12. Kellen

Chapter 12

Kellen

When Kellen returned home after his conversation with Noella, Oliviana was waiting for him, completely naked, in his bed.

“How the fuck did you get in here?” he snapped at her, grabbing her clothes off the floor and chucking them at her.

“I’m an earth-bender, dummy,” she laughed. “I can pick a lock with vines.”

“I need you to leave. Right now.” Oliviana slid off the mattress, prolonging her movements in an attempt to be seductive, but all it did was initiate a surge of flames to spark in his throat from anger.

“You seem stressed.” She sidled her way over to him and reached up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to the hollow of his throat. Kellen yanked his body away from her before her lips made contact and held his hands up in defense of himself, in case she tried to invade his personal space again.

“I mean it. I’m done, Oliviana. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The gold flecks in her amber eyes blazed as they squinted in a sharp glower. Inside her irises, however, joined with the yellowish-brown hue, a twinge of hurt sliced through the enraged mask she’d coated her features in. “I spend three days in Terminus, and you’re ready to toss me aside? You’re that fucking worried about your reputation?”

“This has quite literally nothing to do with my reputation.” Only someone consumed with their own reputation would immediately go to that place. “I don’t have the time, energy, or frankly the feeling to give you what you clearly want. I’m sorry I didn’t end this sooner. I should have, and that’s on me. I respect you as a person, but we’re just not compatible. It was fun while it lasted, but it’s over now.”

“What if I don’t want it to be over?” Kellen’s mouth opened and closed. What response could he give to delusion like that? “Didn’t you miss me at all when I was in Terminus?” She took a step forward.

He took three large steps back.

“No. I’m sorry to be an asshole, Oliviana, but I need to be honest. I didn’t. You deserve someone who would miss you if you were gone. Like Daniel. He went out of his mind, batshit crazy when you were in Terminus. You should be with someone like Daniel. You deserve to find that.”

“I don’t want Daniel,” she groaned as she finally began to redress herself. “I want you, Kell.”

“I don’t want you, Oliviana. I don’t.”

“You’re not the only one with feelings in this, Kellen. You’re not the only one whose desires matter.”

“I never said I was.” I wish I was anywhere else right now than having this conversation. “But why would you want to be with someone who is telling you they don’t want to be with you?”

“Because I don’t believe you mean it . ” What planet is she living on? Are we having the same conversation? “You’re all I thought about when I was in Terminus. The thought of you got me through the torture. Do you know what they do to you in Terminus? They take the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and make you relive it, over and over again, with no breaks, no end. It’s maddening. The only thing that kept me connected to life was the thought of you, of being with you again. I’m not going to give that up so easily, not when you saved me at my worst moment.”

Fuck, this is infuriating.

Jare was right. Kellen never should have started this with her, or let it continue after the first time.

“Oliviana.” He spoke slowly and with clear enunciation to make sure she heard every word. “ I didn’t save you. The thought of me saved you. Those are not the same things. You are clinging to an idea of me, not the real me. The real me is not compatible with you. The real me cannot give you what you want. You’re putting the idea of me on a pedestal, and the real me can’t live up to that image. Stop torturing yourself. Go find someone who can give you that, but it’s not going to be me.”

Oliviana stared at him with a look that insinuated there were no real thoughts bobbing around in her brain. Her mind wasn’t present in the room. It existed in the conversation she’d rehearsed having with Kellen and was trying to keep on course, even though the real him wasn’t playing the part right.

“You didn’t treat me like this last week. Did something happen? Did you fuck someone else? Oh, Gods.” She gasped. “Did you fuck her while I was gone? ” Kellen knew immediately who she was talking about.

“This has nothing to do with Noella.”

Oliviana’s eyes bugged out. “You’re calling her Noella now?” Oh shit.

He usually only called her that in his head. A private place where he could appreciate the beauty of such a name without ever attaching any real meaning to it. So what if he liked the way the name rolled on his tongue? So what if sometimes, her name slipped out when he was pleasuring himself?

It didn’t mean anything. Not in privacy, at least.

But he’d called her that out loud now. He called her Noella to her face, after she called him Kellen for the first time and it fucked with his head. So now, her name fell off his tongue as easily as breathing.

“That’s her name,” he said like Oliviana was being ridiculous for trying to twist this into something strange. “What else should I call her?”

“How about the human scum who doesn’t belong here? Since when does she deserve the respect of being called Noella?”

“Don’t make it a big fucking deal when it’s not. It’s just a name.”

“Do you think about her?” What the literal fuck?

He’d tried to handle this in a nice manner. He’d tried to be the gentleman in this situation, but he didn’t know how else to get Oliviana to leave other than to be the bastard everyone expected him to be.

