Assigned Fate

I woke up to my alarm screaming and sunlight burning through curtains I’d forgotten to close.

Shit. 8:47 AM.

I was supposed to be in the office by eight-thirty, showered and professional and pretending I hadn’t spent half the night touching myself to fantasies of a criminal’s hands on my body.

The shower was scalding and too brief, my hair a disaster I attacked with bobby pins and prayer. Coffee burned my tongue as I threw on the first suit I could find—navy blue, conservative, armor against the memory of hazel eyes that had seen straight through my soul.

I’d dreamed about him. About Kane. Dark, vivid dreams where those scarred hands explored every inch of my skin while he whispered filthy promises in that whiskey-rough voice. I’d woken aching and empty, my fingers still slick with evidence of what I’d done while thinking about him.

Pathetic didn’t begin to cover it.

Patricia’s office door was already closed when I rushed past, but her assistant flagged me down with a manila folder that felt like destiny in my hands.

“New case,” she said. “High profile. Patricia wants to see you the moment you’ve reviewed the file.”

I grabbed coffee that could strip paint and locked myself in my office, spreading the documents across my desk with shaking hands. Sexual assault in the first degree. Victim: Victoria Ashford. Defendant: Kane D.

The world tilted sideways.

Kane. The stranger from Eclipse wasn’t a stranger at all—he was Kane Drax, and somehow the universe had decided to torture me by making him my client.

My hands trembled as I scanned the charges. Victoria’s accusations were detailed, brutal, exactly the kind of he-said-she-said that could destroy a career. But I’d been there. I’d seen Kane reject her, watched her rage as she stormed away from his public dismissal.

This was revenge, pure and simple.

And I was about to walk into a room alone with the man who’d starred in every forbidden fantasy I’d had since last night.

The courthouse holding area smelled like industrial soap and desperation, but all I could think about was how Kane would look in that orange jumpsuit. Would it stretch across those broad shoulders? Cling to the muscles I’d glimpsed beneath his leather jacket?

Professional. Stay professional.

Room 3 felt smaller than usual, the air thick with anticipation that had nothing to do with legal strategy. When the guard opened the door, every coherent thought scattered like smoke.

Kane Drax sat at the metal table like he owned it, one ankle propped casually on the opposite knee despite the shackles. The jumpsuit should have made him look like any other inmate. Instead, it clung to every hard line of his body, the orange fabric stretched taut across shoulders that spoke of violence and strength.

His black hair was pulled back in a knot that emphasized the sharp angles of his face, and when those hazel-gold eyes met mine, liquid fire shot straight to my core.

“Ms. Reyes.” My name on his lips was pure sin. “My lawyer, I presume.”

I forced my legs to carry me to the chair across from him, hyperaware of how his gaze tracked every movement. The space between us felt electric, charged with something that made my skin prickle and my breath catch.

“That’s right.” I set my briefcase down with hands that trembled slightly. “I’m here to discuss your case and—”

“What’s your mother’s name?”

The question came out of nowhere, sharp and demanding. His intensity pinned me to my chair like a butterfly on display.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your mother.” Kane leaned forward, and I caught that intoxicating scent from Eclipse—leather and motor oil and something wild that made my mouth water. “Elena Reyes?”

My chest tightened. Nobody mentioned my mother anymore. She’d been dead over a decade, killed in the line of duty when I was sixteen, and the wound had supposedly healed.

Kane’s casual use of her name tore it wide open.

“How do you know that?” My voice came out smaller than I intended.

Something dark flickered across his features. “She was a cop.”

Not a question. An accusation. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, and I felt the shift in Kane’s energy like a physical blow.

“Yes.” I lifted my chin defiantly. “She died protecting people from criminals like—”

“Like me.” Kane finished, his voice flat and cold.

He stood abruptly, the chain connecting his shackles rattling against the metal table. For a moment, he towered over me, and I felt the full weight of his presence—dangerous, overwhelming, completely magnetic. Then he stepped back like I’d burned him.

But not before I’d seen it. The flash of heat in his eyes. The way his pupils dilated when he looked at my mouth.

He wanted me too.

The knowledge hit me like lightning, setting every nerve ending ablaze. Kane Drax—criminal, everything I should avoid—wanted me with the same desperate hunger that was eating me alive.

“I don’t want you as my lawyer.”

The words were like ice water over flame. I felt my face crumple before I could stop it, the rejection hitting somewhere deep and vulnerable I’d forgotten existed.

“Mr. Drax—”

“No.” He moved to the far wall, putting as much distance between us as the small room allowed. “You don’t understand. You can’t—this isn’t—”

He stopped, jaw working like he was swallowing broken glass. When he looked at me again, his eyes were wild with something between panic and hunger.

“Find me another lawyer. Someone who isn’t—” His gaze raked over me, lingering on the conservative cut of my suit, the careful way I’d pinned my hair back. “Someone who isn’t you.”

The dismissal was quiet. Almost gentle. But it landed like a physical blow, and I felt tears threaten behind my eyes.

I didn’t understand this. The intensity, the connection, the way his rejection felt like losing something I’d never had. I barely knew this man. Had no right to feel gutted by his dismissal.

But I did.

“I see.” I gathered my papers with hands that shook despite my best efforts. “I’ll speak to my supervisor about reassigning—”

“Calla.”

My name on his lips stopped me cold. When I turned, Kane was pressed against the wall like he was trying to push himself through it, his hands clenched into fists.

“You felt it too, didn’t you?” His voice was rough, desperate. “At Eclipse. This—whatever this is between us.”

I opened my mouth to lie, to maintain some shred of professional dignity. But the words that came out were pure truth.

“Yes.”

Kane’s eyes closed like I’d hurt him. “That’s why you can’t be my lawyer. That’s why you need to walk away and never look back.”

“But—”

“There’s no but.” His eyes snapped open, burning with intensity that made my knees weak. 

The words should have frightened me. Should have sent me running like any rational woman would. Instead, they sent heat spiraling through my core, because they sounded less like a warning and more like a promise.

I reached for the door handle with shaking fingers, desperate to escape before I said something that would destroy us both. The moment my skin touched metal, electricity shot up my arm like I’d grabbed a live wire.

I gasped and jerked back, staring at my tingling hand in shock. When I looked at Kane, he was frozen against the wall, his face pale beneath his tan.

“You felt that,” I whispered.

Kane’s throat worked soundlessly. Then, in a voice like broken glass: “Static electricity. Old building.”

It felt like a lie.

But I was too rattled, too confused, too desperate to escape the way he made me feel to call him on it. I fumbled the door open and fled, leaving Kane alone with his secrets and his warnings.

Only when I was locked in my car did I let myself fall apart.

I sat in the courthouse parking lot with my forehead pressed against the steering wheel, trying to understand why a stranger’s rejection felt like the end of the world. I hadn’t flirted. Hadn’t made any advances. Hadn’t even acknowledged the attraction that was eating me alive.

But somehow, Kane had looked at me and found me wanting.

The worst part was how much I still wanted him.

I should have been angry—at his rudeness, his assumptions, his complete dismissal of professional courtesy. Instead, I felt hollow, carved out, like something essential had been ripped from my chest.

Which made no sense.

I barely knew Kane Drax. Had spoken to him for maybe fifteen minutes total. There was no logical reason for his rejection to hurt this much, no explanation for the ache spreading through my ribs like poison.

But as I sat there surrounded by the ordered world I’d built my life around, all I could think about was the desperation in Kane’s voice when he’d warned me away. Like he was drowning, and I was salvation he couldn’t reach.