Chapter Thirty-Six
Marius
I didn’t hesitate.
That alone told me how far things had already shifted.
By the time I reached her door, the decision had been made so completely there was nothing left to do but carry it through.
Willem’s report was still sitting under my skin like a blade I had not yet pulled free.
They had crossed the outer line, tested distance, tested response, gotten close enough to prove they could.
And whether Leona understood the full shape of that or not, the equation had changed.
She was no longer safe outside the house.
She was going to hate that. It changed nothing.
I opened her door without waiting and stepped inside, letting it close behind me with a soft, final click that did not match the tension already waiting in the room.
She was by the window. Of course she was.
Not sitting. Not resting. Standing there like the glass itself had become a line she could hold, her shoulders squared, her weight balanced, her whole body set for resistance before I said a word.
She had been looking out, toward the grounds, toward the space beyond the house, like distance itself might still belong to her if she stared at it long enough.
It would have, once.
Not now.
“You’re not going outside.”
No lead-in. No softening.
Her stillness sharpened. Then her head tilted slightly, her eyes narrowing just enough to change the entire room.
“Try that again.”
I stepped farther in, slow and deliberate, already knowing she would meet force with force if I gave it to her too quickly.
“You stay inside,” I said, my voice lower now, harder. “Until I say otherwise.”
That broke it.
“No.”
The word came clean and immediate, cutting through the room before I took another step.
“No, you do not get to walk in here and decide that.”
“It’s already decided.”
“Not by me.”
Her voice rose, not uncontrolled, but fueled, and with it the rest of her came alive. She pushed away from the window and moved toward me instead of back, closing space rather than yielding it. That would have pleased me under almost any other circumstances. Now it only made the whole thing worse.
“You don’t get to do this,” she said, her hands lifting slightly with the force of it. “You don’t get to take something that is mine and rewrite it because it’s more convenient for you.”
“It isn’t about convenience.”
“It is always about control with you.”
I stopped a few feet from her and held there. Close enough for pressure. Far enough that she could still claim the space as hers if she needed to.
“This is about risk.”
“This is about you deciding I can’t handle it.”
“You can’t handle this.”
The words left me harder than I intended. I watched them do their damage. She went still for half a second, the impact of it visible before it burned into something hotter.
“You don’t know what I can handle.”
“I know what happened.”
“And I’m still here.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“That is exactly the point,” she snapped, stepping closer again, her voice roughening at the edges. “You don’t get to take one moment and turn it into something that defines everything I can and can’t do.”
“It wasn’t one moment.” My voice dropped lower, quieter, more dangerous for it. “It was someone getting close enough to take you. That doesn’t happen by accident.”
“And locking me in here fixes that?” she demanded. “You think putting walls around me suddenly makes me safer?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in it struck the room like something thrown. Her breath shook once at the edge. Her hands dropped to her sides, fingers curling as she fought to keep the pressure in her chest from rising with the anger.
“God, you’re impossible,” she muttered, dragging a hand through her hair before dropping it again. She paced once, turned back on me, and there it was again, the refusal to fold, the refusal to let me set the whole shape of the moment without fighting me for it.
“I am not staying in here,” she said, slower now, more deliberate. “I do not care what you think you’re protecting me from. That is not your call.”
“It is when it affects everything else.”
“And I’m just part of that now?” Her voice sharpened. “Just another thing you manage?”
“No.” I stepped closer. “You’re the reason it shifts.”
That stopped her. Not for long. Long enough. Her breath caught, and the room changed with it.
“That’s not better,” she said, quieter now, but no less charged.
“It’s the truth.”
She shook her head hard, gaze locked onto mine. “You do not get to make me smaller just because this is bigger than I expected.”
“I’m not making you smaller.” I removed the distance she had tried to reestablish. “I’m trying to keep you from walking straight into something you do not understand.”
“Then explain it,” she snapped.
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
A pause.
Then—
“Yes.”
That changed the shape of her expression. Frustration thinned into something more complicated. More dangerous.
“Then don’t expect me to just accept it.”
“I don’t.”
“Then what do you expect?”
A beat.
Then—
“For you to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
A breath broke out of her halfway to becoming words.
“That’s not how this works.”
“It is right now.”
“No.” She stepped directly into me again, voice lower this time, more dangerous because it had gone quiet. “It isn’t. Because I do not belong to you.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t step back. Something in me shifted anyway.
“I know,” I said.
“And you’re acting like I do.”
“I’m acting like you matter.”
That did more damage than either of us was prepared for.
Not outwardly. Not in any easy way. But I saw it move through her too fast for her to hide.
