Chapter 21
Evelyn
He's still resting against me—broken, quiet, not asking for anything—and something inside me folds like wet paper.
It hits me with sickening clarity. I’m not angry anymore. I’m terrified. Because if I let myself feel what I just saw in his eyes…I will never be able to walk away. Not from him. Not from this ruinous, impossible gravity between us.
I step back slowly. My hands skim his cheek in the softest ghost of a touch, and his eyes rise to mine like he’s bracing for a verdict.
“Sit,” I whisper.
He obeys instantly. That alone almost knocks the breath from my lungs. The room is quiet. Too quiet. My heartbeat echoes like a fist against my ribs.
“I… grew up with no name,” I begin. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Smaller. Younger. The girl I killed just to survive. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t interrupt. He watches me with a stillness that feels like worship.
“I never knew my parents. I was passed around like a file nobody wanted to keep. Orphanages. Foster homes. Some were tolerable. Some were nightmares stitched into walls.”
My throat tightens. I force myself to swallow, to keep going.
“There was one man who used to smile at me when the others weren’t looking. Told me I was ‘special.’ Said he’d protect me.”
A bitter laugh escapes. “And then he locked me in a cupboard for hours when I didn’t keep my mouth shut.”
Alexander’s jaw flexes—hard enough to splinter bone.
“Another foster father used to give me candy. Brush my hair. Tell me I was pretty.” My hands shake. “Then he tried to climb into my bed.” His hands curl into fists. If rage had a temperature, the room would ignite.
“I screamed. They moved me. Again. And again. And the pattern never changed.”
My voice cracks.
“Every time I told the truth, I was punished. Every time I trusted someone, they made me regret it.”
The air thickens between us. Heavy as confession. Sharp as old wounds reopening. “I stopped trusting,” I whisper. “I learned to survive by being invisible. By being useful. Never vulnerable.”
My eyes meet his, and something inside me fractures. “And then you happened. And now I don’t know how to breathe around you.”
My hand—traitorous, trembling—finds his chest. His heartbeat slams against my palm, fierce and uneven. “I don’t do love either,” I murmur. “But maybe… maybe I want to try. Once. With you.”
Something breaks open in his expression. Then he rises. And his mouth crashes into mine. It’s not a kiss, it’s a catastrophe. All of the pain, denial, hunger, fury, longing… all poured into lips that feel like absolution.
He yanks my blouse open with a growl, buttons scattering across the floor like fleeing witnesses.
His mouth burns a path down my throat, my collarbone, my breasts—an unholy benediction claiming every inch of me.
Before I can breathe, he lifts me—effortless, possessive—and places me on the edge of his desk. “Don’t move,” he orders, voice wrecked.
I don’t. I can’t.
He drops to his knees. Slides down my panties.
His mouth finds me, and the world ceases.
Tongue, lips, hands—devouring me with a starvation that borders on worship.
My fingers claw at the desk. My thighs tremble.
My breath breaks. “Alexander—” I gasp, but it dissolves into a moan as he drags me over the edge with merciless skill.
When I finally shatter, shaking, whimpering, ruined in ways that feel holy, he rises.
His eyes are unhinged. Possessive. Beautiful.
He unbuckles his belt with one hand. “Evelyn,” he growls.
I wrap my legs around his waist as he presses into me—slow, deep, devastating—like he’s carving his name into my bones.
Our foreheads press together. Our breaths sync. His hand slips under my jaw, tilts my face to his. “You’re not a mistake,” he whispers against my lips. “You’re the only thing that’s ever felt real. And the only thing that has rattled my heart.”
I kiss him—hungry, terrified, undone. And when we fall apart together, grasping and gasping, both of us breaking open in each other’s arms, I realize the war I thought I was fighting is already lost. We collapse against the desk, half-dressed, skin slick with sweat, his arms caging me like a shield against the world.
I bury my face in his throat, breathing him in like I’ve been starving for centuries.
“Stay,” he murmurs into my hair. “Please stay.” A plea dressed like a command. My voice trembles when I answer.
“Yes…I’d consider it.