Page 50 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"No," Sebastian says, very quietly. "I won't."

I never see Gideon. He comes from behind Cyrus out of the dust, broad as a door, and the hand at my neck is simply gone—wrenched up and back. Elias is there in the same breath, a coil of restraint already moving, and between the two of them Cyrus is forced down to one knee against the concrete, snarling, his control collapsing into something ugly and human-sized. Then Sebastian is knelt down at my wrists. He frees them, and I'm shaking.

"I've got you," he says. "Don't move yet."

I rise to my feet and that's when he sees the blood on my mouth.

Something goes out of his eyes like the light he saw is gone. He crosses the floor before I realize it and drives Cyrus down hard, cracking the ground on impact. His forearm bars across Cyrus' throat, his other hand drawn back, and for one breath I see exactly what he is. The predator under the suit.

"Sebastian." Gideon's voice, a hand on his shoulder that doesn't try to pull, only to remind. "Breathing. Gregory's order. He goes back alive."

Sebastian doesn't move. The whole room waits on the line of his shoulders.

I'm not afraid of him. I see his fury and I see what's under it. Love with nowhere safe to put it, and then he decides. The drawn-back hand lowers. He stands, and the violence goes out of him by choice, not exhaustion.

"You know what to do," he says to Gideon and Elias.

They take Cyrus up off the floor between them, cursing, and move him out. The last of his people are down or scattered into dust. It's over—the loud part of it, the part with bodies.

Sebastian comes back to me slowly, approaching me like he's afraid I'll walk away again.

"Are you alright?"

"Erm."

He sweeps me up and carries me like a baby, gently placing me in a car. I brace for the drive to his fortress, instead he takes me to my apartment. The apartment is exactly as I left it. Nothing's been searched. Nothing destroyed.

He helps me lay on my bed. Then he crouches beside me, a clean cloth in his hand, but he waits before touching me.

"Your lip," he says. "May I?"

It's a small word,may. I nod a yes. He cleans the split with a care that has nothing predatory left in it, his touch so light I have to hold still to feel it at all.

"I confused protecting you with owning the decisions of your life," he says, not looking up, working the cloth along the cut. "I paid your mother's debt without asking. I made your world safe by making it smaller, and I told myself fear gave me the right. It didn't. Love is not meant to be like that, I realize that now."

I'm shocked at what to say. He continues, "I'm not asking you to call it even."

"Good. Because it isn't." I take the cloth out of his hand so he has to look at me. "I ran from every bit of you because some of it scared me, but running didn't make the danger smaller. It just meant I faced it without you. I thought boundaries meant distance. They don't. I should be able to hold a line and still let you stand on the other side of it."

"Jazz—"

"I'm not finished." My voice steadies. "I'm choosing you. Not the bond. Not fate. Not because you tore a wall down to get me. Because of who you are when you put your hand back down. I saw you decide earlier, and that's the man I want. But choosing you does not erase what happened, we work on fixing that."

He's very still. "I don't want your obedience," he says. "I don't want the bond to choose for you. If it's doing that, I'd rather lose you than have it."

"Then keep proving that after today," I say. "Now come here."

He rises slowly and I rise with him, but I am the one who closes the distance. I curl my fingers into his ruined collar and bring his mouth to mine, careful of the split in my lip. The kiss is not hungry. It is slow, testing, both of us learning a language our bodies had spoken before either of us had the courage to admit it. His hands settle at my waist and remain there, open,waiting, until I slide one palm to the center of my back and let him understand that he is allowed.

A low sound leaves him then, not quite a groan, not quite relief, but something pulled from the deepest part of him. It vibrates against my mouth and makes my stomach tighten.

"Tell me if anything feels wrong."

"I will, and I want you here."

The words steady something in him. We undress each other without urgency. My hands find buttons, torn fabric, cool skin beneath the ruined elegance of him. His mouth moves over my shoulder, my collarbone, the curve of my breast, never taking more than I offer, never pushing past the pace I set. I try to swallow my moan but it comes out softly, and his answer is a rougher sound against my skin, restrained but unmistakable. Every place he touches feels claimed only because I choose to give it.

I guide him down onto my bed. The ordinary gray afternoon presses against the curtains, and somehow that makes this feel more intimate than the storm, more dangerous than the office, more honest than anywhere built to impress. There is no desk between us, no glass, no hidden machine humming with decisions I did not make. Only Sebastian above me, holding himself on his forearms, watching my face as though permission is a living thing he must keep earning.