Page 126 of Kill for a Kiss

The rawness in his voice splinters deep inside me. But I keep moving against him, slow and relentless, forcing us both to stay in this moment.

“I never forgot you,” he rasps.

My eyes close, tears slipping hot and silent. Even knowing he tore that life out from under me, he’s still here, still holding on.

I move again, deeper this time. Sterling’s head drops back. My lips brush his, featherlight despite the heaviness between us. I don’t mean to ask, but it falls out of me anyway. “Should I hate you for it, Sterling?” I whisper.

He stops breathing for long enough to worry me. “You should.”

Wrong. He’s wrong.

I kiss him, holding him close, so he can’t pull away. Hate was never what tied us together. It was this. This inevitable pull we keep choosing. I ride him harder. He hisses as his hands twitch at my hips, still waiting, still holding back. I feel all of it. What I take from him. What he gives to me.

My breath stumbles over the next question, but I can’t stop now. I don’t want to. “Why were you there, Sterling?”

“It was Clo,” he says through gritted teeth. “She sent me there, gave the order.”

I roll my hips again, coaxing a confession he can’t stop.

“I wasn’t told much,” he grits out. “Only that it had to be done. No mistakes.”

My fingers trace his broad shoulders. “But you made one,” I whisper.

His throat works around a nervous swallow. “I didn’t know your mother would be there,” he says. “Didn’t know she’d defend him.”

Another breath breaks from his throat as he shudders all over.

“She wasn’t supposed to be a part of it,” he says. “But she fought for him. She was a witness. So I couldn’t leave her there.”

The ache in his voice splinters through me. “And after?” I whisper.

Sterling’s hands slide down to my calves. “I thought it was over,” he rasps. “Until I saw you. You bolted out of the door with your brother crying in your arms. There was fire all over you. Your feet, your legs…”

The world tilts. Time slows. “You saw me,” I echo, blinking through the haze.

“I saw her too,” he says, hoarse. “Clo. With you. With him. Taking you both.”

His breathing roughens. The haze in my mind lifts, flowing away with the rattling sound of windows. I have another piece of my past I never thought I’d ever remember clearly until now.

Sterling goes on, “I thought she was tying up loose ends. But she wasn’t. She was keeping you.”

I freeze for a heartbeat, my whole body trembling against his. Keep us.For what?

I grind harder, not for mere pleasure, but to silence the sob that’s clawing its way up my throat.

Sterling groans, the sound desperate. “I ran,” he says, deep and pained. “I ran because I couldn’t be a part of it anymore. I ran to this shack. I ran to survive what I’d done. Ripped myself away from her,from my family, before she could own me too.”

His words cut into me. He saw the monster his mother was becoming, and he chose to run, even if it cost him everything. It’s a price I wasn’t willing to pay when I was in the same shoes with my own mother. The memories flash like dancing flames. My mother screaming at me while I shielded my younger brother. Things thrown at the two of us while I tried to reason with her. They all come back with the confession Sterling gives me, leaving me open and raw.

“But after…” His voice draws me back to the present. “After I saw you—what I’d done—I started digging. I had to know.”

I slow my movements, feeling the weight of every word he says.

“Clo wanted full control,” he says between ragged breaths. “Your father created Kys. He made the formula.”

The breath that leaves my lungs comes out as a sharp, painful rush.

My father.He made the drug that destroyed everything.