26. Talia

Chapter 26

Talia

“ A re you hungry?” calls Kieran.

Squeezing moisture from my hair with a towel, I walk into the bedroom to see him lounging against my headboard with his phone. His hair is wet, too, a messy halo around his face. Jeans and no shirt, bare feet crossed at the ankles.

I almost pinch myself.

“Sure.” I pause. “Do Sven and Dylan want to come in the house? We should feed them, too. Right?”

Kieran doesn’t look up. “Gabe relieved them a bit ago so they could go home. We came straight from the airport.”

My lungs squeeze. He came straight to me.

“Oh, okay. So should I invite Gabe inside?”

He finally looks up, revealing a hint of wariness around his eyes. I toss the towel into a nearby hamper and perch on the edge of the bed .

“What is it?” I ask.

He clears his throat, then laughs a little. “Don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.” I frown, and he clarifies, “How you can see what’s going on in my head.”

“I can’t, though,” I say mutedly.

His eyes soften even as his expression grows grave. He tosses his phone to the sheets and pats the bed next to him. Despite a small trill of alarm in my body, I crawl to him and settle against his side. His arm hooks snugly around my waist. My leg falls naturally between his, my head coming to rest on his chest.

A sigh of contentment escapes me.

“Feel that?” he murmurs. “How we fit?”

“Yes.” My fingers trail across his clavicle; he catches them and holds my hand over his heart.

When he doesn’t immediately speak, I glance up to see his shuttered expression. Stiffening, I say, “You’re making me nervous.”

“Not my intent.” He kisses my forehead. “Just organizing my thoughts. And trying not to think about taking off your clothes again.”

“Do I need to sit up?”

“I dare you to try.”

I hold back a smile. “ Kieran .”

Darkness shifts in his eyes. “That’s the voice, isn’t it? The one that makes men beg?”

Denying the impulse to ask if it makes him want to beg, I ask instead, “Is that what’s bothering you? ”

“No,” he says.

I close my eyes in relief, then open them when he releases my hand to cup my face. His thumb skates across my cheekbone.

“I called that therapist. The man you recommended.”

I blink in surprise, then grin. “Dr. Chastain?”

He nods. “The very one. I must have said something alarming because our first appointment is tomorrow morning at nine. He’s coming to the house.”

Thank you, Leo.

“That’s amazing.”

He smirks. “Turns out I’m not as hardheaded as my former therapist thinks I am.”

I open my mouth, then close it, suddenly uncertain of the new dynamic between us.

“Be you, Talia. That’s all I want.”

A knot inside me relaxes. “What changed your mind?”

He gives me a little squeeze of approval. “I had five weeks of therapy with a brain dentist. She chipped away until all my nerves were exposed, then blew on them.”

I make a face. “What a horrible visual.”

He smiles slightly, then his gaze clouds and drifts to our entwined legs. “I guess it took a while to settle—all the shit we talked about. My issues. How I cope. How I… avoid. My dad really drove the point home yesterday when he told me I should stop trying so goddamn hard, that I’ve got nothing left to prove.”

He sighs. “Fact is, I’ve gone most of my life with a giant chip on my shoulder. This feeling that I needed to be the best. The smartest. Change my family’s circumstances in the most pronounced way possible. Force the world to know my name. Every step I’ve taken since I was fourteen has been calculated to move me toward my goals. My dad was right—I wasn’t living. I set aside what was important to focus on what I could accomplish.”

“What you’ve accomplished is important, Kieran.”

“I know,” he admits, then frowns. “In theory, I know that. But I don’t feel it. Maybe that will change with successful testing, but all I can focus on is that it’s too late to save the person the treatment was meant for. Her disease is too advanced.”

My heart thuds in sympathetic pain. “I’m so sorry.”

He blinks fast, then clears his throat. “Now that it’s happening—now that I’ve reached this impossible benchmark—I’m realizing how many years I’ve wasted ignoring the giant hole inside me. A hole that’s suddenly filling up. Overflowing. And I’ve never been more scared in my life.”

My pulse accelerates. Even as my brain tries to find ways to make what he said not about me, my heart knows—hopes, wants—otherwise.

“What are you most afraid of?” I ask softly.

