Se connecterKillian’s POVShe was still facing the door but she hadn’t moved.I could feel it from across the room… the way her body was responding to what I’d said, that particular tension that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with something she wasn’t ready to admit yet.I crossed the room and started walking towards her.“Your body is reacting to me,” I said quietly, coming up behind her.“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.“You love it when I talk to you like that… don’t you?” I asked teasingly.“No,” she said.“Then why are you still standing here?”She turned around and I closed the distance before she could answer, my hands held her waist, pulling her into me until there was no useful space between us. She pushed against my chest once but I didn’t move.“Ouu! You must be feeling that,” I said, and moved her hand deliberately to my crotch.She pulled back hard but I held firm.“You think your training makes you stronger than me,” I said. “It doesn’t. You cou
Rae’s POVSelene’s scream was loud enough to bring the ceiling down.She sat on the floor with her hand pressed to her face and made sure every corner of the compound could hear exactly what had just happened. It bounced off the walls and down the corridor and I stood over her without moving, breathing steady.Liah walked in from somewhere behind me. She took one look at Selene on the floor, one look at me standing over her, and something moved across her face that I hadn’t seen there before.Fear.Not of me, exactly. More like the particular fear of someone watching a situation accelerate toward a point they can’t pull it back from.“Selene.” Liah’s voice was low and controlled. “Get up. We need to go.”“She hit me,” Selene said, still loud, and performing for whoever was listening.“I know,” Liah said. “Get up anyway. Before this gets back to Killian.”Something shifted in Selene’s face at his name. The performance slipped just slightly and what was underneath it was rawer and less
Rae’s POVHe didn’t say anything as we walked back to the garage.I matched his pace and let the silence sit for a moment, watching the lines of his face from the side, trying to read whatever was running underneath that stillness he always wore like a second skin. I got nothing. He was good at that… giving just enough to keep looking without giving anything to actually hold onto.“You didn’t have to do that in there,” I said finally.“Do what?” he asked.“Yell at them.” I kept my voice even. “Hit the table and create the whole scene.” I glanced at him. “You’ve known those people your whole life. I’ve been here less than two weeks.”“The timeline doesn’t change what’s true,” he said.“Maybe not… But it changes how they see you. You can’t force people to accept someone just because you told them to.” I said.He looked at me sideways. “I’m not forcing them to accept you. I’m want them to respect you. Those are different things.”I thought about that for a moment.“You’re right,” I said.
Rae’s POV“Mmh…”The sound left my mouth before I even knew where I was.My fingers were twisted into the sheets and my back was arched and my whole body was doing something completely outside my control. Everything was heat, pressure and a sensation so consuming that I couldn’t think properly.“Ah…”I tried to find something to push against. My hands found his head and I gripped and pulled but he didn’t move, slow down, or even acknowledge the resistance. Like I was invisible at that moment.It built so fast it frightened me.“Killian…” His name came out broken in the middle.Then I reached orgasm.My whole body seized and released at once and the sound I made had no dignity in it whatsoever. It rolled through me in waves and I couldn’t stop any of it and I stopped trying to push him away.When I finally settled I lay completely still, staring at the ceiling, breathing like I’d just run the track again.He came up.I turned my face away immediately.“Stop that,” he said.“Get off me
Killian’s POVI sat on the edge of my bed for about thirty seconds before I gave up on the idea of staying still. My skin felt too tight. My chest was doing something unpleasant that I didn’t have a name for and didn’t want one. All I knew was that if I stayed in this room with my thoughts for another minute something was going to break and I preferred to choose what it was.I pulled on my gym shorts and a plain tee and walked out.The training room was empty at this hour, which was exactly what I needed. One bag hanging in the center, the overhead light humming, the smell of rubber and old sweat. I didn’t bother with wraps. I just started hitting.The first few were loose, just movement, and something to do with my hands. Then the image came back of Rae standing in the center of that hall with the truth sphere suspended in front of her, pale and upright and running on nothing, because she’d already raced that morning and her system was still half destroyed and nobody in that room car
Killian’s POV“Don’t touch her.”My voice came out harder than I intended but nobody in that hall moved to argue with it. The sentinels at the door stepped back. The two women in white exchanged a look but kept their distance.I stepped in front of Rae.“She came in with me,” I said. “That means she’s under my protection. Anyone who puts a hand on her answers to me directly.”The hall was old stone and high ceilings and the kind of silence that had been accumulating for decades. A long table ran down the center of it, seven elders seated behind it, robes and rings and expressions that had forgotten what it felt like to be questioned.Yvonne was at the far end.She stood as I walked forward. She had known me since I was nine years old, had sat at my mother’s table and drunk her tea and laughed at things I was too young to understand. She was the only person in this room whose opinion I had ever genuinely weighted.She came around the table slowly.“Killian,” she said kindly. “You broug
Rae’s POVI hadn’t expected him to be like this.Dominant wasn’t even the right word for him. He was something deeper than that… something that moved like instinct and didn’t ask permission. His mouth was warm and deliberate against my breast and every coherent thought I had was dissolving faster t
Rae’s POVI didn’t look at him. Not even once.I kept my eyes on the bike in front of me, checking the handles, the seat height, the position of the mirrors, doing all the things I have to do before a ride when I need my hands to be busy so my face doesn’t give me away.I was still angry about last
Killian’s POVI sat on the edge of my bed for a long moment before I moved.My palm was still tingling from where I’d hit the floor. Not from pain… the fall hadn’t hurt, not really. It was more like the shock of it. The absolute last thing I had expected from a woman who had been bedridden for two
Killian’s POVI was on my feet before I even made the decision to move.The sneeze had done it… snapped everything back into focus like a slap to the back of my head. I stepped away from the bed and put enough space between us to breathe properly again.Rae looked up at me. There was nothing readab







