“Mo ghrá,” whispers a voice against my ear, “you can let go now. You’re safe. It’s over.”
“Kieran?” I ask, but it comes out as a sob. Another follows, and another.
Oh, I’m the one crying.
“I’ve got you,” he says, voice thick with his own tears. “Let go, my love. I won’t let you fall.”
My fingers spasm and open.
I’m weightless, lifted up and away.
Chapter 33
Talia
The following night, my phone buzzes from the lip of Kieran’s bathtub where I’ve been soaking long enough for my fingers and toes to wrinkle. After wiping my hands quickly on a towel, I grab my device and read the message.
Done with the cops. Home in 5
My fingers tremble as I type:
I can’t wait to see you
Kieran doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. Even separated by miles, I can feel his need.
From the moment I opened my eyes to Kieran’s face and realized I was safe, I’ve anticipated this moment. He was supernaturally calm during my visit to a private doctor and throughout the hours-long process of having my injuries photographed and giving my statement to the police. When his lawyer and Alistair arrived at the precinct, and Sven suggested I be taken home to rest, Kieran gave me a gentle hug and a chaste kiss goodbye.
Mia and Leo were waiting for me at Kieran’s. There were some tears but no questions, only relief and compassion. Exactly what I needed. After I took the world’s longest shower, they fed me and tucked me into bed, then kept watch over me as I slept. When I woke, the sun was setting. I sent them home, already knowing what was coming.
Now it’s here.
The eye of Kieran’s storm has passed. It rages inside him, desperate for release.
Stepping from the bathtub, I grab a towel and dry off. The magnesium salt bath and anti-inflammatories I took an hour ago have made my soreness almost negligible. I still keep my back to the mirror, avoiding the sight of the bruises blooming on my neck, shoulder, and hip. I don’t look at my hands, either, the abrasions on my palms and wrists minor but stark against my pale skin.
Tomorrow, I have my first appointment with a trauma specialist, a colleague I’ve known since college. Tomorrow, I’ll tend to the bloody tracks left in my psyche by the swinging pendulum of emotional extremes. Terror to hope. Despair to fury. Grief to searing relief when I found out Gabe survived. I’ll face, too, the proof of my own capacity to take a life. My lack of guilt. The twisting, aching knowledge that a part of me wishes I hadn’t been stopped.
Tomorrow, I’ll confront it all.
Tonight belongs to animal necessity, to the natural urge to conquer death with life. Kieran needs physical contact to prove I’m safe, and I need to replace the echoes of nonconsensual touch on my body with the hands of the man I love.
But I need something else from him, too. I need help extracting the poisonous seed I swallowed last night—the lies I told to stay alive. And as difficult as this will be for him, patience and gentleness aren’t going to cut it for me. If he treats me like I’m delicate, there will be only one result: the rot inside me will spread.
To obliterate the stain inside me, I need his darkest self. The savage wolf.
As I hang my damp towel on a hook by the tub, the air changes around me. Goose bumps lift on my arms. My pulse begins to drum, fast and furious, as need throbs between my thighs.
He’s here.
When the bedroom door opens and closes, I walk out of the bathroom.
Kieran jerks to a stop at the sight of me. With the curtains half-drawn against a cloudy afternoon, the bedroom is shadowed, his eyes dark as they scan me from top to bottom. At his sides, fists form. His rapid, harsh breaths—and mine—are the only sound.
“Talia,” he croaks, brow furrowing. “I can’t—I shouldn’t touch you right now.”
I barely feel the floor beneath me as I cross to him. My nipples graze his shirt, emitting tiny shockwaves at the contact. He sucks in a breath, tendons standing out in his flexed arms, broad shoulders shaking as he fights impulse.
Lifting my chin, I stare into his eyes and see everything. Our past, present, and future. The floating ribbons of our lives that crossed and tangled by chance seventeen years ago before weaving in separate directions across continents and years. Apart. Distinct. Growing and strengthening and maturing. But always linked by the bond that formed at his grandmother’s grave. Now we are braided together, sealed with knots so complex and tight nothing in this world can undo them.