Blocked.
I laugh. A low, dangerous sound that echoes in the empty room. Of course, she blocked me. She’s not stupid. She’s cutting off the easy paths, forcing me to hunt.
My storm. She has no idea how right I was.
I close my eyes, picturing her. Where would she go? Not her apartment; it’s the first place I’d look, and she knows it. Not Chloe’s; she knows her friend is a liability. She needs a sanctuary. A place where she feels in control. A place that ishers.
The university, the library, the labs. Her turf.
I walk back into the bedroom, the scent of her still lingering on my sheets, a ghostly reminder of her presence. I grab a fresh shirt, my mind already mapping out the campus, considering the possibilities.
She thinks she’s escaped. She thinks she’s won a battle, but all she’s done is escalate the war. She’s shown me her fire, and now I’m going to show her what happens when you try to burn me.
I’m not just going to find her, I’m going to corner her. I’m going to remind her that there is no place on this earth she can hide where I won’t find her. And when I do, she’ll learn that running from me is the worst mistake she could have ever made.
Thirty Four
Kinsley
The library is my fortress. The scent of old paper and quiet concentration is a balm to my frayed nerves. I find an empty carrel in the deepest, most secluded corner of the third floor, a place where I’ve spent countless hours memorizing metabolic pathways and cellular structures. This is my space. Here, I am the one in control.
I spread my notes out, the familiar diagrams and my own neat handwriting are a comforting sight. For a while, it works. I losemyself in the elegant complexity of pathophysiology, the world outside fading into a distant hum. I am a student. I am Kinsley Fischer, not West Monroe’s captive.
But the illusion is fragile. A shadow falls over my desk.
I don’t need to look up. I know. The scent of him—clean, masculine, and laced with an undercurrent of pure, predatory focus—precedes him. My heart leaps into my throat, a frantic, trapped bird.
“Hello, Kinsley,” West’s voice is a low, dangerous purr that cuts through the library’s silence.
I slowly raise my head, my eyes meeting his. He’s leaning against the bookshelf opposite my carrel, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s changed into dark jeans and a black Henley that stretches across his powerful frame. He looks like a panther, sleek and dangerous, entirely out of place and yet utterly in command.
“What do you want, West?” I ask, my voice colder than I feel.
“What do I want?” He pushes off the shelf, his movements slow and deliberate. “I want what’s mine. You made a move, Kinsley. A bold one. I’ll give you that.” He stops at the entrance to my carrel, blocking my only escape route. “But you seem to have forgotten the rules of the game. You don’t get to make moves. You only get to react to mine.”
“This isn’t a game,” I hiss, my hands clenching into fists under the desk.
“Isn’t it?” He smiles, a slow, devastating curve of his lips that doesn’t reach his eyes. “It feels like a game to me, and I always win.”
He takes a step into the carrel, the small space suddenly shrinking, suffocating me with his presence. I push my chair back, but it hits the wall. I’m trapped.
“Leaving the key card was a nice touch,” he continues, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “A real statement,but all it did was piss me off. And you don’t want me pissed off, Kinsley. You’ve seen what I’m like when I’m pleased. Imagine what I’m like when I’m not.”
He leans down, placing his hands on the arms of my chair, caging me in. His face is inches from mine. I can feel the heat radiating from his body, see the dark, possessive fire in his eyes. My body, my treacherous, broken body responds with a shiver that is equal parts terror and a sickening, unwanted thrill.
“You think you can hide from me here?” he whispers, his gaze dropping to my lips. “In your little sanctuary? There is no sanctuary, Kinsley. There is no place you can go where I won’t find you. Your world is my world now. Your space is my space.”
He reaches out, his thumb brushing against my lower lip, a shockingly gentle touch that makes my breath catch. “You belong to me. In my bed, in my house, and even here in your precious library.”
My mind screams to fight, to scream, to push him away. But my body is frozen, caught in the terrifying magnetism of his presence. He’s not just threatening me with physical force; he’s laying claim to my very identity, to the places where I feel most myself.
“You think you’re in control here,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my skin. “But you’re not. You’re just a student in a library. I could do anything I want to you right now, and no one would even notice. I could take you, right here, between these shelves of books you love so much. I would make you scream my name, and they’d just think you were… passionate about your studies. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
His words are poison and honey, a cocktail of terror and a dark, twisted seduction. This is my domain. The thought of him violating it, of him turning my sanctuary into a stage for his conquest is a violation more profound than anything he's done before.
“Is that what you want?” I manage to whisper, the words a fragile thread of defiance. “To force me? To prove you’re nothing but a monster?”
He chuckles, a low, dark sound. “No, Kinsley. I don’t want to force you.” He leans in closer, his lips now against my ear, his voice a rough, intimate vibration that sends a shiver straight through me. “I want you to want it, I want you to beg for it. I want to show you that your body, your treacherous, beautiful body knows the truth. It knows who it belongs to.”
