Page 43 of Kael

"You... you would leave me?" she whispered.

"I won't spend my nights wondering if I'm going to find you dead in a back room because you wanted to play savior to apredator," I said coldly, reaching out to grab her coat from the chair. I held it out to her. "I won't be worried about you being here alone, vulnerable. Make your decision.”

She looked at the coat, then up at my eyes. I could see that for the first time in our marriage, she realized she didn't hold all the cards.

"Let's go home," she said quietly, taking the coat from my hand.

I didn't smile, though I wanted to. I just turned and walked out to the truck, letting her follow.

Chapter 24

Two weeks had passed since the run-in with Darius, and Kael still hadn’t said a word about it. I didn’t push. I didn’t want to. I liked living in his world where Darius didn’t exist. I was surprised the incident didn’t send me spiraling straight back toward a pipe or a needle, or whatever else might numb the static that day had left in my brain—especially when the police got involved. But I could see the anger simmering under his skin, the kind he tried to hide. He wasn’t over it. Not even close. He was the type of man who held grudges.

I overheard him on the phone with Malachai earlier, something about tracking where Brook was hiding. Darius and Brook had gone underground the second they learned who Malachai really was.

I felt like he had been avoiding me—leaving early, coming home late.

Tonight, I was done. He had come home earlier. We ate, and when he went into the shower, I rushed to change.

I dressed in the black lace lingerie he’d bought me—the sheer babydoll that made me feel exposed, the tiny thong with a razor-thin string of fabric that left almost nothing to the imagination. My hands shook a little as I knelt in the middle of the bed, posing for him.

The bathroom door opened. Kael stepped out, a towel low on his hips, water beads dragging down the dark contours of hischest. The second his eyes caught mine, his pupils blew wide, swallowing the iris until his gaze looked almost black.

“Fuck, Bria.” His eyes devoured me. Good—he wanted me. That gave me the nerve I needed.

I slid off the edge of the bed, the hardwood cold against the balls of my feet, and dropped to my hands and knees. He had a look of awe on his face mixed with confusion, but before he could react, I pulled the towel away. He was already thick and heavy. I took him into my mouth—eager and desperate—trying to prove I could handle him.

For a moment, he let me. His hips jerked. His fingers fisted in my hair almost painfully as he pushed deeper. He groaned and lost himself completely, fucking my mouth like he hated how much he needed it. It terrified me. It also made my mouth water and my thighs ache.

Then the control snapped back into place. He yanked me off, breathing hard, eyes feral.

“No, no, no. Stop. Not yet,” he growled.

I sat back on my heels, looking up at him from the floor. My lips were swollen and bruised, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “I’m ready, Kael. I want this. All of it.”

He stared at me like he was deciding whether to ruin me or protect me.

"Are you sure, Bria?" His voice dropped an octave, his words sounding like a boundary he was giving me one last second to step back across. "Because if we do this…" He let the rest hang in the air.

I nodded.

He shook his head. “Your words, Bunny. Say it.”

“I’m sure.”

Before I could even draw my next breath, Kael reached down, hauling me up off the floor by the bend of my arm. Thesheer lace strained against my skin as he hauled me to my feet, barely giving my knees time to lock beneath me.

His fingers locked around my wrist like an iron cuff, and he dragged me straight out of the bedroom, my bare feet slapping against the cold floorboards as he marched me down the dark hallway toward his office.

When he opened the hidden panel in the wall, my stomach dropped. Ropes, cuffs, paddles, floggers, a heavy black cross bolted to the wall—tools made for breaking someone down.

Kael stood behind me, hands heavy on my shoulders. “This is what I like, rabbit. I like control. I like pain. In our bedroom, I need to own you so completely you forget where you end and I begin. I want to tie you up, mark you, push you until you’re crying and begging. This part of me is not soft. It’s not sweet. You’ve seen the man who holds you at night. This is the other one.”

“How much pain, Kael?” My voice shook.

“I want your thighs aching when you walk, reminding you who you belong to.”

I swallowed hard, my heart hammering. “And tying me up?”