His voice is silk over a razor blade. Quiet. Dangerous.
Tahlia doesn’t look up. She tugs at a strap on the vest, her knuckles white. “Getting ready. What does it look like?”
“It looks like a mistake,” Hook says. He reaches out with his good hand, his fingers catching the heavy fabric of her vest. “Take it off.”
“No.” She finally looks up, and the fire in her eyes is enough to start a blaze. “I’m not sitting in this basement waiting for the phone to ring. I’m not staying in the dark again, James. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“You aren’t coming,” Hook says, his voice droppingan octave, becoming that immovable wall of ice. “This isn’t a game. It’s a slaughterhouse.”
“Then let me be a fucking butcher!” she screams, shoving at his chest. “You think I haven’t seen blood? You think I’m some porcelain doll you can keep on a shelf? Fuck you! I’m going!”
Hook’s hand moves faster than she can blink. He grabs her face, his fingers digging into her jaw, forcing her to look at him. He isn’t being gentle. He’s being desperate.
“Listen to me!” he roars, and for the first time, the ice in his voice shatters into raw, jagged emotion. “I don’t give a fuck what happens to Peter. I don’t give a fuck if every man in this room ends up in a body bag tonight. I don’t care about the girl. I don’t care about the money.”
He leans in until their foreheads are touching, his breath hot against her skin. His voice breaks, a low, wrecked sound.
“I can’t lose you, Tahlia. I can’t fucking lose you. You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that isn’t rot. If I go out there and I’m worried about where you are, if I’m looking for your head in the crowd instead of the man with the gun, we both die. And I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist. Do you understand me? I can’t.”
The fight drains out of her all at once. Her hands, which were curled into fists against his chest, open up, clutching at his tactical vest. She starts to sob—not a quiet, pretty cry, but a deep, racking sound that comes from her gut.
“What if you die?” she gasps, her face crumpling as she buries it in his chest. “What if you don’t come back?What the fuck am I then, James? I’m just a ghost in your house. I’m nothing. I’m back in the cage. Don’t leave me here. Please, don’t leave me alone again.”
Hook wraps his arm around her, pulling her so tight it looks like he’s trying to merge their bodies. He buries his face in her hair, his eyes closed tight, his jaw working as he fights back his own ruin. He doesn’t say it’ll be okay. He doesn’t lie. He just holds her while she falls apart, the steel of his hook pressed against her back like a cold, protective wing.
I turn away, my own chest aching so hard I can barely stand. Watching them—watching the way he devours her fear with his own—it makes the hole in my chest scream. I am so fucking jealous it tastes like bile. Hook has his world in his arms, and mine is god-knows-where, bleeding out or begging for a death I wasn’t there to prevent.
Then Hook snaps. He isn’t just holding her anymore. He tilts her head back, his thumb digging into her chin, and crashes his mouth against hers. It’s not a kiss; it’s a collision. I see his tongue slide into her mouth, claiming her, his hook tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck while his good hand slides down to grip her hip, pulling her flush against his gear.
Tahlia whimpers into his mouth, her legs going weak, her fingers clawing at the black Kevlar. It’s so raw, so violently intimate, that I have to look at the floor. The sound of their lips meeting, the wet, rhythmic gasps—it’s too much. It’s the kind of love that destroys people.
“Fuck,” Hook groans against her lips, his forehead resting against hers. “Little fairy, you’re killing me.”
In that second of total surrender, Tahlia’s handmoves. She’s fast—viciously fast. She snatches the gun from his hip holster before he can even blink. Hook freezes, his eyes flying open, arctic blue meeting her tear-streaked blue.
She shoves the cold barrel of the gun directly against the soft skin of his throat.
“Take me,” she breathes, her voice trembling but her hand steady. “Take me with you or use this. I won’t stay behind.”
Hook stares at her. A slow, dark smirk spreads across his face, something wicked and proud. He actually laughs, the sound vibrating against the muzzle of the gun. “You going to kill me, Tahlia? You going to blow my head off in front of the help?”
Tahlia’s lip quivers. The bravado cracks. She shakes her head, the gun slipping an inch as her strength fails her. “No,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “I’m begging you. Take me. Please.”
The gun clatters to the concrete floor.
Hook doesn’t hesitate. He scoops her up, his arm hooking under her knees, his other hand supporting her back. “I can’t fucking lose you,” he growls, his voice a low vibration in his chest as he starts walking toward the back of the room, away from the maps and the men. “I fucking love you, my poisoned little fairy.”
He kisses her again, deeper this time, walking blindly as she wraps her arms around his neck, gasping into his mouth. I watch them go, the shadows swallowing them as they reach the far wall near the heavy iron radiator.
He sets her down, but he doesn’t let go. He keeps her pinned against the brick, his mouth never leaving hers, his hands roaming over her hoodie as if he’s trying tomemorise the shape of her through the fabric. Tahlia is limp in his arms, her eyes closed, her breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches.
“James,” she gasps, her head falling back against the wall. “James, please…”
His hand moves to his belt. I hear a heavy, metallic clink.
He drops her. Not gently, but sudden enough that she stumbles, her back hitting the cold iron of the radiator. Before she can realise what’s happening, Hook has her wrist. He’s fast, clinical, his surgical steel hook glinting as he loops a heavy industrial chain around the radiator pipe and snaps a padlock shut around her arm.
“James?” she whispers, her voice small. She tugs at her arm. The chain rattles—a cold, final sound. “James, what are you doing? Let me go. Fucking let me go! Don’t do this!”
