I didn’t plan it. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t ask.
I just kissed her.
It wasn’t soft or gentle or the way a man kisses a woman he’s trying to charm.No.I kissed her with all the desperation I have for her, like I was physically trying to anchor her to me before she drifts away completely.
Now, her eyes are wide and her lips are parted and she’s looking at me like she’s trying to make sense of it all.
And every cell inside my body calls to her, wants me to kiss her again. Every instinct ingrained into my otherworldly DNA demands to be with her in the most intimate ways. And my mouth waters with the anticipation of knowing what she’d taste like if I sank my teeth into her neck.
Fuck.
“Rook?” Her voice is a whisper, and she mindlessly reaches up to touch an index finger to her lips.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words ripping out of me. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
She swallows hard. “Why did that…help? Why…why did it feel like that? Why… W-what is happening, Rook?”
Because you’re mine. Because your body knows before your mind does.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
She studies me like she’s seeing me for the first time. Like she’sreallyseeing me. And I can feel that something has shifted. The space between us is no longer neutral. It’s charged. It’s awake. It’s alive. It’s fuckingpulsing.
“You can hate me,” I say quietly. “I won’t stop you.”
She shakes her head once, slowly. “I don’t hate you.”
Her gaze drifts to the window again, the trees blurring past, the world rushing forward without her consent.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Somewhere safe.”
“You keep saying that.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “But I wish you’d define safe.”
I don’t answer, because safe is a temporary condition right now.
Because I didn’t just cross a line—I erased it.
Because whatever comes next could hurt.
Because I love her. Deeply, madly, and all-consumingly in a way you can’t describe.
Because they are going to come for her. For me. For us.And I’ll let them kill me before I let them have her.
Kylie
The hotel room door clicks shut behind us, and the silence rushes in. But it’s not a peaceful silence. It’s the kind that presses on your ears until you feel like screaming just to prove you’re still alive.
I don’t know where Calloway or Kane went, but my mind was too scattered and overwhelmed to pay attention to the name of the hotel or try to overhear Rook’s conversations with his brothers before they left.
Rook doesn’t budge from where he stands near the door. He doesn’t make a move to sit down on the bed or the small chair by the window. He doesn’t say anything, tell me anything. He just freaking stands there while my mind reels in a million different directions.
I start to pace the room, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and when I catch a glance of myself in the mirror near the closet of the room, the feelings of shock and confusion and fear are quickly replaced by anger.
“So, this is it?” I snap. “You basically kidnap me without telling me why you kidnapped me after doing whatever it is you did to those men at my house—the ones who were apparently trying to freaking kidnap me too—and you brought me here? To a hotel room in I don’t even know where, and you still aren’t going to explain any-fucking-thing to me?”
His jaw tightens. “It’s temporary.”
