Page 44 of Pretty Ruthless Monsters: Complete Series

QUINN

Killian blocks the blow, but that doesn’t stop me. I swing again, seeing red.

I’m full of raw, primal fury, driven purely by an overload of emotions that I can’t control.

Everything has been so much for so long, and it’s all crashing around inside my head and my heart.

There’s a part of me that wants to hurt him for what he did, and I lean into it, my fingers clenched tightly around the knife’s handle.

He shifts to one side, trying to move so he can grab me, but I’m faster than him. I duck under his arm and bring the knife up, stabbing him right in the side.

I feel it when the point of the blade breaks into his flesh, sinking into the meat of him, but Killian barely reacts. His forest green eyes flash, and he leans into the wound, almost like he’s embracing the pain of it.

I yank the knife free, the tip coated in his blood. This time, when I go to attack him again, he’s quicker, and he grabs my arm in a grip that feels like iron.

My stomach flips over at the feel of his skin against mine. Now that I know that Killian is the man from the club, the feeling of him grabbing me like this has a whole new meaning behind it.

I struggle against his hold, trying to twist out of his grip.

My other hand lashes out, landing a solid punch against the side of his face, and Killian doesn’t react to that either.

He wrenches me around so that my back is to his front and then shoves me up against the side of the house, boxing me in.

He snatches the knife from my hold, and I snarl in anger as he manages to break my grip.

I can feel the solidness of him, the strength in the way he keeps me pinned.

My heart thumps hard in my chest, and my breathing is ragged.

In this position, with my adrenaline pumping from our struggle, I can’t believe I didn’t realize that Killian was Phantom before today.

Now I recognize the feel of him, even with his scent being different from the man I knew at the club.

I recognize the way he boxes me in, the way his body looms over me, immovable as a brick wall.

There’s nothing sexual in the way he’s pinning me now, at least not overtly, but that doesn’t really matter.

Because it’s the same scenario, really. Me trying to get away from him, him holding me right where he wants me.

It sends the same rush of heat through me, making me feel just as helpless and under his control. Only now there’s more anger behind it than arousal.

I gasp for air, my emotions still a mess. Everything is swirling around in my head in a chaotic tumble, and I can’t decide what I should be feeling right now.

Exhaustion from the day I’ve had creeps through my veins as the burst of adrenaline fades, and I slump in Killian’s hold a bit, letting some of the fight bleed out of me.

When I speak, my voice comes out sounding rough.

“Why did you do it?” I whisper. “Why did you stalk me? Why did you fuck me anonymously in that place?”

For a long time, Killian doesn’t speak. He’s silent, the way I’m used to him being.

As himself, he’s barely said a word to me.

Phantom at least talked. He said filthy things to me in that deep voice of his, breaking down my walls and making me beg for him.

He always seemed to know just the right thing to say, and his words alone were almost enough to send me over the edge.

Killian has just been closed-off and unreadable, and it’s hard to know which side of him is the real one.

He’s quiet for so long that I assume I’ve gotten my answer… but then he surprises me by speaking.

“I don’t understand people.” His voice is a low rumble, and I can feel it vibrating through his chest where it’s pressed against my back. “I’ve never been able to understand them. To relate to them. But I understand you.”

I blink, caught off guard by that. “What are you talking about? You don’t even know me. Following me around, fucking me with a mask on—that doesn’t mean you understand me. And you still haven’t answered my question. Why?”

There’s another beat of silence, but this one feels more like he’s gathering his thoughts than refusing to answer, so I force myself to wait it out.

“You’re… unavoidable,” he says. “I followed you for the first time a couple of years ago. There was a stand-off between our gangs, and you were with your father when he came to deal with it.”

“Back when my dad was still alive.” It’s not really a question, but it’s crazy to me that he’s been doing this for that long.

I feel him nod. “As soon as I saw you standing beside Jonah, I couldn’t seem to look away. I was very aware of you. Your bright hair, the way you held yourself.”

“How did I hold myself?”

“Like there was a part of you that you were hiding,” he says, his breath tickling my ear. “You had this confidence, this easy grace, but there was something else too. Something I could sense beneath the surface. I wanted to know what it was.”

I frown, trying to remember the day he’s talking about.

There were plenty of confrontations between Carnage and Enigma when my dad was in charge.

I was there for several of them, backing my dad up, making sure shit didn’t get too out of hand.

None of them really stand out as all that noteworthy for Killian to decide to start stalking me.

But he keeps talking. “I saw you later, after the stand-off had broken up, and that was the first time I followed you. I didn’t even think about it, really. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was like you were the moon and I was the tide.”

“ Why? ” I ask again, feeling like he’s doing everything but answering my question. “Why me?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “You weren’t even doing anything all that striking.

I saw you in a moment alone, and it was like I got a small glimpse of that hidden piece of you.

You seemed… frustrated. On edge. Like you didn’t quite fit in your own skin.

And I felt like I could understand your emotions completely in that moment.

That had never happened to me before. Not with anyone. ”

It does make sense that I would have been frustrated after a run in with the Princes of Carnage.

My dad never wanted to let the rivalry between our gangs turn into anything serious.

There were scrapes and spats here and there, but nothing that would lead to a full-on bloodbath.

I probably wanted to push for teaching Nico and his people a lesson, and Dad probably told me to stand down.

That’s all I can really think that Killian would have seen.

What he’s describing sounds like such a mundane moment, but what strikes me most is the way he seems to have been able to pick apart my emotions so clearly.

He’s not wrong that I’ve often felt like I don’t quite fit , like something in my life is missing.

