33. Talia

Chapter 33

Talia

T he following night, my phone buzzes from the lip of Kieran’s bathtub where I’ve been soaking long enough for my fingers and toes to wrinkle. After wiping my hands quickly on a towel, I grab my device and read the message.

Done with the cops. Home in 5

My fingers tremble as I type:

I can’t wait to see you

Kieran doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. Even separated by miles, I can feel his need.

From the moment I opened my eyes to Kieran’s face and realized I was safe, I’ve anticipated this moment. He was supernaturally calm during my visit to a private doctor and throughout the hours-long process of having my injuries photographed and giving my statement to the police. When his lawyer and Alistair arrived at the precinct, and Sven suggested I be taken home to rest, Kieran gave me a gentle hug and a chaste kiss goodbye.

Mia and Leo were waiting for me at Kieran’s. There were some tears but no questions, only relief and compassion. Exactly what I needed. After I took the world’s longest shower, they fed me and tucked me into bed, then kept watch over me as I slept. When I woke, the sun was setting. I sent them home, already knowing what was coming.

Now it’s here.

The eye of Kieran’s storm has passed. It rages inside him, desperate for release.

Stepping from the bathtub, I grab a towel and dry off. The magnesium salt bath and anti-inflammatories I took an hour ago have made my soreness almost negligible. I still keep my back to the mirror, avoiding the sight of the bruises blooming on my neck, shoulder, and hip. I don’t look at my hands, either, the abrasions on my palms and wrists minor but stark against my pale skin.

Tomorrow, I have my first appointment with a trauma specialist, a colleague I’ve known since college. Tomorrow, I’ll tend to the bloody tracks left in my psyche by the swinging pendulum of emotional extremes. Terror to hope. Despair to fury. Grief to searing relief when I found out Gabe survived. I’ll face, too, the proof of my own capacity to take a life. My lack of guilt. The twisting, aching knowledge that a part of me wishes I hadn’t been stopped.

Tomorrow, I’ll confront it all.

Tonight belongs to animal necessity, to the natural urge to conquer death with life. Kieran needs physical contact to prove I’m safe, and I need to replace the echoes of nonconsensual touch on my body with the hands of the man I love.

But I need something else from him, too. I need help extracting the poisonous seed I swallowed last night—the lies I told to stay alive. And as difficult as this will be for him, patience and gentleness aren’t going to cut it for me. If he treats me like I’m delicate, there will be only one result: the rot inside me will spread.

To obliterate the stain inside me, I need his darkest self. The savage wolf.

As I hang my damp towel on a hook by the tub, the air changes around me. Goose bumps lift on my arms. My pulse begins to drum, fast and furious, as need throbs between my thighs.

He’s here.

When the bedroom door opens and closes, I walk out of the bathroom.

Kieran jerks to a stop at the sight of me. With the curtains half-drawn against a cloudy afternoon, the bedroom is shadowed, his eyes dark as they scan me from top to bottom. At his sides, fists form. His rapid, harsh breaths—and mine—are the only sound.

“Talia,” he croaks, brow furrowing. “I can’t—I shouldn’t touch you right now.”

I barely feel the floor beneath me as I cross to him. My nipples graze his shirt, emitting tiny shockwaves at the contact. He sucks in a breath, tendons standing out in his flexed arms, broad shoulders shaking as he fights impulse.

Lifting my chin, I stare into his eyes and see everything . Our past, present, and future. The floating ribbons of our lives that crossed and tangled by chance seventeen years ago before weaving in separate directions across continents and years. Apart. Distinct. Growing and strengthening and maturing. But always linked by the bond that formed at his grandmother’s grave. Now we are braided together, sealed with knots so complex and tight nothing in this world can undo them.

My hand finds his and pulls it to my belly. Flattening his palm against my skin, I guide him to my center. His nostrils flare, lips parting as he sinks two fingers inside me. I gasp, clutching his arms as I arch against him.

“I need you, Kieran. Give me your rage and your love.”

Our mouths collide in a brutal union of teeth and tongue. I bite his lip so hard I taste blood. He snarls and bites me back. His fingers curl inside me, yanking me forward and back at a punishing pace. The pleasure is so intense I feel it in the roots of my hair.

Before I lose myself completely, I shove him to make space between our bodies, then rip his pants open and push them down his thighs. Grabbing his cock in one hand and his balls in the other, I squeeze. He hisses, snatching my wrists. Pressure and tingling precede my fingers jerking open.

“No fair,” I growl.

His dark laughter is silk on my senses and gasoline on my need. I hook a foot around his knee and pull hard to unbalance him, but I might as well be trying to uproot a tree.

I take a step back, pouting but secretly thrilled by his strength. Watching me with hawklike focus and a smirk, he steps out of his shoes and pants. His shirt goes next, giving me delicious confirmation of how powerful he is. How much bigger and stronger.

I need a different weapon.

He purrs, “Should we arm wrestle next?”

I run my hands up my body, squeezing my breasts together. His eyes soften, instincts dulling. He takes a step toward me, bringing himself within reach. I grab his nipples and wrench them hard.

