Page 77 of Keep Me

I let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Is this what you like?” I ask.

His gaze bores into mine, the tension growing charged with every passing second.

“Sometimes,” he mutters. Slowly, he walks deeper into the room, closing the distance between us, and I have to force myself to swallow. Killian carries himself with a presence that sometimes steals my breath, and I think I’ve spent so long pushing him away that I haven’t given myself a chance to appreciate that.

“I love the trust that it requires,” he adds, looking into myeyes. “I love feeling so connected to someone that they give me full control over their body.”

When he reaches the chair I’m sitting in, he places his hands on either side, caging me in. I feel his presence like the heat emanating from a fire.

“Is that something you want with me?” I add.

His eyes close briefly as he replies, “Oh, absolutely, mo ghràidh.”

“Well then,” I smirk. “Maybe someday.”

That word,someday, stings, but I quickly brush it off. Killian and I don’t have a future full of somedays, and it’s not something I like to focus on too much.

He grins back at me. “Yeah, someday.”

When I turn my attention back down to my book, he stands up and goes to the bar for a drink. I’m finding it harder to focus on the words on the page since we started talking about it. After only a few months, I’ve noticed how much Killian has changed. He seems less drawn to recklessness and outbursts, and for a man who was introduced to me as such a partier and playboy, I’m just not seeing that anymore.

It piques my curiosity, remembering something Anna mentioned back when I first came around.

“Did something happen that made your aunt so angry?” I ask.

He chuckles. “What didn’t I do to make her angry?”

“No, I mean…with the house.”

“Och,” he replies, turning toward me with a drink in his hand. Leaning against the bar, he takes a deep breath and stares off as if he’s reminiscing about a tough memory. Then he nods toward the book in my hands. “Has a lot to do with that, actually.”

“This?” I ask, lifting it from my lap.

“Aye. You know that party we had a couple months back?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Well, I used to have a lot more of them. Sometimes with that crowd. Sometimes with others. And after a while, I got abit of a reputation. Nearly every weekend, people would come. They’d invite their friends, and I knew it was getting out of hand.

“My house was filled with strangers, but I loved it. They weren’t…regular parties, you understand?”

“I think I do,” I mumble, gazing up into his eyes.

“They were out of control, but I felt free. And soon my house wasn’t such a prison anymore. It was like…an escape. A place where normal people would come to let go. To express themselves. To try new things.”

“What happened?” I ask, although I have some idea.

“Word got out to my family. They found out that our family home had turned into a sex club on the weekends, and they weren’t happy about it.”

I bite my lip as a feeling of regret washes over me. I understand now why his aunt was so angry, but at the same time, I feel so much empathy for what that must have been like for him. To feel something important to him ripped away.

“So you had to stop the parties,” I add remorsefully.

He nods his head, looking melancholy.

“I’m sorry.”

He gives me a shrug. “It’s not your fault.”

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