Her breath hitched. Her chest tightened, not entirely with anger now, her body reacting before she could drag it back under control. She hated that. I could see that too.
“That doesn’t give you the right to take this from me.”
“I’m not taking it.”
“It feels like you are.”
And there it was. Not only the argument. Not only the perimeter. Not only the house. The other thing. Her body had not fully stopped remembering what it meant when choice got narrowed too fast.
I stepped in and caught her arm.
Firm. Not rough. Grounding, because I could see the spiral before it fully took her.
She reacted instantly. Her hands came up against me hard, shoving, the force behind them sharper and more desperate than before.
“Don’t—”
“I’m not them,” I said.
Low. Steady.
Her breath broke. Not clean. Not controlled. Her hands did not drop, but they stopped pushing the same way. The force in them faltered, her body caught between instinct and recognition, between the memory of pressure and the fact that this was not the same.
“I hate this,” she said, and the crack in her voice made something inside me go colder still.
“I know.”
“I hate that I can’t just—” The words broke off as her breath caught again, her chest tightening, her control slipping at the edges. “I hate that it still—”
I didn’t let go.
I adjusted.
One arm steadied around her. My other hand moved to her back, firm and sure, holding her in place without trapping her, giving her something solid to push against without letting her fall into it.
“You are not losing control,” I said.
“It feels like it.”
“That doesn’t make it true.”
Her grip changed. Not pushing now. Holding.
Her fingers caught in my shirt, tight and angry and unsteady all at once, and I felt every inch of that too clearly.
Her breath was still uneven. Her chest lifted against mine.
The space between us stopped being about the argument and became about something else entirely.
The tension didn’t leave. It narrowed. Focused.
Leona’s gaze lifted slowly to mine, closer than before, her breathing still rough, her awareness fixed now not on the room but on me, on the fact that I had not stepped away.
“You’re not letting me go,” she said.
“No.”
“Why.”
I didn’t answer immediately. Because the answer wasn’t simple. Because the truest answer wasn’t safe.
“Because you’re not steady enough to be on your own in this moment,” I said.
It wasn’t the whole truth. She knew it. I watched her recognize it.
Her breath caught again, softer this time. Her grip tightened slightly in my shirt as something darker and heavier moved between us, something neither of us had resolved and neither of us had dismissed.
“You don’t get to decide that either,” she said.
But the words didn’t push me away.
They kept me there.
My hand moved. Slower now. Deliberate. From her arm to her jaw, thumb brushing lightly along it. Not forceful. Not claiming in the cleanest sense of the word. Just there.
She didn’t pull back. Didn’t step away. Her breath hitched again, and this time it had nothing to do with panic.
“You keep doing that,” she said quietly.
“Doing what.”
“Getting too close.”
A beat.
Then—
“You’re not moving.”
That was the line.
She didn’t deny it. Didn’t step back.
And when the tension finally broke this time, it didn’t happen cleanly. It snapped.
I kissed her hard.
No care in the opening of it. No soft testing.
Only the collision point of everything we had not settled, everything that had stayed live between us from the study to the corridor to this room.
Her hands gripped me, not pushing, not startled, pulling me in instead, and that was all it took to strip what remained of my restraint thinner.
She answered me instantly.
No hesitation. No measured pause. Her body came into mine with all the anger and frustration and tension still burning through it, and I took the kiss deeper, one hand firm at her jaw, the other tightening at her back, holding her exactly where I wanted her while the argument burned down into heat and breath and the fact that neither of us was willing to stop.
There was nothing neat in it. No caution left in the pace.
Only hunger. Her mouth on mine. Her fingers caught in my shirt.
The feel of her pressing closer instead of away.
The room dropping out around us one piece at a time until there was nothing but contact and heat and the dangerous certainty that if I didn’t stop this myself, I would not stop it soon enough.
She made a small sound into my mouth, and that nearly cost us both.
I turned the kiss harder, let it deepen, let all the control in me narrow to how I held her and how I took it and how carefully I did not let it go further than it already had.
Even like this, half out of my own hands, I was still directing it.
Still reading every answer she gave me. Still making sure the choice remained alive inside it.
Because if it didn’t, none of this was fit to touch.
Her body was all heat and tension and response, no hesitation left in it now except the kind that only made the rest sharper.
My hand at her jaw tightened by a fraction.
The one at her back spread wider, possessive now in a way I did not bother disguising.
The kiss turned from furious into something worse. Hungrier. Darker. More honest.
The room disappeared. The perimeter disappeared. The argument disappeared. Everything narrowed to the fact that neither of us had stopped in time.