Chapter 28
I should have just left. He told me to get dressed, said he’d clean up the mess, but I stayed anyway—leaned against the peeling tile, arms tight around myself, watching as Kang dragged the dead guard toward the door by one ankle.
The man’s head bounced once, wetly, and then the body was gone, out of sight past the rusted locker partition.
The silence that followed was vacuum-tight. Only the sound of the shower, spitting erratic pulses, and my own heartbeat—fast, arrhythmic, skipping every time I looked down and saw the blood streaking my thighs. Not even my blood, but it stuck.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting, knees pulled to my chest. My back ached from the blows, my scalp stung where the bastard had pulled my hair, and my lungs still burned from the choking. I could taste iron and chlorine, and the whole room stank of old piss and industrial blue.
I told myself to catalog the pain, to start the triage—inventory the abrasions, the likely fractures, the places I’d need to disinfect before the next shift.
But I couldn’t get past the tremor in my hands.
It wasn’t fear. It was something closer to rage.
The kind that doesn’t care about damage, only that it wants to inflict it on something, or someone.
The showers kept running, draining the heat from my skin. I didn’t shiver. I just let myself get cold.
Kang reappeared five minutes later, the body gone, the partition spattered with new red.
He’d washed most of the blood from his hands, but there was still some under his fingernails.
His uniform was wet and clinging, the collar torn and one sleeve already blooming with bruises.
He walked with a limp, favoring his left side, but his eyes were as flat as ever.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there in the archway, arms at his sides, the Authority mask pulled down tight. Only his breathing betrayed him—quick, shallow, like he’d just finished a sprint.
He looked at me. Looked away. Looked again.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, voice level but softer than before.
I checked my arms, the side of my head, then shrugged. “Not as much as he is.”
He flinched, a tiny tic at the corner of his mouth. “You should get that seen to.”
“By who? The corpse you left out front?” I meant it as a joke, but it came out acid.
Kang stepped inside, letting the door fall shut behind him. The echo of it rattled through the pipes, then faded. He crossed the tile slow, careful not to slip, every inch the predator testing a new territory.
He stopped a meter away, looked down at me, then at the wall, then at his own hands.
“You shouldn’t have been here alone,” he repeated, like if he said it enough it would become true.
“I can take care of myself,” I spat back, but even I didn’t believe it.
He crouched, one knee popping. The movement brought him down to my level, but not eye-to-eye. His gaze hovered somewhere just above my shoulder, as if I was a variable he couldn’t solve.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
“You could have been killed,” he said finally. “Or worse.”
I wanted to laugh in his face. Instead, I picked at a fleck of dried blood on my thigh and said, “You care now?”
He didn’t answer. The silence between us flexed, stretched, threatened to break.
I felt it then—the anger that had been simmering all through the assault, the humiliation, the rescue. It surged up my throat, raw and electric, and when I spoke my voice was almost a snarl.
“Why are you even here? What are you trying to prove?”
He met my eyes, green shot through with red, the vessels at the edges gone to burst. “I don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “It’s my job.”
“No, it isn’t. Your job is to watch. Record. “ I spat the word. “You don’t get to play hero, Kang. Not when you’re the one who threw me to the wolves in the first place.”
His jaw clenched, a tic running down the scar on his cheek. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Try me.”
I expected him to lash out, to hit the wall or yell. Instead, he just stared, his whole body coiled tight. “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said, voice gone thin. “Being the one who decides who lives, who doesn’t. Who gets fed to the machine.”
I laughed, sharp and mean. “You’re not the machine. You’re just another cog.”
He surged forward, hand snapping out. For a second I thought he was going to choke me, or punch me, but he just grabbed my wrist and held it, tight enough to hurt but not break. The heat of his skin was shocking after so much cold.
“Don’t ever call me that,” he growled, voice low and dangerous, breath hitting my cheek like steam off boiling metal.
I tried to twist free, yanking my arm, but he didn’t budge. His grip was iron. Unforgiving.
“Let go,” I hissed.
He leaned in, his body radiating heat, every line of him drawn taut like a wire about to snap.
“You want to die in here?” he snarled. “Is that it?”
“Better than living like you,” I spat.
That did it.
His pupils blew wide. His chest heaved once. For a heartbeat, I thought he might break something—me, the wall, maybe himself.
Instead, he crashed into me.
His mouth slammed against mine, all fury and fire and something far more dangerous.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t romantic. It was violence and heat and desperation disguised as a kiss—lips and teeth and the copper sting of blood as our mouths collided, caught between resistance and something far more primal.
His grip on my wrist held me in place, while his other hand fisted into my hair, forcing my head back against the cold tile.
He pressed in fully, pinning me between his body and the wall, all hard muscle and raw tension.
I could feel every line of him, the sharp breath in his throat, the way his chest rose against mine in a stuttering rhythm.
I bit his lip—hard enough to draw blood.
He didn’t flinch.
He kissed me harder.
And gods help me, I kissed him back.
I could feel the whole line of him—hard muscle, wet uniform, the catch in his ribs every time he breathed. My own body betrayed me, arched up into him, hunger and hate blurring until I couldn’t tell one from the other.
