But then he tucks it away, the hurt sealing off behind a cool, terrible calm. “You think I would just let you go?” He lets out a rueful chuckle. “Let you disappear into the world, to one day belong to someone else?Fuck no.”
His thumb strokes my bottom lip, in a gesture so tender it feels at odds with the sharpness of the words that follow. “Try to walk away from me, if you think you can bear it,” he murmurs, voice dropping into a sultry rasp. “But know this: Iwillfollow. Even if it’s to the ends of the earth, I’d find you, and then I’d bring you home.”
His thumb pushes in between my lips like he can’t help himself, and when my tongue darts out to lick it, he shudders visibly with pleasure. The air between us sparks with tension and I press my thighs together involuntarily.
“I didn’t choose this, Olivia.” His words wrap around me like a silken noose, frightening yet intoxicating. “This obsession with you… It chosemethe moment I laid eyes on you, and I don’t want it to end. Not ever.” His hand slides down my throat to splay on my chest, coming to rest on top of my frantically beating heart. “I love you to the point of madness and I willneverstop. Never.”
I can barely breathe. My mind is robbed of all rational thought. His words have sunk into me like claws, and the worst part is that I don’t even want to shake free.
His intensity is magnetic and terrifying in equal measure, and that’s what makes it so irresistible.
Haven’t I always known this about him, even in his tender moments? His relentlessness, the way his eyes track my every move, how he never lets me stray far from him. And isn’t that what drew me to him in the first place, even as much as I try to deny it?
Before I can say anything, he leans in, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath shallow and uneven. Both hands now cradle my face, his touch so gentle it makes my chest ache.
“So now you know,” his voice is a broken whisper. “Whether you stay… Whether you run…” His thumbs stroke my cheeks, his eyes piercing mine. “Where you are is where I’ll be.”
Then, abruptly, his hands fall from my face and he steps back. The shift is small in distance but enormous in sensation. The warmth he’d pressed into my skin drains at once, leaving a raw chill in its wake.
The space he’s now offering feels disorientating, as if my body had calibrated itself to his closeness without asking my permission.
My fingers twitch at my sides, restless with the urge to reach for him. The impulse is humiliating in its immediacy—my body tipping forward, my breath snagging as if some instinct is dragging me back toward the heat I’ve just been pulled from.
Nathaniel catalogs my every reaction, but he offers no reassurances. His restraint reads like provocation, a mirror held up for me to witness my physical craving revealing itself before my mind can catch up.
“You’ve asked your questions,” he says, voice low and maddeningly even. “It’s my turn now.”
A beat.
“Why are you still here, baby?”
The words land with surgical precision, pulled from the mouth of someone who already knows the answer.
Why am I still here?After everything he’s done? After everything I’ve just learned?
The truth rises before I’m ready for it—an involuntary pull, the same one that made me lean toward him the moment he stepped back. My body answered him even while my mindrecoiled, and now I feel the echo of that reach in every shallow breath.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t coax or close the distance. His stillness forces me to sit with what my own reaction revealed, and that knowledge unsettles me more than any confession he could have made.
“By now, you’ve seen every red flag,” he continues. “You’ve had every reason to walk away. You’ve even tried to give yourself space.” His gaze dips to the slight forward tilt of my body. “And yet…you always come back.”
My spine stiffens.
“Have you ever asked yourself why that is?”
His hands remain loose at his sides, relaxed, as if there is nothing left in him that needs defending.
“Do you know why your accusations don’t land the way you think they do?” he asks, tilting his head slightly.
Then he smiles, slow and knowing. I hate the arrogance of it, yet my heart skips a beat all the same. He’s beautiful in a way that’s entirely unfair. Even now, he is still the most handsome man that I’ve ever seen.
“It’s because none of this surprises you,” he says.
Heat rushes to my cheeks, equal parts indignation and the sickening awareness that he’s right.
“Some part of you always knew what you were getting with me,” he continues. “And you liked it. That’s why your accusations ring hollow—even to you.”
He’s right.On a subconscious level, I have always known. I felt it in the way he watched me, followed me, and claimed me long before there were words for any of it.
