Page 72 of Mayhem

His body jerked backward so hard one of the guards had to adjust his grip. Malakai caught Nichlas under the arm and kept him moving toward the secured room without allowing him to turn around, while Echo remained beside the couch and watched them pass. She did not smile at him or approach. She did not need to. Whatever she had done last night had settled deeply enough that seeing her across a room nearly stopped him from walking.

Ronan returned after Nichlas was secured and gave me the medical update while washing dried blood from one wrist. The injuries were painful but survivable. The doctor wanted his hands monitored, his thigh stitched again if he reopened the wound, and somebody nearby through the night because the combination of exhaustion, pain medication, and panic had made him difficult to settle. Malakai had already arranged coverage.

When Ronan finished, I told both men what I had done with Camille’s access and what I had said publicly. Neither questioned the decision. Malakai looked toward Echo for a moment when I mentioned the confrontation, then back at me, but whatever he read between us stayed in his head. Ronan was more interested in whether Desmond would challenge the revocation, and we spent several minutes working through which Quorum systems he could influence without directly overriding my authority at Aldrich.

By the time they left to handle the rest, the anger that had carried me across campus had burned itself down. The practical problem was contained. Nichlas was back where he belonged, Camille could no longer move people under my name, and my father would either stay out of it or force a larger conversation later.

Echo was still in the lounge.

She had taken off her heels and placed them beneath the edge of the couch, then opened the notebook I had pulled her out of class with. She was reading through whatever she had missed rather than hovering around my desk or demanding to know what came next. I finished the last security message, closed the laptop, and found myself watching her for longer than necessary.

Her mouth was the first place my attention went.

Echo noticed eventually. She closed the notebook over one finger to hold her place and looked at me. “Is there something else we need to deal with?”

There was no invitation in the question and no hostility either. I moved away from the desk and stopped several feet from her because I had already made one decision about her body without asking today. “What happened with Camille is handled. What happened between us isn’t.”

Echo shut the notebook completely and set it beside her. “If you’re talking about me threatening your dick, that part was very clear.”

“I’m talking about the kiss.” I watched her expression change without trying to fill the silence. “I grabbed you to make a point. You were right about that. I won’t use you that way again. But after you could have pulled away, you didn’t.”

She stood slowly, leaving her shoes where they were. “Those are two separate things, Hunter. I can be pissed that you used me and still want your mouth on me.”

The simplicity of it caught me harder than the kiss had.

She came toward me until only a small amount of space remained between us, but she did not close it completely. Her eyes moved over my face while I waited, and I understood that waiting was part of this. Echo had spent the afternoon reminding me that I was not her king. If anything happened now, I wanted there to be no confusion about whose decision brought her closer.

“I like control,” I said. “You hate having decisions made for you. That makes this either a terrible idea or something we need to be very clear about.”

Echo reached up and curled her fingers into the front of my shirt, the same place she had grabbed me during the kiss downstairs. “I hate people assuming they own the decision. If I give it to you, that’s different.”

I covered her hand with mine but did not move it. “And when you want it back?”

“I take it back.”

That was enough.

Echo pulled me down to her.

The second kiss had nothing to do with Camille. There was no audience waiting for a reaction and no point to make beyond the fact that she had chosen to kiss me again. I let her control the beginning of it, keeping my hands at her waist until she pressed closer and made it obvious she wanted more. When I finally tightened my grip and shifted her where I wanted her, she came willingly, and the knowledge of that choice settled into every movement afterward.

She didn’t become passive simply because she let me lead. Echo still pushed back when she wanted something different, redirected my hands when I assumed wrong, and watched me closely enough that I knew she was measuring whether I understood the agreement we had just made. I did. Control only interested me if the person giving it understood she could remove it.

I walked her backward until the backs of her thighs hit the arm of the couch. She let me. Her hands stayed in my shirt, holding on rather than pushing away, and when I lifted her onto the arm she opened her legs for me without being told. I stepped between them, one hand still at her waist, the other sliding up the side of her throat until my thumb rested just beneath her jaw. I felt her swallow against it.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

Echo’s eyes stayed on mine. “I will.”

That was the only permission I needed. I kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, while my hands worked the buttons of her blouse open one by one. She shrugged it off herself when I reached the last one, then reached for my belt. I caught her wrists and guided them back to the arm of the couch on either side of her hips.

“Leave them.”

She left them. The deliberate stillness of it hit harder than any struggle would have.

I unhooked her bra and drew it down her arms, then took one breast into my mouth while my hand cupped the other. She arched into it, a low sound catching in her throat when I scraped my teeth lightly over the peak. I spent time there, switching sides, learning the exact pressure that made her fingers curl against the leather, until her breathing had gone uneven and she was shifting restlessly under my hands.

Only then did I move lower. I dragged her skirt up her thighs, hooked my fingers in the sides of her panties, and pulled them down and off. She lifted her hips to help. I stayed standing between her knees and looked at her for a moment, spread on the arm of my couch, bare from the waist down, waiting because she had chosen to wait.