Chapter 21
RAIDEN
It’s after five in the morning, and since waking almost three hours ago, Kiara hasn’t been able to sleep. She’s lying in her hospital bed, just staring at the ceiling, every now and then, wiping away a discreet tear. But she knows I see it. I see everything where she’s concerned.
I’d give anything to have a direct line into her brain, to hear the thoughts circling her mind, to know exactly what’s bringing these tears.
Is she in pain? Shattered that a target slipped away for the first time in her career?
Or is this something deeper, something I couldn’t even begin to understand?
My chest aches, and it’s not a feeling I’m accustomed to. I don’t like seeing her like this. I don’t like knowing she’s in pain, whether it’s physical or emotional. None of it sits well with me.
I hesitate for a moment, unsure how to broach this with her.
Kiara is unpredictable. I can read her body like a map, every want it could possibly crave, perfectly outlined just for me. But when it comes to what she feels, I’ve never been more in the dark.
The surface stuff is easy. When her brows pull tight, a little line appears between them, and I know I’m about to get my ass handed to me. She’ll say, Fuck, I hate you no less than three times.
I know the cadence of her anger.
I know the weight of her body when she launches herself at me in fury.
I know exactly how far she’ll push before that rage shifts into nothing but pure desire.
But that’s where my certainty ends.
I can tell when she’s happy. I can spot sadness before it fully settles in her eyes. Those are simple tells. They’re predictable, and the parts of her that make her human, just like everybody else in this world.
It’s the deeper things that bring me pause. The silent tears. The brokenness. The moments when something raw and unguarded flickers in those beautiful green eyes, then vanishes before I even get a chance to figure it out.
It makes me feel as though I’m not good enough, not smart enough. Because how could I be this accomplished in my career, how can I thrive through such vigorous training and learn to read people in their most feared moments, yet I can’t even begin to understand what’s inside her soul?
When it comes to Kiara St. James, I’m fucking useless.
I’m a man who can read a room in seconds. A man who can anticipate a trigger pull before a finger even tightens. And I’m reduced to nothing by one woman’s silent tears.
When it comes to what she truly feels, wants, or needs, I’m drifting blind through a blackened universe, chasing a light I can’t possibly begin to reach, terrified of what I’ll find if I ever do.
Is she becoming my world? Yes. But do I deserve her? Am I what she truly needs? Am I enough to keep her satisfied—not just her body but her mind and soul? I have no fucking idea.
Kiara is the strongest woman I have ever met.
Her skills and training are lethal. She can pull off the impossible, only to shrug it off and come home to annihilate a cheese pizza like nobody’s business.
But when it comes to dealing with what she feels inside, I fear she has no idea, just like me.
I’m emotionally stunted, incapable of figuring out basic human feelings, simply because I’ve spent my life so deprived of them.
I’ve dedicated every moment to learning my craft and not forming attachments.
I’ve only ever allowed for sexual relationships, and once the deed was done, they were on their way, just like any other contract.
All of this is new to me, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t scary as hell.
What happens if I slip up? What happens to her if she allows herself to truly feel something here, then I get myself killed?
What happens to me if she doesn’t make it home from a job?
What happens when she tears my soul right out of my chest and decides it doesn’t matter? How the fuck would I ever recover?
All I know is that Kiara is lying in that bed next to me, tears silently rolling down her cheeks, and while I might not understand them, I can’t just watch and do nothing.
Throwing my blanket back, I murmur through the quiet hospital room, trying to keep my voice low to not disturb the other patients sleeping around us. “Come here, Firecracker.”
Her head whips toward me, a soft gasp on her lips. “I thought you were sleeping.”
I shake my head, a small smile on my lips. “No, you didn’t,” I say, watching her discreetly wiping away her tears. “Come here.”
She shakes her head. “Katie—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Kiara,” I say as everything inside me screams to go to her, to climb straight into her bed and pull her into my arms until the tears run their course, but I don’t want to take her choice away.
It needs to be hers and hers alone. She needs to decide if she wants this, whether she’s going to lean on me or tell me to fuck off and mind my business. “You’re killing me over there.”
