Page 22 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

It’s sometime past three when I wake up. The room is dark, but the kind of dark that feels heavy, not empty. The kind that hums with the echo of someone else’s presence even when they’re gone.

I roll onto my side, the sheets whispering across my skin. Elias isn’t here.

I don’t panic.

Not yet.

He didn’t leave me.

He’s just somewhere else in this house, thinking too hard or watching too long or bleeding into silence like he always does when something in his world shifts.

I get up slowly, dragging the hoodie he left me back over my shoulders. It smells like cedar, static, and restraint.

The house is quiet, but not dead. Somewhere deeper in the walls, I hear the faint tick of a monitor, the low hum of tech that never sleeps.

I follow it.

Barefoot, silent, I walk the corridor that connects the living space to his private office. The door is cracked open.

He’s in there.

Alone. Back to me. Shirtless, the ink on his skin like scars laid out with surgical precision. His shoulders are tense, braced over the edge of the desk.

I don’t speak.

Just lean against the frame until he feels me.

His head lifts a fraction. No words. No welcome.

I step inside.

"You okay?" I ask.

His answer is too long in coming. "Define okay."

I cross the room slowly, eyes tracing the curve of his spine, the edge of tension in his jaw. He looks like someone trying not to fall apart. Or maybe trying not to come undone.

"Is it Caleb?"

He shakes his head. "Not tonight."

"Then what?"

Elias turns toward me slowly, his eyes catching mine in the low light. "Ghosts."

I stop a foot away. "Yours?"

"They never really leave. Just trade names."

My fingers twitch at my side. "Show me."

He stares at me for a second too long, then nods.

I come closer, and he pulls up a screen. Names, files, encrypted threads spill across it in silent testimony. Nothing I understand. Nothing I need to. Because what matters is the way his hand curls into a fist at the sight of them.

"Tell me where it hurts," I say, softer now.

He doesn’t look at me when he answers. "It hurts in the places I let go of myself to survive."

I press my hand against his back.

"Then let me remind you what staying feels like."

He doesn’t speak. But when I step around to face him fully, there’s something in his eyes that wasn’t there before.

Want.

Not for my body. Not only. But for the quiet I bring when everything else is screaming.

He lifts a hand and touches my cheek. Just barely. A graze. Like he’s checking if I’m real.

And I am.

I lean into it.

"Come to bed," I whisper.

He closes his eyes.

And when he opens them again, the storm has settled.

"Yeah," he says. "Okay."

His hand lingers on my back as we leave the office, not forceful, just steady. The way you might guide someone through a dark hallway you know too well. We walk slow. Not because the house demands it—but because something between us does.

When we reach the bedroom again, I step in first. The sheets are still twisted from when I left. A crease where my body had been. The light in the corner lamp is low, but enough.

I sit on the edge of the bed, watching as Elias pulls the door until it clicks shut behind him. Not locked. Not guarded. Just…closed. And then he looks at me like he's memorizing something again. A detail he might need if I ever disappear.

“Tell me what’s in your head,” I say.

He crosses the room and kneels in front of me, hands braced on either side of my knees. His voice is gravel when it finally comes.

“You. Alone in that office. That note. Caleb’s reach.” His jaw clenches. “How easy it would be to lose the thread of you.”

“You haven’t,” I say.

“But I could.”

I reach for him.

This time, he doesn’t hesitate.

I pull him up to me. Not fast. Just close. And when our mouths meet, it’s quieter than before. Not desperate. Not demanding. Just deep. Like maybe we finally understand what it means to hold without hurting.

His hand slides under the hoodie I haven’t taken off, past the soft cotton of the shirt beneath it. Finds bare skin and the thump of my ribs.

“You always run cold,” he murmurs.

“Always.”

“I’ll fix that.”

He lifts the hoodie slowly, watching my face. Giving me every second to stop him.

I don’t.

The fabric brushes over my arms, my shoulders. He drops it to the floor. His fingers find the hem of my shirt next.

“Okay?” he asks, voice low.

I nod.

It’s not rushed. It’s not perfect. But it’s careful. He moves like someone who’s learning a language through skin. I don’t tell him where I hurt. I don’t have to. He finds it anyway. And when his mouth touches that old scar at my side, I flinch. But not from pain.

He pulls back. Looks at me.

