I don’t want to reconsider them.
“I’m ready to be your wife now,” I say quietly. “If you want me to be.”
The silence that follows fills the entire room.
Killian doesn’t move. He stands by the closed door in nothing but cotton pajama bottoms, barefoot, bare-chested, his breathing slow and controlled in a way that tells me control is the only thing keeping him still.
His eyes search mine.
“Katya,” he says carefully. “I need you to understand what you're saying.”
“I know what I’m saying.”
“You’re in my room in the middle of the night after a week of—”
“Yes,” I interrupt. “Seven days of you pulling out my chair, bringing me tea, and sleeping down the hall because you refuse to take what isn’t given.” I swallow. “I’m giving, Killian. This is me choosing.”
His shoulders tense. His hands remain at his sides, fingers slightly curled as if he’s physically restraining himself from reaching for me.
“Not because of the contract,” he says quietly.
I shake my head.
“Not because of your father.”
Another shake.
“Not because you think this is what I expect.”
“Killian.” I rise from the ottoman, my legs slightly unsteady but my voice certain. “I’m not here because of a contract or a clause or the man who put me in a dress with forty-two buttons and told me to be grateful.”
My breath catches, but I push through it.
“I’m here because I can’t close my eyes without seeing you. Because you gave me your name and bled on a sheet so I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed. Because every door in this house opens from the inside and you made sure I knew that before anything else.”
My voice softens.
“I’m here because I want to be. And I’ve never wanted anything for myself before.”
The stillness breaks.
Killian crosses the room in three strides. His hands come up to my face, warm palms cradling my jaw, fingers threading gently into my hair. He pulls me close until I can feel the heat of his body and the warmth of his breath against my lips.
But he doesn’t kiss me.
“Tell me to stop,” he says quietly. “At any point. Any reason. I stop. No questions. No consequences.”
“Okay.”
“Say it back.”
“I can tell you to stop, and you’ll stop.”
“And?”
“There won’t be consequences.”
His thumbs trace the line of my cheekbones, the same deliberate precision he used when undoing the buttons of my dress. Only now his hands are on my skin, and the warmth of them spreads through me in a way I’ve never experienced before.
