Page 88 of Princes of Carnage

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.

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