CHAPTER TWELVE – A CONFRONTATION
Kat
Iwake up like I’ve been dropped from the roof—no warning, no transition, just the raw shock of a hard landing.
I’m sprawled in Talon’s bed, my legs bare and cold, my hair knotted and wild around my face.
There’s a half-full glass of water on the side table, and a discarded condom wrapper on the floor.
My mouth tastes like whiskey and tears and something bitter I don’t have a name for.
The house is silent, the kind of silence that comes after a storm, thick and airless. The only movement is a single drift of woodsmoke snaking up outside, disappearing into the sky. I try to swallow, but my throat is raw and swollen. My eyes feel like I’ve been slicing onions with sandpaper.
I’m not sure what time it is. There’s a thin, grungy light filtering in through the east windows—maybe eight, maybe nine—but it feels like the end of the world.
I don’t remember falling asleep. The night is a blur of steamy kisses, desperate hands, and the thick, punishing fullness of Talon’s cock.
His handsome face, above me in the dark as he pounded into my pussy.
The low roar coming from his throat as he released deep in my fertile fields.
My body aches in all the right places, my pussy sore and my back slightly stiff.
I shift, and I can feel the sticky slide of his cum between my thighs, drying on my skin in the cold air.
There’s a twinge of something—a memory, a phantom pressure—reminding me of how he was inside me not twelve hours ago.
I want to cry, or scream, or maybe just dig my nails into my own flesh until I can’t feel anything else.
But I don’t. I just lie there, like a ragdoll, watching the dust motes float through the sunlight.
The sound of the shower cuts through the silence, distant and muffled behind the bedroom door.
I imagine Talon in there, hot water sluicing over his skin, washing away every trace of last night.
I wonder if he’s thinking about me, or if he’s already moved on to his next scene, next girl, next lie.
Maybe he’s rehearsing what he’ll say to me, how he’ll spin the story so I’ll believe it was all for my own good.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the sound, but it only makes it worse.
I can hear the slap of his feet on the tile, the low scrape of his razor against his jaw, the deep, ragged sigh he makes when he thinks nobody’s listening.
My chest gets tight, a fist of salt and bone and pride.
I want to run, but I also want to stay, to make him look at me and see what he’s done.
The shower cuts off, and for a moment, there’s nothing.
Then the creak of the door, the heavy step of him moving down the hall.
I can smell the cedarwood soap he uses, the one I teased him about buying in bulk from .
The smell makes me want to puke, or maybe just bury my face in his chest and sob until I pass out.
I sit up, pushing blonde curls from my face. My hands are shaking, but I press them flat against the mattress until the tremor stops.
He appears at the edge of the room, still towel-wrapped, hair dark and dripping, a half-smile already forming on his lips. He shoots me a grin.
“Hey, Kitten,” he says, voice warm and low, like nothing in the world is wrong. “You’re up. Was hoping I’d wake up to you in bed this morning.”
The words hit me like a slap. I don’t reply. I just stare at him, feeling the shape of every ugly, beautiful thing I ever believed about us.
He pads over, the muscles in his legs flexing with every step. I can see the old scar on his left thigh, the one he said was from a bar fight in Prague. I remember tracing it with my tongue, thinking it was the most intimate thing I could do for him.
He kneels beside the mattress, one hand reaching to brush the hair from my face. His fingers are warm, gentle, and for a second I almost let him. Almost.
I jerk my head away, hard enough that my neck cracks.
His eyes go sharp, reading my face. “What’s wrong?” he says, and for the first time, there’s an edge to it. Not anger, just a readiness. The same way he sounds when he knows a twist is coming in a story, but wants to pretend he doesn’t.
I take a deep breath, and then reach under the pillow. I stole his manuscript from his office late last night, as well as the incriminating emails with his agent. I shove the papers at his chest, hard enough to knock the wind out of him. The emails scatter on the floor. His face goes blank.
I hear my own voice, hoarse and wrecked: “You never wanted a romance, did you?” I swallow, fighting the urge to spit. “You never needed help with research. You just needed a warm body and a wet piece of pussy, not to mention some girl dumb enough to buy your bullshit for two months.”
He stares at me, mouth open. For once, he doesn’t have a line ready.