But I work hard to keep that part of myself hidden behind a mask, especially since I became leader of Enigma.

And the fact that he could see it makes me wonder what else he can see in me.

“I started following you on purpose after that. Just here and there. And then more often.” Killian pauses, shifting his weight a bit.

He presses closer against me, so that our bodies are touching practically from head to toe, and my breath catches as he murmurs, “I saw you go to that sex club. Le Bal Masque. I wasn’t sure you knew what you were in for. I wasn’t sure you understood.”

“That’s insulting,” I mutter under my breath. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I know. But I still didn’t like the idea of anyone else touching you, so I kept the other men away from you. And then I realized what you wanted. What you came there for.”

My heart thuds in my chest at that, and my mouth is suddenly dry. Sure, some people probably go to a club like that for the ambiance or to socialize and show off. Maybe to dabble in the lighter side of kink or to impress a date. But I only ever went for one reason.

“And you gave it to me,” I whisper, my throat tight.

Killian nods.

He steps back slowly, giving me just enough space so that I can turn around to face him. I’m still pressed against the side of the house, but now it’s my back against the cool wall instead of the side of my face.

I gaze up into his eyes, and even they look familiar now. I could barely see Phantom’s eyes in the dim rooms of the kink club where we met, but I recognize him now—in a way that goes far beyond physical attributes.

This is the man who first helped me explore my need to be hunted, chased, and fucked roughly. It could have been anyone who found me at that club and tried to give me what I was craving, but it wasn’t. It was him.

My head is suddenly flooded with images of all the things he’s done to me.

Things I didn’t know Killian had done to me until now.

All the times he’s chased me down that hall, slammed me against the door, the walls, the bed, the floor.

The way he’s wrenched my legs open as I struggled and made me fall apart.

He’s been inside me. He’s seen me sobbing for release.

Seen me messy and degraded and raw. In a way, I was more open with Phantom in those back rooms than I’ve ever been with anyone in my life.

And he’s looking at me now with a banked heat in his eyes, like he’s remembering all of the same things I am.

There’s a hunger in his expression, subtle but there, and it makes me shiver as my body reacts to it.

Our gazes hold for another long moment, and even though Killian is barely touching me now, I still feel him everywhere.

Some of it is the phantom touches of remembering his hand at my throat or his fingers digging into my hips or my ass.

A lot of it is the sheer physicality of him.

He’s so big that the gaps between us seem even smaller than they are, and my senses are flooded with him.

His scent—his real scent, leather and dark liquor—swirls around me, and his dark green eyes seem almost black in the darkness around us. I can feel the heat coming off his body and almost feel the thumping pulse of his heart.

I have to take a breath and then another, steadying myself before I finally ask, “Is that why you never kissed me on the lips?”

Killian shakes his head. “No. I kept the mask on so that you wouldn’t see my face, but I’ve never kissed anyone on the lips. It’s not something I do.”

“Never?”

“Never. But I didn’t need to. I could give you what you needed without that.”

There’s a quality to his voice when he says those words—that he gave me what I needed—that sends another shiver of heat down my spine. Usually, having him this close means I’m about to get fucked until all I can think about is how good it feels and how badly I need to come.

It’s like now that I know who he is, my body is conditioned to that, expecting it. My clit throbs, my pussy clenching involuntarily, every part of me wanting that release.

After everything that’s happened today, and in the days leading up to it, this is the kind of mood that would send me to the club, hoping Phantom would be there. These are the kind of feelings I’d want him to fuck right out of my head.

Judging from the way he’s looking at me, he knows that. It’s the same look in his eyes that I’d barely be able to glimpse through his mask. Like he was assessing me, figuring out what I needed and then planning to do it and do it fucking well.

There’s a yearning in me for that. For him to force me to face the wall again and fuck all this confusion and stress out of me. To cover my mouth with one of those massive hands and keep me quiet while he takes me apart.

I called him Phantom in my head before, because that’s what he was to me. Elusive. Enigmatic. Almost untouchable, except for those moments when he would allow otherwise.

But Killian? He’s here in front of me. He lives in my house. He follows me, and he’s seen me at my worst. Just a few hours ago, he was holding me in the bathtub while I fell apart.

He reaches up, taking a lock of my hair between his fingers and toying with the teal strands.

“I wasn’t wrong that first day,” he tells me, his voice low and intent.

“I do understand you. Even if I didn’t know why then, I knew that there was something in you that I recognized.

” He twists my hair around his finger, tugging on it lightly.

“Sometimes when darkness is thrust upon us, we come to crave it later. We want to own it, so that it can never own us.”

I swallow hard as his words hit me right in the chest. This is the most he and I have ever said to each other while knowing who the other person was, and the way he talks makes it clear that he wasn’t lying before.

He does understand.

He does see me.

I don’t know how to feel about that. There was definitely a time when I craved being understood. When I would have done anything to have someone just know how I felt.

But even though Killian is right here and my body is aching for him, I don’t give in. I can’t. Underneath the arousal, the anger still simmers. He lied to me. He stalked me and fucked me and knew all this shit about me, while I knew nothing.

That betrayal still burns.

“If you understand me so well,” I bite out, hardening my voice, “then you’ll know how I feel about being lied to.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, just keeps watching me with those too-perceptive eyes. And all at once, I’ve had enough of this.

I shove at him, one of my hands hitting his wounded side, smearing blood on my palm as I make space between us. I don’t have any illusions that if he didn’t want to move, he wouldn’t, but he doesn’t try to keep me there.

So I slip out from between him and the house and stalk back inside, feeling even more confused than I did when I came out.