The color in her cheeks deepened from pink to rose.
“Kiernan, why do you think you have no right?” My name from her lips nearly undid me.
I should have walked away. I didn’t.
“I don’t do relationships. I don’t let people in. It’s not what I’m built for.”
“Has it occurred to you that we might be capable of deciding that for ourselves?”
The question stopped me cold. No one had ever challenged me like that, not in those words.
For a moment, neither of us stirred. Then she lowered her gaze and let her arms fall to her sides.
Submission.The unconscious gesture of a woman yielding to authority she didn’t consciously recognize.
It was yet another nail in the coffin of my tenuous restraint.
“Forgive me,” I said as I walked away.
I satin my bedroom and accepted the truth I’d been avoiding.
Distance wasn’t working. The club wasn’t working. My walls were crumbling more with every day they stayed,every meal we shared, every glimpse I caught of them walking the grounds or laughing together in the garden.
I’d told her the truth, though not all of it. I ached to command them together, to own their pleasure and their surrender in ways that would consume all three of us.
I had two choices. I could send them away and save them from what I was. Find another place for Oliver to recover and return to the solitude that had kept everyone safe.
Or I could let them stay while I destroyed everything I touched. The same way I had before.
I knew which choice I should make.
I also knew, with sick certainty, that I didn’t have the strength to make it.
The wanting had already won.
5
OPHELIA
Kiernan’s words echoed long after he’d disappeared.
Being near you makes me want things I have no right to want.
He desired me. He’d admitted it aloud in a way that made my skin prickle with heat, then he’d walked away as if the confession cost him nothing—as if he could deposit those words between us and retreat to his tower without consequence.
I should have been relieved. The distance he maintained, the hours when he disappeared, the meals where he barely looked at me—all of it had been driving me mad. At least now I understood why.
Except understanding made it worse.
Rather than act on that desire, rather than let me respond, he’d fled. The man who set my heart racing had run from a single moment of honesty. But Kiernan wasn’t an average man. I’d known that from the moment we met at Glenshadow, realized it more deeply during our hours together at Dunravin, and acknowledged it with sharpclarity during the nights at Oliver’s bedside when he appeared and disappeared like a storm I couldn’t predict.
I replayed it—how close he’d stood, the rough edge to his words, how I’d lowered my gaze, not knowing why I was compelled to do so. I could not overcome the overwhelming need to yield to him.
I had to put this in a box. That’s what I did with feelings—labeled them, filed them, and dealt with them later or never. Except this wasn’t something I could manage. Kiernan had looked at me like he could see straight through every wall I’d built, and instead of feeling exposed, relief washed over me. That terrified me more than anything.
When I returned to my room, the fire had burned down to embers, leaving the room dark, but I didn’t turn on the light. I stood frozen, recalling Kiernan’s words.
He’d spoken as if the wanting itself was dangerous, as if desire was a force to be contained rather than acted upon. What could a man like Kiernan Lockhart want that he believed was forbidden?