I managed to get my hands between us, shoved at his chest. The fabric tore under my nails, revealing a flash of skin beneath—tattoos, yes, but also something else. Scars. Old, ugly, healed badly.
He broke the kiss first, panting, forehead pressed to mine.
I spat in his face. “Fuck you.”
He wiped it away, eyes glinting. “You wish.”
I bared my teeth. “You’re not even man enough to take what you want.”
He looked at me for a long moment, face unreadable. Then he stood, yanked his shirt over his head, and tossed it aside.
His chest was a ruin. Scars layered over scars, some knife, some bullet, one so thick it looked like he’d been torn open and stitched shut by a blind man. The tattoos were Authority issue, rank and blood type and other markers, but most were faded, overgrown by the scar tissue.
He saw me staring, and for the first time he looked ashamed.
“Happy?” he said, voice bitter.
I shrugged. “I’ve seen worse.”
He stepped forward, close enough to pin me again. “You want to know what I want, Diana?”
I could barely breathe. “Tell me.”
He grabbed my chin, forced me to meet his gaze. “I want you to stop fighting me. Just once.”
I laughed in his face. “Then make me.”
His hands were on me before I could finish the sentence, strong and urgent, grasping me like a storm surge.
He lifted me, hard, slamming my back against the wall with a force that echoed like thunder.
One arm braced under my ass, firm and supportive, the other wrapped around my shoulders.
My legs found his waist, locked tight, anchoring myself to him.
The rough edge of the tile dug into my spine, but I didn’t care; the pain was a distant whisper, drowned out by the roar of sensation.
I bit his shoulder, drew blood, the coppery taste flooding my mouth.
He growled, low and dangerous, a primal sound that resonated through his chest, and bit me back, teeth closing on the tendon at my neck, a flash of pain that sent electric shocks through my nerves.
He spun us, dropping me to the floor, but not letting go.
His hands roamed, bruising, exploring, cataloguing every part of me like a hostile territory to be occupied.
I clawed at his back, dug nails into his sides, raked lines through the old scars until I found a new one to leave, a fresh mark of our passion.
We crashed to the ground, rolling through the puddles and broken tile, bodies a tangle of heat and fury.
The water splashed around us, cold against our heated skin, as we wrestled for dominance.
He pinned my arms above my head, used his knees to spread mine wide, and pressed his weight down until I couldn’t move, his body a prison of muscle and bone.
He kissed me again, slower this time, tongue tracing the cut he’d left on my lip. I tasted copper and bleach and the ghost of his name in my mouth, a bitter cocktail of lust and desperation.
He let go of my wrists, just for a second, and I used the moment to grab his belt, yanked it open.
His cock was already hard, thick and pulsing against my thigh, a rod of heated steel.
I wrapped my hand around it, squeezed, and he made a noise I’d never heard from him before—a broken, desperate sound, a symphony of need and desire.
He shoved my legs wider, lined himself up, and pushed inside, hard enough to steal my breath.
The pain was sharp, bright, perfect, a lightning strike of sensation that left me gasping.
I dug my heels into his hips, pulled him deeper, urging him on.
He fucked me like he wanted to erase every memory I’d ever had—rough, fast, no rhythm except the need.
The sound of our bodies slapping together echoed off the tile, water still running overhead, washing the blood and sweat down the drain.
He braced his hands on either side of my head, face inches from mine, hair dripping. “You take me so well,” he muttered, almost reverent, his voice a low rumble of thunder.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I spat, arching up to meet him, forcing him deeper, a challenge in every movement.
He thrust harder, slamming me into the tile. The pain went molten, pleasure and agony twisted together, a fiery storm of sensation. I moaned, low and guttural, then clamped my teeth on his shoulder again, biting until I tasted blood.
He laughed, a wild, broken sound “You’re fucking insane.”
“Takes one to know one,” I panted, squeezing him tighter, a vice of flesh and blood.
He rammed into me, once, twice, again, every thrust driving the air from my lungs.
My hands roamed his back, mapped every scar, every ridge of bone, a landscape of pain and pleasure.
I wanted to hate him, but I didn’t. Not in this moment.
In this moment, he was mine, a storm of sensation and emotion, a primal force of nature.
He was hitting that spot inside me with every thrust, the one that made stars burst behind my eyelids and set my nerve endings alight. I could feel the pleasure building, coiling tighter and tighter in my core like a spring ready to snap.
He must have sensed how close I was because he increased his pace even more, slamming into me so hard the tile cracked beneath us.
My orgasm hit me like a freight train, crashing through me with the force of a tidal wave.
I convulsed beneath him, back arching off the floor as every muscle seized up tight.
He followed me over the edge a second later, shuddering, head thrown back, muscles locked so tight I thought he’d break, a statue of ecstasy carved from living flesh.
I watched his face, catalogued every twitch, every beat, a symphony of release and surrender.
He collapsed onto me, breath hot on my neck, body shaking, a storm subsiding into calm.
I held him there, hands on his shoulders, refusing to let go.
When he finally rolled off, I stayed on the floor, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
We didn’t speak.
There was nothing left to say.