Chapter 32 Neve
Neve
I didn’t care what he said. I didn’t care what he decided. I was leaving.
I shoved past him, legs shaking, head spinning. I made it three steps before I hit the door. I fumbled with the latch, breath tight, vision dark with panic and rage.
His kill-me stare burned into my back.
“Don’t,” he barked.
I ignored him.
My fingers curled around the cold metal of the handle as I prepared for freedom. But strong arms wrapped around my waist and lifted me clean off the ground.
“What the—let me go!” I twisted, clawed, kicked, but his grip didn’t budge. He dragged me back like I weighed nothing, turned me in his arms, held me pinned against his chest.
His strength was infuriating. His heat bled through my thin shirt. His breath grazed my cheek.
I looked up, ready to spit in his face, and everything stopped.
His face was inches from mine. Close enough that I could see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes. Close enough that when I inhaled, I was breathing him in… danger, sweat, heat, something so dark and male that it terrified me and made my stomach drop all at once.
“Put me down,” I whispered.
He didn’t. Instead, his grip tightened while his jaw flexed.
And then, something changed. The slightest hitch in his breath. A shift in the air between us. His forehead brushed mine.
It happened that fast, and then his mouth was on mine.
The shock hit me like a slap. His lips were rough, firm, claiming. His hand slid up my back, holding me steady as his mouth moved against mine like he’d been waiting fifteen years for this moment.
I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have even looked at him. He slaughtered my family. He stole my life. He followed me, stalked me, dragged me into his own private hell… but my traitorous body betrayed me instantly.
I gasped into him and he deepened the kiss. My fingers curled into his shirt. I felt his chest against mine, solid, unforgiving, real, and something inside me cracked…
Alive. I felt alive. For the first time in my life.
I hated it. I wanted more of it. Both truths hit at once, violent and unstoppable.
He kissed like a man who took what he wanted and expected the world to kneel. And I… I melted. My lips parted, welcoming him. His tongue swept against mine—slow, sure, claiming. A sound escaped my throat, small and desperate, and he growled low in response, pulling me tighter against him.
Heat shot through me. My body arched, instinctive and hungry.
He kissed me harder, deeper, until I couldn’t breathe. Until I forgot myself. Until I was clutching at him like he was the only solid thing in the room.
Then instinct cut through the haze.
I bit him. Hard.
He jerked back with a hiss, lips red, teeth bared in something like amusement or anger—I couldn’t tell which.
“Dangerous girl,” he growled, thumb brushing my lower lip.
My chest heaved. “Put me down.”
His gaze traveled over my face—my swollen mouth, my flushed skin, the fear I was trying not to show. He set me on my feet, but didn’t step back.
A breath passed between us. Thick. Charged.
And then the truth swept over me so violently that my knees almost buckled.
He killed my family. The man who slaughtered everyone I ever loved… just kissed me. And I let him.
I stumbled away from him, hand over my mouth, shaking. My stomach twisted. Shame and fury ripped through me.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer.
He just watched me, his chest rising and falling with the same ragged breathing I was trying so hard to steady.
I met his eyes.
“We’re enemies,” I reminded him.
His reply was quiet. Deadly.
“I know.”
The moment he was gone, I pressed both hands to my face and let out a strangled breath that felt like it was tearing out of my ribs. My mouth still tingled. My pulse wouldn’t settle. My body felt too warm, too aware, too… corrupted.
I kissed him. I kissed the man who murdered my parents. What kind of sickness was that? Why did I let weakness overcome me?
I dropped my hands and stared at the empty doorway like it betrayed me. God, I was losing my mind. My heart was beating so fast it was painful. My lips felt swollen. My throat tightened because I could still taste him—heat, breath, a softness that I knew someone like him was incapable of.
I shoved my fingers into my hair before I sank down onto the edge of the bed, breathing hard.
This couldn’t be happening. For fifteen years, I’d imagined confronting him—the man with the storm-grey eyes, the man who pulled the trigger and didn’t flinch while my whole world died in front of him.
I imagined stabbing him, shooting him, screaming at him, hating him.
But never in any lifetime did I imagine wanting him.
I stared at the floor, my hands shaking in my lap. I felt… hollow. Raw. Embarrassed. Ashamed. All of those things and so much more.
He’d changed. He was older. Bigger. Rougher. Meaner. More man than monster now, which somehow made him more dangerous.
And those eyes… God, those eyes. They used to be cold grey steel. Now they were silver—brighter, harder—but when he looked at me just now, I saw something else flicker under the surface. Something that shouldn’t exist between people like us. Something that terrified me more than death.
I pressed a palm to my chest as if I could slow my heartbeat down by force.
Why didn’t I fight him harder? Why did I let my guard down? Why did I feel… alive… when he kissed me? I gritted my teeth as answers to my own questions eluded me.
I’d spent years building myself into someone untouchable.
A weapon. A survivor. A girl who vowed she’d never be weak again.
I trained. I learned. I hardened myself into something strong enough to survive alone.
And I didn’t understand what was happening now.
Why I reacted like that. Why I couldn’t get his mouth out of my head.
Why I was sitting here trembling like I was seven again instead of the killer I was forced to become.
“No,” I whispered fiercely. “Stop it. Stop.”
This was wrong. All of it. He was the enemy. He should be the enemy. He stole my family from me. He stole the girl I was supposed to become. He stole fifteen years of my life. And now he was stealing my breath. My logic. My focus. And the worst part? He didn’t even have to try.
I pressed my forehead against my knees, squeezing my eyes shut until they burned.
I should have hated him. I did hate him.
But underneath that hate was something twisted, something broken, something alive—something I didn’t have a name for and didn’t want to examine too closely.