31. CHAPTER 31 #2
Frustration overcame any embarrassment when he kept walking.
“You breathed all over my lips and down my throat. Down my throat, Zayne.”
Now he did slow, pausing before he worked around to face her.
“Is that your usual go-to for a first kiss?” she asked.
Though he looked at her, it felt like he didn't see her. “No.”
Of course, Zayne wouldn't offer her a crumb more than she demanded. Holding his stare, she said. “It was the best kiss of my life.”
Reading his expression proved as hard now as when he wore that mask, but Kira finally had her wish. He'd removed it, and she could see his face and eyes. It didn't help her understand him any better, but reconciling Zayne Riven with her masked man sent tingles throughout her body.
Zayne refused to touch her, but she viscerally remembered the hardness of his body against hers and the tenderness of his embrace. Those soft, strong lips.
Her cheeks warmed at how he could make her feel. This infuriating, stubborn, distant man did that to her?
When Kira moved forward, his eyes fell to the remaining space between them, his body locked in place.
“I'm your prisoner.” One more step closer. His body tensed. “You're engaged.” Each breath felt so heavy. “It was one time.”
A determined voice. “Yes.”
“Okay. Didn't you ever think about seeing me again, though?”
This time, he didn't respond, but he didn't run away by averting his eyes either.
“I understand the position you're in, but this right here has nothing to do with my time as a prisoner or any manipulation by the Phaedra.
This is about that night and the three years after when you secretly protected me.
No one made you do that. And the way I felt had nothing to do with my imprisonment or your family's power because we were just two strangers.”
Now he did look down, the muscles in his jaw winding tight.
“I told Brock I wanted to see you. You never came to me.”
“I told you we'd never see each other again.” Sharp eyes on hers now.
“But here we are.”
A beat of unbearable silence. “Here we are.”
Kira didn't even know what she wanted from him.
She was his prisoner. He was engaged. It was one time.
She'd said those words, but she only really believed the first two.
“Maybe we only kissed one time, but how many times did you save me? How many times did you check on me and worry about me? How many times did you think about me? How many times did you remember kissing me?” Pain burned in her chest. She'd longed to see him again, but she never could have imagined it being like this.
“It wasn't one time. You're the only one who knows how many times it was.”
If anything she said tonight reached him, it was this. The hardness in his eyes softened. “You're angry because I refused to see you for three years, and now I've pretended not to know you. I lied to you for weeks.” Zayne nodded. “You have every right to be angry.”
“There's anger beneath the surface, but that's not what I feel. It's just grief. All this time, you cared so deeply, and I wanted to see you so badly. It's sad.”
“I'm sorry, Kira.” His shoulder relaxed. “I don't know how to navigate this.”
“I don't either.”
In a moment as stunning as when Zayne lowered his hand from her eyes while they were kissing, he walked closer to her.
He walked closer to her.
And he met her eyes fully. “I do know this.”
Kira couldn't breathe, seeing Zayne and her masked stranger tangled together, standing close enough to touch if she reached out. Close enough to feel his nearness.
With an unyielding voice, he said, “I will not rest until you're safe.” The muscles in his jaw bunched again, and she heard that wrath in his voice, full of the vengeance that he unleashed when he bashed his head into her attacker's face.
“I will never show mercy to anyone who hurts you, including myself.”
A tear wet a path down her cheek, and his eyes flickered to it, his expression and body tense again.
Then he turned away. Began walking once more. Kira moved forward by his side, saying nothing as tears fell down her cheeks. Any closer and he betrayed someone, whether it was his fiancée or his need to protect his mission. Too many lines they couldn't cross. Finally, she understood.
Kira glanced down the profile of his face, seeing a new man in him. “I won't show mercy to anyone who hurts you either, including you.”
The words affected him, subtly but undeniably, in the tightening of his lips.
Their wrath may look different, but justice ran through her veins as well.
“Hold on a little longer,” he said.
Kira nodded, still desperate to take his hand, not as the woman who longed to see him again all these years, but as the one who cared for him and wanted to walk this painful path together.
She couldn't breathe with him looking at her. Her body remembered every moment they'd spent pressed together. Though she'd tried to tell herself she didn't notice how he looked at Dr. Cooper's, she had, and the memory burned in her cheeks now that she let herself feel what had always been there.
“Let's go home,” Kira said, steps lighter. “Your mom is making breakfast tomorrow.”
For the first time since they met three years ago, she learned what it looked like when her stranger smiled.
When Zayne Riven smiled. And she'd been right before.
He did have his mother's smile. A heavy, strained version, but every bit as pleasant.
A sorrowful smile shadowed by deep gray eyes that glowed with the softest blue in the moonlight.