Page 214 of The Owner's Temptation

“I didn’t care about the empire. About the business. About anything. I just needed to get to you.”

He swallows hard, voice barely a whisper.

“I’ve been in shootouts. I’ve killed men with my bare hands. I've seen things that don’t leave you—things that turn your soul black.”

He takes in a shaky breath.

“But nothing… nothing ever scared me like the thought of losing you.”

My mouth parts but no sound comes out.

I’m drowning in the wreckage of him. The weight of his confession crushes every defense I have left.

“I don’t know how to do this, Sienna,” he whispers. “How to care about someone. How to let someone care about me.”

His eyes drop to my hands, still raw and red from the ropes. He holds his hand out to me and I take it, stepping out of the aircraft with him.

He lifts my wrist to his mouth, placing a tender kiss just above the sore wounds. Closing his eyes, he squeezes them tight, fighting to keep everything pushed down.

But it refuses to stay buried any longer.

“I only know how to destroy.”

His words hover between us, heavy as stone, delicate as glass.

Lucian’s jaw ticks once, then again—like he’s fighting something inside him that doesn’t want to be named.

That doesn't want to befelt. His eyes drop to the floor, to the space between our shoes like it holds the answer to how he’s supposed to survive this.

Surviveme.

“You should’ve had someone soft,” he says quietly. “Someone safe. A man who works nine to five and comes home on time and remembers your coffee order. Someone who hasn’t put bullets through dozens of men and lied to you every time he tried to protect you.”

He looks up. The storm in his eyes is still there, but the walls are breaking.

“I’m not that man, Sienna.”

I already know that.

He swallows hard and his voice drops, barely above a whisper.

“But I wanted to be.”

His hand flexes at his side like it’s aching to reach for me, but still—he doesn’t move.

“I didn’t lie to protect the business. I didn’t push you away because of some fucking protocol. I did it because I didn’t know what to do with the way you made me feel.”

His voice breaks then—just a little, but enough for me to hear the man underneath the legend.

“I thought I could let you go. Thought I could live with it. I told myself if I kept you safe, that was enough. That I’d done my part.”

He shakes his head.

“But when I saw you there, tied up and bleeding and too still… I unraveled. Isnapped.”

He exhales slowly, brokenly.

“Because if I lost you, Sienna—if something happened to you because of me—I wouldn’t come back from it. Iwouldn’t want to.”

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