Chapter 17 #2
"I don't—" My mouth's gone dry. "You said—downstairs, you told your father to get rid of me, you said you'd handle it, you—"
I remember it so clearly, how furious he was.
I’d been listening at my door as Killian, Calder, and Vincent were shouting downstairs.
Every word of it came straight up through the floor.
He can't stay in this house. Sell him, ship him, put him back in that shithole apartment, I don't care.
And then the other thing, the one that's been sitting in my chest ever since—I'll end it.
Said flat, like he was talking about a light left on.
But only twelve hours before that he had me pinned against the kitchen counter telling me what he wanted to do to me.
It was like whiplash.
"I said a lot of things." His voice drops into something rough. "You want to know how I actually felt?"
I don't answer.
"Like I was coming out of my skin." He says it slowly, like he's still working it out. "Whatever was coming off you that day, that night got into me and it wouldn't stop. Couldn't sit. Couldn't breathe right. I was going out of my mind. All kinds of thoughts, things I wanted to do to you.”
He drags a hand down his face and winces when it hits the split eyebrow.
"And I was hard the whole time," he says. "Rock fucking hard, so goddamn painful I think I might have come in my pants if you’d touched me, Sonny."
Molten heat spreads through my whole body.
"So yeah. I wanted to hurt you." His eyes don't leave mine. "And I wanted you underneath me. And I wanted it to stop. All three at once, and from the inside there wasn't any difference between them."
"So you picked one."
"So I picked the one I know how to do." His jaw sets. "Something scares me, I go at it swinging. I wanted to throttle you, I don’t know. Anything to get you off my mind."
I'm gripping the blanket so hard my fingers hurt. But it all makes sense now.
"That was the heat," I say.
"What?"
"All of it. That's what that was." My voice comes out unsteady. "I was going into heat and you could smell it. That's what happened to you."
It was all biological.
"No."
"You just said it yourself—something coming off me—"
"It started before that,” he admits.
I stop.
“You being lodged in my head happened before that.” He eases closer, his eyes meeting mine.
I watch as his jaw clenches, my lower belly clenching too.
“Don’t you remember? I dragged you down onto me, put your head in my lap." His voice has dropped.
I nod, remembering that night. He’d pulled me over him and then I felt his erection almost immediately. I’d been scared out of my mind but something about the weight of his hand on the back of my neck calmed me down enough to fall asleep.
"I sat there hours, Sonny. Didn't move. I just watched the little flutter of your pulse, beating against your skin as you slept."
Heat climbs the back of my neck.
"I was hard as fuck that whole time. Your mouth so close to my cock. And that little scab where I’d split your lip. All I could imagine was sliding my dick between your lips and fuck," he says, his eyes fluttering shut. “I thought you’d drugged me somehow. Like I might die if I didn’t taste you.”
I can't look at him. My blood is blistering and blood pools between my legs, my dick going hard listening to his words.
"I made you haul wood you'd already hauled. I made you dust books that were already clean. Days of it." His voice has gone rough. "You think that was about the work? I couldn't come up with a single reason to be near you, so I made some up."
He's moved closer without me noticing. He's right at the side of the bed now, still down on his heels, close enough that I have to look down to see his face.
And then his hand comes up and settles on my thigh through the blanket. Warm. Heavy.
He squeezes. Just once. Gentle.
I stop breathing entirely.
"I'd never even met an omega before you," he says. "Wouldn't have known one if it bit me. Whatever's wrong with me, whatever you’re doing to me–it started way before your heat and it didn't have a damn thing to do with what you are."
"Then what is it?"
"You," he says.
One word. Just that. My stomach flutters.
My heart's going so hard I can feel it in my throat and his hand is still on my leg and nobody has ever said anything like that to me in my life.
"Say something," he says.
"I'm thinking."
"That's worse."
"You scared me." It comes out shaking. "You scared me from the first night.
You tossed my pills down the drain. You hit me.
You were ready to torture me and let my mom listen.
" My eyes are streaming now and I don't care.
"And the entire time I was scared of you there was some—some idiot part of me that couldn't stop looking at you, and I hated that.
I hated it so much. I thought there was something wrong with me. "
Killian goes very still on the floor. "There isn't," he says.
