“Start with something small then,” she said in a low voice. It was dark back here away from the lights in the gym, but her blue eyes still shone with intensity.
My mind whirled with all of the fucked up, world altering, impossibly devastating truths I could offer her and I landed on the smallest one I could think of.
“I kept the knife,” I breathed.
“What?” she asked, her palm hot against my chest as she kept it there, her body so close to mine in the dark that I was aching to move even closer.
I unclasped the hunting knife which was strapped to my belt, pulling it free of its sheath and offering it to her.
Her hand trembled a little as she took it and I watched her hungrily as recognition spilled into her gaze.
“You’re fucking crazy,” she whispered as if she thought the walls might be listening in on us. “This…we killed someone with this. Why the hell would you have kept it? It’s evidence!”
I ignored her concerns, Saint had cleaned the thing meticulously so I knew there was no DNA evidence on it and the body was long gone so I wasn’t worried about getting caught with it.
“Tell me baby, how good did it feel when you drove this blade into him?” I growled, leaning down to brush my mouth against her collar bone and making her shiver as my stubble grazed her skin.
“I didn’t enjoy killing him,” she protested, her breath catching as I moved my lips up her neck, laying the softest of kisses against her skin.
“It’s not about the killing,” I murmured. “It’s about survival. Knowing you’ve got what it takes.”
“I…” The cold blade in her hand pressed against my stomach as she touched me while still maintaining her grip on it and I growled with desire for her as I skated my lips up to her jaw.
“When you stabbed him, it broke those shackles in your mind which had painted the world in black and white,” I said. “And you realised that sometimes an act of evil is what it takes to destroy evil. Sometimes the darkest of creatures can be fighting things that are even darker. And that just maybe, the construct of good and bad, the lines drawn in the sand between one and the other aren’t as clear cut as you used to believe.”
Her back arched as I curled my hands around her waist, loving how delicate she felt in my arms while knowing just how strong she really was.
“So what does that make me?” she asked breathlessly. “If sometimes, I think I like the dark?”
“Powerful,” I said, my mouth moving along her jaw as I drew ever closer to her full lips and my heart pounded feverishly with the desire to taste them. “Beautiful,” I added, grazing my teeth along her skin and making her gasp. “And free.”
My mouth brushed the corner of hers and a soft moan escaped her as I fell still there, every piece of me aching to make that final move, to feel the press of those full lips against mine, to taste the desire on her tongue and open myself up to all the things I shouldn’t have been wishing she might be to me.
“Kyan…” she murmured, her voice husky, her chest pressing against mine as the sound of our heavy breaths filled the small prayer room and echoed off of the cold stone walls.
“Every good thing that’s ever gotten close to me has ended up destroyed,” I said slowly, my lips brushing against her skin as I stayed locked in place, desperate to claim that kiss from her and terrified of what it would mean for her if I did.
Liam already knew about her, had already guessed what she might mean to me. If I crossed this line, I was only dragging her in deeper, making sure I’d pull her under with me when the weight of my secrets finally drowned me.
“If this is about the things I said to you in anger, I-”
“Everything you said to me was true,” I said, my grip on her waist tightening as I battled with my own selfish desires and with what I knew was best for her.
“Kyan,” she breathed again and I fucking loved the way my name sounded coming from her. She turned her head so that her lips brushed against mine for the briefest of seconds, but I pulled back before it could even resemble a kiss.
“The darkness in me is the type that breeds,” I said roughly, gazing into her eyesas I fought off the desires of my flesh in favour of what I knew was right. “And when it touches something good, it infects it. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep far away from me.”
I took a step back but she hounded forward, dropping the burn cream and catching my cheek in her grasp as she forced me to stop again.
“You just told me that the lines between good and bad aren’t clear cut, Kyan,” she said fiercely. “So maybe you should let me decide how much I want to blur them.”
“There’s dipping your toe in the water and then there’s drowning in an ocean of darkness,” I replied roughly, ignoring the ache in my chest as I used my grip on her waist to push her back. “And I’m not going to drag you under the surface with me.”
I prised my knife from her grip before she could try and argue anymore and snatched the bottle of Jack before striding away from her.
There weren’t many good things that I’d done in my life, but I could do this. I could shield her from the worst of me and