Kellen grabbed her elbow—not harshly, but not gently either—and began dragging her to the door, telling her on the way there, “I’m not entertaining this shit anymore. Hear my words and believe them when I say this. I. Don’t. Want. To. Do. This. With. You. I’m not fucking anyone else. This has nothing to do with the human. I don’t need a fucking reason. I’m just done. ”

At the exact moment Kellen opened the door to toss Oliviana into the hallway, he found Noella frozen outside her door, her keys gripped between her ashen fingers, with the gremlin plastered to her side. Her big grey eyes swung to him, resembling a deer trapped in headlights, a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“YOU,” Oliviana hissed, about to lunge for Noella. Kellen grabbed the back of Oliviana’s blouse and wrenched her away.

“You don’t want to do this,” he cautioned her, unsure if he was trying to help Oliviana here or Noella. “You just spent three days in Terminus. You really want to make it a permanent stay just because you’re angry at me? I’m not worth it.”

Oliviana’s gaze oscillated between Kellen and Noella, debating which of the two she wanted to kill more. In the end, she relented with a rough growl, shaking Kellen’s hand off her, and marched down the hallway, a blur of crimson tendrils dissolving in the wind, wretched sobs following in her wake. He found no pleasure in her tears the way Oliviana had found pleasure in Noella’s.

Kellen turned back to Noella. The two stared at each other with equal uncertainty of how to proceed.

“That wasn’t about you,” he blurted out, not sure why the fuck she needed to know that or how much she’d actually heard before he opened the door. Noella looked as confused as he felt.

“I didn’t think it was,” she replied. The corners of her lips lifted before she taunted, “ Now, I do.”

Heat rushed to his cheeks, blasting across his whole chest, scalding him from the inside out. His throat scorched from a flurry of emergent flames. He wanted to rip off his enflamed skin and slap her with it.

“Leave. Right now, Rose.” Before I vomit fire all over you and burn this building to the ground.

“I’m going. I’m going.” Noella snickered to herself as she jammed her key into the lock, needling the fire in his throat so it nipped his tongue. Kellen unintentionally made eye contact with the gremlin.

I heard everything, the dog sung, flashing him an absurdly large—frankly frighteningly large—smile.

Great for fucking you, he hissed. Too bad you can’t tell her about it, since you can’t fucking talk.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a way to tell her somehow.

“Goodnight, Kilic,” Noella threw over her shoulder with a grin, shepherding the dog inside her dormitory.

It will be a good night, he decided, his mind set as he headed back inside his apartment. Because if you think I’m going to let you stay on your high horse, you’re fucking wrong. He wouldn’t let this interaction end with him the embarrassed loser and her the smug victor. In the cold dark of night, he let his lips form a cruel, malevolent smile. I’m about to fuck with your evening, Rose.

Sleep evaded Ella.

She tossed her body across the mattress, contorting into different shapes to try and obtain some semblance of comfort, but no matter how hard she tried, her limbs refused to rest, her mind refused to slow down, her heart refused to stop thrashing. Her thoughts belonged across the hall, with the irritating dragon-shifter who uttered her name and she didn’t know why. She’d only caught the backend of Oliviana and Kellen’s argument, so all she heard him say was, “ This has nothing to do with Noella.”

She hadn’t heard what question prompted him to give this response, why her name had been brought up at all.

Here’s what she did know: he didn’t call her the human scum, or Ms. Rose, or even just Rose, like he usually hurled at her in a frigid manner. He’d called her Noella— for the second time that night.

And it was driving her insane.

Her questions tripped over one another and stumbled through the pathways in her mind, blurring together to create an incoherent echo chamber overflowing with curiosity. She fought every urge she had to scramble out of bed and storm across the hall to ask him herself. She made eye contact with Freya in the dark, the cavachon watching her like a hawk through the bars of her crate, assessing Ella’s mental state.

“I shouldn’t. Right?” she asked Freya, as if her dog could respond. “I don’t know why I care. He sucks. He’s the worst. He hates me. So why do I care that my name came up in his conversation with his fuck buddy?” Freya blinked at her, providing no guidance or recommendation. All she did was swing her eyes to the door, as if encouraging Ella to go seek answers to her questions. “You know what?” she decided aloud, yanking her comforter off and sliding out of bed. “He doesn’t get to take up this much space in my brain. No fucking way. I’m ending this right now.”

Ella stomped out of her bedroom, leaving Freya curled up in her crate. She marched out the front door in nothing but her light blue matching pajama set with little white stars speckled across the soft fabric. She came to a halt when she landed in front of Kellen’s door. She had no plan. No reason for being there. She’d simply lost control of her feet, and they’d carried her there at their own accord, with their own mission in mind. Now that she was here, she didn’t know what the fuck to do.

