Chapter 43 #2
“You don’t know that I would do that.”
“I do.”
“If that’s what you believe then you think very little of me.”
“That isn’t what I said. You’re always twisting my words.”
“It is exactly what you said.”
“No.” He pushed away from the cabinet. “I think you would do what you have done since the first day I met you. You would keep moving after everyone else tells you to stop. You would decide pain is acceptable if it buys you another answer. You would convince yourself you can survive whatever waits on the other side because you have survived everything before it.” He came closer. “And I know my father.”
“Well I don’t. So why don’t you tell me about him.”
“I am.”
“Tell me all of it. You know everything about me. You know about Edenlo, you know about everyone I lost there. You know about my Shadow, my runes, the Lumina Codex. You know my friends, my Light. You know everything there is to know about me, Kieran. For once tell me something about you.”
His eyes were cold now. “No.” The refusal hit harder than it should have. It sank into every hollow corner of my being and filled them with pure embarrassment. I turned for the door.
Kieran’s voice came from behind me. “There are things I will not tell you yet.”
I spun around. “Stop pretending this is about my safety. Some of it is about you.”
“Yes.” The bluntness stopped me. He continued before I could decide what to do with it. “Some of it is selfish. Some of it is fear. Some of it is me knowing that once I tell you certain things, I cannot put them back where they were.”
“Do you think I can?” His brow tightened.
“My mother and father whose faces I still haven’t seen.
Twenty years of missing records. A prophecy written before I was born.
Neseryn’s magic reacting to my blood for reasons nobody will explain.
Your father sending someone into the Sanctum to mark me like property.
” My throat tightened, but I kept going.
“Nothing goes back where it was for me. You don’t get to be the one person standing in the middle of all of it with a locked door and tell me the timing isn’t right.
” His face had gone still. I was furious enough to hurt him.
So I did. “I let you inside me before you let me inside the truth.” Kieran flinched.
Not visibly enough that anyone else would have called it that.
I knew him more than he would have liked.
I saw it. “You let me trust you with my body while you were still deciding what I deserved to know about my own life.”
“I never thought you didn’t deserve it.”
“That isn’t any better.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His temper finally showed. “What do you want from me, Lyra? You want me to tell you that I regret trying to keep you out of my father’s reach?
I don’t. I regret how I did it. I regret hurting you.
I regret that you looked at me yesterday as though touching you had become another thing I took without permission.
But if the choice is between your trust and your life, I will destroy one to keep the other.
” The words hit so hard I stopped breathing for a second.
The brutality was in his refusal to soften the truth, standing before me and letting it remain exactly as ugly as it was.
“No one has ever accused me of being good. Do not start now.”
“I’m not asking you to be good, Kieran.”
“Then what are you asking?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came. Because the answer was worse than the question.
I wanted him to choose me without deciding for me.
I wanted him to trust me enough to hand me the weapon that might cut me.
I wanted him to care more about what we were building than whether he could control the outcome.
I wanted him. That was the part I had been avoiding.
The realization did not arrive beautifully.
It made me furious. I loved him. I loved this infuriating, damaged, ruthless man who would stand between me and an army and then lie to my face if he thought the lie kept me behind him. I looked away.
“Say something.”
“No.”
“Lyra.”
“I said no.”
He came closer anyway, stopping before he touched me. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Congratulations. Now you know what that feels like.” He stared at me. I should have left. Instead I stayed put. The air between us had changed. Or I had. Kieran reached for me and stopped with his hand inches from my waist.
“Tell me not to.”
I looked at his hand. At the distance he had left. “You hate being told what to do.”
“This isn’t that.”
“No, it’s not.” His fingers flexed once.
I stepped into them. The first touch was barely there.
His palm settled against my side, careful of the bruising beneath my ribs.
My body remembered him immediately. That made me angry too.
I caught the front of his trousers and pulled him closer.
Kieran’s other hand came up to my neck, not gripping, just holding me there while he searched my face.
