Chapter Twenty-Five #2
I can’t breathe. Each breath hurts my abs and heightens my fear, until I’m hyperventilating and sweating through my torn clothes. My shirt got ripped at some point during the conflict, and my pants are halfway off, and I’m trapped in a car with a killer—
“Please let me go,” I cry out.
“Not my call.” Locke adjusts the rearview mirror and glances at me. “I’m not a liar. I said I won’t hurt you, and I meant it.”
Strangely… I almost trust him. Locke belongs to Killian. I don’t think he’ll kill me without Killian’s orders. But Killian might decide that I’ve really seen too much now, and act accordingly.
“C-can you take me home?”
“Nope. You’re going to Killian. He’ll want to see you.”
I have a dreadful sense that this visit may end with me in a body bag.
“Please don’t kill me,” I cry.
“I’m not gonna kill you. I doubt he will, either—he’s fucking obsessed with you. So, calm the hell down and try to relax.”
“Have you ever been assaulted in an alleyway?” I demand, voice rising in pitch. “It’s hard to calm down—”
“Little girl, I’ve seen and experienced things that’d make you hide under your bed for the rest of your life. If you won’t calm down, at least shut the fuck up.”
He pulls a phone out of his pocket and sends a message—probably to Killian. Immediately, it starts buzzing, and Locke picks up.
I listen to his side of the conversation, desperately trying to regulate my breathing.
“Yup,” Locke answers. After a pause: “She’s fine.
Cut on her cheek. Possible abdominal trauma—I didn’t see.
Two perps. One’s gone, the other’s still breathing but both are contained.
Orders?” He listens intently. “Yeah, okay. ETA is 15 minutes.” Another pause.
“I can push for ten. Yup.” He sets down the phone.
I fold my arms over my chest, shrink into myself, and don’t even try to stop the tears from falling.
By the time we pull up to Killian’s apartment, my breathing is back to a normal rate, but my heart is still thundering away like it wants to burst out of me.
My stomach hurts—my entire torso hurts, and I feel humiliated with my ripped clothing.
I feel like a battered woman, I feel far worse than I ever have after even my worst encounters with Killian.
I refuse to examine that fact. After even the most painful and forceful moments with Killian weeks ago, I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I do now. I don’t want to know what that says about me or how fucked my head is.
Locke opens the car door for me, staring down at me impassively. When he gets a good look at my expression, whatever it is, his eyes soften ever so slightly.
“Come on,” he says. “Killian will take care of you.”
“I’d really like to go home.”
His only response to that is offering me his hand.
I sigh and accept it, letting him pull me up and walk me into the apartment building.
He rides the elevator to the top floor with me, and flashbacks of the last time I was here—when Killian coerced me into dinner and drugged me—flash through my mind.
But what just transpired in the alleyway was worse—so much worse.
The elevator door slides open with a ding that makes me jump. Killian is standing in the doorway, dressed down in grey sweatpants and a tight white t-shirt that accentuates every bit of his muscular torso. He looks strong, warm, and oddly, safe. Logically, I know he isn’t, but emotionally…
He steps into the elevator, gently wraps his arms around me, and pulls me into his apartment.
I bury my face in his shirt and sob, letting all the terror and pain pour out of me.
He absorbs it like a sponge, stroking his hand through my tangled hair while murmuring something to Locke under his breath.
I hear the elevator door slide closed behind me, but I don’t want to abandon the warmth of Killian’s arms.
He's the most dangerous individual in my life; he’s done worse things to me than those men in the alleyway, and yet, right now he feels like the only stretch of land in an otherwise endless stormy sea.
He lifts me up into his arms bridal style, and starts carrying me through his apartment.
I rest my cheek against the hard planes of his chest, fists buried in his shirt, heedless that I’m covering the material with tears, snot, dirt, and blood.
I’m a mess right now, and perversely, Killian King—my tormentor—is the one who’s holding me together.
He moves to set me down somewhere, and I clutch him tighter in a panic.
“Easy, Lyra. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to look you over.
” He carefully sets me down on a cold, hard surface—a counter, I realize.
A bathroom counter. Gold-dusted white marble greets me from every direction, gleaming in warm light.
The shower is glass enclosed, there’s a bathtub large enough to host an orgy, and a counter large enough for six people to use it simultaneously.
Killian wordlessly begins to peel away my shirt, lifting it over my head. My arms fall limply by my sides, and his eyes fill with menace when he sees the dark bruises already blooming across my abdomen, coming from the two punches I took.
