Page 23 of His Fury

I’d walked away because I knew how dangerous he was. But he was still the man I felt safest with.

With his sharp smirks and rough hands. With his unreadable eyes and cool control. The way he always seemed to know what I needed before I could even admit it to myself.

Zayn, the man who kissed me like he was branding me. The man who had come for me. The one who had gotten me out without so much as breaking a sweat.

The man who kidnappers feared.

I squeezed my eyes shut, a strangled sob fighting to be free of my throat. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t keep letting him in. But no matter how many times I told myself I waswalking away, no matter how many times I tried to draw the line—I never stayed gone.

And that terrified me more than anything.

Because Zayn had made one thing very, very clear.

He wasn’t letting me go.

And deep down, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to.

The soft glowof morning light crept through the edges of the blackout blinds, casting a hazy warmth over the room.

His room.

His bed.

And him… Still here.

I blinked slowly, my mind dragging itself out of sleep as the weight of reality crashed over me once more. Last night. The warehouse. The fight with Zayn after it. The shower.

I shifted slightly, careful not to move too much, my body all too aware of the man beside me. Far toofamiliarwith the body next to mine.

His warmth radiated through the sheets, one arm resting above his head, the other lying across his stomach, his hand splayed across his abs, and his breathing deep and even. I’d asked him to stay, and he had. Without argument, without question.

My chest tightened. I had completely broken down. He hadn’t mocked me for it, hadn’t pushed me away, and hadn’t brushed it off. Instead, he carried me to bed and comforted me. He held me through the worst of it, letting me fall apart, and he didn’t try to piece me back together; he just let me be.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat, my fingers curling into the sheets as I forced myself to breathe evenly.

I needed to move. I had to get up, leave, and put distancebetween us. It was what I had been doing. Waking up in his bed, his space, and his world felt too intimate, too…irresponsible.

It wasn’t a good idea to linger. I knew that. But my body betrayed me.

I didn’t move.

I allowed myself to listen to the steady rhythm of his breathing, to watch the slow rise and fall of his chest, to notice how his lips parted slightly in sleep, and to see how his thick, dark lashes framed his cheeks.

He looked at peace. It was rare that I was awake before him, and I was unfamiliar with seeing him like this.

Zayn McCabe didn’t do peaceful. He did control. He did danger. He did chaos.

But not here. Not now.

Longing twisted in my stomach, a feeling so familiar, no matter how much I tried to convince myself it was unwanted. I turned my head, exhaled slowly, and forced my gaze away. This was temporary. We weren’t like this. Not anymore. I wasn’t sure if we ever had been. Like a magnet my graze drifted back to him.

We had moved on. Or at least we tried to. Now, we were just angry and tense, weighed down by a messy history neither of us had any right to revisit, just as we had been before we slept together.

A soft rustle of sheets made my breath hitch, and I hastily shut my eyes.

A low, gravel-rough voice reached my ears. “You gonna keep staring at me, or are you gonna pretend you’re still sleeping?”

My stomach flipped.Damn him. I shot him a glare, finding him already watching me, his sharp gray eyes still laced with sleep but filled with something else.

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