Page 110 of Killing Me Softly

Then he kissed her.

It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t passionate. It was cold. Clinical. Deliberatelyempty. He gave her the shell of a kiss, nothing more than compliance on the surface, a hollow echo of what she wanted. Not a flicker of vulnerability. Not an ounce of surrender. Just a man doing what he had to do to keep Aaron alive.

Still bile rose in Aaron’s throat, and he had to look away.

Mable tried to make it last. Draw it out. Make it something worth witnessing. His lips were still, his body unyielding, a man standing in the rain without acknowledging he was getting wet.

Mablehated it.

When she pulled back, her smile faltered for a fraction of a second before she forced it back into place. “See, Mummy was right. Youlovethe thrill. The danger. You want to kiss the devil and have himkiss you back. You want the beast to surrender under you.”

She dragged the knife down his chest, slicing fabric but not skin. The shirt fell open, exposing bare muscle and coarse chest hair, the blade hovering just close enough to threaten. She sighed, tracing her fingers over his skin, leaning in, nuzzling his neck like a lover. Watching for a reaction. Waiting for him to shudder. To stiffen. To show even the smallest sign of discomfort.

Kenny didn’t give it to her.

“Your mother is wrong,” he said, but his voice had lost its usual edge of control. “She’s emotionally fractured. Unable to distinguish between need and love. Control and care. She sees everything as a transaction. A game. So of course she’d twistusinto something ugly.” He paused, eyes flicking to Aaron, just for a second. “She can’t understand how I feel. Because she’s never known what it is to love someone and want nothing from them but the truth of who they are.”

Mable pulled back, expression twisting.

Aaron’s stomach clenched. She was losingcontrol.

Mable recovered quickly, smirking, rolling her hips against Kenny’s lap. “Oh, but love and desire aren’t the same, are they, doctor?” She sat back, eyes gleaming. “Oops.” She bit her lip in mockery. “See, I made youhard.”

Red flooded Aaron’s vision. A pulse of heat and fury behind his eyes. He wanted to lunge, to tear her away, toendthis—

But Kenny only exhaled through his nose. A long, slow breath. Then, with a single look at Mable, he smiled, and his voice was almost gentlewhen he said, “You couldn’t make me hard if you tried.”

Silence.

Mable’s eyes darkened.

Kenny didn’t look away. Didn’t falter. Then, finally, he shifted his gaze away from her and locked onto Aaron’s. And when he spoke next, it was forhim. “I adore your brother too much to even see you or anyone else.”

Mable’s grin twisted, lips stretching too wide, too sharp. Like a wound splitting open. Her eyes gleamed, feeding off the tension tightening the air like a noose. Aaron clenched his jaw so hard it ached, knowing what that look meant. Knowingexactlywhere she was about to take this.

Slithering down like a serpent, body liquid and slow, she sank to her knees in front of Kenny, reaching for his belt, unfastening it, the metallicclinkringing out like a gunshot in the suffocating silence. Aaron’s stomach plunged as he had to watch her slide the zip down, dragging it inch by agonising inch. A torturous unravelling. She hummed—that fucking song still playing in the background—and she dropped lower, palming Kenny through the fabric of his underwear.

Massaging.

Teasing.

Violating.

“Oh, he’s big,” she purred.

Aaron retched, pure, molten rage coiling so tightly, he shook, and Kenny flinched, recoiling from her touch, trying to shift away, but there was nowhere to go. His body strained against the ropes, muscles tensed to breaking.

“Don’t fight it, doctor,” she cooed. “Maybe you’ll like it.”

“You know I won’t like it, but that’s not the point, is it? You’re trying to hurt Aaron for something that isn’t his fault. Trying to regain the control you never had.”

Mable hesitated. Just for a second. Caught off guard by the way Kenny spoke, not as a victim, not as a man at her mercy, but as a surgeon peeling back the skin of her mind. And Kenny didn’t give her time to recover.

“I saw you. I saw you then. What you went through. And I see what you’re trying to do now. You’ve spent your whole life being dismissed. Overlooked.Used. But your mother is still using you. Even now. Getting you to do her dirty work. Aren’t you tired of it? You should be. Because you were achild. A child in a world that never gave you a choice. You weren’t loved. And that leaves scars. That makes you want to tear love apart. Burn it down before it can burn you. But you can’t, Mable. You can’t kill love.”

Aaron heldhis breath.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kenny said. “You don’t have to be whattheywant you to be. Not anymore. You’re free. You’reyou. Whoever you want to be. Not what they made you. Not your parents. Those doctors who were supposed to help you. Not even Dr Pryce.”

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