043— "MOLEST?"

                   ~KAI~

I didn't think before I kissed her.

That was the problem. That was always the problem with her. 

She made the space between deciding and doing disappear completely and I was kissing her before I'd finished the thought that led to it and her lips were soft and she tasted like something I didn't have a word for.

My chest did the thing it had been doing for weeks except louder now, more insistent, like it had been trying to tell me something and had finally just decided to shout it.

Her hands were on my chest.

Pushing.

I didn't move. I was fairly certain she didn't want me to move. I was fairly certain the pushing was performance and the staying was what she actually wanted.

Then she pushed harder.

I stepped back.

The sound of the kiss breaking was loud in the room.

I looked at her.

Her chest was heaving. Her hair was pulled at where my hands had been. Her eyes were — furious. Wide and something underneath the fury that she was working very hard to bury.

Her palm connected with my cheek.

Hard.

The sound of it cracked through the room and I stood there and felt it and didn't move.

"Don't you dare," she said. Her voice was shaking. "Don't you dare molest me like that."

I stared at her.

"Molest."

The word landed in the room between us like something dropped from a height.

"Yes." She crossed her arms. Still breathing hard. Still furious. "What else? Get out."

I took a step toward her.

"Molest," I said again. Because I needed to say it again. Because hearing it once hadn't been enough to make it make sense. "That's what this was to you."

"Get out Kai."

"That's all it was."

"I said get out—"

"Look at me." I stepped closer. "Look me in the eye and tell me that's what that was."

She looked me in the eye.

"Yes," she said. "That's what it was. Get out. Please leave."

I looked at her face.

At her eyes that were doing everything except what she was saying.

"Do you really want me to leave," I said. My voice came out differently than I intended. Lower. Less controlled than I'd wanted. "Tell me now. Tell me you actually want me to go."

She paused.

One second. Two.

I watched it happen — the decision forming, the jaw setting, the thing in her eyes that closed like a door.

"Yes," she said. "That's my wish. Leave."

I backed off.

One step. Two.

Something was happening in my chest that I had no protocol for. Not the racing. Not the warmth that arrived when she was close. Something different. Something that had edges to it that cut on the way through.

I straightened.

"Since that's what you want," I said. "Sloane Thorne." My voice came out even. I don't know how. "None of anything happened. I apologize for the inconveniences."

I turned and walked to the door.

Every single step I wanted her to say my name. To cross the room. To reach out and grab my wrist the way I had grabbed hers a hundred times in this godforsaken arrangement. One word. Just my name. Just—

Nothing.

I kept walking.

                     …

The rooftop was cold and empty and I stood at the edge of it and looked at the mountain ridge and breathed and told myself this was fine. 

This was information. Information was useful. I had the information now and I could work with it and move forward and none of this had to mean anything beyond what it was.

My vision blurred slightly.

I blinked.

Pressed the heel of my hand against my chest and waited for the pressure to ease.

It didn't ease.

Two days.

I had spent two days away from the mansion because the proximity was becoming a problem I couldn't manage professionally. 

Because my heart rate had stopped being something I could regulate around her. Because I had sat in my office trying to read files and seen her face in every paragraph for six hours and understood that distance was the only intervention left.

Distance had made it worse.

Significantly worse. I had lain awake both nights unable to locate a comfortable position that wasn't about her. 

I had gone to a doctor — a real one, not the mansion medic, and sat in the chair and described the symptoms and watched the doctor find nothing wrong and come away understanding that nothing being wrong was the problem.

I had driven two hours to a mountain because she was here.

I had told myself it was security. The property. Professional responsibility.

I had arrived in time to see that man's hand moving toward her face on the balcony and something had happened in my chest that I had no clean word for. 

Shift. 

Crack. 

The specific sensation of something that had been held under pressure deciding it was done being held.

I had walked across that balcony and said ‘move’ and meant something significantly beyond the word.

And now she was in her room calling it molesting and telling me to leave and I was on a rooftop with my vision doing something I was attributing to the altitude.

Her lips.

Her hands in my hair in the painting room. The sounds she made. The way she'd kissed me back on the terrace and in the painting room and just now, for three seconds, before she pushed — she had kissed me back. I wasn't wrong about that. I was wrong about many things but not that.

‘Don't you dare molest me.’

I looked at the mountain.

The lump in my throat was a physiological response to a stressful situation. That was all it was.

I pressed harder against my chest.

Footsteps behind me.

I didn't turn around. I knew the rhythm of them.

"What's stressing the heir apparent this evening," Niko said, appearing beside me with his hands in his pockets and his tone at that specific register he used when he already knew the answer and wanted to watch me arrive at it myself. 

"Aren't you coming down for the bonfire?"

"I don't know what's wrong with me," I said.

It came out before I processed saying it. I looked at the ridge.

Niko was quiet for a moment.

"I do," he said.

"Don't."

"Love," he said simply. "You're in love Kai."

"That's not what this is."

"What is it then?"

"A biological—"

"Stop." He almost laughed. "Just stop. You drove two hours to a mountain because she was here and you told yourself it was professional." He looked at me sideways. "Then you found her on a balcony with another man and the professional assessment you made was to walk across it and tell him to move."

I said nothing.

"You haven't slept properly in two weeks," he said. "You went to a doctor. You—"

"How do you know about the doctor?"

"Because I know you." He said it simply. "And I know what you look like when you're trying to solve something that doesn't have a solution you're comfortable with." He looked at the mountain. "Just accept it."

I looked at my hands on the railing.

"The man downstairs," I said.

"Daniel."

"He was going to touch her."

"I know."

"On a balcony he found specifically to—"

"Kai." Niko's voice changed. The teasing gone. Something more careful underneath it. "She's running out of time."

I went still.

"The mark," he said. "It's worse than she's saying. Elena told me. 

She coughed blood and Sloane told her it was nothing and Elena's been watching her hands shake during breakfast and pretending not to notice." He turned to look at me directly. "You know what gets rid of it. You've known for a while. You made the phone call."

I looked at the ridge.

"You have to claim her," he said. "Properly. You have to accept the bond. It's the only thing that stops it."

"No."

"Kai—"

"There has to be another way. I won't—" My jaw tightened. "I won't force a bond on someone who just told me to get out of her room. I won't do it."

"Then she dies," Niko said quietly. Not cruel. Just true. "And you stand here on rooftops for the rest of your life being professionally fine about it."

I had nothing to say to that.

The mountain was very quiet around us.

Then — footsteps.

Both of us heard them simultaneously. Coming from the stairwell door behind us. Too fast to be deliberate.

"Who's there?" I asked.

Nothing.

Just the sound of the wind.

And then silence where the footsteps had been.