Page 66 of The Beast's Broken Angel
And somehow, I knew he meant it.
My body was still humming, hypersensitive and aching in the best, most dangerous ways. Adrian’s chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. His hair was wild from my grip, his mouth red from mine, and his eyes, God, his eyes, held something feral and unguarded that made my heart stutter.
“This changes things,” he said, his voice rough, threaded with want and something deeper I wasn’t ready to name.
“Does it?” I challenged, though the words trembled out of me. “Or is this just another way to control me? Another angle to work?”
The question hit him like a slap. I saw it, the way his expression froze, how the heat in his eyes cooled as if shutters had been drawn behind them. But before he could retreat behind those walls completely, I pushed on.
“Because that’s what you do, isn’t it?” I said. My voice shook, but I didn’t stop. “You find people’s weaknesses and use them. You found mine, Isabelle’s illness, my desperation, my need to save people. And now what? You’ve found another pressure point to push?”
He stared at me, quiet. The muscles in his jaw jumped, tension radiating from him in waves.
“Is that what you think this is?” he asked, low and dangerous, but there was something else underneath. Something fragile. “You think this,” he gestured between our tangled bodies and the rumpled bed, “is just another angle?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” I said, voice cracking on the truth. “I was a trauma nurse with a normal life and a clear sense of right and wrong. Now I’m here, in this place, in your bed, complicit in things I never thought I’d be. And I just... I don’t know who I am anymore.”
I sat up, pulling the sheets around myself like armour. “So yeah. I want you. I can’t even lie about that anymore. This thing between us, it’s real and terrifying and it’s pulling me under. But I also know who you are, Adrian. I know what you’re capable of. And I’d be a fool to think I’m not still one more pawn on your board.”
He didn’t move. Not at first. But something in himshifted.
Not anger.
Hurt.
“You think I’m manipulating you,” he said slowly, and the look in his eyes wasn’t the cold, calculating gaze of the man who’d first dragged me into his world. It was raw, unguarded. “You think this is strategy.”
“Isn’t it?”
His shoulders straightened, his chest lifting with a deep breath. “No. It’s not.”
He stepped back from the bed, and the loss of his warmth left me colder than I expected. He didn’t reach for his clothes or try to gather control. He just stood there, looking at me like I’d carved something out of him with words alone.
“You want to know what this is?” he said. “It’s the first time in twenty years someone has looked at me and seen more than the violence I’m capable of. It’s the first time I’ve wanted something that wasn’t about dominance or leverage.”
He ran a hand through his hair, restless. “You watched me in that basement, saw what I did. And instead of flinching, you stood your ground. You called me out. You made me question myself.”
“That doesn’t mean?—”
“I could have anyone,” he cut in, not boastful, just stating a truth as sharp as a scalpel. “Money, power, fear, people respond to those things. If I wanted you compliant, I’d have used those tools. I’ve used them before.”
He turned slightly, eyes dropping to the floor. “But I don’t want that with you. I want you as you are, sharp-tongued, infuriating, relentlessly moral. I want you to choose this. Choose me.”
The words left a hollow ringing in my ears. A confession I hadn’t expected. A vulnerability from a man who commanded every room he walked into.
“And if I don’t?” I asked quietly.
He met my gaze. “Then nothing changes. Your sister stays protected. You continue your work. We go back to what it was before tonight.”
“But?”
“But I won’t touch you again,” he said, voice resolute. “No more blurred lines. No more pretending.”
He moved away from the bed, running a hand through his hair, his back to me.
“You said you need time. I’ll give it. But Noah?”
“Yeah?”
