
While Kane rummages through my belongings and dips into the attached bathroom for God knows what, I click through his phone’s tracking history.
Sometime over the past few hours, I missed an entire detour across the city, curving around the mountainside to reach the Morningstar property.
What was he doing there? Tucking Mercy into bed for the night?
Jealousy burns like magma in my gut as I picture him taking a bleeding, broken angel home, setting her down in the shower, and gently washing her battered and bruised skin. Wiping the tears off her cheeks. Kissing her swollen lips. Easing the ache inside her body by healing the cracks in her heart.
It should be me he tends to. My broken, aching heart.
Because if he saw Mercy tonight, I—
Sharp pain in my chest renders me speechless.
I watch, barely breathing, while Kane doesn’t so much as look at me.
Why won’t he look at me? Drawing a shallow breath, I clutch my chest. Each beat of my heart aches.
Am I so disgusting to him that he can’t stand the sight of me?
The thought of living together gives him hives, so he’s kicking me out without a word?
Packing my bags and throwing them out the window?
“Kane—”
At the sound of my voice, his gaze snaps to mine.
Fire burns hot in his eyes, but I can’t tell its source.
Fury? Desire? Obsession? Fuck, I’ve spent years watching him obsess over our targets as they fall apart beneath his touch.
I’ve yearned to be the one he unravels. But that’s not what this is.
Kane’s gaze is too intense—too sharp—and more dangerous than anything I’ve seen before.
It’s like the man I’ve fallen in love with has forgotten who I am.
What we are to each other. He’s not just my friend, but my brother. My lover. My everything.
I’ll do anything to keep him.
“Kane,” I start again, standing. “What’s going on?
” I hold my tongue to keep from asking something specific, like “Where have you been?” or “Are we in danger?” Or, worst of all, “How’s Mercy?
” The truth burns in my throat. I hope she’s bleeding on the floor right now.
I hope that Kane walked in on her being railed by another man and lost his shit.
I hope that she’s crying her eyes out, because her new favorite toy—my man—has lost all interest in her.
And yet.
Razor wire wraps tightly around my heart, squeezing, digging into the muscle, cutting deep and making me bleed.
Picturing Mercy naked and alone with tears streaming down her face doesn’t…
feel right. It sounds right. It’s what I’ve wanted.
To get her out of the way so that Kane and I can finally be together, free from the binds of these stupid fucking games we play.
I’ve wanted this shit to end before it ever began.
I’m the one who pulled the knife on her the first night we met.
I wanted her dead and buried next to Forty-Three—barely a blip on our radar, underserving of the title Forty-Four, dead and gone in a heartbeat.
That should be what I want now. It’s what I’ve been preparing for.
Fixing up that ridiculous chapel on her family property.
Setting it up like a rustic love nest, ignoring all of its flaws, because I know that Kane salivates over that shit.
The worn floorboards, the cobwebs hanging from the eaves, the smudged stained glass windows casting muted light across every dust-covered surface.
It’s dirty and awful and hardly romantic.
But it’s where I’ve imagined Kane killing her, when this shit is finally said and done.
Cutting our journey short before the grand finale has its consequences.
I won’t get to see how pretty of a corpse she is—bathed in ethereal moonlight, her perfect skin turned into a canvas of bruises, the rattle of her final breaths echoing in time with the flickering candlelight.
I blink away the fantasy, knowing that it will never come true.
I can live with that disappointment so long as I have Kane.
Two long strides is all it takes for my lover to pounce.
He barrels into my body, cupping my jaw and slamming his mouth over mine.
The barest sound passes his lips—a hard, frustrated puff of air—as he backs me against the wall.
Tearing at my clothes, he rips my t-shirt and attacks my neck at the same time, biting hard enough that I whimper.
“K-Kane,” I stutter, my nerves unable to keep up with the rapid-fire beat of my heart. Anxiety pulses through my bloodstream, knowing that I want this—I want him—but something isn’t right. We’ve spent the past week together in tender bliss, not this.
Not aggression.
He wraps his palm around my throat. “Shut up.” Squeezing, he nips my jaw as he cuts off my airway. “I can’t think with your voice in my head, so just—” A shiver rolls down his body. “Stop talking.”
I grab the nape of his neck as I struggle with my next breath. “Safe word.” We never came up with one. I didn’t think I needed one. But fuck. This is too much, too sudden, too rough—
A growl rumbles inside Kane’s chest. “This is what you want, isn’t it?
” He sucks a bruise into my skin, on the tip of my shoulder, and releases my neck, his hands dipping to roam my abdomen.
“My attention.” Lowering his palm, he cups my balls and massages, sparking desire in my blood.
It burns painfully hot as he licks a stripe up the side of my neck and groans, his erection swollen against my hip.
“Speak up, Zane. Is that what you want?”
I choke on the words tumbling around my brain. Yes. No. Fuck. My cock thickens, heavy and hot between my legs, and I moan.