She glances my way, and when those glossy green eyes come to mine, I see the longing, but her body hesitates. For a moment, I fear she’s going to pull away, that she’s going to slam down some invisible wall between us, and this is all going to be over before it even has a chance to truly begin.
But then she nods and pushes her blankets back.
My heart races as she clambers out of bed, her legs not so shaky anymore as she grabs her IV pole and rolls it across the linoleum until it’s settled right there next to mine.
I open my arms, and without a single sneer, threat, or insult, Kiara slips beneath the blankets, settling in beside me. She presses close as I wrap her up, her body fitting against mine like it was built to.
She buries her face against my bare chest, her wet cheeks dragging across my skin as she nuzzles in. And when she places her hand over my heart, I know she has to feel how fast it’s pounding, how it betrays me, but I don’t try to hide it.
I’m fucking home.
The chaos disappears. The games, the rivalry, the constant edge we live on.
All of it fades beneath the simple weight of her in my arms. For the first time since the explosion—since the fear I felt while we were soaring toward the pavement, and I thought I would lose her—everything inside me goes still.
Absolute clarity settles in my bones.
This is it.
Not the chase. Not the competition. Not the blood on our hands.
Just her.
How could I ever give this up for anything?
Silence settles between us, but her tears dry up as my thumb brushes over her hip. “You’re not planning to kill me the moment I let my guard down, are you?”
“Who knows? Sounds like fun,” I tease, knowing she needs it to build her back up. “After those sloppy moves back at the penthouse, I think I might just be able to pull it off.”
Kiara scoffs, and I feel her soft smile against my chest. “Please. Says the man who sent three rounds directly into the wall.”
I groan and let out a huff. “Not my fault. I’d just been shot and was using my non-dominant hand.”
She lets out a soft, breathy laugh and lifts her head from my chest, pushing up onto her elbow. Her gaze rises to mine, and something softer than I’ve ever seen flickers there. Not weakness. Not surrender. Something warmer. Something steady.
“There’s not a non-dominant bone in your body, Raiden Kane,” Kiara whispers, a teasing smile curving her full lips. “And for the record, I don’t have a non-dominant hand. When I shoot, I have absolute precision whether it comes from my left or my right.”
My brow arches. “Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, her gaze sailing across my face, lingering on something. She lifts her hand off my chest and brushes her fingertips over the cuts and bruises that mark my skin. A hollowness appears in her eyes, and along with it comes a heaviness I wasn’t expecting.
Reaching up, I cup her hand over my skin, forcing her gaze back to mine. “What is it, Kiara?”
“You,” she whispers. “You scare the shit out of me. I don’t know what this is or why it feels like this.
Why do I always need to be around you? Why do you drive me crazy the way you do?
It terrifies me—and has since the moment I met you.
But then you grabbed my hand and forced me to jump.
You used yourself as a human shield, Raiden.
You could have died just to save me, and that . . . I don’t know what to make of that.”
I nod. I know exactly what to make of that, but I’m not about to scare her by admitting what went through my head when the flames swallowed us whole. In that split second, with the world detonating behind us and the ground rushing up to meet us, something inside me settled with brutal clarity.
I would have taken the full force of it. Every shard of glass. Every burn. Every broken bone.
I would have died before I let that fall take her from me.
So I keep that to myself, locked up deep within me, never to see the light of day. Kiara doesn’t need a truth that heavy right now, and maybe I’m not ready to say it out loud. In my heart, I know that my soul tethered itself to hers in the middle of that explosion.
“You don’t need to overthink this,” I tell her. “I don’t want you feeling conflicted because I chose to protect you.”
She shakes her head, helplessness brimming in her eyes as they fill with fresh tears, and I realize that she knows exactly what this is.
At least, on my side. She sees it in my actions, how I hold her, seek her out.
“We can’t do this,” she tells me, as though I haven’t already agonized over every little reason.
“It’s too dangerous. We’re compromised.”
“I know,” I tell her, not willing to sugarcoat something as important as that.