Chapter 10
Tate
Distance. That was the only solution. After that kiss in the kitchen—after I’d lost control so completely that I’d lifted her onto the counter and devoured her mouth like a man starving—I knew I had to pull back. Hard.
So that’s what I did.
For the next two days, I was polite but distant. I kept our conversations to the bare minimum. When she came down for breakfast, I’d already eaten. And at the end of the day, I ate my dinners in the study while checking the security feeds.
I could see how much my forced indifference annoyed her. The way her eyes narrowed when I left a room she’d just entered. The frustrated set of her jaw when I cut short her attempts at small talk. The flash of hurt beneath the irritation that she tried so hard to hide.
Good. Let her be annoyed. Let her think I was an asshole. It was better than the alternative and her seeing the beast that lived inside me. The one that wanted to do wicked, depraved things to her that would undoubtedly change the way she viewed me.
I threw myself into physical training to burn off the restless energy that had taken up permanent residence in my body.
Every morning, I was in the backyard before dawn, doing push-ups until my arms shook, running the perimeter until my lungs burned, working through combat drills that left me drenched in sweat and still not tired enough.
I caught Stella watching me through the window more than once.
The first time, I pretended not to notice, focusing on my form as I moved through a series of burpees. But I felt her gaze like a physical touch, tracking the movement of my muscles, lingering on my back, my arms, the strip of skin that showed when my shirt rode up.
The second time, I made the mistake of looking in her direction.
Our eyes met through the glass and the heat that passed between us nearly broke through my resolve to resist her.
She was still in her pajamas—that same silk camisole and shorts from the night in the kitchen.
Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and she looked so goddamn beautiful that I had to turn away and run another lap just to keep from marching inside and taking her right there on the living room floor.
This was for the best. That’s what I kept telling myself.
We’d crossed lines with that kiss. Lines that should never have been stepped past. And there were other lines I wanted to cross with her—darker, more forbidden ones that had nothing to do with just heated kisses and everything to do with the beast that lived inside me. The one I tried warning her about.
Late at night, when the house was quiet and sleep refused to come, I let myself think about it.
The primal maze at The Players Club. The hunt.
The chase. Running her down in the darkness and pinning her against the nearest surface while her heart raced and her body trembled with anticipation, and maybe even a little bit of fear.
I thought about putting my hand against her throat again, feeling her pulse flutter beneath my palm as her eyes glazed over with pleasure and surrender.
Fucking her hard and deep while she gasped my name, while I whispered filthy things in her ear and took her to the edge again and again and made her beg for release.
I wanted to own her. Consume her. Break her apart and put her back together until she was ruined for anyone else but me.
But those weren’t things I’d ever do with her. Because if I showed her that side of myself—the darkness I’d inherited from my father, that need for complete control that lived just beneath my skin—she’d never look at me the same way again.
She’d see the monster. And she’d run.
It was bad enough that I’d spilled all those details about my childhood. About my father, and the abuse and the violence and the prison sentence that had ended his miserable life. I’d given her pieces of myself that I’d never given anyone, and I didn’t even understand why.
No—that was a lie. I knew why. Because Stella made me want to shed the armor I’d spent years building and let her see what was underneath.
It was a terrifying notion. I’d spent my entire adult life constructing walls.
Layer after layer of protection—the military discipline, the professional detachment, the cultivated persona of a man who didn’t need anyone and never would.
It was safer that way. Easier. If no one got close, no one could see the broken parts.
No one could confirm what I already suspected about myself—that my father’s legacy was written into my DNA, that some darkness couldn’t be outrun no matter how far you traveled.
But Stella... Stella made me want to tear it all down and let her see all those darker parts of myself.
When she’d touched my face in the kitchen, her palm soft against my stubbled cheek, her eyes full of compassion, I’d felt something crack inside me that had been frozen for so long I’d forgotten it existed.
You deserved better.
Three words. That’s all it had taken. Three words spoken in that gentle voice and suddenly I was seventeen again, standing in the doorway of our shitty apartment, watching the police car pull away with my father in the back seat, feeling nothing but numb relief that it was finally over.
No one had ever told me I deserved better.
Not my mother, who’d been too broken by years of abuse to have anything left for me.
Not the counselors at school who’d seen the bruises and looked the other way.
Not the drill sergeants who’d shaped me into a weapon for the military but never bothered to ask what had shattered me first.
I’d learned early that comfort wasn’t something people like me received. We survived. We endured. We built walls high enough that the pain couldn’t reach us, and we told ourselves that was enough.
But the way Stella had looked at me—like I was worth comforting, like my pain mattered, like she wanted to reach through all my defenses and touch whatever wounded thing was hiding beneath—it made me want things I had no business wanting.
I wanted her softness. Her gentleness. I wanted to wake up next to her and feel her warmth against my skin. I wanted to tell her every dark and broken thing about myself and have her look at me the way she had in that kitchen—not with fear or disgust, but with understanding.
I wanted connection. Real connection. The kind I’d convinced myself I didn’t need, couldn’t have, and wasn’t built for.
And that wanting was more dangerous than any threat I’d ever faced.
Because if I let myself have it—if I let myself reach for what she was offering—I’d have to show her everything.
Not just the sanitized version of my past I’d shared in the kitchen, but the full ugly truth.
The depraved desires that lived in the deepest part of me.
The things I craved in the darkness that no decent woman should ever have to know about.
The truth was, I didn’t deserve better. I was my father’s son, no matter how hard I tried to be different. And Stella... Stella needed the kind of man who could give her the life she was raised for.
Sitting in the study by myself, I thought about her parents.
Their expectations. The world they inhabited—charity galas and society pages and country clubs where everyone knew everyone and bloodlines mattered more than character.
They wanted their daughter to marry well.
To produce acceptable grandchildren. To continue the Hayward legacy with someone from an appropriate family.
Someone like Oliver Roberts—or the real version of whoever they thought Oliver was. A litigation attorney from a good family. Someone who wore tailored suits to work and knew which fork to use and had never had to learn how to read his father’s mood to avoid a beating.
Not someone like me, whose childhood home had been a war zone. Not someone who’d joined the military at eighteen just to escape the violence that had infused his life up to that point.
The gulf between us was vast and uncrossable. The sooner we both accepted that, the better.
* * *
Stella poured herself into her work those two days.
I could hear her sewing machine during the times I spent in my room across the hall, the rhythmic hum that meant she was creating something new.
Sometimes it would stop and I’d hear music playing, or the murmur of her voice as she filmed content for her social media.
On the morning of the second day, I was monitoring her social media accounts as part of my standard daily security sweep when I saw it. The lookbook she’d told me about had gone live.
I clicked through to her profile and there I was, photo after photo in those clothes she’d dressed me in, looking like someone I barely recognized.
The images were professional, polished, the kind of content that belonged in a magazine spread.
She’d done something with the lighting that made everything look expensive and sophisticated.
She’d captured angles I didn’t know I had.
I looked... good. Better than good. I looked like the kind of man who belonged in her world.
The response from her following was instantaneous. Comments flooded in faster than I could read them. Her follower count ticked upward with every refresh. People were sharing the posts, tagging friends, and saving images to their collections.
And everyone wanted to know about the model.
Excuse me, is he part of the collection? Because I’d like to order one of him.
Is he single? Asking for myself.
That jawline should have its own marketing campaign.
Buying one of each of everything so my boyfriend can look as hot as him.
He’s gorgeous. Petition for him to model the entire menswear line. Signed, everyone.
I scrolled through dozens of comments, each one more enthusiastic than the last. Women were losing their minds over my face. My body. The way I wore those ridiculous patterned and colored shirts she’d put me in.