19. Hunter #2
Echo melted into me. Her mouth opened under mine almost immediately, one hand catching the front of my shirt while the other slid up behind my neck.
The kiss stopped belonging to the statement somewhere in the first few seconds.
She leaned into my grip instead of away from it, and the sudden willingness hit hard enough that I forgot Camille was standing three feet away until the silence around us registered.
I broke the kiss slowly as Echo’s eyes stayed on mine for half a second longer than they should have, pupils wide, her fingers still twisted in my shirt. I kept my hand at the front of her neck and turned my head toward Camille without letting Echo go.
“You just stepped over a line you were never supposed to cross.” Camille looked between us, whatever answer she had prepared gone for the moment.
“I’d tell you to let me know where Nichlas is, but we already know.
Your access to anything attached to me, my security, or my territory ends today.
If you have a problem with one of my decisions again, you bring it to me. You do not make another one for me.”
Camille stared at me, anger and humiliation fighting for space across her face. I did not wait to see which one won.
I released Echo’s neck, took her hand, and walked out. She stayed with me until we were through the next corridor and out of sight of the lounge. Then she ripped her hand free and slapped mine away when I reached for her again.
Echo turned on me so fast the heel of one shoe skidded against the polished floor. “You use me like that again or call me a bitch in front of half the fucking school, I will take off one of these heels and stab you directly in the dick.”
The warning was delivered with enough precision that I looked down at her shoes before returning my attention to her face. “You played the part well.”
“That was not permission.”
The anger in her expression sharpened, and she stepped closer until she was almost against me.
“I’m not your toy, Hunter. I’m not your prop, and I’m sure as fuck not something you get to grab whenever you need to make another woman feel stupid.
You need me. I need you. That’s the arrangement, so let’s not get it twisted because you got a little excited throwing your dick around in there. ”
She had followed me out of class without making the situation harder and let me handle Camille until I dragged her into it myself. Even furious now, she was telling me exactly what line I had crossed.
Echo pointed one finger against my chest. “And before you get pissed about how I talk to you, remember something. You might be a king to every one of these fucking students, but you aren’t mine.”
I looked down at her hand against my shirt, then back at her face.
She held my gaze without moving.
I curled my fingers around her wrist and lowered her hand from my chest without forcing any distance between us. “Understood. I used you to make a point without asking first. I won’t do that again.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, as though the lack of an argument had deprived her of something she had prepared to enjoy.
I kept hold of her wrist another second before releasing it. “Calling you a bitch was also a poor tactical choice.”
“You think?”
“I’m fond of my dick.”
That almost got a smile out of her, but she caught it before it fully formed.
I started walking again at a pace that did not require her to hurry after me.
Echo fell into step beside me after a moment, still visibly annoyed, and neither of us mentioned the part of the confrontation that had gone considerably less according to plan.
The kiss had been meant for Camille. Echo kissing me back had not.
I kept thinking about that distinction while we crossed campus, even with Echo walking beside me in pointed silence.
She had made the boundary clear, and I had deserved every word of it.
Grabbing her without warning and using her to humiliate Camille had been a decision made in anger, one I would not make again.
The fact that Echo had responded to the kiss did not alter how it started.
It only created a second problem I had not expected to be thinking about while Ronan was still getting Nichlas back under my control.
My phone vibrated as we reached the private floor.
Ronan confirmed the transfer had been stopped, Nichlas remained at the off-campus medical property, and our people were already on their way to collect him.
Camille’s authorization had been frozen before she could issue anything else.
I read the message twice, then forwarded the necessary instructions to security while Echo put her bag down near the couch and stayed where she could see me.
“Nichlas is coming back,” I told her while I opened the access records.
“Ronan stopped the transfer before Camille could move him anywhere else. She used an old family authorization attached to my security accounts, so I’m removing anything that still allows her to act without somebody speaking directly to me first.”
Echo came closer to the desk but did not reach for my phone. “How much access did she have?”
“More than she should have.” I scrolled through permissions that had existed so long nobody had questioned them: transportation requests, medical authorizations, security escorts, entry into two restricted buildings, emergency family credentials created when our fathers still used overlapping personnel.
None of it had been dangerous while Camille treated it as convenience.
Today she had used it to make herself an extension of me.
“Most of this existed because our families have worked together for years. I never bothered removing it because she had never used it against one of my decisions.”
Echo rested both hands against the desk and read several entries upside down.
She did not tell me I should have known better or make the obvious point that Camille had been acting entitled to me since before Echo arrived.
She simply watched while I eliminated each access point and waited until I finished before asking whether Camille could restore any of it through Desmond.
That was the question that mattered.
“My father could give her access to Quorum resources,” I said. “He cannot give her authority over mine without making the conflict explicit. If he wants to do that, he can have that conversation with me himself.”
Echo nodded once and moved away from the desk.
There was still tension in the way she carried herself, but she had stopped treating my anger as something she needed to manage.
She had done the same thing in Camille’s lounge.
She had followed when I told her something was wrong, listened while Camille exposed exactly what she had done, and stayed out of the argument until I dragged her into it myself.
The elevator opened before I finished dealing with the thought.
Ronan came through first, followed by Malakai and two of our security people supporting Nichlas between them.
The doctor had cleaned him up since the last time I saw him, but there was no disguising the swelling around his face or the bandages covering both hands.
He moved stiffly on the injured leg and looked half-drugged until his gaze found Echo.
Then he became fully awake.
His body jerked backward so hard one of the guards had to adjust his grip.
Malakai caught Nichlas under the arm and kept him moving toward the secured room without allowing him to turn around, while Echo remained beside the couch and watched them pass.
She did not smile at him or approach. She did not need to.
Whatever she had done last night had settled deeply enough that seeing her across a room nearly stopped him from walking.
Ronan returned after Nichlas was secured and gave me the medical update while washing dried blood from one wrist. The injuries were painful but survivable.
The doctor wanted his hands monitored, his thigh stitched again if he reopened the wound, and somebody nearby through the night because the combination of exhaustion, pain medication, and panic had made him difficult to settle. Malakai had already arranged coverage.
When Ronan finished, I told both men what I had done with Camille’s access and what I had said publicly.
Neither questioned the decision. Malakai looked toward Echo for a moment when I mentioned the confrontation, then back at me, but whatever he read between us stayed in his head.
Ronan was more interested in whether Desmond would challenge the revocation, and we spent several minutes working through which Quorum systems he could influence without directly overriding my authority at Aldrich.
By the time they left to handle the rest, the anger that had carried me across campus had burned itself down.
The practical problem was contained. Nichlas was back where he belonged, Camille could no longer move people under my name, and my father would either stay out of it or force a larger conversation later.
Echo was still in the lounge.
She had taken off her heels and placed them beneath the edge of the couch, then opened the notebook I had pulled her out of class with.
She was reading through whatever she had missed rather than hovering around my desk or demanding to know what came next.
I finished the last security message, closed the laptop, and found myself watching her for longer than necessary.
Her mouth was the first place my attention went.
Echo noticed eventually. She closed the notebook over one finger to hold her place and looked at me. “Is there something else we need to deal with?”
There was no invitation in the question and no hostility either. I moved away from the desk and stopped several feet from her because I had already made one decision about her body without asking today. “What happened with Camille is handled. What happened between us isn’t.”