Page 19 of Mated to the Kingpin

“I was trying to protect you,” he says again, but it sounds thin now. Desperate.

“Then you don’t know what love is!” I shout, breath hitching as I take a step back. “Love doesn’t leave. Love stays and grieves with you. Love doesn’t just walk away when it gets hard.”

The air crackles. Instead of sagging like he did before, something in Liam snaps. The tension that had been coiled tight between us ignites. He crosses the distance between us in a prowling blur, hands on my face before I can suck in another breath. Then his mouth crashes over mine.

The kiss is rough, desperate, edged with something feral and furious. My breath catches as his teeth drag across my bottom lip, mouth claiming mine like it’s a war he intends to win only by surrendering everything.

I should shove him away. I should slap him for daring to touch me like this after what he did, after what he said, after how he left.

Except I don’t. Because my body responds before my heart can shut it down. Because some traitor part of me has been waiting for this damn kiss since I was sixteen years old. Because the girl who fell in love with Liam O’Reilly never truly stopped loving him, no matter how tightly I buried her.

He pulls back just enough to speak, his eyes wild and storm-bright, his breath ragged across my cheek.

“You want a fairy tale? You want Prince Fucking Charming? Then you don’t want me.”

“Then what are you?” I whisper, throat tight, heartbeat a thunderclap in my ears.

His hands shake where they cradle my jaw.

“I’m the kind of man who loves like a fucking curse. Who will fucking carve my name into your skin, Claire. Who watched you from the shadows because I knew I couldn’t have you, but I couldn’t let anyone else have you either, goddammit.”

My breath stutters.

He leans in, voice low and cold and holy. “I wasn’t there where you could see me, but I was always there. Always. I watched over you. Protected you. Every man who harmed you that night? I learned their names. Their habits. Their routine and lives.”

His eyes flare with something black and glittering.

“I hunted each of them down.”

My stomach twists. My pulse trips. I can barely move.

“I made sure they never laid their goddamn hands on another girl again,” he says, his voice dipping to a rasp. “That’s my love, Claire. Not poems or roses. But vengeance. Rage. Obsession. I’d dig a hundred graves just to make one point, that no one touches you but me.”

I should be backing away. My mind wheezes that this man is dangerous, obsessive, twisted. But my heart is fluttering inside my chest like it recognizes the beast it always belonged to. Like no matter the horrors, he was always meant to be mine.

“I don’t give a fuck what the world thinks,” he growls, pulling me tight against his chest. “I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you.”

I tilt my face up, my mouth barely brushing his, our breath caught between us. Everything inside me screams this is chaos, this is dangerous.

But it’s also real. He’s not the boy I used to dream about. He’s fury and darkness now—obsession shaped into flesh. And maybe, maybe I’ve always wanted that. Not the prince. The wolf.

But I won’t make it easy.

My palm presses to his chest, the thud of his heart a match to mine. My other hand curls into the back of his neck. I watch his eyes, dark with restraint, and I let myself smile.

“If that’s the kind of love you offer,” I breathe, “then I want it. I want you.”

He trembles against me, fingers tightening at my waist like chains about to snap.

“You left me once,” I whisper, “so if you want me now, you’ll have to earn every jagged edge you left behind.”

I retreat a single step, chin up, daring him. He looks wrecked. Ravenous.

“I’ll run, Liam. And if you catch me, you’d better be ready to never let go again.”

And God help me, I’ve never wanted anything more.

Chapter 11

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