“You are angry with me.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Not enough.” His next breath came slower than the last. I hated that I wanted to soothe the hurt I had put there. I hated him for making me feel it.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Then make me leave.” He went still. I knew before he answered that he wouldn’t.
“Don’t ask me to do that.”
“Why?”
His hand moved from my neck into my hair. “Because you’re mine.” The words went through me. Not softly. They landed somewhere low and dangerous, exactly where all the anger had been sitting. My grip tightened in his waistband.
“You don’t own me.”
“I know.” His forehead came down against mine.
His voice was rougher when he continued.
“I know I don’t own you. I know you can walk out that door and I have no right to stop you.
I know every choice you make is yours even when I hate it.
” His thumb moved against the side of my neck. “But you’re still mine.”
I wanted to argue. Instead the words escaped me before pride could catch them. “Say it again.”
Kieran’s eyes lifted to mine, and for one heartbeat, all that brutal control came undone.
“You’re mine.” I kissed him. There was nothing careful about it.
My injured hand hurt when I caught the back of his neck.
I didn’t care until he did. Kieran broke the kiss long enough to take my wrist and move it between us.
“Use the other hand.”
“Don’t start with me.”
“I’m not arguing. You’ll tear it open.” He wrapped my injured arm around his shoulder instead, taking the pressure himself, and kissed me again.
That was worse. Because he could infuriate me and care for me in the same breath.
His mouth moved over mine until I stopped thinking in sentences.
I bit his lower lip harder than necessary.
He made a low sound and pulled me against him.
I felt him through the thin fabric of his trousers.
He was hard already. My body answered with a humiliating ease.
Kieran’s hand slid beneath the hem of my shirt, across my waist and up my back.
His palm was hot against bare skin. When he reached the clasp beneath my breasts he stopped.
“Do you want this?”
“What a stupid question.” He unfastened it and I pulled the shirt over my head with my good hand.
The bandage caught awkwardly in the sleeve, and Kieran helped free it without laughing.
There was nothing playful in either of us tonight.
His attention dropped to my breasts. Not with the hungry surprise of the first time.
With recognition that felt more intimate.
He cupped one breast and ran his thumb over my nipple until it tightened beneath his touch. My head tipped back.
“Don’t be gentle because we fought.”
His mouth came to the side of my neck. “I’m being careful because you were cut open six hours ago.”
“My hand was cut.”
“And your shoulder is bruised. Your ribs are bruised. Half the western vault tried to land on you.”
“Eiryx moved me.”
His teeth closed lightly over the place where my neck met my shoulder. “I noticed.” There was enough irritation in that to make me pull back.
“Are you jealous of Eiryx now?”
“No.”
“You sounded jealous.”
“I’m grateful he reached you.” The honesty took all the humor out of me. His hand moved lower, following my spine until his fingers reached the waistband of my leathers. “I saw that cage falling, and for one second I couldn’t get to you.”
I stopped. He did not. His mouth traveled over my collarbone while his fingers worked the fastening at my waist. “I don’t know how to make you understand what that does to me.”
“You could try.”
“I have been trying. You keep calling it control.”
“Because sometimes it is.”
His forehead rested against my shoulder. “I know.” This time I let him say it. I threaded my fingers into his hair.
“That doesn’t mean I want you to stop caring.”
His head lifted. “That will never happen.” He pushed my leathers down.
I stepped out of them. The air was cool against my skin, but Kieran’s hands were burning when they returned to me, sliding over my hips and settling at my waist. His attention caught on the Shadow rune disappearing beneath the edge of my underwear.
The last time he had seen all of it, we had been half-drunk on each other and magic.
Now he traced the visible edge with two fingers.
The rune pulsed under each stroke. Shadow stirred beneath my skin.
Kieran hooked his fingers into the sides of my underwear and lowered them slowly.
My breath changed when he knelt. He looked up at me from between my thighs.
There was nothing gentle in his face now. “Tell me if your hand hurts.”
“Kieran.”
“I mean it.”