Page 59 of Velvet Betrayal
He shook his head, half-laughing, then stopped. “You’re not. You’re efficient. That’s what I always liked.” He let go of my wrist, turned the tap on full blast. “You know what the upshot of being raised that way is?”
I shrugged.
“It means every time I tell you I love you, it’s a choice. Not instinct, not hormones, not my parents’ mess. I mean it.” He flicked water off his fingers, eyes catching mine just as city light slashed across his face and made him look younger, more dangerous, more like the Kieran who’d ruined me and haunted every rebound since.
I swallowed hard. “Why do you think I never made it work with anyone else?” I said. “You ruined me. There wasn’t anything left for anyone else.”
“I ruined you?” He laughed, disbelieving. “You ruined me.”
For a second, I almost said it—the whole dark joke of us, how every man since had to measure up to the Kieran-shaped hole in my life. But no. I wasn’t about to give him that.
Instead, I pressed my palm to his chest, like I could stop his heart if I wanted. “Maybe we just broke each other,” I said, and even though I meant it as a joke, it sounded a lot like truth.
He touched the new stitches above his eye. “Or maybe,” he said, slow, “we’re just the only ones stubborn enough to keep patching the breaks.”
That was always Kieran—hopeful, reckless, impossible. I wanted to laugh, to cut him down, but instead, I just let my head fall against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, gentle, and for a minute, we stood there, counting down the seconds before the world tried to take it away again.
“Go to bed,” I said, voice muffled.
“You’re bossy.”
“Only way to keep you alive, Callahan.”
He spread his hand over the back of my head, covering half my doubts. “You’re the only one who ever could,” he said, and for once I didn’t argue. “I’ll go to bed if you come with me.”
I should have said no. Should have told him this couldn’t happen, not again.
Instead, I nodded.
Kieran
She walked me to the bedroom, but didn’t come in. Just stood there, watching, like she was trying to decide if this was mercy or a mistake. I could feel the air shift between us, humid with things we’d said and things we hadn’t, and it hit me like it always did—how she smelled like something stolen from summer even in the dead of winter, how she never looked scared even when she should’ve been. I reached for her wrist, slow, like I was asking permission without saying it out loud. Her pulse was fast. So was mine.
She didn’t kiss me. Not at first. Just dragged her fingers through my hair, careful around the bandage, and looked at me like she didn’t know whether to fuck me or leave me bleeding.
“Get some rest,” she said, quiet. “You look like a corpse someone forgot to bury.”
“I’ll sleep when you’re beneath me,” I said.
A flush crawled up her throat—frustration, arousal, both. “You’re concussed.”
“Then maybe you should do something to keep me conscious.”
“You really want to pick this fight?”
I leaned in, lips just shy of hers. “I don’t want to fight. I want you to make me feel like I’m still alive.”
And that was it—the break in her armor. The split second before everything turned.
She bit me first—hard enough to split my lip open again, hard enough to make me forget everything except the taste of blood and lemon soap and her. I knotted my fingers in her hair and dragged her in, kissed her like it was the only way to prove we were still alive. She made a sound—half gasp, half growl—and for a second I wanted to pin her down, mark her, fuck her, anything that would get through to the universe that we’d been here, together, even if the world outside was just knives and threats waiting for us to step out.
She fought it, of course. She always did. But her knees buckled, and her hands curled at my sides—claws, not fists. The fight was still there, just rerouted, all that energy turning into something hungry and raw. She ripped my shirt, yanking it over my bandaged head so fast I almost blacked out, then dragged her nails down my ribs, lighting up nerves I didn’t even know I had.
She hit the wall first, rattling the frames. I pinned her wrists up, bracing my body between her and the drywall, breath coming fast, matching hers. For a second, I thought we might just combust—two pressure points waiting for the fuse.
“You like this?” I breathed, grinding my hips into hers, wedging my thigh up between her legs. I felt how ready she was, the slick heat through both our clothes. “You missed me.”
She laughed—low, close, throatier than I’d ever heard. “You’re insufferable.”