He yelps but instead of jumping back, he sweeps forward and plucks me off my feet, his arms trapping mine to my sides. “Goddammit, Talia.” Amusement and pain roughen the words.

Wiggling to free my arms, I wrap them around his neck and lock my ankles at the small of his back. “Right where I want you,” I murmur as I rock against him, finding friction against the trail of hair and hard muscle on his abdomen.

Lips trail along my ear, nipping and sucking, as he palms my ass. “I have something better for you,” he whispers, lowering me down his body until the thick root of his cock meets my soaked center. “But you have to ask for it. Nicely .”

Angling my face to his, I clamp my teeth on his lower lip and tug before releasing it to say, “I shouldn’t have to ask for what’s already mine. Give me my cock right now.”

His features tighten, his entire body hard as marble against me.

My gaze holds his. “Now, Kieran.”

Control shattering, he strides to the closest wall. We slam against it, his arms protecting me from the impact. With an animalistic snarl, he fists his cock and notches himself against me. I cry out in relief, but when seconds pass and he doesn’t fill me, my moan turns to a growl. A protest on my tongue, my eyes flutter open.

The anguish on his face steals the air in my lungs, wiping away my frustration. “What’s wrong?”

“I… God, I don’t feel in control. I don’t want to hurt you. I’d rather die.”

A single tear slides down his cheek, and a deep ache unfurls in my chest. Fighting my own tears, I kiss him softly and stroke his jaw, his brow, his cheekbones. “Oh, Kieran, you can’t hurt me. You love me too much. So much, in fact, that you’re going to let go of that fear. I need you to remind me what I’m not—fragile or weak. Help me remember who I am.”

The darkness melts from his eyes. “I know exactly who you are. My perfect match.”

The smile in my heart matches the one on my face. “Yes. Your match. Your equal. May I have my cock now, please? I want to feel your thrusts all the way in my throat.”

Lips curving in promise, he lightly flexes his hips. The head of his cock slips inside me. My eyes roll back in my head at the twinned pleasure and torture of it. He licks my throat, then bites my chin.

“Since you asked so nicely…” Strong fingers hook over my shoulders. “Hold tight, mo ghrá. It’s going to be a rough ride.”

It’s not rough.

It’s the perfect storm, and it scours me clean.

There are more storms over the days and weeks that follow. Storms no amount of logic, acceptance, or calls with my trauma therapist can circumvent. They’re lightning strikes in blue skies. Impossible to predict or to prepare for. One minute I’m fine, the next I’m not.

The first week is the hardest. I wake up multiple times a night covered in sweat, my heart pounding and a scream lodged in my throat. Sometimes I dream of that kitchen and what happened there. But mostly I dream of blood. Gabe’s. Mine. Kieran’s. Gunshots and cuts that won’t stop bleeding.

Awake, I startle at unexpected noises. A car horn. A door closing. A phone ringing. A Tupperware container dropping to the floor. And when Kieran nicks his finger on a knife in the kitchen, the sight of his blood sends me into a panic attack the likes of which I’ve never experienced.

My intellectual tools are useless. I can’t think or meditate myself out of what’s happening. I’m a teenager again, a slave to emotional forces I can’t control. All I can do is weather them. Accept the slices of my monster’s claws inside me and resist the lure to mirror them on my skin.

This time, though, I’m not alone. Kieran is my cornerstone as I process and heal, just as I am his. We are a seesaw in perpetual motion—each of us strong when the other is not. When he struggles, I am calm. And when I struggle, he knows not to press me to talk. Instead, he draws me baths. Reads to me for hours. Walks the beach with me multiple times a day. When I run into the cold water to feel the shock to my system, he follows me, anchoring me in the waves with his arms as much as the love and acceptance in his eyes.

He doesn’t ask me about the nightmares, but one afternoon a week and a half after my abduction, I tell him everything. Or almost everything—I don’t bring up the words he yelled over the phone. He hasn’t brought them up, either, and the longer we don’t talk about it, the more convinced I am that I hallucinated them. I recognize, too, that my emotions are still too chaotic to handle the conversation.

But I do tell him why my father put me in therapy when I was young. About my monster and why blood triggers me. Why seeing Gabe’s blood, having it on my hands, cast blinding light onto the shadows of my past.

I show him where I used to cut .

There are tears in his eyes as he traces my invisible scars with gentle fingertips, then with soft kisses. With his touch, he smooths the warped edges of my psyche’s darkest treasure. With his words, he turns my vulnerability into strength.

“I love the girl who did this, and I love the woman who survived. You are my miracle.”

That night, I sleep soundly for the first time. And the next morning, Kieran leads me to the room that doubles as a dojo and home gym. Sven is already inside. He hands me a Judogi in my size and a white belt.

“Want to learn how to beat the shit out of Kieran?” he asks mildly.

I grab the uniform. “Yes, please.”

Kieran laughs and kisses my forehead, then points a finger at Sven.

“Teach her to bring me to the floor in under thirty seconds, and I’ll buy you an island to retire on.”

Sven smiles slowly. “Done.”