Chapter 27 - Kieran
Steam rolls off my skin as I push open the bathroom door, towel slung over my shoulder more for convenience than modesty. The water was hot enough to burn, just the way I like it. It didn’t help. My nerves are still coiled too tight, my thoughts too tangled.
Damien’s words won’t stop circling in my head, and neither will the way Quinn looked at me this morning. She looks at me like I’m dangerous and that part she got right. But it’s not the danger that makes her blush, it’s the part she doesn’t understand. The part that calls to something buried inside her.
I toss the towel over my shoulder and open the door, bare and unbothered. But the second I step into the bedroom, her scream nearly knocks the breath from my lungs—not from shock, but from the sheer fucking volume of it.
“Put something on!” she shrieks, already turning around so fast her hair smacks against her own face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
My lips tug into a slow grin, and I glance down at myself. Water still clings to my chest, dripping in lazy rivulets down to my stomach and lower. I could dry off. I could grab something to wear.
Instead, I take a slow step forward, bare feet silent on the stone floor. “I just got out of the shower,” I say.
“I don’t care if you just came back from a blood sacrifice in the woods, Kieran, you do not walk around naked when there’s someone else in the room!”
“Funny,” I murmur, “I recall this being my bedroom.”
“Oh my God,” she says, still not looking at me. Her face is bright red, the blush crawling down her neck, and her whole body is rigid. “This isn’t happening. This is a dream. A weird, sexually confusing nightmare. I’m going to wake up in my bed. Alone. Where everyone is clothed.”
“Disappointed?” I ask, grinning now because she’s trying so hard to keep it together.
“Mortified,” she snaps without hesitation. “Put on pants or I swear to God I will jump out the window.”
“You were the one who wanted to go to Thisbe,” I murmur, my voice lazy with amusement. “You’re going to have to toughen up if you think this is the worst thing you’ll see.”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracks. “Don’t come any closer. I swear to God, Kieran—”
“Swear all you want, little red,” I drawl, another step. “But I’m already closer.”
She whips around like she wants to run, but smacks straight into the armoire. Hands fly out to catch herself, but her eyes stay shut so tight I can see the lines pulling between her lashes.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” she hisses. “You’re being—God—you’re being you.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I say that like you’re the worst.”
I chuckle under my breath. “You can open your eyes, Quinn,” I murmur, tilting my head, watching her. “I’m not going to bite. Not unless you ask me to.”
“Fuck you.”
“Mmm. So you have thought about it.”
“Put. Clothes. On.” She doesn’t shout it this time, her voice a little strained. But I see the way her throat moves as she swallows. The way her fingers twitch like she doesn’t know what to do with them.
“I’m not ashamed of my body,” I say, stepping a little closer, just enough for her to flinch. “Are you ashamed of wanting it?”
Her breath catches, and that’s when I know. She wants to slap me or scream. Or maybe both. But none of it changes the fact that her body betrays her every time I step into a room.
I lean in, voice low at her ear.
“You’re not from here, little red. You don’t belong in my world, and you don’t owe it anything. So tell me…” My hand lifts, knuckles brushing the edge of her jaw just long enough to make her freeze. I feel her shiver. “What are you willing to give me… if I take you to Thisbe?”
She jerks away from me like I burned her, stumbling back with her hand held up between us. “There’s always a price with you.”
“Always,” I say, my tone unapologetic. “Nothing in this world comes free. Not even me.”
She backs toward the bed now, sheet still clutched around her like armor, eyes wide and furious. “And what do you want, Kieran? Huh? You want a promise? A kiss? You want me to owe you something so you can hang it over my head every time I blink wrong?”
I arch a brow, pretending to consider it. “A kiss sounds nice.”
“Go to hell.” She grabs the nearest pillow, hurls it at me, but I catch it effortlessly. “Do you do this with everyone who crosses your path? Or am I just special?”
“Everyone?” I echo, stepping around the bed now, just to watch her scramble to the other side. “No. Most people don’t live long enough to piss me off, let alone interest me.”
“And I’m the lucky exception?”
“Exception, yes. Lucky? We’ll see.”
“I hate you,” she breathes, voice shaky. “I actually hate you.”
I smile, slow and unhurried. “Now that’s a lie.”
She turns away so fast she almost stumbles into the dresser again, flailing one arm blindly behind her like she’s trying to ward me off without actually touching me. “Okay! Okay, I’m leaving the room, you get dressed, I will go stand in the hallway and scream into a pillow until I erase this from my memory!”
“Memory’s a tricky thing,” I say. “Hard to erase something that leaves an impression.”
She lets out another frustrated noise, flings open the door, and disappears through it like her life depends on it. I wait until I hear the distant sound of her voice muttering threats at the universe before I finally pull on a pair of pants.
I tug a shirt over my head and walk to the door, still half-smiling to myself as I imagine her face pressed into her hands, trying not to remember what she saw.
She’s unraveling, and I’m enjoying it far more than I should.
There’s something about her resistance that makes every second of proximity feel like a lit match dropped on oil. She keeps fighting to pretend she’s not affected, that she’s repulsed or outraged or above it. But she’s not. She’s curious, uncertain, and very, very human in the ways she blushes and snaps and tries to run from what’s already wound itself around her spine.
She doesn’t know what this world does to people. She doesn’t know what I do to them. She still thinks she can get out of this untouched, and that... makes her dangerous.
Damien was right—she could be my undoing.
Despite that, I have no plans to let her go. Not when she’s standing in my home, sleeping in my bed, arguing with me like she hasn’t already made a hundred wrong turns. Not when she flinches from my touch but doesn’t actually pull away. Not when she looks at me like she can’t decide whether she wants to escape or stay and burn.