I keep going, my voice getting louder with every word. “You lied to me. From the start. All those scenes, all those stories—you were just enjoying the pretense. You didn’t give a fuck about any of it. Or about me.”
I can feel the tears burning at the corners of my eyes, but I blink hard, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
He tries to speak, but I cut him off. “Don’t. Don’t you dare try to twist this. I know exactly what you were doing. I found the emails, Talon. I found all of it, and there’s no romance manuscript. There never was, and you never even planned on writing a romance.”
The room is silent, except for the sound of my own ragged breath.
For a moment, I think he might apologize, or maybe even laugh it off like a joke. But he doesn’t. He just sits there, towel slipping down his hips, hands clenching into fists.
“I was never going to hurt you, Kat,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “You know that.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know anything anymore. Not after last night. Not after—” I gesture at the sticky mess drying on my thighs, the bruises on my hips, the bruised places on my heart.
He doesn’t move. He just watches me, blue eyes cold and flat.
I let the manuscript slide to the floor, pages fluttering out like dead birds.
“Fuck you,” I say, voice barely above a whisper. “I hope your book tanks.”
For a second, he looks like he might break. But then he stands, rolls his shoulders, and the mask slips back on.
“If that’s how you want to play it, Kitten,” he says, voice smooth as glass, “then you’re free to go.”
He leaves the room, the scent of cedar wood trailing after him like a curse.
I sit up, the evidence of his betrayal in a heap at my feet, and try to remember how to breathe.
It takes me a long time to scrape myself off the floor. My knees feel like they’re welded in place, and the rest of me isn’t far behind. I pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and stare at the tangle of emails and manuscript pages littering the floor.
Talon doesn’t come back for a while. I half-expect him to just vanish, maybe pack his shit and ghost me so I can get the last word. But that’s not his style. He wants control, even if he has to scrape it up from the ruins of a bombed-out morning.
I hear the fridge open, then close. The sound of a beer bottle popping.
The soft, measured steps as he pads upstairs, this time fully dressed.
Dark jeans, black thermal shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
He looks clean and fresh and completely untouchable.
Not a trace of the man who fucked me raw against the mattress just last night.
He stands in the doorway, bottle dangling from his fingers, head tilted like he’s sizing up a chessboard.
“Kitten,” he says. Not a question, not an apology. Just the old nickname, rolled out like a red carpet he expects me to walk.
I don’t answer.
He comes closer, taking slow, careful steps, never looking away from my face. He sets the beer down on the side table, kneels next to the bed, and reaches for my hand.
I yank it back, folding it tight into my ribs.
He doesn’t flinch. He just holds the space, staring at me with those eyes that have always been equal parts mercy and murder.
“I want to talk,” he says, voice softer now. “Let’s talk. You can yell, you can throw shit, whatever you want. But let’s not—”
“Let’s not what?” I spit, and the sound of my own voice makes me want to puke. “Let’s not ruin the vibe? Let’s not make it ugly?”
He looks at the floor, then at me, and for a second I see something like regret. But only for a second.
“I never lied about wanting you here,” he says, choosing every word like it’s a bomb wire. “I never lied about what I felt. Not even once.”
I laugh, ugly and sharp. “You just lied about everything else.”
He shrugs, like he’s accepting a compliment. “You were the only one who ever made this place feel less lonely.”
It’s a good line, and I feel my spine soften, just a little. That’s what makes me the angriest. I want to hate him, but my body still aches for him. Even now, I want him to pull me into his lap and hold me like he means it.
He must see it in my eyes, because he leans in, slow and careful, like he’s trying to tame a feral animal.
“Kitten,” he murmurs, “please.”
I flinch away, but not before I catch the smell of him—clean skin, cedarwood, a whisper of sweat. My hips clench with the memory of him inside me, and I want to die.
He reaches for my knee, sets his palm on it, and for a second I almost let him. But then I remember the way he sounded on the phone, the way he said, “She’s perfect, exactly as promised.”
I push his hand away, hard. I was a product to be bought and sold, and nothing else.
He sits back on his heels, the line of his jaw clenched so tight it looks painful. The fire spits a single, weak spark. The room is frozen, but there’s a heat between us that’s as violent as anything we’ve ever done.