His eyes close. “Right now? Telling you the truth of how paranoid I am, what I’ve done because of it. I’m afraid of smothering you, poisoning you with my fears. I’m afraid you’ll end up hating me for it. But I don’t know if I can stop myself. Even if it means losing you. ”

When I sit up, he doesn’t try to stop me. His dark lashes lift, eyes reflecting the same emotions that thickened his confession. Fear. Anxiety. Raw, desperate desire. I grab his hand, threading our fingers and squeezing. The urge to tell him there’s nothing he could say that would make me walk away from him pounds at my teeth. I swallow it down, scrambling for a logical response instead of an emotional one.

“Thank you for being honest with me. I do need to know what you mean by ‘what I’ve done,’ though.”

He inhales slowly. “The night of the benefit, I had Sven break into your house to assess your security. You already know about the company I hired to watch your house—I didn’t fire them like you told me to. I’ve also hired personal protection for you. Sven is briefing them right now. There’s more, too. What I haven’t done yet but want to.”

My mind and heart racing a mile a minute, I ask weakly, “What do you want to do?”

“I want to convince you to move in with me. Close your practice. Relinquish your freedom. Stay in my line of sight at all times. I can’t stop the fear. Can’t help it. I’d chain you to me if I could, Talia. And yes, I fucking mean that.”

My breaths rasp in the sudden quiet. It takes a solid thirty seconds for me to sort through why those ideas are bad. Finally, I’m able to divorce myself from the thrill of his possessiveness.

“I guess it’s a good thing you have therapy tomorrow.”

He blinks, brows lifting. “That’s it?”

I hesitate, then nod. “Since Sven told me about that car, the man watching me, I’ve felt vulnerable in a way I never have before. Even though there haven’t been any more sightings of him, I still feel the weight of it. I can’t imagine how much worse it’s been for you, what you’ve dealt with for years—the threats, Liz’s murder, the attempts on your life, the phone call… If it eases your mind to have a security team follow me, I’m okay with it.” I pause. “You’ll tell Dr. Chastain all this, right?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

I swallow past my dry throat, nodding. “Good.”

He stares at me for several moments. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but here I am, my mind once again blown.”

I laugh, a soundless burst of air. “You’re surprised I’m not freaking out? Oh, believe me, I am.”

Just not for the reason you think.

His gaze sharpens. Pierces. He sees too much. Hears what I can’t say. Heat rolls through me. Unable to hold his gaze, I look down.

The next seconds are a blur as he pins me to the mattress. His forearms caging my head, he kicks my legs apart and settles his weight. His eyes hold mine from inches away.

“Don’t hide from me ever again, mo ghrá,” he whispers. “Tell me.”

I gasp for air. For words. Courage.

“Please.”

His voice cracks—I crack with it.

“I’m freaked out because I’m not freaked out!” My voice is too loud, fraught with agitation. “The idea of giving up everything for you—my whole life—doesn’t seem nearly as insane as it should. What if you change your mind, Kieran? What if you wake up one day and realize I’m not as fascinating as you think I am, or you really do prefer petite blondes? I’ve already given you more than I’ve given anyone!”

“I know,” he whispers, gaze tender as it roams my flushed cheeks, my tearing eyes.

“That’s just it—you don’t know. I’m a Domme, goddammit. Do you have any idea what it means that I went to my knees for you? That I let you fuck my ass? That you’re pinning me like this and I haven’t scratched your eyes out? I have one submissive bone in my body. One! Out of two hundred and six!”

He bites his lower lip so hard it turns white.

I sag back to the bed, the fight draining out of me. “You’re laughing. Unbelievable. I hate you right now.”

A crooked grin spreads on his face. “No, you don’t. What we feel for each other is the furthest from hate you can get.”

I freeze. He chuckles and kisses my nose, then rolls away and climbs off the bed. His hand extends toward me. My brain still half-melted by his pronouncement, I scoot toward him and let him draw me to my feet. A finger under my chin lifts my face for his kiss—soft, almost chaste, a tingling exchange of heat and breath.

“You’re perfect,” he whispers. “Every molecule. All two hundred and six bones. You are and will always be a miracle to me.”

He strokes my cheek before taking a deliberate step back. When I register the intent in his eyes, goose bumps explode across my skin. My fingers clench. My heart stampedes.

I gasp his name.

“I’m yours, Talia. All of me.”

With smooth grace, he lowers to his knees before me and bows his head.