"You don't know that."
"I know if there’s something wrong with you, it’s wrong with me too, baby." He says it rough. "We can be wrong together or you can tell me to get out. Both fine. I'm not going to touch you either way."
"Why not?"
It's out before I've thought about it.
And Killian's head comes up.
"What?"
My heart is going so hard I can hear it.
Every sensible thing in me is standing up and shouting but I'm not listening to any of it, because there's something happening low in my stomach that has nothing to do with heat—the drug took the heat, the doctor took it, there's no biology in this room making me do a single thing—and it's still happening.
My wanting him. My needing to feel what his touch feels like.
"Careful." His voice drops. "Say something like that again and I'm going to think you want my hands on you."
"There's no heat," I say. "I'm not in heat anymore. There's nothing making me—" I stop. Start again, quieter. "So if I wanted something right now, it'd just be… me. Wanting it."
"Sonny." Everything in his voice has changed. His hand squeezes my thigh. "Don't say that to me unless you mean it."
"I… mean it."
"You've got my brother's teeth in your neck."
"I know exactly what's in my neck."
Something changes in his face.
He takes that line and he runs with it—I watch him decide, watch whatever was holding him down on that floor just go—and then he's up off his heels and onto the edge of the bed and his hand is fisting in the front of my shirt.
"Killian—"
"Too late." He drags me forward. "You had your chance to shut up."
And then his mouth is on mine.
It isn't careful. Nothing about Killian is careful. He kisses me the way he does everything else, furiously, aggressively–like he wants to consume everything in his path. His mouth sears mine, his head angling before his tongue darts in and I let him.
He tastes like rain. Cold on his lips and warm underneath, whiskey and copper and something that goes straight down my spine. His hand comes up off my shirt and into my hair and holds me there.
A week ago I'd never been kissed at all. Then Calder did it—slow, asking, I'm going to kiss you first like he needed it in writing.
Killian doesn't ask me anything.
He steals my breath, tangles his fingers in my hair and holds me so close I can’t move.
When he finally lets me back an inch I'm breathing like I ran up the stairs.
"You're shaking," he says. Not gently. There's something pleased in it.
"You're wet."
"It's raining." His mouth drags along my jaw. "You want me to go dry off first?"
I shiver. "No—"
"Didn't think so."
"That's not—" I'm gripping his shirt with both hands now and it's soaked through and freezing and I don't care at all. "Killian, I've never—"
He goes still against the side of my throat.
"Never what?"
My face is on fire. "You know what."
"Say it." He nips at my lips.
When he lets go, I bite my lip in the same spot. "Killian."
"Don't tell me you've never been fucked." His nose drags up under my ear. "I can smell exactly what my brother did to you."
"That's—no. Yes. I mean—" My face is on fire. "Not like this. I was in heat. I was out of my head the whole time. I needed it but maybe I wasn’t ready for it." I make myself get the rest out. "I've never done this when I could actually think."
He goes very still against my throat. "So you're choosing me."
"Yes."
"Right now. Nothing in your blood is making you do it."
"Yes."
He pulls back and looks at me, and his eyes have gone black, and his wet lips pull into a smirk. "Haven't either, baby," he says, low. "Not like this."
Then his mouth finds my ear.
"Don't worry about the rest. I'll get you slick to take me just the same."
His mouth crashes back onto mine before I can answer. The kiss is all teeth and heat and rain-cold skin, and then he’s dragging me down the bed by the ankle like I weigh nothing. The blanket goes with me. My back hits the mattress hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.
“Killian—”
“Quiet.” He’s already stripping out of his wet shirt.
The fabric peels off with a wet sound and hits the floor.
Rainwater runs down the hard lines of his chest, the bruises, the split skin over his knuckles.
He looks at me for half a second like he’s deciding something, then reaches for my sleep shirt.
He grabs the old t-shirt fabric and tears, right down the middle. I suck in a sharp breath but Killian just smirks, shoving the ruined shirt off my shoulders.
All this pent up fire, this strength–I should be scared. I should be thinking about how fragile I’ve always been, how careful everyone has always been with me. Instead heat floods low in my belly so fast it makes me dizzy. He’s treating me like I can take it. Like I won’t break.
His hands are shaking.