Go back inside your own apartment, she tried to counsel herself. You don’t need to know why he said that. Just because he showed you a softer side tonight and he saved his little siblings the way Rylee saved you does NOT make him worthy of your time or energy. Remember, he tried to drown you in a pool. This is a bad idea, Ella.

Against her better judgement, Ella pounded her fist against his door.

That minute of waiting elapsed at such a slow pace that it felt like hours before Kellen finally opened the door. Words shriveled up on Ella’s tongue as she drank in the Varmin in nothing but black sweatpants, hanging so low that it should have been considered illegal on his waist, allowing her to glimpse his well-defined lower obliques and the fact that he wore nothing beneath the trousers. Soft brown flesh pulled tight across an immaculately chiseled chest, carved from raw power with a web of demarcated sinew snaking down his midsection. Eight abs—yes, she counted his abs — were accompanied by bulging muscles ringing up his arms, which pulsated when he twisted them across that delicious chest.

“What do you want, Rose?” he spat, leaning against the doorframe.

“I…” She didn’t know anymore. Her purpose was lost to the wind, lost within the ridges of his beautiful physique. She liked to think of herself as someone who wouldn’t be blinded by physical attraction, who could retain control of her faculties and remember that what lived on the inside of him wasn’t nearly as flawless as what was portrayed externally. That viewpoint felt so far away when her mouth literally watered at the sight of him, her body heating up to a degree it had never warmed to before, almost dangerously hot, making it uncomfortable for her to exist in her skin.

Kellen either sensed the change in her body temperature or scented something in the air. His posture straightened against the doorframe, his arms falling away from his chest to make it impossible for her to avoid his magnificence. A flicker of a smile played with his full lips as his eyes haunted her body, perusing her pajama shirt and matching pants, then examining her face, the swish of color no doubt staining her cheeks.

“If you want it, sweetheart,” he said, his voice like gravel as his pupils overshadowed the green of his eyes, “you’re going to have to beg for it.”

Want it? No! We hate him! her subconscious roared. Ella, step away from that man right now!

Ella’s body was no longer connected to her brain.

It now belonged to some invisible presence that took control of her limbs and forced her feet to move closer to Kellen in spite of her deafening thoughts. One second, she stood before him, vibrating with the need to touch him, to run her tongue down the length of his chest and feel those glorious abs against her tongue, and the next, she found herself lunging at him. Her fingers dove into his short, black curls and wrenched him down to her, her lips crushing his. Ella tasted Kellen’s shock, swallowing the gasp he spluttered, before his body collapsed into her and she found herself pinned beneath him against the wall. There was nothing gentle or romantic about this kiss—it was pure hatred mixed with lust passing between them, fueled by determination to see who could dominate the other. When Ella’s fingernails scraped down his chest, Kellen nipped at her bottom lip, yanking down on her hair to stretch her neck and expose her throat to his lips, which lithered down the slender column, sucking at the skin there to no doubt leave a pathway of marks in his wake.

“I hate you,” she groaned, sinking her nails into his ribs, wishing she possessed claws of her own to make it hurt.

“Hate me while I have my hand between your legs,” he hissed into her mouth, prompting an ache so painful in her core that she felt like sobbing. “And I’ll hate you when I replace my fingers with my tongue.”

“You—” His fingers ghosted across the hem of her pajama pants. In a shocking turn of events, he didn’t just skate his hand inside her pants, but loitered there as if waiting for permission to enter, forcing Ella to act on her desire rather than have him submit to his, another tactic in their battle of wills.

Fuck, Ella hated herself more than she hated Kellen when she grabbed his hand and slid it inside her pajama pants, helping him to make contact with her clit. Ella extended her fingers out towards his own sweatpants, hoping to return the sentiment in retaliation, but Kellen snatched both her wrists before she reached him and pulled them above her head, trapping them against the wall.

A grunt heaved out of her that bled into a moan when his fingers pressed down on her clit and began massaging the nub of flesh in a slow, circular motion. Ella’s hips rose to meet the heel of his palm, desperate for more friction.

“Be a good girl, and I’ll let you come,” he ordered, which provoked Ella to thrust her knee upward, hoping to collide with his dick. Kellen ripped his hand out of her pants to obstruct her knee’s journey, her wrists still gathered in his other hand. He made a disapproving tsk sound with his tongue before he used the knee of hers now in his grasp to spread her legs wider. Kellen sunk down to a crouch on the floor, using his height to his advantage so he never had to release her wrists, which were still in his confinement. With no preamble this time or an offering of choice, Kellen pressed his nose between her legs, then kissed her through her pajama pants, sliding his free hand up the back of her thigh to hold her steady. She felt his tongue move through the cotton fabric and loosed a sound that was more of a whimper than a moan, her hips betraying her and jerking closer to meet what his mouth was doing. “That’s it,” he growled, tugging at her clit through her pants with his teeth. “Give in to me, Noella. Gods, you’re breathtaking when you surrender.”

