Tears sting my lashes. My lips part, but no sound comes out. I can’t tell him, I can’t lie, and either way I’ll drown.
Dean leans in, his breath scorching my ear.
“Brooklyn,” he whispers, dark and lethal. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out myself. And if I do—God help him.”
The counter digs into my back, the metal handle biting through my sweater, and still I can’t move. His body is all around me—heat, weight, danger—and the silence feels like it’s going to choke me before the words do.
“I—” My voice cracks, brittle as glass. My eyes squeeze shut, because if I look at him, I won’t get it out. “He was here.”
The air snaps between us.
Dean doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t blink.
Tears spill hot down my cheeks, my chest heaving against the cage of his arms. The rest rips free like a wound tearing open.
“I didn’t ask him, I didn’t want him—he just came. He cornered me, Dean, and I couldn’t—he said—” My throat locks, strangling on the memory of that low, taunting whisper: you’re on borrowed time.
Dean’s hand fists in my hair, tilting my face up until I’m staring into the storm of his eyes.
“He touched you?” His voice is poison laced with steel.
I shake my head fast, desperately. “No—no, not like that. He just—” My lip trembles. “He warned me. He said I don’t belong here. That I’m running out of time.”
Dean’s teeth bare in something that’s not a smile, not even close. His grip tightens, pulling a soft gasp from me, not cruel but grounding—pinning me in place when I’m unravelling.
“You listen to me,” he growls, his forehead pressing to mine, his breath scorching my skin. “He doesn’t get to touch you. Doesn’t get to breathe near you. You are mine. Do you understand that?”
The word cracks through me, sharp and searing. Mine.
A sob catches in my throat, but I nod, my tears smearing against his cheek. “I know,” I whisper. “I just—Dean, I’m scared. What if he’s right? What if?—”
“Don’t.” His voice breaks over me, rough and final, like stone grinding against stone. “Don’t you ever say his name like it has power. I’ll end him before I let him take a single second from you.”
His hand slips from my hair to cradle my face, thumb dragging my tears across my cheek. His other hand still cages me in, knuckles white against the counter.
“You’re mine, Brooklyn,” he says again, lower, darker, as if carving it into the marrow of my bones. “And I’ll burn this whole fucking world before I let it steal you from me.”
The words scorch me. I feel them sink into the cracks of my breaking, filling every hollow space until there’s no room left for fear, only him.
And then his mouth is on mine.
Not soft. Not careful.
A claiming.
His lips crush against me, swallowing my sob, turning it into a gasp that has nowhere to go but into him. His hand clamps the back of my neck, keeping me exactly where he wants me, and I don’t fight it—I can’t. My tears salt the seam of our mouths, but he licks them away like proof, like he’s erasing the evidence of anyone else’s shadow.
The kiss is bruising, a punishment and a promise, his tongue parting mine with ruthless control. He tastes of fury, whiskey, and a man on the edge of violence, but he directs it all outward. Not at me. Never at me.
My hands fist in his shirt, desperate, shaking, pulling him closer even though there’s no space left between us. My lungs burn, my lips sting, and still he doesn’t let up. He tilts his head, deepening the kiss, dragging me further under until I’m drowning in him, exactly where he wants me—where I’ve already admitted I still want to be.
When he finally tears his mouth from mine, his forehead slams back against mine, ragged breath mingling with my cries.
“You think you don’t fit in my world?” he rasps, thumb smearing wetness from my cheek. “Then I’ll tear down the world and build one that only fits you.”
I shudder, the words sinking into me deeper than his kiss, deeper than his hands. My lips part, trembling, whispering against his.
“Dean…”