“I want you,” he says. “But I need you to feel safe more than I need anything else.”

“I feel it,” I whisper.

“You sure?”

I nod again.

And when he lowers me to the bed, it isn’t about forgetting.

It’s about finally remembering what it means to be wanted and not used.

To be seen and not handled.

His hands slide around my waist, his mouth finds mine again, and this time I don’t pause.

I don’t pull away.

His kiss is a fucking paradox—gentle, like I’m spun glass, but laced with a hunger that could burn me to ash.

It’s as if he’s afraid I’ll shatter if he grips too tight, yet terrified I’ll slip through his fingers if he lets go.

His weight hovers over me, one hand braced beside my head, the other digging into my hip, anchoring me on the bed.

He’s still holding back, leaving me a sliver of space to escape this inferno. I don’t take it.

My fingers find his ribs, tracing the sharp lines of ink carved over bone, a map of his secrets etched in black.

He doesn’t flinch, but his breath catches, a shallow, jagged hitch that betrays the crack in his armor.

I drag my nails along the ridge, slow and deliberate, watching his control flicker like a dying flame.

“Stop holding back,” I whisper, my voice a challenge, low and raw. “I want all of you.”

His eyes darken, a storm brewing behind that feral gaze. Something coils tight beneath his restraint, a beast straining at its leash. “You sure about that?” His voice is gravel, rough with warning, dripping with promise.

I nod, my pulse hammering. “Show me what you really want.”

His mouth crashes into mine again, devouring, claiming, shattering the quiet of the room. The kiss is a war—teeth and tongue, a brutal dance of need that leaves my lips swollen and my body aching. The world tilts, and I’m lost in the heat of him, the taste of whiskey and sin.

Clothes come off in a frenzy, barriers torn away like they offend us.

My shirt hits the floor, his jeans follow, the rasp of his zipper a fucking symphony in the charged air.

His skin against mine is electric, the scent of salt and musk and something darker, headier, flooding my senses.

I’m bare beneath him, exposed, my body a canvas for whatever he’s about to unleash.

He grabs my wrists, pinning them above my head against the pillow with one hand.

Not rough, not playful—just firm and certain, like he’s staking a claim on my soul.

The silk sheets are cool against my skin, a stark contrast to the heat of his grip.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs, his breath hot against my ear, his voice a low growl that sends a shiver straight to my core.

“I won’t,” I say, defiant, my voice trembling with want. “I’m yours.”

His eyes flash, feral and possessive. “Then I’m done pretending I don’t dream of ruining you every goddamn time I see you.”

His mouth moves lower, a slow, savage descent.

His lips graze my neck, sucking hard enough to mark me, a bruise blooming under his touch.

He lingers at my collarbone, his tongue tracing the delicate bone, then dips to the soft underside of my breast, teasing the sensitive skin until I’m squirming, my nipples hard and aching.

He finds a faint bruise—someone else’s mistake—and pauses, his tongue circling it like he’s erasing it, rewriting my skin with his own claim. “Mine,” he growls against me, and I melt.

I gasp, my back lifting from the bed, arching into him, my breasts pressing against his chest in a silent, frantic plea.

He keeps my wrists pinned above me, his grip firm but not cruel—just enough to keep me still, to make me feel the heat of being utterly exposed under his gaze.

No hiding. No shield. Just skin and breath and nerve endings lit up like fire alarms.

His free hand trails down slowly, mapping my ribs before cupping my breast with deliberate care. His fingers circle the nipple, teasing it until my spine tightens with pleasure.

Then his mouth follows—lips brushing, tongue tracing, finally sealing around me with wicked precision. He sucks, then flicks, then swirls, driving sensation through me so sharply I moan aloud, my body writhing beneath him.

He releases my wrists, the shift almost imperceptible, but my body knows. His hands move—one trailing down my side, the other skimming across my stomach, slow and intentional.

He palms my breast again, thumb flicking the already-sensitive peak as his other hand slips between my thighs, fingers teasing, testing, parting me with a pressure that makes my hips twitch. I moan, arching toward him, greedy for more.

Taking advantage of that freedom, I reach for him—one hand fisting in his hair, the other sliding down his back, tracing the dips of muscle, the rise of heat.

His skin is fire under my palms. He groans low in his throat when my nails drag lightly along his waist.

Then he goes lower.