“They will die in agony for what was done to you,” he says. The words are dark and deadly, a vow sealed in the promise of violence. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”
I blink blearily. “Why… why was Locke there?”
Killian pulls me off the counter to tug my pants down, not bothering to respond. My hands land on his shoulders when he helps me step out of them. “Killian—why was your guard dog in downtown Manhattan at 11p.m.?”
Killian rises to his full height. “You don’t want the answer to that, do you?”
My temper flares. “I deserve it.”
Killian examines me for several moments. “He was there because I told him to follow you. After the incident with you and Rhea meeting in private without my knowledge, I figured it’d be a good idea to have you monitored to make sure you didn’t do anything else that was stupid.”
My stomach bottoms out, and vague nausea rises up. Bile coats my tongue.
Locke has been watching me for weeks. Does he watch me in my apartment? Oh God, if he does, then he knows about my second laptop and phone. Oh fuck oh fuck oh—
Wait. If he knew, I’d already be neck-deep in trouble with Killian. I might even be dead.
A soft breath whooshes out of my lungs. No, he doesn’t know about those things, but he knows about a lot. My routine at work, the train I take home, the places I get coffee from…
Killian slides his palms up my thighs. I shove him away. “Don’t touch me!”
He rolls his eyes. “Calm down. You can’t blame a tiger for his stripes, or a wolf for his teeth. Putting Locke on you was more for your protection than it was mine.”
He cups my chin and angles my head upward; I slap away his hand. “Fuck off!”
“Lyra.” His tone has hardened into the same one he uses when he’s about to spank me until I’m crying. “Don’t fight me right now. I’m not going to hurt you, and I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Then what do you want?” My voice cracks.
He blinks slowly, brows furrowing, as if he hadn’t thought about it yet.
“I want to take care of you.” The words come out like a question—not to me, but to himself, as if he can’t understand what he’s doing.
“Bottom line; some fuckers were stupid enough to put their hands on you. The only person allowed to put their hands on you is me. I am going to deal with them accordingly, but in the meantime, I’m going to look after you. ”
I swallow. “But you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. Never did. Would I chase after someone I hate as much as I’ve chased you?” he arches an imperious brow. “For whatever ridiculous reason, I like you.”
“You call me an ant.”
“That’s because you are. You’re an ant in the working colony, but you could be so much more.”
My brows touch. “What else could I possibly be?”
He gazes so deep into my eyes I feel stripped down to my soul. “Mine.”
He flinches as soon as he says the word, then abruptly turns around, giving me his back. He pushes a hand through his hair, shakes his head, and paces the length of the bathroom a few times, muttering something incoherent under his breath.
I watch with a mounting sense of trepidation, feeling more and more like I’ve gotten myself into something I won’t get out of.
Killian fucks me without a condom—often.
He arouses me in a way I’ve never been aroused, even though I’ll die before admitting it.
He blackmails me. He calls me out of the blue. He’s admitted to desiring more time with me, even if begrudgingly.
He’s cruel, he’s callous, he might as well be the emperor of corruption… but he’s also human.
He’s a beast and a man. A perfect mix of the two. Killian King is a blend of science, philosophy, and artistry so remarkable it’s reminiscent of DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man.
And I’m starting to get worried that the beast or the man—or worse, both—might be starting to form some sort of… attachment to me.
The thought undeniably thrills me. Not because I have any intent or much desire to spend additional time with Killian, but because he takes such pleasure in reminding me of just how far beneath him I am, yet he wants me. He calls me. It makes me feel so damn powerful.
“Killian,” I say carefully, “this is all we’ll ever be. These eight weeks. All of the… depravity that’s occurred—that’s it. Right?”
He turns around to face me, eyes burning with something fierce—something that looks a lot like possession.
“Don’t be silly,” he says flatly. “I’m just fucking you out of my system. I have no interest in you beyond the arrangement I’ve made and the temporary corner I’ve forced you into. When I’m done, I’ll discard you like a pair of old shoes.”
Something in my chest twists at that, and the pain in my abdomen reaches a fever pitch that makes me gasp. Killian’s jaw ticks. “Take a shower,” he says. “Clean yourself up. You’re filthy.”
He strides to the door. Pauses. Turns his head over his shoulder to throw me a dark, cruel glance. “You’re filth.”
The words are agony, because I’m starting to care about what he thinks. I look forward to his feedback on my novel. I eagerly anticipate each new batch of pages I send him, even when he makes it his business to tear them apart.
With that final, searing insult, he leaves, shutting the bathroom door behind him. I flinch as it slams.
I’m not sure if he called me filth to remind me… or to remind himself.