Chapter 20
Iwas still in front of my mirror when Zandia's revelation settled into something close to acceptance.
Not peace. Just the clarity that comes from learning your whole existence was a design.
My hands had stopped shaking, at least. The Cerbie tattoo shifted against my ribs, reading my anxiety for threats, and I let out a breath I'd been holding since she walked out.
I started undressing. Mechanical and necessary. My last attempt at going to bed had failed miserably. The shirt was sweat-through, hours of crisis will do that, and I pulled it off without ceremony.
I was working off my boots when the door opened. I didn't startle. That was the first thing I noticed.
Kearan let himself in without knocking and my nervous system didn't spike. I just kept moving, levering off the second boot.
"Close the door," I said, and he did, quiet, the way of someone who knew how to move through a room without making it a production.
He took the chair across from my bed. Neither of us said anything for a moment, and the silence sat between us full instead of empty. His hands were on his thighs, gripping like he was holding himself in place.
I finished changing without hurrying. Not slow, slow would have been a performance.
I just moved like someone who'd decided modesty was beside the point.
He was already watching. I was already letting him.
The pants came off, then the sports bra, and I stood in front of him in nothing but skin and the scars that came with being built for survival.
Cerbie shifted under my ribs again. I felt his gaze move across my shoulders, my spine, and the rest of my body.
He stayed exactly like that while I took a quick shower. I couldn't wash off the revelations from today, but at least I could feel fresh.
Then I pulled on fresh clothes. A black tank, soft sleep pants. The whole thing took maybe ninety seconds, and he watched every one of them.
When I was done I sat on the edge of the bed and gave him my full attention.
"I'm in love with you," Kearan said. No preamble. "And I've been a coward about it. Building reasons to wait, reasons to keep my distance, telling myself the right time would come. I'm finished. No more delays."
For one ugly second, Zandia's voice was louder than his.
You were built to draw exactly the design called for.
The doubt surfaced before I could stop it.
Maybe he didn't love me. Maybe he loved the thing Eloise engineered to be loved, the part of me that was specification instead of person.
I'd carried some version of that fear my whole life, that I was wanted for function.
"Then don't."
His breath caught. I watched my response land different than he'd braced for.
I turned back the covers and gestured at the space I'd opened. "Stay." Not a question.
He stood and undressed with the same competence he brought to everything, shirt first, the burn scar catching the light, the rest after. I settled in beside him, not touching, sharing the same space while the bed warmed. But he was turned away from me.
"I want to be bonded to you before whatever's coming gets here," he said, rough. "I want this finished."
"Is this about the threat," I asked, "or about us."
He turned, slow, a full rotation until he faced me in the dark. I could barely see him, but I felt the weight of his attention.
"Us," he said, no hesitation. "The threat's just the deadline I needed. I was already going to come to you. The crisis only made me stop putting it off. That's not fear talking, and it's not circumstance forcing my hand. It's a choice I made before and I'm only now saying out loud."
I read his face in the dark for a man bending under pressure, capitulating, unsure.
Found none of it. Found someone who'd decided and was finally giving it a voice.
And the part of me still chewing on Zandia's warning went quiet, because whatever I'd been built to draw, a man doesn't gut himself for weeks over a specification. He does it over a person.
That was all I needed.
I stroked my hand across his cheek, traced his jaw, felt the tension start to leave him. I kissed him gently. Yes to the choice, yes to the bond, yes to what came next. When I pulled back, he followed, holding the contact a second longer.
"Okay," I said. "Then we bond."
Neither of us moved for a moment. Just two people looking at each other, naked in the same room, knowing what came next and not rushing to get there. His burn scar visible in the low light. I reached out and traced the edge of it.
"Still there," he said quietly.
"Still there," I confirmed. "But it doesn't mean what it used to."
He moved toward me, and I pulled him down on top of me. The mattress shifted under his weight, and his body bracketed mine without pressure. One knee came up beside my hip. His hand found the line of my jaw and tilted my head up, asking if this was okay.
