Page 107 of Velvet Chains

He nodded, jaw tensing. I could see him thinking about the implications. About the risk. But he didn’t ask me to back down, and that should’ve scared me more than it did.

“She’s careful,” he said instead. “Darnell. That whole crew. They’re posturing. They want you scared first.”

“They’ve got eyes inside my office,” I said. “I have to assume it’s a matter of time before they—”

“They already know about us,” he said. “But they don’t have us. Not yet.”

I let my head rest against his shoulder, dread settling low and familiar in my chest. “There is no us. There can’t be an us, Kieran.”

He slung his arm around me. “I just came inside you, Rubes. Pretty sure there’s an us.”

“You’re an asshole,” I said, no real bite in my tone. I was feeling at once both weightless and impossibly heavy. My heart should’ve been pounding with anxiety, but instead every muscle in my body was suspended between fire and snow, the peace after a storm.

I must have fallen asleep, at some point, because when I woke it was still dark. He was gone. I thought, at first, he’d left, but then I saw him standing at the front window, naked but wrapped in my cardigan—which on him barely closed in the front, leaving his arms and most of his chest exposed, pink and ridiculous and beautiful.

I realized I had never seen him like this before: unguarded, unaware of being watched.

He stood there, looking out at the city, hands braced on either side of the window. The snow had stopped, leaving the street empty and blue and luminous. For a moment, I saw him not as I had always seen him—dangerous, magnetic, a force of nature—but as someone caught between two worlds, terrified of both.

He noticed me watching and turned, a sheepish, crooked smile on his face. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, indicating my poor stretched-out cardigan. “It’s softer than it looks.”

“It was $1200,” I said.

He laughed. “Ah, so trash. I’ll replace it if I stretch it out.”

Another long pause. Then: “It’s a nice view here. I bet Rosie likes it. She’d like my house better.”

My chest squeezed. “Are you still trying to sell me on this whole united family plan?”

“Is it working?” he asked, with a faint, hopeful smile.

“No,” I said. “And if you care about me at all, you’ll stay away from her.”

He gave me a long, assessing look. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“You really shouldn’t be here, Kieran.”

“Yeah, you keep saying,” he said, turning to look away from me. And he stayed.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Kieran

The snow was still coming down when I opened my eyes.

For a second, I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. I just watched her.

Ruby was curled up in her bed—our bed, if I let myself think like that—with her face half-buried in the pillow, her hair a mess, my shirt swallowing her whole. The sheet was twisted around her waist, legs bare and knees drawn up like she didn’t trust the warmth to last.

I reached out. Let my fingers brush her calf, slow and quiet, like I was scared she’d vanish.

She didn’t.

Instead, she turned toward me. Not all the way—just enough to let me know she wasn’t asleep. I brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “I want you,” I said.

"You're insatiable," she said, voice low and unfamiliar, as if the snowstorm had delayed the rest of the world outside and left only the singular moment of this bed.

"I am," I said. "With you."

She closed her eyes. I studied the fan of her lashes, the faint lines that always lived at the corners of her mouth, the way forgiveness and warning hadn't yet decided how to resolve themselves behind her expression. I wanted—for once—to take it slow. But when she opened her eyes again and fixed them on mine, I knew she didn't want that.