Wildblood

Chapter 62

62

The first thing Kai did when he kicked the apartment door shut was carry Miya to the bedroom, her thighs clenched around his waist. The moment her feet touched the ground, her fingers curled around his belt, and she yanked him into a ferocious kiss. Urgency snared them both, and he surrendered to that pull, his hunger matching her own.

His teeth snagged Miya’s lips as he shoved her pants away, his hand scraping past her underwear to cup the curve of her pelvic bone. Her gasp warmed his skin, and as her grip closed around his cock, he pushed a finger inside her, steering her back until her legs hit the bed, and he hauled them both onto the mattress.

“So much for the nap,” she quipped as he peeled away the rest of their clothes.

He groaned in reply—half protest, half plea. Miya smiled against his lips, basking in his impatience, then pulled back and cradled his face.

“Tell me seriously—are you okay?”

His mouth opened to offer a knee-jerk reassurance, but he stopped, his jaw clamping shut. Was he okay? He’d never really thought about it, absurd as it sounded. So much of his life had been spent in a bullheaded fugue—a stubborn refusal to die. I’ll live was the only mantra he could muster. But being okay? The possibility never entered his thick skull. Sure, he enjoyed himself—found pleasure where it could be meted out—but that wasn’t the same as being okay, was it?

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I was so pissed today I chewed through a man’s neck, snapped his spine with my teeth, and turned his head into a soccer ball.”

Miya swallowed, trying vainly to temper her shock. Her fingers slid down his cheeks and traced his jaw. “Do you feel bad about it?”

“No.” He shifted his weight to the side. “He needed to die, and I wasn’t about to give him the death he wanted. Either way, the cops will never know what happened in that laundromat. An exotic pet loose from its cage? A zookeeper gone berserk?”

Miya nodded slowly, mulling over his admission. “I’ve seen you hurt people. I’ve also seen you regret it when it causes more harm than it ends. But this…even I don’t feel bad.”

“Pyotr got what was coming to him. I’m just…raw.” The word tasted sour on his tongue—foreign somehow. It was a different language, one he was acclimating to. He could still see Caelan’s face contorted in agony, feel her hopelessness as she begged him to end her life. Caelan, bargaining for death, would haunt him far longer than Pyotr’s severed head. She’d rattled him to his core, filled him to the brim with an unshakeable dread that he was looking into a mirror.

And maybe that’s all a fetch was—a mirror image, a version of what could’ve been.

How many times had he plunged headfirst into a fight just to see if it would be his last? How often was the satisfaction of winning tainted by the disappointment that he hadn’t lost? For years after Alice died, he’d bargained with death too. “I just wanted to protect her,” he said. “Keep her off my path.”

“And heal your inner child?” Miya flashed him a knowing smile, then poked him in the ribs. “How’s therapy treating you?”

“Well,” he feigned, “it made me mad enough to fuck you in a field, but that probably means it’s working.”

Miya flung a haphazard jab at his stomach, and he caught her wrist and rolled her onto her back, mindful of her injuries. “How does that mean it’s working?” she sputtered through a giggle.

He leaned in close, his lips gazing hers. “Do you think it’s working?”

She pecked the corner of his mouth, her eyes scanning his face. “Yes,” she said, the playfulness leaving her. “Yesterday, when you had that nightmare…I honestly didn’t think I’d live to see you trust me so much.”

“I kept lashing out at you,” he murmured, recalling his previous outbursts. “Instead of admitting I was hurt, I snapped my teeth so you wouldn’t see how fucked up I was.”

“You saved that kid’s life,” Miya told him. “I’m not sure that would’ve been possible if you hadn’t checked your own wounds. It’s hard to empathize with others when you’re in pain.”

“Maybe I did,” he acknowledged, a strange warmth spreading through his middle. The pieces of his life hadn’t simply fallen into place. They had to be molded into something workable, so he could fashion them into a reality he actually wanted. Before, all he had was a blank space and a story he told himself to make sense of those disparate fragments. They were jagged, painful to touch.

Yet Kai wasn’t finished with the puzzle. That too-comfortable armchair in Hristina Kruni?’s office would have a dedicated imprint of his ass for months—possibly years—to come.

Miya’s fingers raked through his hair, pulling him from his reverie. His eyes drifted to hers, and for the second time that day, he felt a strange reverence for this person who kept choosing him over a world of possibility. And he’d chosen her too, again and again, despite every impulse that drove him to the worst parts of himself.

Desperation crushed him like a fist around his heart. He devoured the space between them, his lips on hers bruising, wild. They were naked in every way, every vulnerability laid bare. Miya’s arms wove around him, and her fingernails trailed down his back, reaping a growl from his throat as he pushed her legs open and pressed himself to her center. Her hips rose to meet his as her heart hammered against her ribs, heat blossoming over her skin. Every sharp breath laced with his name was a drug he grew more ravenous for.

Being inside her wasn’t just fleeting pleasure. She was a hurricane, uprooting his dark, fucked-up world, shattering the bleak reality he’d painted himself into. Yet being with her was also an equilibrium, the quiet at the center of a storm. And he was helpless against that storm. All he could do was surrender and trust that it wouldn’t tear him apart.

“Say it,” he whispered against her lips, his fingers tangled in her hair, tugging.

Miya searched his face, her reply catching on a moan. “Say what?”

A momentary waver, a splinter of uncertainty in his chest. His thumb hooked her lip, his mordant gaze steady on hers. “Tell me you love me.”

Her murky green eyes seared into him, branding him with a weight he knew he could never cast off—and he didn’t want to. He welcomed it, this heaviness that bound him to her, wove them together like roots beneath the earth. Her legs squeezed around his waist, and she pressed her forehead to his, her eyes never leaving him. “I love you,” she said, and he felt her heart thud against his chest through every syllable of those abominable words.

This time, at least, they didn’t hurt.

Kai swore under his breath, frustration and terror swirling with a bone-deep ache—a yearning he couldn’t quell. He fisted the sheets next to her head and dropped his mouth to her ear. Pummeling back his misgivings, he flouted the sheer impossibility of knowing what, exactly, love was supposed to be. Every cell in his body screamed this was it, and if it wasn’t, then it didn’t fucking matter. It was enough.

With his teeth bared and his heart a barb in his throat, Kai said the words back—uttered them so quietly that even a ghost couldn’t hear. They were for her only—perilous, capable of maiming him—but he said them anyway, tasting them on his tongue like he tasted her skin.

Kai gave Miya the blade and let her press it to his heart. He’d always liked sharp and wicked things.