I kissed him instead of answering. Directly to the point, my mouth firm against his.
He made a small sound that might have been relief or might have been something else, and then his hand was in my hair and mine was on his ribs, and we were moving into it the way two people move into something they've decided to do together.
He was careful. Not hesitant. Careful. Deliberate about every touch, tracking whether I could handle how much of him there was.
I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer, which I hoped told him the careful thing was unnecessary, that I could take him, that he didn't have to manage how much of himself he gave me.
He understood. His mouth moved to my neck, kissed the spot where my pulse was, and my body answered like it had been waiting on exactly that. My hands moved across his back, tracing muscle, finding the tension he carried there.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," he said, the words against my skin.
"I won't. That's the thing. I'm not going to ask you to stop."
His hand moved down my ribs to my hip, reverent. He was looking at me like he was learning something he'd never get to learn twice. I watched his face and caught the moment the fear that had run his whole life started taking itself apart.
"I can feel you," he said. His hand pressed against my sternum, over my heart. "Alive through the bond pulsing at me to claim you."
I knew what he meant. This was what the bond was supposed to feel like.
Connection. The knowledge that someone was here and present and alive and not about to die.
The dagger was still on my dresser, the demon was still in my father, and all kinds of sabotage was still circling the perimeter.
But in this bed what mattered was Kearan finally getting it through his head that love didn't require martyrdom, that bonding with me didn't mean spending every second braced for catastrophe.
His hand moved lower, across my stomach, and my breath caught. He shifted his weight to one side and his hand found the space between my legs. My hips moved toward him before my brain signed off on it.
"Okay," he said. Not a question, but the tone made it one.
"Okay."
His fingers moved with the precision he brought to everything, finding the rhythm that changed my breathing, that made my hips move with intention.
He watched my face, tracking every expression, adjusting on what he read there.
That was the thing about Kearan that got me, a man who'd spent his whole life paying attention to other people's needs.
Even in bed, especially in bed, he was present.
I reached down and grabbed his wrist, and he froze.
"No," I said. "Don't stop. Just let me be part of this too."
I guided his hand, showed him what I wanted, and he adjusted.
I watched the moment he understood land on his face.
He pressed deeper, his thumb finding the spot that stole my breath, his mouth coming back to my neck.
His hand inside me and his mouth on my skin was more than my nervous system knew what to do with.
"There?" he asked against my shoulder.
"Yeah. Right there. Don't stop."
So he didn't. His hand worked with the focus of a man determined, which should have been weird and wasn't, because this was Kearan and the way he paid attention had always made me feel seen.
My body started climbing toward something, tension gathering in my spine, my legs beginning to shake against his hand.
"Let go, don't hold it in," he said. His other hand pressed against my lower belly, and that pressure plus his hand inside me sent me over. I came with my whole body seizing, my hands gripping his shoulders, my mouth opening against his shoulder and biting down because I needed somewhere to put it.
When I came down, his hand was still there, not moving, just present. His mouth was at my hairline, his breathing heavy. I turned my head and kissed him.
"We're not finished yet," I said.
He pulled his hand back, and I watched him move. I sat up and pushed him back onto the mattress. He went without resistance, which told me he was ready to let me run things for a while.
I kissed him while my hand found the length of him between us. He was ready, dripping and rock hard. His hips lifted into my hand and he fought to control his breathing.
"That's it," I told him. "Don't hold back."
I moved down his body, kissing across his chest. I trailed my mouth down his stomach and his breathing sharpened.
When I took him in my mouth, the sound he made wasn't a word.
His hand came to my shoulder like he needed to confirm I was actually doing this and not some fantasy his fried brain had cooked up.
I showed him exactly how I felt about him. Long sucking pulls before I slid the length of him again and again. He tried to hold still and lost, his hips moving, controlled but persistent, his hand coming to my hair without gripping, just resting there, tracking. His breathing had gone ragged.
"Parker." His voice came out wrecked. "You don't have to."
I pulled back just far enough. "I want to."