Page 107 of Fractured Devotion
There’s silence.
Then the lock clicks.
He’s still dressed in his shirt from the clinic, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and the top buttons undone. His expression barely shifts, like he’d already pictured me standing here. He doesn’t look at me like a man sizing up a choice but like a scientist observing something volatile and committing every detail to memory.
“Celeste,” he says. Just that. No question, no surprise.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I whisper.
He studies me for a moment longer, then steps aside.
Inside, it smells like something expensive and clean. Like sandalwood, ink, and pressed linen. The lights are low.
I stop in the center of his living room, my fingers tightening around the cuff of my sleeve.
“Is this where you pretend to be normal?” I ask softly.
Kade moves to stand just behind me, close but not touching. “No. This is where I stop pretending entirely.”
My spine tingles.
When I turn, I do it slowly. Meeting his gaze is like stepping into cold water. I should flinch, should retreat, but I don’t.
Something breaks in his eyes. But not like glass. Like restraint.
He takes my wrist gently, bringing it between us and brushing his thumb across the place where my pulse beats like a warning. I feel it everywhere. Heat, blood, and the want of him in my lungs.
“Are you sure?” he murmurs, his voice low. “Because I won’t stop if we start.”
I swallow hard and reply, “I don’t want you to stop.”
His breath catches just a fraction. Then he pulls me closer.
This kiss is nothing like the one on the couch. This one bites.
It’s a collision of mouths, teeth, fingers that don’t ask for permission, and skin that answers with tremors.
He backs me toward the wall, his lips pressed to my throat, his hands already undoing the buttons of my shirt, slow but without pause. I gasp, not from fear, but from the intensity of it. His name slips from my lips in a breath I don’t recognize as mine.
He pins my wrists above my head with one hand, his other roaming over bare skin as if learning a language only he understands. My back arches involuntarily, and he doesn’t smile. He just watches me break.
“You want control,” he whispers into my ear, his teeth grazing my lobe. “But you ache to be undone.”
I don’t answer.
Because he’s right.
And because I’m already gone.
Kade’s mouth trails fire along my collarbone, his breath hot and uneven as he presses his weight against me, not to trap but to claim. My fingers clench reflexively in his hair, my nails grazing his scalp, a feral need uncoiling inside me. This is not about love. This is about surrendering to something deeper, darker, and more inevitable than reason.
He releases my wrists slowly, letting his hands skim down my arms, then lower, pulling my shirt completely off before lowering his own body until we match height, eye to eye, breath to breath. I tremble under the pressure of his stare. It doesn’t just look at me. It peels me open.
Kade drops to his knees as he takes off my pants without much effort, so smoothly as if he’s done it a thousand times.
I freeze.
It’s not because I want him to stop, but because it feels like worship. Like he’s offering something.