“I will never surrender to you,” she panted, her skin on fire. His fingers dug into the back of her thigh.

Raising the end of her pajama shirt, he whispered into her stomach, “What do you call this then, Ms. Rose, if not the ultimate surrender?” He lay a succession of kisses and tiny nips along her waistline.

Ella bit her lip to destroy the moan on her tongue.

“You’re the one on your knees, Mr. Kilic,” she challenged, arching a goading brow. “Seems to me that you’re the one who’s surrendered, and I’m reaping the benefits.” Kellen dropped the bottom of her shirt to recover her stomach.

“Is that what you crave, Ms. Rose? My surrender, or my tongue?” Ella tugged at her wrists. To her surprise, Kellen’s fingers eased off her, freeing her hands. Her own fingers flew down and twisted in his hair.

“Why not both?” she responded, pushing his face back between her legs…before the thunderous screech of an alarm shredded the image of Kellen on his knees before her, yanking Ella out of her dream and dumping her back in reality.

Ella jolted awake with a scream.

She was lying on her stomach—she never slept on her stomach—and drool dribbled down from the side of her mouth to slather her pillowcase, her hair in chaotic disarray, a tangled nest of blonde atop her head. It took her a second to get her bearings, to realize that what she’d experienced wasn’t real, that she’d never left her apartment to confront Kellen and hadn’t jumped him in the hallway. She pulled herself into a sitting position, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, unable to shake the feeling of Kellen off her, her wrists burning with the impression of his touch. She pressed her thighs together to bring some reprieve to her tender clit, feeling how damp her panties were.

Her eyes swung to Freya.

The dog remained curled up in her crate, staring back at her with no judgment, just pure love and a tiny sliver of concern in the way she cocked her head at Ella, silently asking are you okay?

“I’m not sure,” she answered the question in Freya’s eyes, then crawled out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

She dressed for the day, sweeping a brush through the tangles in her hair, then ultimately braided the tousled tendrils to keep them from swinging in her eyes. She grabbed Freya’s leash, retrieved Freya from her crate, and began leading her dog out the door, coming to a standstill at the threshold.

Kellen leaned against the doorframe to his own apartment, exactly as she’d seen him in her dream.

A roguish smile sprawled out across the bottom half of his face.

“Hello, Ms. Rose,” Kellen drawled. “Have any good dreams last night?” The air was ripped from her lungs.

“You fucking bastard,” she roared, his licentious grin enlarging. No part of her now was distracted by his physical beauty, no urges to jump his bones. Whatever magic he’d wielded through the dream had no claim on her anymore. She saw him for exactly what he was, what he’d always been.

“Do you usually have such erotic dreams? Do I make frequent appearances in your fantasies, Rose?”

“STAY OUT OF MY HEAD, KILIC,” she threatened, getting right in his face. “If you ever fuck with my dreams like that again, I’ll tell the Cavalian Gods’ envoy that you sexually harassed me.”

“What makes you think I was responsible for your dream?” Ella stared at him like he’d grown a third arm out of his head.

“You’re an image-manipulator.”

“It’s true that I can project images and speak into people’s minds, but all I did was drop myself in your head. I wanted to search through your memories for something embarrassing to use against you, but I got pulled into your dream instead. You manufactured that vision all on your own based on my presence in your head. I didn’t do anything to influence it.” Ella sensed that he was being truthful, but it was a truth she refused to accept, that her mind was capable of fabricating a fantasy of that nature, with Kellen Kilic the star of her pleasure, of all fucking people.

She wrinkled her nose and snarled, “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me, but I’m actually telling the truth. You can blame me all you want, but that dream was all you, sweetheart.” Ella gritted her teeth and wrapped Freya’s leash tightly around her palm.

Freya nuzzled up against her calf as a show of comfort.

“I need to walk my dog,” she huffed, shoving her shoulder into Kellen’s as she turned to leave. She paused a moment, a thought occurring to her, and slowly spun back around to face where Kellen was still leaning against the wall. “Why did you stay?”

“Huh?” he snapped at her, split away from whatever far-off place his own thoughts had drifted off to.

“You said you didn’t manufacture the dream. You could’ve left as soon as you realized you were in my dream and went looking through my memories like you planned to, yet you stayed to watch the dream instead.” Kellen sucked in a harsh breath that brought a winning smile to Ella’s face. He hadn’t anticipated her calling him out, but he should have known by now that she wouldn’t go quietly. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show, Kilic,” she tossed over her shoulder on her way down the hallway, then raised her middle finger high in the air. “It’s the last one you’ll ever get.”