“I’m not your project,” I say, steadying my voice. “I’m not an experiment. I’m not a fucking solution to your writer’s block.”
He’s silent for a long time. Then: “No. You’re not.”
The words hang there, ugly and true.
He stands, slow and deliberate, and picks up the beer. He takes a long swallow, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’ll be in my office,” he says, voice flat. “If you need anything.”
I don’t watch him go. I just stare into the embers, willing them to flare back to life.
They don’t.
I sit on the couch an hour later, brain sloshed with adrenaline and misery, when I hear his footsteps again.
This time, they’re heavy, decisive. He doesn’t pause in the kitchen, doesn’t loiter in the hall.
He just comes straight for me, a shadow looming in the doorway, broad shoulders blocking out half the light.
I shrink back, wishing I could disappear into the upholstery. He stops at the edge of the rug, arms folded, and just stares at me. There’s no warmth in his face, no glimmer of the man who used to call me “sweetheart.” If anything, he looks annoyed that he’s been forced to repeat himself.
“I’m not going to apologize again,” he says, voice a dead monotone. “You deserve better than a half-assed sorry. You want the truth, I’ll give it to you.”
I want to tell him to fuck off, but my tongue won’t work. I just hug my knees tighter.
He walks over to the fire, pokes at the coals with the iron poker, and stands there, backlit by the orange glow. It makes him look even bigger, even more dangerous. His eyes never leave my face.
“I’m a thriller writer, Kat,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“That’s what I do. My agent, Jonah, said I needed a break.
‘Get some inspiration, get some fresh meat in the cabin, see what comes out.’ So I did.
And for the record? It worked. I’ve written more since you got here than I have in the past two years. ”
I flinch at the word “meat,” but he doesn’t slow down.
“The romance novel stuff, the ‘research’—that was Jonah’s idea. He said it would be easier to get someone like you out here if I pretended it was for a legitimate reason. He was right.”
I can’t breathe. My ribs are knives under my skin.
Talon keeps going, unblinking. “This arrangement was designed to provide inspiration and physical release during my writing retreat. You were the solution to my writer’s block, Kat. A very sexy solution, but a solution nonetheless.”
I want to scream, but all that comes out is a dry, wounded gasp.
“Fuck you,” I whisper, but it’s not even angry. It’s just empty.
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “Look. If you want to hate me, go ahead. If you want to trash my name all over the internet, be my guest. But don’t pretend you didn’t get exactly what you signed up for.”
I shake my head, shaking all over. “That’s not—” My voice breaks, a guttering flame. “I thought it was real. I thought you needed an assistant—” I can’t say more. The words are stuck in my throat, a lump of razor wire.
He doesn’t blink. “You got paid six figures for your help. I got company. That was our arrangement. It doesn’t matter what I was researching, and what kind of book I put out in the end. That’s not your concern.”
I’m cold all over, but my face burns with humiliation. The words land like blows.
“So I was just a whore to you?” I say, the syllables stabbing out of my mouth like shrapnel.
He shrugs, so casual it makes me want to claw his face off. “If that’s how you want to look at it, sure. You got something out of it, too. That’s why these things work.”
I curl tighter, breath coming in ragged hitches.
“You lied to me,” I hiss. “You lured me out here under false pretenses. You fucked me. You took my fucking virginity and made me think it meant something!”
He shakes his head, lips curling in a shadow of a smile.
“Sweetheart, you don’t get to rewrite the script just because you don’t like the ending.
I was honest about what I was doing. I paid you handsomely for it.
That’s more than most people ever get. How many girls give it away for free, only to regret it later?
At least you have a big number in your bank account now. ”
I can’t take it anymore. I scramble to my feet, dizzy and off-balance. My legs give out and I hit the coffee table, scattering beer bottles and empty mugs. I’m crying so hard my vision is smeared.
I run—up the stairs, down the hall, into the first room I find. I slam the door and collapse on the floor, sobbing into the crook of my arm.
I can hear him moving around downstairs, unconcerned. A chair scrapes, a door opens and closes, and then nothing. It’s like I never existed.
For the first time since I got here, I wish I never had.